Testing a $35 Firefox OS phone—how bad could it be?

Review: A masochistic journey into the world of the Intex Cloud FX.

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[Beef Supreme]

I know that this phone is really out of scope for a developed nation, but I am still in awe that we are now able to produce something at this price point which would be completely unheard of more than 15 years ago.

Sadly, it's a garbage device compared to the luxury of what we have now, but imagine taking this phone back 15-20 years, and telling people that this phone costs the same as as a cheap dinner for two.

edit: 15 years ago, we were dealing with Windows ME. Surely this phone is still more stable than ME ever was, even OOB.

 

[Geral]

Interesting review. I liked that it did come with a microSD slot (even if it only supports up to 4gb). Sadly my Moto G (1st gen) did not...

 

[siliconaddict]

The software—Firefox OS was a totally inappropriate choice of operating system for this hardware. There are literally zero considerations for the speed and memory of the Cloud FX, and most of the device's really serious problems come from running software on hardware that feels well below the minimum spec.

So they tried to shoehorn a browser OS onto a phone that didn't need it. Not overly surprised. While I have no issues with adding another mobile OS into the mix, but Firefox is a browser wanting to be an OS. Just no.

 

[potato44830]

Im guessing there are a lot of 'dumb phones' (aka 'feature phones') that will provide a better experience for a similar price, running a browser like Opera Mini. Especially in the used market.

Which makes me wonder.... if you have a good browser on a 'dumb phone', and all your apps are web based, then what is the difference between a dumb phone and a smart phone?

 

[iampanis]

40 percent of the front is bezel, which really stands out next to a high-end phone.

That screen to bezel ratio is nearly identical to the iPhone 5S. I think that would have been considered pretty high end until a few weeks ago.

 

[keltor]

5% of the world is NATIVE English speaking. (The English-speaking world pages give 430 million native which would be closer to 15% of the world.) The actual generally able to understand population is between 1 billion and 1.2 billion.

 

[Cogmatix]

I am genuinely curious: is it possible that this device could be made usable by replacing the OS? Is there an old or stripped-down version of Android that could be massaged into some form of usefulness? Seems unlikely.

128MB of RAM and a non-multitouch screen make any attempts at real functionality a tough road to hoe, I think. This seems like a pretty clear case of "just because you can does not mean you should". I have no doubts we will see acceptable devices on the market below $50USD in a surprisingly short time but the Cloud FX seems like a train wreck at any price.

 

[theoilman]

hey, when you did the article asking what we wanted to know for this review I suggested there are android devices at this same pricepoint already which have more RAM and 3G, and suggested you guys do a comparison. any word on if that's gonna happen? my curiosity is piqued!

beyond actually having 3G access, this OS actually sounds terrible compared to android for developing countries. if most apps are just bookmarks, then any time the user wants to use the app they have to essentially redownload the app, meaning it would burn through their data cap quite quickly I'd imagine. on android at least there are plenty of purely offline apps. also android has lots of browser choice and features for being able to load limited websites which would help a ton. and there are some nice data compression apps for android and in android browsers which would help a lot in these countries- I'd love to know if the FFOS browsing compresses data at all and how data use compares to various android browsers with compression built in.

 

[ronamadeo]

keltor[/url]"y2daczm]5% of the world is NATIVE English speaking. (The English-speaking world pages give 430 million native which would be closer to 15% of the world.) The actual generally able to understand population is between 1 billion and 1.2 billion.

Ok, fair enough, that list is English as a first language so I changed the wording a bit. Thanks.

 

[ronamadeo]

theoilman[/url]":1mslg3je]hey, when you did the article asking what we wanted to know for this review I suggested there are android devices at this same pricepoint already which have more RAM and 3G, and suggested you guys do a comparison. any word on if that's gonna happen? my curiosity is piqued!

Definitely. Eventually I want to get a dirt cheap Android phone to compare. I'm going to try to squeeze it in somewhere in between the crazy holiday release schedule. There were a lot of great suggestions in that thread, but this phone failed on so many basic functions that most of them just don't matter for the Cloud FX. I'll be digging into (hopefully) better cheap stuff later.

 

[Xeric]

"...it's easy to forget that the majority of people doesn't have any access to the Internet at all."

Hmmm...

 

[theoilman]

ronamadeo[/url]":124hbivs]

theoilman[/url]":124hbivs]hey, when you did the article asking what we wanted to know for this review I suggested there are android devices at this same pricepoint already which have more RAM and 3G, and suggested you guys do a comparison. any word on if that's gonna happen? my curiosity is piqued!

Definitely. Eventually I want to get a dirt cheap Android phone to compare. I'm going to try to squeeze it in somewhere in between the crazy holiday release schedule. There were a lot of great suggestions in that thread, but this phone failed on so many basic functions that most of them just don't matter for the Cloud FX. I'll be digging into (hopefully) better cheap stuff later.

awesome!

 

[crashworks]

A constrained-hardware low-price-point device seems like the very worst possible place for web-only applications, to me.

The premise of Web apps is that fast computers are cheap enough these days that we can waste 90% of the CPU's time on interpreter and HTML overhead in exchange for programmer convenience. Compared to native code, Javascript gets you out of worrying about memory, or type safety, or efficiency; and that's okay because buying 90% more CPU to run all the overhead is a small marginal cost.

But a phone is constrained hardware. CPU cycles are not cheap (as a fraction of $35 and 1250mAh). The Web-app overhead is at a direct cost of battery life and user experience. This is one place where you want the app programmers to spend effort on optimizing, so that 1,000,000 customers can spend less on silicon.

 

[continuum]

There's low-end, and then there's unusable... this is clearly the latter. I just wonder how much more hardware you need to make it usable, tho? Is it $10 worth to the BOM? $20? A different OS entirely on the same hardware?

 

[TheGreenMonkey]

I don't know, seems like 50 bucks USD would be a good price point for a cheap smart phone at this time. May be able to get it cheaper as time goes on, but this Cloud FX phone does not seem to perform anywhere near where it needs to be.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Quite possibly the longest "bad" list that I've ever seen on any Ars review of anything. Ever.

 

[kripkenstein]

We get the feeling there are relatively good, under-$50 devices out there—this isn't it.

This feels like a very unfair way to end the article.

Have you seen such relatively-good under $50 devices? Then details would be interesting (and even better, a review). But if not, then just mentioning "oh, I hear other stuff exists in this space that is way better" is just speculation, written in a way to make the Intex phone sound as bad as possible.

 

[SnowGhost]

YourConscience[/url]":3ieiybxa] I know that this phone is really out of scope for a developed nation, but I am still in awe that we are now able to produce something at this price point which would be completely unheard of more than 15 years ago.


Sadly, it's a garbage device compared to the luxury of what we have now, but imagine taking this phone back 15-20 years, and telling people that this phone costs the same as as a cheap dinner for two.

But it's easy to make something cheap if it isn't required to actually work.

I can see that the following might be considered important in 3rd world nations.

Could it actually play a simple 240 resolution youtube video?
Could it be used to help with translation from English to language of choice?
Does it work as a skype phone? This might be a killer app for a device like this.

 

[Azethoth666]

ronamadeo[/url]":20v04jc8]

keltor[/url]":20v04jc8]5% of the world is NATIVE English speaking. (The English-speaking world pages give 430 million native which would be closer to 15% of the world.) The actual generally able to understand population is between 1 billion and 1.2 billion.

Ok, fair enough, that list is English as a first language so I changed the wording a bit. Thanks.

There is more to it than that. Both China and India feature a lot of English as an additional language. Not sure about the EU, but a good case can be made for using English as the common language of the planet.

Usually people want / or predict it will be Chinese. Eventually there may be an economic argument for that. Population wise India will soon dominate though so it is unclear.

Personally I am in favor of reducing the number of languages. As an English 2nd language person, I just do not see the need for my native tongue to exist. It is not like species where we want to preserve "language diversity".

 

[rbell]

It's off topic, but... I was just looking around at that map of internet usage and suddenly laughed. Even if you don't know where North and South Korea are, just can spot the two of them easily. The single biggest contrast on the entire planet. Wow.

 

[glitchc]

I think the camera hardware isn't the problem. Rather the phone seems to be applying extremely aggressive jpeg compression in post. 2 MP should give you a very sharp image. After all, that is what your front-facing Facetime camera is, and it doesn't look like that.

 

[glitchc]

How was the call quality though? Seems like the "phone" half of smartphone was entirely forgotten in your desire to get on the internet. The primary purpose of such a phone is to make phonecalls. The internet is an added "beta" feature.

 

[jandrese]

Yeah, that camera problem is quite possibly fixable in software. It seriously looks like someone screwed up the encoder settings.

I'm really curious if someone is going to figure out how to install Debian on this thing. For $35 it's basically a Raspberry Pi with a screen, camera, cell modem, WiFi, and battery. Sure they're all kind of crap, but the Pi doesn't come with any of that. The only things missing are a GPIO connector, Ethernet, and HDMI out. I'm also not sure if the USB can run in host mode or not.

 

[MonkeyPaw]

Honestly, it seems like getting a refurbished or recycled smartphone would be a better option if money is that tight. For example, one can get a used iPhone 3G for $36 on eBay. Seems like even a beat-to-hell phone would probably offer a better experience.

 

[jimmyeatapple]

Wow Ron, thanks for suffering through it. I've used some terrible 'developing nation' smartphones, usually from Alcatel (shudder), and that sounds worse than any experience I've had to date. Intex is hell bent on driving the price down, which is admirable, but this is ridiculous. Just think of what $10 more could have afforded.

I did want to say though it is funny you spent so much time on the alarm clock and lack of accurate time. The people who can only afford a phone at this price point are probably not the people who care about an accurate clock or alarm. The cell towers here (Vanuatu) all give out the wrong times anyway and no one but me and other aid workers/volunteers care. I doubt people in inner India care either. The certs issue is bad though, if my counterparts can't get to their facebook they bring the phone to me, but half the time they already know to blindly accept all expired or questionable ssl certs anyway (shudder again).

 

[Eternal Visitor]

glitchc[/url]":2hcxrjqm]I think the camera hardware isn't the problem. Rather the phone seems to be applying extremely aggressive jpeg compression in post. 2 MP should give you a very sharp image. After all, that is what your front-facing Facetime camera is, and it doesn't look like that.

I'd be inclined to agree there, my (very) old Palm Zire 71 took better shots then that with a VGA rear camera, that looks like a bad VGA shot blown up to 2MP size.

 

[orangpelupa]

he other problem is that when Firefox OS does run out of memory, it closes apps without doing anything to preserve their state or to keep critical background tasks running.

If the lock screen pops up while reading a webpage, you'll need to reload the page again.

Oh the same with my 400 dollar android phone with 1GB ram then. (but magically fixed when I switched to cyanogenmod)

If you start the stopwatch and leave the app, the stopwatch stops. You can set the e-mail app to check for mail every five minutes, but there is never any free memory, so the mail check never runs.

But not that bad.

 

[Bernardo Verda]

...it's easy to forget that the majority of people doesn't have any access to the Internet at all.

And based on this review, it would appear that this phone can't, and won't, change that in the slightest.

I wasn't expecting much from Firefox OS -- but this is still quite disappointing.

 

[SPCagigas]

Xeric[/url]":2hxqwh6a]"...it's easy to forget that the majority of people doesn't have any access to the Internet at all."

Hmmm...

Well, on the upside, those people don't have to deal with Comcast. . .

 

[zonnked]

Yeah, ok, the phone is crap, but the way it levitated that quarter in that last picture was awesome!

 

[orangpelupa]

Btw I just checked Chinese online store with free shipping.
For the price of fireos phone, you can get Nokia 5230.

It's full fledged symbian smartphone. It happily multitask, can install apps, and have good Web experience if you install opera Web browser.

My curiosity is now... Symbian phone runs better than fireos although they have smaller ram and slower cpu. Before using android I was a heavy symbian user so basically I used those phone as heavy as Android (push email, photography, working on Web, playing games, heavy multitasking between Web, notes, and music, etc)

How can this be?

 

[NotContinuum]

We all know that Google makes stock Android and ships it off to the OEMs which put their own touches/limitations on it. I can't help but wonder if Mozilla made Firefox OS and Intex took it and didn't bother to modify it for their particular device. Perhaps there are ways of dumbing it down a bit to use less memory, etc. Although, I still don't think the problems with the keyboard, and the crashing and not saving stuff when the memory runs out is appropriate at all. That's most likely a Mozilla-made problem.

 

[jimmyeatapple]

orangpelupa[/url]":38wrn73n]Btw I just checked Chinese online store with free shipping.
For the price of fireos phone, you can get Nokia 5230.

It's full fledged symbian smartphone. It happily multitask, can install apps, and have good Web experience if you install opera Web browser.

My curiosity is now... Symbian phone runs better than fireos although they have smaller ram and slower cpu. Before using android I was a heavy symbian user so basically I used those phone as heavy as Android (push email, photography, working on Web, playing games, heavy multitasking between Web, notes, and music, etc)

How can this be?

I can't tell if rhetorical, but Symbian just Rocks! I miss my Nokia Asha 201... I was going to suggest that the new Symbian 'dumb phones' are a great alternative to this $35 smartphone. There are plenty of people where I am with dumbphones that have integrated key-pads or onscreen keyboards to send sms and browse facebook or email with dedicated apps. They aren't flashy, but they work a lot better than an equivalently priced Android phone that has had its guts removed to keep the costs down.

 

[jimmyeatapple]

SPCagigas[/url]":1faw4yzq]

Xeric[/url]":1faw4yzq]"...it's easy to forget that the majority of people doesn't have any access to the Internet at all."

Hmmm...

Well, on the upside, those people don't have to deal with Comcast. . .

If only, Comcast still has better customer service than a developing nation's branch of an international telco (TVL, Digicel, looking at you). I pay roughly $108 a month for my 512Kbit connection, get no support, have frequent outages, and have CSRs who will just hang up on you if you've asked a question they can't answer, or if they aren't feeling like taking the call, or if it is a holiday.

 

[Deleted member 192806]

Hey! You there! You've got it pretty good, you know that? While you're sitting there using your Internet-enabled device to read about some other Internet-enabled device, it's easy to forget that the majority of people doesn't have any access to the Internet at all. The "World Wide" Web is actually not that worldwide—only about one-third of the population is online. That's 4.8 billion people out there with no way to get to the Internet.

Make it a right, that'll fix the problem there.

 

[coachmark2]

Question: Why the HELL would you even consider this phone when you can get a Lumia 520 for $48. I know, I know, it's $13 more expensive. But seriously, the 520 is an absolutely fine daily phone that works really REALLY well even by our "spoiled" standards.

It has a camera that takes recognizable pictures
It has HSPA+
It has a good battery life
It can multitask
It has a dual core Snapdragon and 512MB RAM
It has a browser that doesn't suck
It has 8.1 with Cortana and swype-typing

http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Lumia-520-G ... =lumia+520

.....

 

[mewmew]

Given the phone's target demographic, why does it support Bluetooth? Who can afford a BT device when they have to buy a $35 phone? Seems like a good place to do a little cost cutting and battery improving, to me.

 

[avant]

If you are into the low-end, you should review an Asha series phones from Nokia/Microsoft or perhaps one of the older Symbians would fit the bill. Back in the day, I had a Nokia E71 and it had a very complete feature set, including a Webkit browser with Flash Mobile.

 

[joshv]

These specs are roughly equivalent, and better in some respects, than those of the T-Mobile G1, which ran Android 1.6 passably well - so I don't think they are asking the hardware to do too much. I think the OS is just a dog.