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The first phone to run Firefox’s mobile OS is now on sale here in Blighty. The Spanish were the first to get their hands on the ZTE Open, but now us Brits can pick one up by heading to ZTE’s store on eBay. Our cousins across the pond can do the same, as it’s launched in Britain and America simultaneously.
Nice to see us Brits not left wanting for once.
The ZTE Open will set you back £60. As you’d expect for that price, the specs aren’t going to blow your socks off, with a 1GHz processor, 256MB of RAM, 512MB of storage, and a 3.2-megapixel camera. It’s a diddy little number too, with a 3.5-inch touchscreen that has a resolution of 480×320 pixels.
But it’s all about the software. Firefox OS is open-source, and is made by Mozilla, the people behind the wildly popular Firefox Web browser. It’s simple to customise, so we could see a glut of handsets made by manufacturers and networks how they see fit. It has Android squarely in its sights, promising anyone making a Firefox handset won’t be beholden to Google.
Here it is in action.
There’s a bit of a bunfight going on with mobile operating systems at the moment. Samsung is prepping Tizen, its own OS which will be found on low-end mobiles soon. And then there’s the Ubuntu Edge, which runs Ubuntu’s own OS. The Edge (that’s the phone, not the hatted one out of U2) recently entered the record books by raising $10.3 million through crowdfunding. That beats the record previously set by the Pebble smart watch. Though it still has a long way to go to reach its rather lofty goal. Another $20 million in four days? I don’t think so.
Will you take the ZTE Open for a spin? Is there room for another mobile operating system? How can Mozilla beat Google, Apple and Microsoft? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.
