ZTE will sell its Firefox phone on eBay for $80

ZTE Open comes to the US through unconventional channels.

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[potato44819]

I actually wouldn't mind having one as a backup phone.

 

[daggar]

With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

 

[jdale]

I really hope they do well, and I would be fine with the eBay aspect (no surprise, I bought my Pre3 that way), but with those specs I will sit this one out.

 

[Wellard]

Oooh, This'll be interesting. I've been trying to get a Keon/Peak for ages, but they keep selling out before I can get an order in.

I have a feeling this type of phone has a place in the market, especially at such a neat price. Having eBay as the distro point makes things less good for support, and means more money for feebay but I guess it speeds up things as the shop is already done for them.

It's a £60 punt I'm prepared to take.

 

[Nevarre]

daggar[/url]":1f328fgm]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Yeah, I hate it when the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Bada and Ubuntu Phone monoculture rears its ugly head!

 

[JD2468]

What about the apps?

 

[phoenix_rizzen]

What apps? Everything is just a web page.

 

[superdave2013]

I'd definitely consider this phone if I find a data/voice plan that I find reasonable.

 

[kjamc1982]

Might just have to get me one. Just need a phone with a good Web browser.

 

[Voo42]

Nevarre[/url]":at83ky4s]

daggar[/url]":at83ky4s]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Yeah, I hate it when the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Bada and Ubuntu Phone monoculture rears its ugly head!

Still not a monoculture, but ios+ Android have what? 90% market share for smartphones in the US?

 

[jdale]

Nevarre[/url]":ajsyiyqr]

daggar[/url]":ajsyiyqr]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Yeah, I hate it when the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Bada and Ubuntu Phone monoculture rears its ugly head!

I don't think Bada or Ubuntu Phone are available for the US market. Blackberry is down to 1.1% market share and falling, and Windows Phone is only up to 4%. It's still not really a monoculture because Android and iOS are splitting up the rest, but it's also not an adequate set of options.

 

[kosso]

But can it play/record H.264 video?

 

[kjamc1982]

I think webkit based mobile browser is a mono culture!

 

[LazarX]

jdale[/url]":2f22l841]

Nevarre[/url]":2f22l841]

daggar[/url]":2f22l841]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Yeah, I hate it when the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Bada and Ubuntu Phone monoculture rears its ugly head!

I don't think Bada or Ubuntu Phone are available for the US market. Blackberry is down to 1.1% market share and falling, and Windows Phone is only up to 4%. It's still not really a monoculture because Android and iOS are splitting up the rest, but it's also not an adequate set of options.

To be really fair, It took a long time for a #3 company to show up. In the meantime IOS and Android phones just kept gobbing up new customers.

 

[well is it.]

The simplicity is nice. If the battery life is good and the web browser is fast then I might give it a chance.

 

[wicker_man]

kosso[/url]":37avje92]But can it play/record H.264 video?

Not sure about ZTE, but the Alcatel one can play H.264: http://www.alcatelonetouch.com/global-e ... gkFxX7c9_N

Record - probably yes, too, but certainly not in 1080p which is probably what you were really asking.

 

[Shannara]

I wouldn't mind buying one if they went through an honest company .... Ah well, maybe next time.

 

[wicker_man]

Shannara[/url]":s9bctclg]I wouldn't mind buying one if they went through an honest company .... Ah well, maybe next time.

Look at Alcatel one then.

 

[kosso]

The reason I ask is that obviously Firefox/Mozilla have never had the H.264 license thereby forcing FF users to use Ogg Theora (or.. urgh.. Flash fallback). If they want to compete at all on mobile, they need to have H.264 support, I think. If that happens for mobile, I'm hoping it might cover the desktop browser too, meaning that multimedia processing systems (which I build) don't have to export OGV files too. At last.

 

[kleinma]

daggar[/url]":fabme5kk]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Fragmentation of the marketplace can also be bad. Already there are so many horrible ports of apps because developers can only afford to develop for one platform, and then get it cheaply and poorly ported over to the other platforms.

Also Nokia is not the only one making Windows phones, they just are to Windows phone what Samsung is to Android.

 

[DerHabbo]

Ebay = US Paypal. Do not want (okay do want, but not from paypal).

 

[mbrubeck]

Firefox currently supports H.264 video on Windows Vista and higher, Mac OS X 10.7 and higher, Android, and Firefox OS. Support on other platforms is in progress.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... ia_formats

 

[jdale]

LazarX[/url]":1rmp7rnp]

jdale[/url]":1rmp7rnp]

Nevarre[/url]":1rmp7rnp]

daggar[/url]":1rmp7rnp]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Yeah, I hate it when the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Bada and Ubuntu Phone monoculture rears its ugly head!

I don't think Bada or Ubuntu Phone are available for the US market. Blackberry is down to 1.1% market share and falling, and Windows Phone is only up to 4%. It's still not really a monoculture because Android and iOS are splitting up the rest, but it's also not an adequate set of options.

To be really fair, It took a long time for a #3 company to show up. In the meantime IOS and Android phones just kept gobbing up new customers.

Blackberry predates the iPhone (2007), with a smartphone in 2003. So getting in early is not sufficient. The first Android phone was in 2008. Palm/Handspring was doing phones in 2002 (WebOS showed up in 2009). Microsoft had smartphones on its mobile OS in 2002.

What really killed Blackberry and Palm was serious lag in innovation. Both had popular state-of-the-art products, but rested on their laurels while others were innovating. Both scrambled to catch up, but they hadn't just lost time, they also lost believers. WebOS came out in 2009 (just one year after Android and two after the iPhone). To a lesser extent the same is true for Microsoft (not sure they were ever really state-of-the-art though), Windows Phone 7 was finally making a real step forward but that was not until 2010.

It feels like there is a huge gap in time between these operating systems but actually it happened very fast.

 

[suburbandude]

But will it blend?

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

kosso[/url]":22a5oj2y]The reason I ask is that obviously Firefox/Mozilla have never had the H.264 license thereby forcing FF users to use Ogg Theora (or.. urgh.. Flash fallback). If they want to compete at all on mobile, they need to have H.264 support, I think. If that happens for mobile, I'm hoping it might cover the desktop browser too, meaning that multimedia processing systems (which I build) don't have to export OGV files too. At last.

If memory serves, FF was leaning in the direction of deferring to platform capabilities to dodge the issue of H.264 licensing (Since, even if they had the cash to buy enough licenses for the binaries they distribute, they'd be passing a patent-encumbrance on to any downstream users of the code, which they Do Not Want to do).

If they do that, which seems likely, sooner or later, on the desktop, it seems even more likely on the mobile side (where, even if you are legally in the clear, your weedy little SoC may not even be capable of doing decode in software; but probably has a hardware decode, sometimes even encode, engine that can handle video on a trickle of power). If so, ZTE just has to pay Qualcomm the extra nickel or whatever to get the chip with H.264 support enabled, and everything will Just Work.

 

[Voo42]

mbrubeck[/url]":2h4nv82c]Firefox currently supports H.264 video on Windows Vista and higher, Mac OS X 10.7 and higher, Android, and Firefox OS. Support on other platforms is in progress.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... ia_formats

They just let the native decoder of the os do the work, which is also the reason why it's only supported for a few oses.

Although if the phone has support for h264 decoding mozilla could do the same there I think. Nobody would be stupid enough to release a phone without hw h264 decoder in this day and age surely?

 

[foolishgrunt]

fuzzyfuzzyfungus[/url]":2oj3s5e7]

kosso[/url]":2oj3s5e7]The reason I ask is that obviously Firefox/Mozilla have never had the H.264 license thereby forcing FF users to use Ogg Theora (or.. urgh.. Flash fallback). If they want to compete at all on mobile, they need to have H.264 support, I think. If that happens for mobile, I'm hoping it might cover the desktop browser too, meaning that multimedia processing systems (which I build) don't have to export OGV files too. At last.

If memory serves, FF was leaning in the direction of deferring to platform capabilities to dodge the issue of H.264 licensing (Since, even if they had the cash to buy enough licenses for the binaries they distribute, they'd be passing a patent-encumbrance on to any downstream users of the code, which they Do Not Want to do).

If they do that, which seems likely, sooner or later, on the desktop, it seems even more likely on the mobile side (where, even if you are legally in the clear, your weedy little SoC may not even be capable of doing decode in software; but probably has a hardware decode, sometimes even encode, engine that can handle video on a trickle of power). If so, ZTE just has to pay Qualcomm the extra nickel or whatever to get the chip with H.264 support enabled, and everything will Just Work.

As previously noted, Firefox supports platform-enabled multimedia decoding on Windows and OS X. Gstreamer support (for Linux and others) is currently in development.

 

[mbrubeck]

Yes, just to be clear, Firefox *already* supports H.264 decoding using the underlying device/OS decoders on most desktop platforms and all mobile platforms where it runs (including Firefox OS phones like the ZTE Open).

Decoding H.264 on Linux with GStreamer will be enabled by default soon. Then the last big platform without H.264 support will be Windows XP (which does not include an H.264 decoder in the operating system).

 

[lowlymarine]

well, is it.[/url]":25j3jwfq]The simplicity is nice. If the battery life is good and the web browser is fast then I might give it a chance.

If you mean "fast" as in "scrolling is smooth" then it is possible; scrolling is pretty smooth on Firefox for Android even on lower-end hardware, and we're dealing with driving a very low resolution screen here.

If you mean fast as in actual respectable Javascript and rendering performance, I can assure you it will not be. No amount of behind-the-scenes wizardry will make an 800 MHz single-core A5 put up decent performance; you're dealing with iPhone 3GS-class CPU performance here, and I don't think even the most generous person would call that browsing experience "fast."

Also, while I'm very glad to see smartphone hardware coming down in price, the sacrifices you're making here versus the Lumia 520 to save $20 are pretty extreme. I understand that's the reality of the very low end - BoM and manufacturing costs have floors that it becomes increasingly difficult to push down as you get lower; this is why you see AMD and nVidia hack off two-thirds of a $75 GPU just to get down to a $50 one. In developing markets that $20 could make enough of a difference, but in the US and UK I can't see anyone buying this as more than a curiosity.

 

[kosso]

Got it. Thanks for the responses.

I'm looking forward to only having to support H.264 in all browsers "out of the box". You know, for the 'normal' people.

Then, no doubt, Google will force their WebM on everyone through Blink. ... sigh..

 

[rex86]

And how much money does Microsoft get per sold Firefox OS phone by ZTE? Or they're still doing the numbers?

 

[phoenix_rizzen]

kosso[/url]":35igwm6e]But can it play/record H.264 video?

That will depend on the SoC. I believe the Snapdragon S1 supports it, but don't know for sure.

Mobile Firefox supports H.264 decoding in hardware if the underlying OS supports it in hardware (IOW, it works fine on Android).

 

[kosso]

Interesting info. Thx. I just updated my FF to 23 on OSX 10.8.4 and it appears to play a direct mp4 video url in the browser, but not as an HTML5 video tag source, as type=video/mp4. (I'll dig deeper)

 

[beebee]

jdale[/url]":7nfdqgl9]

Nevarre[/url]":7nfdqgl9]

daggar[/url]":7nfdqgl9]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Yeah, I hate it when the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Bada and Ubuntu Phone monoculture rears its ugly head!

I don't think Bada or Ubuntu Phone are available for the US market. Blackberry is down to 1.1% market share and falling, and Windows Phone is only up to 4%. It's still not really a monoculture because Android and iOS are splitting up the rest, but it's also not an adequate set of options.

Ahem:

http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/05/14/andr ... s-gartner/

 

[beebee]

jdale[/url]":1pjtw1v7]

LazarX[/url]":1pjtw1v7]

jdale[/url]":1pjtw1v7]

Nevarre[/url]":1pjtw1v7]

daggar[/url]":1pjtw1v7]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Yeah, I hate it when the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Bada and Ubuntu Phone monoculture rears its ugly head!

I don't think Bada or Ubuntu Phone are available for the US market. Blackberry is down to 1.1% market share and falling, and Windows Phone is only up to 4%. It's still not really a monoculture because Android and iOS are splitting up the rest, but it's also not an adequate set of options.

To be really fair, It took a long time for a #3 company to show up. In the meantime IOS and Android phones just kept gobbing up new customers.

Blackberry predates the iPhone (2007), with a smartphone in 2003. So getting in early is not sufficient. The first Android phone was in 2008. Palm/Handspring was doing phones in 2002 (WebOS showed up in 2009). Microsoft had smartphones on its mobile OS in 2002.

What really killed Blackberry and Palm was serious lag in innovation. Both had popular state-of-the-art products, but rested on their laurels while others were innovating. Both scrambled to catch up, but they hadn't just lost time, they also lost believers. WebOS came out in 2009 (just one year after Android and two after the iPhone). To a lesser extent the same is true for Microsoft (not sure they were ever really state-of-the-art though), Windows Phone 7 was finally making a real step forward but that was not until 2010.

It feels like there is a huge gap in time between these operating systems but actually it happened very fast.

I don't think RIM saw the need for fart apps and pissed off birds. Five years later, I don't see the need for fart apps and pissed off birds, but the general public does.

 

[DanNeely]

phoenix_rizzen[/url]":1phi06k6]

kosso[/url]":1phi06k6]But can it play/record H.264 video?

That will depend on the SoC. I believe the Snapdragon S1 supports it, but don't know for sure.

Mobile Firefox supports H.264 decoding in hardware if the underlying OS supports it in hardware (IOW, it works fine on Android).

IIRC that change only came when they decided they wanted to make a mobile product, until then they were taking a principled, if futile, stand against supporting patent encumbered codecs.

 

[DanNeely]

beebee[/url]":idrtv6f1]

jdale[/url]":idrtv6f1]

Nevarre[/url]":idrtv6f1]

daggar[/url]":idrtv6f1]With Blackberry on the ropes, Nokia still sickly, I'm happy to see another mobile OS popping up.

Monoculture is bad.

Yeah, I hate it when the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Bada and Ubuntu Phone monoculture rears its ugly head!

I don't think Bada or Ubuntu Phone are available for the US market. Blackberry is down to 1.1% market share and falling, and Windows Phone is only up to 4%. It's still not really a monoculture because Android and iOS are splitting up the rest, but it's also not an adequate set of options.

Ahem:

http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/05/14/andr ... s-gartner/

Depends what markets you're looking at. While Android is dominating globally, especially in poorer markets where even the cheapest iPhone is really expensive by local standards, the two are neck and neck in the US and some other rich world markets.

 

[Voo42]

DanNeely[/url]":13m89mq4]
Depends what markets you're looking at. While Android is dominating globally, especially in poorer markets where even the cheapest iPhone is really expensive by local standards, the two are neck and neck in the US and some other rich world markets.

Certainly closer if you look at the US (where Apple has generally the highest market shares world wide), but even there Android has by now a 20% lead, so not really "neck to neck".

The real winner if you look world wide and not US only is certainly Symbian though

 

[rcxb]

You can get Android phones with slightly better specs for the same price. Samsung Transform Ultra was $80 for quite a while, but there seems to be quite a shortage of them now.

Only reason to buy it is if you want to try Firefox OS, and I can't see any reason to do so... FirefoxOS' whole philosophy is based on a false premise, that HTML5 apps will give decent performance on a low-end phone. Everyone with a clue knows that's the exact OPPOSITE of reality.

Drew Crawford's write-up with benchmarks makes a very good point that HTML5/javascript is absolutely terrible from a performance perspective, giving us "2%" performance:

http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-mob ... -are-slow/