While Android and iOS might be the leaders, they are far from the only mobile operating systems on the market. We have Windows Phone and Blackberry, and many newcomers such as Tizen and Ubuntu for Phone/Tablet. So is there room for Mozilla Firefox OS? Mozilla seems to think so.

The new mobile OS has made a pretty big splash at MWC 2013, showing off its first handsets by Alcatel and ZTE. What really makes Firefox OS different from the competition is that it isn’t trying to win over the hardcore mobile smartphone user.

They understand that the big boys already have this market by the horns, and instead they wish to expand into the developing world and also attract consumers in countries like Europe and the United States by offering competitive, entry-level devices running on open standards.

So what exactly is Firefox OS?

Somewhat reminiscent of WebOS, Firefox OS is all about using open web standards, making it easy for web developers to program apps for the OS. It is also open source, which means anyone with coding knowledge can help expand and improve the experience.

In many ways it is also similar to Chrome OS for Chrome computers, though it seems to have a little more of a traditional layout and while Chrome OS is starting to grow its library of offline-capable apps, all of Firefox’s apps will have the option to either be stored locally for off-line or ran directly as a web-app for conserving storage space and more.

A look at the apps available for Firefox OS

As for the apps included with Firefox OS? There will be usual suspects like an integrated dialer, messaging, the Firefox browser, Nokia maps, and email. Beyond that though, they are already prepping their marketplace to offer goodies like Facebook, Twitter, TimeOut, and Disney apps like “Where’s My Water”.

What really makes Firefox OS different though is that it could actually entice carriers in a big way. Why? They leave quite a bit of control up to the carriers, even making fully possible for consumers to purchase apps on the Marketplace directly through the carrier. This likely means that carrier’s get a piece of the pie when it comes to app sales, and it also makes it easier for contract-carrying consumers to buy apps: they will simply see the charges added to their monthly bills.

Another interesting thing about Firefox OS is that all paid apps will be able to be tested before buying, through a “one-time use” trial.

The Hardware as we currently know it.

At the moment, there are two announced handsets that will run Mozilla’s Firefox OS, the ZTE Open and Alcatel One Touch Fire.

ZTE Open

The Open is a 3.5-inch device with a modest 480 x 320 display. The phone is powered by an A5-based Qualcomm processor clocked around 1GHz with a measly 256MB of RAM. The internal storage is also quite tiny at just 512MB with a included 2GB microSD card. Connectivity options include WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, GPSm and FM radio. There is also a 3.2MP camera on the back of the phone.

Alcatel One Touch Fire

If you were hoping for more power here, you will be disappointed. The Touch Fire is a 3.5-inch phone with a 1GHz Qualcomm CPU, 256MB of RAM, 512MB storage, microSD with included 2GB card, 3G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and FM radio. The camera is also a 3.2MP shooter and the battery is 1400mAh.

As you can see, these are REALLY basic devices. These devices are meant for their launch markets like Brazil, where a smartphone on the cheap sounds like a great plan, even if the specs aren’t much better than a typical “dumb phone”.

In countries in Europe and North America? It is doubtful we will see the One Touch Fire or Open. Mozilla is also partnering with LG and Huawei for hardware, which are more likely to be the partners they choose for (hopefully) more upscale yet still lower-end devices down the road.

When is Firefox OS coming?

Impressively, Mozilla has announced tons of partnerships, including 18+ carriers with a constantly growing list. The first markets expected to see the hardware will be Brazil, Hungary, Mexico, Colombia, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela.

As for the United States and Western Europe? The platform likely won’t launch until 2014.

But can it really compete?

That’s good question. Based on hands-on reviews coming in from the net, the existing ZTE Open and Alcatel One Touch Fire are sluggish and the operating system itself is a bit buggy – but the hardware is still a few months out from shipping to its first few markets. Additionally, just because it is running a little choppy on 256MB of RAM doesn’t mean it will be the same story when brands like LG launch hardware, as I highly doubt their offerings would have less than 512MB of RAM.

To put it frankly, it is just too early to judge. While operating systems that lean heavily on open web technologies haven’t exactly taken off in a big way just yet, Firefox’s modest approach of going first after developing countries and second after first-time smartphone users could potentially pay off if they play their cards right.

The biggest challenges will be convincing consumers that haven’t made the jump to a smartphone just yet that Firefox OS is worthy of their time. The second issue will be building up their store and continuing to expand partnerships with hardware vendors, app developers and others in the mobile industry. What do you think, interested in Firefox OS or not?

The post Mozilla Firefox OS is Here, Should You Care? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

When it comes to voice guidance and turn-by-turn directions, the GPS app on many smartphones and tablets usually needs to be coded in a native kind of way. TeleNav is changing that by offering the first GPS navigation service of its kind that is powered by HTML5. That means it can be completely browser-based and work on any OS.

It doesn’t have a name yet, but the new TeleNav creation completely opens up new windows for both developers and consumers. The HTML5 browser-based solution offers voice guidance and turn-by-turn, just like a standalone GPS navigation device. No need for a static mapping service. Developers can add a single line of code and away they go.

If you are a current app developer and would like to take advantage of the new HTML5 GPS API from TeleNav, you can sign up on their website for updates and such. Code once and deploy on multiple platforms. The planned launch is in early 2012.

The post Free TeleNav HTML5 GPS Offers Voiced Turn-By-Turn Directions appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

You will probably kick yourself after reading this article wondering why you didn’t think about it earlier and enjoy yourself a few minutes of fame. Developer Yifan Lu has managed to jailbreak the Amazon Kindle Touch and he has done so in the simplest of ways, by playing an MP3 file.

As you might know, the Kindle Touch isn’t the best that is out there when it comes to specifications and hardware performance. But that does not mean developers will not be interested in the device.

Now, the developers have got a chance to start playing with the device all thanks to Lu who was able to root it with an MP3 file.

And the jailbreak was quite easy since the Touch’s OS uses a lot of easy-to-exploit HTML. The software is written mostly in HTML5 and JavaScript, not the Java on the other Kindles.

If you are planning to jailbreak it, you just have to download an MP3 file and play it on the Kindle Touch.

Lu assembled the special mp3 file which includes his hack buried in the ID3 tags. The ID3 tags execute commands on the Kindle Touch. The hack just installs a key to root the device, quite simple indeed.

But this has not brought any new features to the device. Still, it has definitely opened a door for all the developers out there. Now they can start working on a hack of their own and hopefully bring some awesome stuff.

Check out the video which is proof on the matter. Head here to download the zip file needed for the hack.

The post Amazon Kindle Touch Jailbreak Using An MP3 File [Video] appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

You know how we heard QNX still doesn’t support BES? I guess one way around that is to create yet another operating system and that’s exactly what the Waterloo crew have decided to do, today announcing the next-generation BBX OS for BlackBerry smartphone and tablet devices.

Mike Lazaridis, who is still recovering from the recent BlackBerry outage, took the stage at RIM’s app developer conference to announce the new development. Basically, BBX is a middle ground between QNX and the company’s usual BB OS stream.  After apologizing for the outage and offering $100 in premium app downloads to those affected, Lazaridis continued.

Research in Motion is encouraging developers to create their games using HTML5, since that’s supported by QNX, as well as older platforms like BlackBerry OS 5 and OS6. This way, they can code once and deploy everywhere. There’s also something called Cascades, which is a native UI framework built into BBX, giving developers access to low-level APIs.

On the Enterprise side, unlike pure QNX, BBX should fully support BES. What’s more, enterprise apps can get their own shelf in App World and they would then be hosted by a company’s BES (and be undeletable by employees). There’s also something called BlackBerry Balance that will provide a “corporate partition” for separating BES (work) stuff from the rest of your life.

There was a brief moment discussing how BBX will support the Android Runtime.  A demo was later shown to developers in the Technical Session, but a simple app with menus was just ported.

Even though it’s yet another OS for RIM to handle, BBX could be the unifying factor to help minimize fragmentation and hopefully improve profits for BB app developers. Until we get some more details (like screenshots and demo videos), we’ll have to reserve judgement.

The post RIM’s New BBX Operating System Marries BlackBerry With QNX appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

I spoke with Jaafer Haidar, CEO of London, Ontario-based Carbyn at Tech Crunch Disrupt in San Francisco about their new beta HTML 5 OS which will run on any HTML 5 capable browser; mobile or desktop. The OS features multitasking, a slick UI and will allow developers to port their HTML 5 apps to Carbyn with very little effort.

The post Carbyn: The World’s first HTML 5 Cloud OS appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Yesterday Microsoft unveiled Windows 8 at D9, much like Google’s Android tablet optimized Honeycomb, Windows 8 has been built around the use of touch devices, but they assure us it will work equally as well with a mouse and keyboard.

Our approach means no compromises — you get to use whatever kind of device you prefer, with peripherals you choose, to run the apps you love. This is sure to inspire a new generation of hardware and software development, improving the experience for PC users around the world.

This allows companies to develop apps for one platform and easily carry it across from your desktop or Windows 8 tablet, from small low-res screens to super high-res billboards, all utilizing “fluid interaction” traits and “seamless connectivity.”

For now we are given some demo videos on Windows 8, it will give you a good idea of how the OS will appear. HTML5 and Javascript will be much more apparent. Multi-tasking with snapping apps to different areas of the screen is planned as well as touch inputs and gesture s.

Some interface traits shown in the videos:

• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
• Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
• Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
• Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.
• Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
• Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

Windows 8 running on a Qualcomm tablet:

Live demonstration of Windows 8:

Windows 8 on an NVIDIA Kal-El/Tegra 3 notebook:

Windows 8 running on a Quanta TI-OMAP tablet:

The post Video: Windows 8 Optimized for Touch appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Interestingly enough, the mobile version of Bing Deals isn’t exactly being optimized for Windows Phone 7. Instead, they’re catering to iPhone and Android with m.bing.com; maybe there’s a WP7 app for that instead. They say you need an HTML5 optimized device.

I don’t see how Bing Deals is all that different from all the other daily deal aggregators out there (hello referral income), but I guess you could say that it sorta beat Google to the punch?

[Bing Blong]

The post Bing Bong: Microsoft Makes Deals Mobile appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The Mozilla team focussed mainly on improving responsiveness and enhancing the JavaScript performance, meaning smoother panning and zooming, faster start ups and quicker page loading. They’ve also reduced the amount of memory needed and optimized CPU usage behind the scenes for an overall stability upgrade.

But there are still a few known issues with the browser. They still haven’t been able to work out the kinks for their Flash add-on, they say, as ”currently, enabling the Flash plugin results in a compromised user experience across Firefox for mobile.”

And the alternative to Flash, HTML5 video, “may load slowly and create artifacts on the screen during playback.”

What’s more, sometimes letters typed on a hardware keyboard will appear in the wrong order, issues with SwiftKey that may cause it to crash or to prevent users from entering text in input fields, they say, adding users of Motorola’s Droid, the Galaxy S and the Nexus S may also experience a disproportionate amount of freezes and crashes.

That said, there are now more than 100 add-ons for Firefox 4 Mobile, meaning a more customizable experience for users.

Those with Apple products are still stuck with Firefox Home for iOS, basically an add-on for Safari Mobile which allows access to Firefox bookmarks, history and open tabs from their iPhone or iPad.

[Mashable via Mozilla]

The post Mozilla releases Firefox 4 Beta 5 for Android and Maemo appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Even if he is having a case of the Mondays, Cloud Print from Google could come to the rescue. The idea is that you can boot up the HTML5-based Gmail mobile site on your iPhone, iPad, or Android 2.1 device (or anything else that does HTML5, really), and send the request to print over your cellular data connection.

Boom! Back at home base, your co-worker sees the TPS report spitting out of the printer connected to your cubicle. Done and done. This goes so much further than the AirPrint solution from Apple, because you don’t need to be connected to the same network as the printer and you don’t need a special AirPrint printer; it just works, so long as you’ve got the printer connected to an Internet-capable Windows PC.

Google Cloud Print isn’t new, but the mobile variation is. Look for the Google Team to roll out this feature in beta for select American users later this week.

[BGR via Google]

The post Google Cloud Print enables iPhone and iPad printing thanks to HTML5 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Well, apparently RIM recently posted a video comparing their upcoming Playbook tablet’s mobile browser to that of the iPad. So? No harm done in publicizing your product, right? Right, the only catch is that the said video, apart from favoring RIM’s tablet, also did its bit to highlight iPad browser’s weak point (no Flash support, slow page loading speed, lack of pixel to pixel rendering fidelity, lack of high end Javascript and HTML5 – there are too many of them, by the way).

Perhaps RIM just wants to show the world that their tablet’s browser, apart from supporting cutting edge stuff like HTML5, also provides the added bonus of Flash support, unlike that of the iPad. Jim Balsillie, CEO of RIM, also openly stated the same, “You don’t need an app for the web,” (touching upon the fact that most iOS apps are mere frontend implementations of web services).

Even though this isn’t the first time Balsillie has attacked Apple or Steve Jobs, one wonders the motive behind it anyway! This is because RIM devices such as the Blackberry smartphones are taking a beating not from the iPad or iPhone, but rather from Android powered machines. Guess there’s too many of Android devices to attack, so RIM just chose the stationary object (Apple) to hit at.

Plus, talking about giants such as Apple gives you free publicity, no matter who you are. And to further delve deeper, RIM has sensed the fact that the iPad, though initially eyeing the youngsters, has managed to make an impact among the business users (read: RIM stronghold). Obviously, RIM has to counter-attack, and it will not be shocking if the present video is followed by other similar ones.

The post Showtime: Its RIM vs Apple appeared first on Mobile Magazine.