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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by jeena@jemmy.jeena.net to c/technology@lemmy.world

Today 10 years ago I went to Poland to buy a Phone with pre installed #Firefox OS on. The Phone was a Alcatel One, so very shitty. Two years later I installed Firefox OS on my Nexus 5 instead.

It was a very good concept, but sadly rolled out on too shitty hardware so it never caught on.

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[-] meiti@lemmy.world 131 points 1 year ago

Imo that's what caused Firefox to lose market share to Chrome. They focused too much on Firefox OS and deprioritized browser development. In one example, it took them a long time to implement FIDO when it was already functional in Chrome.

[-] djsaskdja@endlesstalk.org 138 points 1 year ago

Considering how dominant the mobile OS has become, this wasn’t a terrible gamble. Like they lost and it looks bad in hindsight, but you can’t blame them for trying. If it had succeeded, we’d be living in a very different world of technology right now.

[-] angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My recollection was that the game was already down to just iOS or Android by the time this came out. Windows Phone still existed, but it was already being ignored by popular apps like Snapchat.

Plus the people who even knew about this (tech people) didn't like the "everything is a web app" idea when Chrome OS did it, much less a smartphone.

[-] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 18 points 1 year ago

They tried to focus on lower end devices and that's not inherently stupid. If you only need half the ram and CPU of a low end Android phone, you can undercut Android's marketshare - in theory at least.

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[-] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago

I think what destroyed Firefox market share was a RAM leak that took them like a year or two to fix. It consumed all of your available RAM and would bog your computer down. I know that's what drove me away. It took like 10 years for me to come back.

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[-] root@lemmy.world 55 points 1 year ago

Wish something like that would come back.

[-] bill_1992@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago

Same, having competitors to Android and iOS would be great.

[-] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

The are some alternatives out there. Calling them competitive might be a stretch though.

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[-] maniel@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago

It's KaiOS now, completely independent from Mozilla

[-] EsLisper@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

People talk about FFOS like it was a failed project while in reality it was successfully commercialized and is so popular it has a native WhatsApp client. It has ~70x more users than LineageOS. Maybe Mozilla didn't knew how to make money out of it but it's definitely was a great OS project.

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[-] transientDCer@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago

This makes me nostalgic for my Palm Pre and webOS.

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[-] Qkall@lemmy.ml 38 points 1 year ago

oh wow, i had forgotten! I too was hopeful....

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[-] Shatur@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 year ago

If you are still interesting in Linux phone, consider looking at PinePhone Pro. I would recommend it only for experience users and the phone experience is far from Android, but software is catching up. Check @linuxphones

P.S. writing this comment from PPP :)

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[-] Alivrah@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

Ah, nostalgic! I loved the Firefox OS! I even preached about it to family and friends. Good times.

Unfortunately it never felt like a finished product.

[-] K0bin@feddit.de 26 points 1 year ago

I never understood why they targetted low end hardware with a tech stack that's notoriously slow (web).

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[-] Selmafudd@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

What is this? A phone for ants?

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 39 points 1 year ago

I remember a time when all of the companies were striving to make cell phones as small as possible. But as soon as touch screens came out that trend reversed.

[-] Pea666@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

When we realized we could watch porn on them.

[-] JenIsBringingTheDrugs@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

The nexus 5 was peak size for a phone imo, it's a nightmare trying to find a decent 5" phone nowadays.

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[-] StuckInAWell@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

I remember when Ubuntu for phones was hyped so big, then it fell flat...

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[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

I was thinking of getting one of these when they were very cheap. I really wanted FF OS and other alternatives to succeed or at least exist, because Android was just never very good and I foresaw how Google is just gonna abuse its monopoly and make life difficult for everyone.

But Mozilla was like "now it's not the right time to introduce a mobile OS" - wtf, when if not exactly at the time when markets were still forming? It was now or never, and Mozilla threw in the towel so quickly it almost feels like someone got a nice paycheck from Google or something.

And while I never got that phone at the end, it did look like it had some decent basis and ideas in it that could've developed into something cool. Alas.

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[-] walnutwalrus@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

today there are comparable projects with like postmarketos and ubuntu touch for specific phones, among other linux mobile projects

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[-] xX_fnord_Xx@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Am I the only one that misses a thick bezel?

[-] bustrpoindextr@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Thick bezels are great for actual comfortable usage, but they don't look sexy so they're no more

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[-] kiwixvalentine@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

For the curious people, Firefox OS kept living in a way, being used as the foundation for KaiOS, which was a smart operative system for "dumb" phones. This one took off in certain parts of the world.

[-] lnxtx@feddit.nl 20 points 1 year ago
[-] robert235@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

I completely forgot Firefox had a phone.

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[-] gameboyhomeboy@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I would love another, more privacy focused os. I've tried graphene, etc, but something altogether different would be cool.

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[-] Zoldyck@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

This reminds me... What happened to Sailfish?

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[-] n3cr0@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

FFOS was an html mess. The GUI didn't have much to offer. You couldn't organize your apps since they were only accessible through the cluttered app drawer.

[-] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 21 points 1 year ago

The HTML was not the problem, the never finished OS was one yes.

I still liked it because of how easy it was to develop apps for it like I did with my https://jeena.net/feedmonkey

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[-] ostsjoe@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

We had two of these that ended up sitting in my desk at work back around that time. They were sent to us free with hopes we would port our (shitty) android/iOS apps to it. One was a bit newer, but they both just felt shitty compared to the equivalent Nexus or iPhone of the time, so I never bothered trying to use it as a daily driver. I wasn't even on the app dev team, no one else wanted them or cared at all. Was fun as a technical curiosity though.

[-] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I thought this was an urban myth or a collective hysteria.

[-] ram@feddit.nl 12 points 1 year ago

Remember when android phones fitted in hands?

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[-] rowie324@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 year ago

i really hope these alt-mobile OS's take off, i know theres things like pinephone and kde mobile but they're still a little bit rough around the edges last i checked.. at the same time tho maybe i should do some more digging around. i imagine someone's made a daily-driveable alternate OS for phones at this point

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[-] 933k 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I remember using multiROM to install Lineage OS, Sailfish OS and Firefox OS all at the same time on my Nexus 4. I wished there was some kind of software today that you could dual boot an android phone.

[-] mtchristo@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

How much functionality is left on that phone?

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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
1814 points (98.5% liked)

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