Firefox OS post-mortem
######################
:date: 2015-09-26T15:00:00
:category: computer
:tags: firefoxOS, review
So, it happened. My Flame_ stopped working, it just doesn’t
react to anything (power off switch, power cable), and of course
being a weird unknown China-only thing, no local repair shop
would touch it. I probably could ask somebody at Mozilla for
another one, but I already knew I wouldn’t. Let me write couple
of words why I gave up on `Firefox OS`_ (not on Firefox or
Mozilla!).
.. _Flame:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150214081749/https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Phone_guide/Flame
.. _`Firefox OS`:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS
The promise of Firefox OS as I understood was that although it
will never be as powerful as other high-end mobile platforms, it
would provide superior hackability and openness, and in the end
and after some time the platform should provide a poor-men’s
equivalent of a way more expensive high-end phones.
I was willing to wait for the fulfillment of this promise and I
don’t I gave up too easily. The first Firefox OS phone I bought
was the first one sold (that’s summer 2013 for those who
weren’t there), Geeksphone Peak (I always bought the Firefox OS
“high-end” models). I was really not happy with that phone.
Not because of the immaturity of the platform (that was
expected), but by the actual lack of openness of the hardware.
Geeks `never really freed`_ their hardware (whether they didn’t
want to or couldn’t is immaterial to me), and so every update
was subject to their willing to port drivers. And that
willingness was quite limited as the new models (well, only one
model) appeared. Nevertheless, as there was no alternative I in
the end bought two Peaks (the first one got broken glass which
made it useless).
.. _`never really freed`:
http://coldnew.github.io/blog/2015/06/10_gp_revolution3_en.html
So, when Flame appeared and its page (finally!) on MDN promised
support by the Mozilla itself, I was again the first in the line.
Literally I sent my order five minutes after `the page`_ went up
(or something close to it; the page itself is defunct, but it
exists). I found Flame to be really nice piece of hardware
(considering its price-range). It felt like being in the normal
world again. It seems that it has a decent camera (it is hard to
judge, unfortunately, because of the terrible photo software). On
the plus side, I have to give to the Flame incredibly long
battery life. I usually run two days on one charge even though I
was playing a lot of podcasts all the time. However, the problem
is Firefox OS itself. After over two years of waiting, it is
still nowhere to be complete.
Let us start with the most obvious issues. I really cannot
believe that Mozilla, authors of Firefox, are able to create a
product browsing Internet which `doesn’t save credentials`_ and
force use of weak passwords (and the solution is nowhere at
sight). Obviously, it means that `compatibility with Firefox
Sync`_ is really out of question. In the same category of
I-cant-believe-we-are-still-dealing-with-this bugs is inability
to work with clipboard between the applications well. There is
some development on this front, but it has still `not be done`_
yet (although I have to admit some progress happened lately).
Calendar works quite nicely with CalDAV (and with my ownCloud
instance). However, I would expect that in the same manner the
Contacts app works with CardDAV. After all adding new contacts
and appointments [#]_ is one of the most common activits done
with a smartphone. It doesn’t sync with anything `at all`_.
I know there are some attempts to create a general JavaScript
`DAV library`_, but nothing substantial came from that yet, and
the library itself was still somehow broken, so even when I
started to extend some ToDoMVC app myself I was not able to make
the library working.
.. _`at all`:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=859306
.. _`DAV library`:
https://github.com/gaye/dav.git
Next is the camera. Technically it `should be`_ 5MP so not a
complete disaster, and truth to be told that I got many very nice
pictures from it. However, it is completely unreliable. We were
in Dresden, visiting the awesome Zwinger_, it was an extremely
hot and sunny day so typical of the past summer, and yet all my
photos of the Zinger itself ended as a complete blue disaster.
And it is by far not the only situation when something like that
happened. With Flame as a camera I was never really sure what
will I get in the end.
.. image:: {static}/images/zwingler-blue.jpg
:width: 50%
:align: center
:alt: Completely blue photo of the Dresden Zwinger
.. _`the page`:
http://www.everbuying.com/product549652.html
.. _`doesn’t save credentials`:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=877648
.. _`compatibility with Firefox Sync`:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=824026
.. _`not be done`:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1023688
.. _`should be`:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/flame-firefox-os-developer-phone/
.. _Zwinger:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwinger_%28Dresden%29
Measured in the amount of the time spent, my most frequent use of
the smartphone is wihout question listening to podcasts. GSM [#]_
connection here (and in most places where the Firefox OS is
supposed to be sold, I guess) is unrealiable and expensive, so it
is necessary for a good podcatcher for me to download all
podcasts for offline use. That gives me lovely zero podcatchers
available for Firefox OS. The only two real podcatchers for
Firefox OS I know about: `Podcasts by Mozilla`_ and Foxcasts_
promise to do it eventually, but currently the only reliable
podcatching setup is bashpodder_ on a desktop computer and rsync
over USB MassStorage connection. It kind of works, but given that
even Music Player is not `very reliable`_, the experience is
horrible (not mentioning, that normals are not expected to use
rsync).
.. _`Podcasts by Mozilla`:
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/podcasts
.. _Foxcasts:
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/foxcasts
.. _bashpodder:
https://gitlab.com/mcepl/bashpodder
.. _`very reliable`:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1142876
I haven’t expected an equivalent of OSMAnd to be available
(with downloadable maps and offline routing; especially
interesting for countries with unrealiable Internet connection).
If I am not mistaken then nobody even started to rewrite huge
navigation libraries like GraphHopper_ in the pure JavaScript.
(I currently haven’t finished installing comment application to
my blog server, please, direct any comments to Twitter_).
.. _Twitter:
https://twitter.com/mcepl/status/647756939137556480
.. _GraphHopper:
https://graphhopper.com/
.. [#] And tasks, and there is no CalDAV-enabled HTML5 ToDo app,
which is interesting considering ToDoMVC_ site
.. _ToDoMVC:
http://todomvc.com/
.. [#] Let us not mention that Flame doesn’t support LTE, but
it is really not that big deal. It is meant as a developer
phone, not the end user one.
