Product Code Database
Firefox OS (project name: Boot to Gecko, also known as B2G) is a discontinued open-source operating system made for , , , and Matchstick TV designed by Mozilla and external contributors. It is based on the rendering engine of the Firefox web browser, Gecko, and on the Linux kernel. It was first commercially released in 2014.
Firefox OS was designed to provide a complete, community-based alternative operating system, for running directly or those installed from an application marketplace. The applications use web standards and approaches such as JavaScript and HTML5, a robust privilege model, and Open Web that can communicate directly with hardware, e.g. cellphone hardware. As such, Mozilla with Firefox OS competed with commercially developed operating systems such as Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows Phone, BlackBerry's BlackBerry 10, Samsung's/Linux Foundation's Tizen, and Jolla's Sailfish OS. In December 2015, Mozilla announced it would stop development of new Firefox OS smartphones and, in September 2016, announced the end of development. Successors to Firefox OS include the discontinued B2G OS and Acadine Technologies' never-released H5OS as well as KaiOS Technologies' KaiOS and Panasonic's My Home Screen for smart TVs.
On December 8, 2015, Mozilla announced that it would stop sales of Firefox OS smartphones through carriers. Mozilla later announced that Firefox OS smartphones would be discontinued by May 2016, as the development of "Firefox OS for smartphones" This means that Firefox OS for smartphones will no longer have staff involvement beyond May. .. As of today, we have 3 projects that have passed the first gate including SmartTV, and about a dozen more projects are prepping for review. would cease after the release of version 2.6. Around the same time, it was reported that Acadine Technologies, a startup founded by Li Gong (former president of Mozilla Corporation) with various other former Mozilla staff among its employees, would take over the mission of developing carrier partnerships, for its own Firefox OS derivative H5OS.
In January 2016, Mozilla announced that Firefox OS would power Panasonic's UHD TVs (as previously announced Firefox OS "would pivot to connected devices"). In September 2016, Mozilla announced that work on Firefox OS had ceased, and that all B2G-related code would be removed from mozilla-central.
This led to much blog coverage. According to Ars Technica, "Mozilla says that B2G is motivated by a desire to demonstrate that the standards-based open Web has the potential to be a competitive alternative to the existing single-vendor application development stacks offered by the dominant mobile operating systems."
In 2012, Andreas Gal expanded on Mozilla's aims. He characterized the current set of mobile operating systems as "Closed platform" and presented Firefox OS as more accessible: "We use completely open standards and there’s no proprietary software or technology involved." (That changed in 2014; see Digital rights management (DRM), below.) Gal also said that because the software stack is entirely HTML5, there are already a large number of established developers. This assumption is employed in Mozilla's WebAPI.WebAPI These are intended W3C standards that attempt to bridge the capability gap that currently exists between native frameworks and web applications. The goal of these efforts is to enable developers to build applications using WebAPI which would then run in any Web standards browser without the need to rewrite their application for each platform.
In September 2012, analysts Strategy Analysts forecast that Firefox OS would account for 1% of the global smartphone market in 2013, its first year of commercial availability.
In February 2013, Mozilla announced plans for its global commercial roll-out of Firefox OS. Mozilla announced at a press conference before the start of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that the first wave of Firefox OS devices would be available to consumers in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela. Mozilla also announced that LG Electronics, ZTE, Huawei and TCL Corporation had committed to making Firefox OS devices.
In December 2013, new features were added with the 1.2 release, including , silent SMS authentication for mobile billing, improved push notifications, and three state settings for Do Not Track.
Async Pan and Zoom (APZ), included in version 1.3, should improve user interface responsiveness.
Work was done to optimize Firefox OS to run a 128 MB platform with version 1.3T. A 128 MB device is out that seems to use that version but it may be unfinished.
In 2015, Mozilla ported Firefox OS (an "experimental version") to MIPS32 to work in a sub-$100 tablet (that can also run Android 4.4 KitKat). Mozilla has worked on developing the OS for Smart Feature Phones.
Firefox OS was discontinued in January 2017.
In August 2015, attempts by Matchstick TV (based on Firefox OS) to add DRM caused the demise of Matchstick TV, a decision that Boing Boing called "suicide-by-DRM".
Firefox OS is compatible with a number of devices, including Otoro, PandaBoard, Emulator (ARM and x86), Desktop computer, Nexus S, Nexus S 4G, Samsung Galaxy S II, Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4. A MIPS port was created by Imagination Technologies in March 2015.
In December 2012, Mozilla rolled out another update and released Firefox OS Simulator 1.0, which can be downloaded as an add-on for Firefox. The latest version of Firefox OS Simulator, version 4.0, was released on July 3, 2013 and announced on July 11, 2013.
Mozilla's planned US$25 Firefox smartphone displayed at MWC, is built by Spreadtrum. Mozilla has collaborated with four handset makers and five wireless carriers to provide five Firefox-powered smartphones in Europe and Latin America so far with cellphone launches being led by UK marketer John D. Bernard. In India, Mozilla planned a launching at $25 in partnership with Intex and Spice Telecom, but the price ended up being $33 (converted from 1,999 Indian rupee).
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Acadine Technologies has derived their H5OS from Firefox OS as well. Li Gong, the founder of the company, had overseen the development of Firefox OS while serving as president of Mozilla Corporation.
A fork called KaiOS has been used on a few feature phones, including Alcatel Mobile's OneTouch Go Flip (known as Cingular Flip 2 on AT&T), Reliance Jio's JioPhone (LYF F30C), and Intex's Turbo+ 4G. The system brings support for 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS, and HTML5-based apps onto non-touch devices with an optimized user interface, less memory usage, and longer battery life.
It is now the basis of KaiOS which has (as of January 2019) over 17 percent of the Indian mobile phone market and is the third most popular phone OS. KaiOS is closed-source.
Builds are available for Pixel 3a and Pixel 6a devices, as well as GSI images for Android 10 based devices. Linux mobile devices such as the PinePhone, PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 are also supported.
Janne Lindqvist, a mobile security researcher at the Rutgers University WINLAB, expressed concern about the discovery mechanism of a Web-based platform, but a Mozilla spokesperson stated that Mozilla required developers to "package downloadable apps in a zip file that has been cryptographically signed by the store from which it originated, assuring that it has been reviewed." In addition, "apps coming back from search are given only limited access to device programming interfaces and applications, unless the user grants permission for further access."
Ben Francis, an engineer on the Boot to Gecko and Firefox OS projects, described the changes in direction of the project from open web technologies for app development, to cheap smartphones, to connected devices; and how evaluation of its success was reduced to its market share as a third smartphone platform (after Android and iOS).
Firefox OS specific devices for developers:
Firefox OS specific devices for consumers:
Firefox OS has been ported to the following devices:
There is also non-compiled source code of B2G firmware for Sony Xperia E (C1505/C1506) on Sony servers. In earlier versions of Sony EMMA software you could download precompiled firmware, but nowadays it's impossible to do it as the software no longer supports this phone and probably the .FTF files needed to flash were deleted from Sony's servers
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