Category: mozilla

Mozilla will end Firefox OS phone support in May

Carl Lamiel

It’s now final: Mozilla will be ceasing development of Firefox OS for smartphones once the last version has been seeded this May.

firefoxos

In a statement posted on the Mozilla website, the move is made to refocus their developers on bigger scale platforms such as IoT. Here’s an excerpt of the announcement:

We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the version 2.6 release.

[…]

Through the work of hundreds of contributors we made an awesome push and created an impressive platform in Firefox OS. However, as we announced in December, the circumstances of multiple established operating systems and app ecosystems meant that we were playing catch-up, and the conditions were not there for Mozilla to win on commercial smartphones. We have decided that in order to succeed in the new area of Connected Devices we must focus our energy completely on prototyping the future and exploring how we can make the biggest impact in IoT.

Therefore we are announcing our plan to end-of-life support for smartphones after the Firefox OS 2.6 release. This means that Firefox OS for smartphones will no longer have staff involvement beyond May.

App Marketplace submissions for Desktop, Tablet, and Android will end March 29th, while Firefox OS-compatible apps can still be submitted until some time in 2017. A sad day for Cherry Mobile Ace users, as they are the ones affected by this announcement.

 

Update (2/9/2016): We wrote on Sunday, February 7, that Mozilla will be ceasing development of its Firefox OS as a whole, which is in fact only meant to be for the smartphone segment as mentioned in the full announcement at the source. In a statement from MozillaPH representative Bob Reyes, developments for the Cherry Mobile Ace will still be in full swing despite the announcement. “Though support from the local device manufacturer is next to none, rest assured that MozillaPH will continue to provide support to CM ACE users via the FB Group. We are not promising, but we are working on ways to deliver a possible update to Firefox OS v1.3T currently installed on these devices,” Reyes said. Our apologies for the error.

Source

The post Mozilla will end Firefox OS phone support in May appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines News & Tech Reviews.

Firefox OS: A Preview Of Good Things To Come

Bob Freking Leave a comment

On top, there’s Android & iOS, then comes Windows Phone & BlackBerry 10. Is there space for more mobile OSes? Sailfish, Ubuntu and the rest are just around the corner, but for now, we have Firefox OS here to look at. Here is a preview on what to expect once it’s out, so read on.

YT FFOS

Firefox OS here runs on the Geeksphone Keon, which is somewhat a statement that it can run on a low-spec’d handset. We already did a first impressions here if you want to check it out.

Setup

Like most devices, the OS requires users to undergo initial setup on first boot. This involves choosing your desired language, connecting to a WiFi network, then setting the date and time.

firefoxos_setup1

You can then choose to import your contacts from your SIM or Facebook account. After which, you can decide whether you want to help Mozilla improve the Firefox OS by sharing data about your phone.

firefoxos_setup2

UI Navigation 101

Once setup is finished, Firefox OS will give you a quick tutorial on how to navigate the OS. Swipe from right to left to browse your apps, swipe from left to right to discover new apps, tap and hold an icon to delete or move it.

firefoxos_ui1

Swipe down to access recent notifications, credit information and settings, tap and hold the home button to browse and close recent apps. Beginners won’t have any issues learning how to navigate the device as everything is straight forward and easy to understand.

firefoxos_ui2

Lockscreen

Before you can access anything, you’d have to go through the lockscreen first. Unlocking the phone is done by swiping upwards from the bottom of the screen. From there, you can either choose to be directed to the home screen (by choosing the unlock button) or go straight to the camera app. For added security, you can also setup a 4-digit passcode to unlock the phone.

ff lockscreen

The lockscreen shows the current date & time, as well as the name of your network provider. In addition, it also displays notifications such as unread emails and/or SMS. We think that Mozilla did a great job with the Firefox OS’s lockscreen as relevant information is readily available at a glance and it gives users quick access to the camera app.

Homescreen

After passing through the lockscreen, you are brought to whatever app you last used. By default, however, you are brought to the homescreen with everything within reach.

Swiping all the way to the left will show you the universal search bar which is similar to iOS. It will also bring you a grid of suggested web apps, search tags and things that you already have on your phone.

ff home

Below the universal search bar is a list of preloaded bookmarks, which takes a little time to load once pressed. You can add or remove them all to your taste. Next to that is the homescreen that displays the date & time with 4 customizable shortcuts below. With a long press on the blank space, you can change the wallpaper and get to pick from preloaded ones, from the gallery or from the camera app.

To the right are all your apps. We have HERE Maps by Nokia and a couple more such as an E-mail client which works pretty well. With a long press, you can customize it too together with uninstall options.

Notifications

The notification bar is seen across the system most of the time and it shows the battery, the network, WiFi, Bluetooth and all of the usual stuff.

notifications ff

Pull it down and you’ll see your notifications with a “clear all” button at the top and the toggles down below. If you’re inside an app when you receive a notification, boxes will appear at the top for a short while similar to Apple’s iOS.

Design & Function

As you can see in the screenshots, the design of the OS is quite polished. In totality, Firefox is like a marriage between Android & MeeGo that bares iOS-like functionality (single home button, homescreen similarities).

apps ff

There are barely any gesture-based operations in FireFox OS as compared to other mobile OSes, so we’ll have to stick with the conventional tapping and swiping.

As for the apps, they are still in development. However, when we entered the Marketplace – it was loaded (it even seemed as loaded as the Play Store). Upon pressing install, poof! – in split-seconds the download was done. We found out later that some of these apps functions like a web bookmark. This app won’t run without internet, and it simply directs you to the mobile version of that webpage. No need to worry though, as we’re sure real apps are probably in development.

Button Combinations & Multitasking

Of course, there’s the volume rocker that works like how it does on Android, iOS & the rest. The power button locks the device with a single press, and with a long hold, it gives you options to toggle Airplane mode, restart, silence incoming calls and power it off.

communications

To take a screenshot, you need to press and hold the power button together with the home button.

Multitasking can be done here, as it doesn’t close the applications you leave immediately. Long press the home button and you are brought to your recent apps/task switcher. You have the option to close them with a button on the top left corner of the window.

It’s the start of something more

We think the best part here is how the OS can run so smoothly on an entry-level category device. Firefox OS is easy in every sense & simple without sacrificing too much functionality. In fact, for a newly bred OS, it does a lot of things better than other platforms – for example, Windows Phone 8 in multitasking.

It’s not the final product yet, and Mozilla will be adding a lot more into this OS such as social networking integration. For our last words, we want to keep it simple and concise – this fox is on fire!

The post Firefox OS: A Preview Of Good Things To Come appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Mozilla and Samsung teams up to enrich mobile browsing

Ronnie Bulaong Leave a comment

Branden Eich, CTO of Mozilla, has recently announced in a post on their official blogsite that Mozilla is working with Samsung to further enhance the mobile browsing through an experimental browser engine called Servo.

Over the past few years, mobile devices have seen significant increase in performance thanks to the development of more powerful processors. And as these devices become more able to handle advanced computing tasks, it’s only rational for companies such as Mozilla to develop a mobile browser that fully maximizes the hardware’s potential.

mozilla firefox

This explains why, Mozilla decided to collaborate with Samsung to come up with mobile browser designed for ARM-based processors and Android. We think that, Samsung is the perfect fit for this endeavor as Mozilla can leverage the expertise that the South Korean firm has in the realm of Android and mobile processors.

The project that these two companies are working on is Servo – a web browser engine which is based on Mozilla’s in-house programming language called Rust. Servo is still on its early stage of development as Mozilla is still trying to put the last pieces together to make Rust more secure and stable.

Details about these projects such as target release date are scarce at the time of writing. All we know right now is that these two (Rust and Servo) will lay the foundation for a faster, mobile device-friendly browser of the future. It’ll be interesting to see what these two giants will come up with.

{Source}

The post Mozilla and Samsung teams up to enrich mobile browsing appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Qualcomm announces 2013 plans for Philippines

Louie Diangson Leave a comment

Leading mobile technology company, Qualcomm, has recently announced their upcoming plans for the country this year as well as their collaboration with Mozilla for the Firefox OS.

qualcomm-snapdragon-s4

According to Qualcomm, the company is expecting two things to happen in the Philippines. The first one is the gradual increase of smartphone capabilities, while the second one is the launch of LTE devices as data consumption grows in the country. “Qualcomm will work closely with local companies to bring to the Philippines a significant variety of local brand smartphones that are highly functional and affordable,” says Mantosh Malhotra, Senior Director for Business Development, Qualcomm Philippines.

firefox-os-smartphone-20130225-1

As for the Qualcomm-Mozilla collaboration, Qualcomm will continue to work with Mozilla to help Firefox OS work seamlessly on Snapdragon processors. “Qualcomm is excited to play a key role in this initiative to support the availability of 3G smartphones while collaborating on the evolution of mobile services and applications for HTML5,” said Malhotra.

These plans would certainly help Qualcomm utilize its new set of processors, particularly the Snapdragon 400 and 200 which are aimed at mid-tier and entry level smartphone segments.

The post Qualcomm announces 2013 plans for Philippines appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

The race to break the OS duopoly

Ronnie Bulaong Leave a comment

During the course of the past six months, several companies have announced their new mobile platform hoping to break the Apple-Google duopoly. Today we’ll take a closer look at 5 of those operating systems and see which one has what it takes to be the next big thing in the OS wars.


yugatech1

Two of the candidates in this list (BlackBerry OS 10 and Windows Phone 8) are already out in the market, while three are still in the last phase of development and is scheduled to make its debut in the latter part of this year. Furthermore, the two OS out in the market are both closed source and the 3 upcoming platforms are all open source.

BlackBerry OS 10

Company: BlackBerry Ltd. (formerly known as Research In Motion)
Source Model: Closed source
OS Architecture: Real-time Microkernel (QNX)
Supported Programming Language: JavaScript, CSS, HTML
Supported App Framework: Qt/QML and HTML5
User Interface: BlackBerry 10 UI
Min. Hardware Requirements: Undisclosed
Announcement Date: January 30, 2013
Status: Available
Devices: Limited to BlackBerry handsets as of the moment

The BlackBerry OS 10, as well as the BlackBerry Tablet OS, is the product of the acquisition of QNX Software Systems, the company behind this Microkernel-based OS. As such, the platform shares some distinct features with its tablet counterpart just like the bezel-to-screen swipe gestures called Blackberry Flow and Peek for navigation and multitasking.

bb os 10

Apart from revamped UI, the BB OS 10 also boasts several new features including BlackBerry Hub, Balance, Time Shift Camera. Being known for providing one of the best keyboard in the industry, the on-screen keyboard of the BlackBerry Z10 has also seen a significantly improvement over the previous builds. The virtual keyboard bears the company’s renowned layout and is now capable of auto-predicting the next word that the user will type. The predicted word/s is displayed on top of a certain key and can be used by flicking upwards.

After a long period of silence, BlackBerry is starting to create a buzz in the mobile industry with the release of the highly anticipated mobile platform, the BlackBerry OS 10. The OS, along with the two new handsets (Z10 and Q10) that features it, has been regarded by many smartphone enthusiasts as the Canadian company’s last ditch effort to regain its place in the consumer and enterprise market. Now that the OS is out in the open, the key is for the company to back up their brainchild with aggressive marketing strategy.

Firefox OS

Company: Mozilla Foundation
Source Model: Open Source
OS Architecture: Monolithic (Linux Kernel)
Supported App Framework: HTML5
User Interface: Gaia
Min. Hardware Requirements:
Processor: 800MHz
RAM: 256MB RAM
Display: QVGA
Announcement Date: July 25, 2010 (Boot to Gecko), July 2012 (Firefox OS)
Status: In development, target launch on Q3 2013
Devices: Alcatel, LG Electronics, ZTE, Huawei, TCL Corporation, Sony

Deeply rooted in Mozilla’s core is the organization’s advocacy to promote openness, innovation and opportunity. This belief is reflected on almost everything that they do, including their latest endeavor the Firefox OS.

The goal is to build “a complete, standalone operating system for the open web.” In order to achieve this, Mozilla uses HTML5 in programming the platform and for developing applications. This allows developers to easily port their apps that are previously written for other platforms to the upcoming OS.

firefox os

In the recently concluded MWC, the organization announced the companies that joined their cause. These companies include several telcos and a handful of device manufacturers. At the convention, Mozilla also showcased a pair of handsets (Alcatel One Touch Fire and ZTE Fire) that sports the OS.

Sailfish OS

Company: Jolla Ltd.
Source Model: Open Source
OS Architecture: Monolithic (Linux Kernel)
Supported App Framework: Qt/QML
User Interface: Jolla UI
Min. Hardware Requirements: TBA
Announcement Date: November 21, 2012
Status: In development, target launch on Q1 2013
Devices: TBA

Equipped with more than enough knowledge and expertise about mobile OS, Jolla Mobile, the team that brought us MeeGo and MaeMo is back with a vengeance and is looking to make another mark in the industry with their upcoming platform dubbed as Sailfish OS.

sailfish os

The concept behind the OS is rather simple; merge Mer (MeeGo Reconstructed) and MeeGo’s architecture and further develop it using Qt Quick, QML and HTML5. The result that the team is hoping for is platform that “brings and fosters innovation to offer unique differentiation and a competitive advantage for OEMs and ODMs, chipset providers, operators, application developers and retailers.”
Jolla Ltd. has yet to officially name a mobile manufacturer that would carry their OS. It’s been said that the design of the phone will come from the organization itself, but because of the platform’s versatility, Jolla is confident that the integration of the OS to other devices should be a breeze.

Ubuntu Touch

Company: Canonical Ltd.
Source Model: Open source
OS Architecture: Monolithic (Linux Kernel)
Supported App Framework: Qt/QML and HTML5
User Interface: Unity UI based on Ubuntu 10.10
Min. Hardware Requirements: 1GHz Cortex A9 processor, 512MB RAM
Announcement Date: January 2, 2013
Status: Slated for Q4 2013 launch
Devices: TBA

Ubuntu Touch hails from a long line of Open Source operating system developed by Canonical for desktop users. With a slogan of “One Device To Rule Them All”, Canonical is looking to capitalize on their expertise in the desktop ecosystem and apply those in their upcoming mobile platform.

The mobile OS will sport a home grown, gesture-based UI called Unity UI which is inspired by the netbook-optimized version of Ubuntu. Unity UI bears some similarities with Blackberry OS 10’s UI, particularly in the navigation aspect, as both makes use of the every inch of the device’s display for basic operations. This eliminates the need for a physical button and makes it easier for users to navigate through various selections. The downside, however, is that it requires a lot of getting used to in order for the touch-based operation to feel natural.

ubuntu touch

Canonical’s goal is to provide users with the near-desktop experience on their mobile devices by integrating some of key components of the desktop version of the platform to the gesture-based UI. The company has yet to disclose the manufacturers who will use the Ubuntu Touch on their smartphones, but Mark Shuttleworth (Founder and CEO of Canonical, Ltd) mentioned that the first devices running on their Linux-Based OS is slated to debut on October of this year.

Windows Phone 8

Company: Microsoft
Source Model: Closed source
OS Architecture: Hybrid Windows NT Kernel
Supported App Framework: Microsoft XNA
User Interface: Windows 8 (Metro UI)
Min. Hardware Requirements:
Processor: Snapdragon S4 dual-core
RAM: 512MB (WVGA), 1GB for 720p
ROM: 4GB
Announcement Date: October 29 2012
Status: Out in the market
Devices: HTC, Huawei, Nokia and Samsung

For the majority of users, Windows Phone 8 may just seem like a major update to the last version of WP7.8 (Tango). This misconception may have sprung up due to the similarities that this OS and the previous generations share in common, especially in the user interface department. However, truth be told, there are more to Windows Phone 8 than meets the eye.

Probably the most significant improvement that WP8 has over previous builds is at its core. Instead of using a similar kernel as the pre-historic Windows CE, Microsoft utilized a Hybird (Monolithic – Microkernel) Windows NT kernel that is also being used on Windows 8. The use of this kernel has resulted to a significant improvement in the mobile platform’s ability to handle multi-core processors, higher screen resolution and storage expansion via Micro-SD card; three of the many things that users and journalists have been complaining since the debut of Windows Phone7.

windows phone 8

However, one of the major drawbacks that WP8 has is the fact that it cannot be installed on devices running on WP7. Microsoft explains that this is due to the hardware limitations presented by the earlier devices running on an older version of their platform. When this news made the headlines, it sparked an uproar in the WP7 community which also proved crucial to the success of WP7-powered handsets in the market. In the end, users are left with a hard pill to swallow; be content with their current device’s OS or move on to WP8.

As of the time of writing, both BB OS 10 and WP8 have a clear advantage over the other candidates in our list. In the case of BlackBerry, it has already established a following in the past; they just need to get things back on track to reclaim their spot in the upper echelon of the OS wars with BlackBerry OS 10. Windows Phone 8, on the other hand, is still on shaky grounds, but the single major edge it has over its competition is the fact that users can seamlessly transition from one Windows-powered device to the other since it also has a counterpart in the tablet and desktop scene.

yugatech2

As for the three upcoming open source OS, it’s still pretty early to tell whether these platforms will make it to the big leagues, let alone break the two-horse race between Android and iOS. Make no mistake though; each of these platforms presents a very interesting proposition for its potential users. So the effort is definitely there, the question is if it’s gonna be enough to be named as one of the greats in the industry.

The post The race to break the OS duopoly appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.