Apps and the Marketplace:
Firefox OS, as we know, will utilise web standards and as such Mozilla is all about HTML5 apps! So whose apps will we have when this crop of phones, which we'll get to in a minute, eventually go on sale? Well you could have guessed that Facebook and Twitter will have offerings, as will Cut The Rope, Where's My Water and a few other Disney Mobile and EA games. Box have announced that they will offer their cloud storage on the new platform and there are SoundCloud, Pulse News, Time Out. Airbnb and Nokia's Here maps all confirmed for the platform! The OS will allow app payment directly through your mobile operator, something which probably helped to get so many carriers on board!
Carrier partners:
Mozilla have confirmed that carriers from Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela will be offering the first wave of Firefox OS based devices. The carriers involved are: Móvil, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison Three Group, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Qtel, SingTel, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia Group, Telefónica, Telstra Telenor, TMN and VimpelCom.
With so many carriers it should help Mozilla get a good starting presence for their devices. In case you were wondering about when Firefox OS powered devices will land in the USA, then Mozilla have said that they're aiming for a 2014 release!
Devices:
Mozilla has confirmed that they are working with Alcatel, LG and ZTE for the first wave of Firefox OS smartphones. These devices will later be complemented with a phones or two from Huawei! All of these devices will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipsets and lets get into the real meat here Lets look at the devices!
Alcatel One Touch Fire.
Deutsche Telekom and Mozilla have teamed up with Alcatel to release of the first Firefox OS powered smartphone in Europe! Again this is a low end device: it'll feature a HVGA, that's 480 x 320p resolution, 3.5-inch screen, 1GHz processor, 3.2-megapixel rear-facing camera, 256MB of RAM and 512MB of storage which is MicroSD expandable.
The Alcatel One Touch Fire will first be available in Poland this summer and after that it will roll out to more Eastern European countries throughout the second half of the year!
ZTE Open.
We actually saw the spec sheet for this little phone yesterday, but here it is in an official capacity!
Just in case you missed it yesterday here is a little recap of the specs. There's a HVGA, that's 480 x 320p resolution 3.5" display and there's a 3.2MP rear-facing camera. There's also a 1200 mAh battery, 512MB of internal storage, 256MB of RAM and the usual array of sensor and connectivity options you would expect!
Reference devices.
Mozilla may not have said anything about these devices today, but don't forget the Geeksphone made Keon and Peak. The full details for those can be found here!
