Phones based on alternative mobile operating systems (Firefox OS, Sailfish OS, Tizen…) are due to be available this year. The first entrant appears to be Telefonica ZTE Open, an entry level phone running Firefox OS that will be available in Spain on July 2, 2013 (Tomorrow).
Here are the specifications of the device:
- SoC – Qualcomm MSM7225A ARM Cortex A5 @ 800Mhz
- System Memory – 256 MB RAM
- Storage – 512 MB ROM + micro SD card slot (4GB SD card included)
- Display – 3.5″ HVGA TFT, One Point touch + Gesture Captive (Two point option)
- Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth 2.1 + GPS (with AGPS)
- Network – UMTS
- Sensors – Accelerometer, Ambient Light
- Camera – 3.2MP canera
- Battery – 1200mAH
- Dimensions – 114 × 62 × 12.5 mm
This a low end device by today’s standard, but that’s exactly what Firefox OS is for. I’ve recently been told by a Mozilla developer that Firefox OS is now about equivalent to Android 1.x in terms of features. Developing apps for the platform is supposed to be easy as everything is written in HTML5, and a marketplace with free and (eventually) paid apps is available.
The phone is cheap by Europeans standard as it will be available from tomorrow for 69 Euros including VAT on Movistar.es including 30 Euros for prepaid customers. 69 Euros is equivalent to about 69 US dollars once you remove VAT, and the usual markup for European customers. Telefonica will also sell the phone in Colombia and Venezuela in the next few weeks.
Deutsche Telekom is expected to launch its own Firefox OS phone, “Alcatel One Touch Fire”, in central European markets soon with similar specs as ZTE Open.
Update: Firefox OS Video Demo
Via H-Online
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Why you are writing that 69$ = 69 EUR Let’s do a deal I will give you a 1000$ and you will give me 1000EUR 🙂 Will it be good deal for you ? 🙂 And be serious! today FX rate is 1$ equals to 0.77 EUR so with quick calculation: 69$ = 53.13 EUR Conclusion: European customers are rip off by companies which don’t want to see FX rates. This way the same product on euro market is over priced. I personally try to avoid companies who want to rip me off. And I recomend the same to all… Read more »
@Tom You have VAT in Europe. For Spain it’s 21%, and you also have custom duties between 0-20% (avg. 4.2%) according to http://www.uscib.org/?documentID=1676. In the US, I understand there’s no VAT, although in some cases there’s a sales tax, but not included to the announced price. I don’t know about custom duties. When you add those the “effective” exchange rate for electronic products is much closer to 1 Euro = 1 Dollar. You can see some companies choose to price their devices like XXX Dollar US = XXX Euros. I’ve just looked for one example right now, and it was… Read more »
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)
I believe that US has also custom fees when you import electronics. There is a sales tax too. But this is why we compare net prices (a base price). Even if you look for tangible products like Adobe Cloud prices you will see that for EU market they have 61 EUR monthly with VAT 23% (this is 49,59 EUR net) for my country. On us market is 50 US monthly plus sales tax.
I just want to address that this 1 to 1 fx rate is not so obvious.
Thanks for reply.
@Tom
OK, This time 69 Euros is about 79 Dollars… 🙂 But they don’t include prepaid credit in the U.S.
http://liliputing.com/2013/08/zte-open-80-firefox-os-smartphone-coming-to-us-uk.html