Mozilla is at CES showing off its upcoming Firefox mobile OS on a prototype device. It’s come a long way since we saw it as “Boot to Gecko” back at MWC last February, and now looks a bit more like a fully-fledged operating system — Mozilla say it’s two weeks from being completed. It’s aimed at low-end, low-cost devices, and will be restricted to single-core 800MHz processors at launch. Mozilla’s UI philosophy here is similar to Android: unlocking the phone takes you to a homescreen that can display your favorite apps and bookmarks, with the rest of your apps stored in an app drawer. Unlike Android, however, it’s entirely HTML5 based — most of the apps are simply websites, and although there’s a store planned you’ll also be able to find apps through a built-in search engine based on SEO.
Mozilla’s Firefox OS demoed, coming to emerging markets later this year (hands-on)
1/6
Firefox does show some promise; the overall aesthetic, although perhaps a little more child-like than other OSes, is very pleasant, and Mozilla has obviously put a lot of thought into the UI. For now though, t's difficult to get a real impression of what it'll be like on a competitive device. Mozilla does plan to target more powerful devices, but for now it's expecting its manufacturing partners — ZTE was named — to launch devices in South America and other emerging markets later this year.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
Most Popular
Most Popular
