Today 10 years ago I got a Firefox OS phone

Imo that's what caused Firefox to lose market share to Chrome. They focused too much on Firefox OS and deprioritized browser development. In one example, it took them a long time to implement FIDO when it was already functional in Chrome.

Wish something like that would come back.

oh wow, i had forgotten! I too was hopeful....

This makes me nostalgic for my Palm Pre and webOS.

Ah, nostalgic! I loved the Firefox OS! I even preached about it to family and friends. Good times.

Unfortunately it never felt like a finished product.

If you are still interesting in Linux phone, consider looking at PinePhone Pro. I would recommend it only for experience users and the phone experience is far from Android, but software is catching up. Check @linuxphones

P.S. writing this comment from PPP :)

I never understood why they targetted low end hardware with a tech stack that's notoriously slow (web).

What is this? A phone for ants?

I remember when Ubuntu for phones was hyped so big, then it fell flat...

I was thinking of getting one of these when they were very cheap. I really wanted FF OS and other alternatives to succeed or at least exist, because Android was just never very good and I foresaw how Google is just gonna abuse its monopoly and make life difficult for everyone.

But Mozilla was like "now it's not the right time to introduce a mobile OS" - wtf, when if not exactly at the time when markets were still forming? It was now or never, and Mozilla threw in the towel so quickly it almost feels like someone got a nice paycheck from Google or something.

And while I never got that phone at the end, it did look like it had some decent basis and ideas in it that could've developed into something cool. Alas.

today there are comparable projects with like postmarketos and ubuntu touch for specific phones, among other linux mobile projects

For the curious people, Firefox OS kept living in a way, being used as the foundation for KaiOS, which was a smart operative system for "dumb" phones. This one took off in certain parts of the world.

Am I the only one that misses a thick bezel?

Fira font <3

I completely forgot Firefox had a phone.

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This reminds me... What happened to Sailfish?

I would love another, more privacy focused os. I've tried graphene, etc, but something altogether different would be cool.

FFOS was an html mess. The GUI didn't have much to offer. You couldn't organize your apps since they were only accessible through the cluttered app drawer.

We had two of these that ended up sitting in my desk at work back around that time. They were sent to us free with hopes we would port our (shitty) android/iOS apps to it. One was a bit newer, but they both just felt shitty compared to the equivalent Nexus or iPhone of the time, so I never bothered trying to use it as a daily driver. I wasn't even on the app dev team, no one else wanted them or cared at all. Was fun as a technical curiosity though.

Remember when android phones fitted in hands?

I thought this was an urban myth or a collective hysteria.

How much functionality is left on that phone?

i really hope these alt-mobile OS's take off, i know theres things like pinephone and kde mobile but they're still a little bit rough around the edges last i checked.. at the same time tho maybe i should do some more digging around. i imagine someone's made a daily-driveable alternate OS for phones at this point

I remember using multiROM to install Lineage OS, Sailfish OS and Firefox OS all at the same time on my Nexus 4. I wished there was some kind of software today that you could dual boot an android phone.

I tried it on my Nexus 5 as well. It didn't work well for my needs at that time, so I went back to putting Android on it.

I daily drove the ZTE Open and then the ZTE Open C for over a year each. Still have them kicking around in a box somewhere. Returning to Android was weird, but unfortunately there just weren't good alternatives, since Ubuntu bailed on Ubuntu Touch about the same time Mozilla pivoted away from FirefoxOS.

I've considered going with a Pine Phone, but not sure I want to go back to not having 5G support at this point. Kinda hoping that eventually we might start seeing more open alternatives once RISC-V matures a bit, but that's probably still quite a few years away at this point.

So development was abandoned, whatever happened with the Ubuntu OS for cell phones?

I spent a couple weeks in Poland exactly in August 2013 and I distinctly remember a huge Firefox OS billboard on the Warsaw Central train station building.

Oh man, I wanted one of those so bad back in the day, how was it?

That home button is really cute. Reminds me of the iPod Nano 7

I forgot this even existed. I had the HTC One and/or Galaxy S4 around this time.

Now it is Kai OS

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OS aside, the Nexus 5 was boss.

I recently flexed on some nerds when I whipped out my Zaurus

So sad it didn't take off, I would love to have an alternative to Android or iOS right now

I also got one (not sure which model) to play around with.

It was... okay. It very much felt like an alpha release. Lots of features were broken or simply missing.

I should have it in a drawer somewhere

Rad! I just threw ubuntu touch on my nexus 6p... Far from perfect, but a great premise of a new era!

I usually buy last year's pixel model when they go on sale around end of year. prefer to use my desktop as eyes aren't great at skimming tiny text. on a 6a which should last until next year. could get by with much less

I wish so much that there was a solid Linux phone that was just as viable as any android-based device.

There are some options, but nothing that just works.

How was Firefox OS on the Nexus 5?

Yh boi

I remember emulating it on my desktop.

Jealous. That always looked cool. Sad it never caught on.

I miss my nexus 6 shamu. I think that phone was the best that Google ever made even to this day.

I remember this, we had one phone in our country with it, but it was such a terrible phone. And now FirefoxOS is KaiOS....

I always thought those were really cool! I used to have the launcher they made for Android on my old Droid Turbo, and it was pretty cool! Then it stopped working when I got a new phone with a newer version of Android.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Seemed like a silly endeavor by Mozilla.