Running Firefox OS

Mozilla's approach to the smartphone market is a bit different from Canonical's or Jolla's. Instead of aiming for a system that looks nice and is feature rich, Mozilla engaged in a race to the bottom of the bargain bin – an OS that can run on the cheapest, slowest phones – in a bid to win over users in developing markets. The box titled "Installing Firefox OS" describes how to install the operating system on a Nexus 4.

$ adb reboot bootloader

$ fastboot flash recovery \
  <your_recovery_image>.img

$ adb push <FFOS>.zip /sdcard/

Firefox OS (Figure 3, right) is based on the Boot2Gecko project developed by Mozilla and was first released in April 2013. Like Ubuntu Touch, the system itself is completely open source and uses open standards.

Because of the very low requirements needed for Firefox OS to run on devices, the interface is simple … and ugly, very ugly. Icon designs in the home screen (Figure 6, right) are garish and quite an eyesore. Navigation around the UI is similar to iOS, with a central Home button overlaid on the screen and all other navigation buttons placed inside the individual applications. Long-pressing the Home button takes you to the app switcher (Figure 5, right), which is as basic as everything else in the system. There's not much to customize here, at least not easily, apart from wallpapers and sounds, but dive in deep, and you can change as many things as you want – if you know how, of course.

Interestingly the app situation is the best out of the three systems I tested, even if it is only because Firefox OS has been around the longest. Applications are similar in nature to the web apps of Ubuntu Touch, although they do run a bit more smoothly, which is good because the OS itself is very light on apps, not even featuring a terminal or calculator applications out of the box.

Firefox OS still has a long way to go with its app store, though, with many large apps such as Instagram or WhatsApp missing (at least officially), although I did find an official Telegram web app.

The lightness of the system means it runs blazingly fast. Apps open quickly and animations are smooth. Firefox OS is also the stablest of the three systems tested.

The problem is that all of this means nothing if few phones ship with Firefox OS and Android keeps getting slimmer and faster with every release. Right now, Android commands a massive percentage of the developing market, and Firefox OS hasn't made much of a dent in it, even though it has been out for more than two years.

$ adb reboot bootloader

$ ./flash-all

Conclusion

Firefox OS, although it is the most mature of the three, is by far the biggest eyesore; Sailfish OS, though pretty, is the buggiest, most featureless, and deficient system I have ever run on a mobile phone. Ubuntu Touch is simply a joy and deserves to be the fourth contender in the mobile market.

Figure 4: ClockworkMod custom recovery running on a Nexus 4.