You might have heard of Mozilla before: it’s the foundation that drives the popular Firefox internet browser. You might not know though that it’s also working on its own mobile phone operating system, like Android, iOS or Windows Phone. And today, we’ve got details on the first phone in the world that’ll be running it.
For the uninitiated, Firefox OS is the result of Mozilla’s Boot 2 Gecko project to create a mobile operating system entirely around the web. It’s a bit like Google’s Chrome OS, but for phones and tablets: the entire operating system is a web browser, from the dialler to the apps it runs. That means you’ll never need to update any apps yourself – every time you open them they’ll be bang up to date. It also means phones won’t need so many different parts inside, meaning cheaper smartphones for the masses.
It’s a novel idea, and now according to Gizchina, Chinese phone manufacturer ZTE (the brains behind the Orange Monte Carlo Android phone) is working on a phone that will actually run Firefox OS. It’ll sport a 3.5-inch screen (the same size as every iPhone until the iPhone 5) with a sharp 800×480 resolution, a five megapixel camera and 1.5GHz processor.
So when will see the first Firefox Phone actually go on sale? It’s too early to tell: Mozilla and Telefonica (the multinational company that owns O2 in the UK) are targeting South America first, where smartphone sales aren’t as high as Europe.
But if it takes off there, who knows where next. Let us know what you make of Mozilla’s plans in the comments below.
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