Firefox OS Smartphones Arriving For Developers

Nerval's Lobster writes "For quite some time Mozilla has been working on Firefox OS, a lightweight mobile OS built in HTML5. Now it's whipped the curtain back from the first developer preview phones. The developer preview phones are unlocked, requiring the user insert their own SIM card. If those specs seem a little underpowered compared to other smartphones on the market, it's because Firefox OS is intended for lower-end smartphones; target markets include developing countries such as Brazil and China. (The first developer preview phones will be available in February.) The Firefox OS (once known as 'Boot to Gecko') is based on a handful of open APIs. The actual interface is highly reminiscent of Google Android and Apple iOS, with grids of icons linked to applications." The specs really aren't that bad; reader sfcrazy points out that they include the usual features baked into medium- and high-end phones these days: Wifi N, light and proximity sensors, and an accelerometer (though no mention of NFC).

Re:An OS built in HTML5?

[jlebar]

For some reason, I think [it's] not quite right [to say that FFOS is "an OS built in HTML5"]. Perhaps the intent was to write "an OS with built in HTML5"?

FFOS developer here.

The entire FFOS front-end is written in HTML5. That includes the homescreen and the task switcher. So "The Web" is the API that applications use to communicate with the system.

But there's of course plenty of C/C++ below that. To a first approximation, it's probably accurate to guess that parts of Android written in Java were re-written in JS for FFOS.