The cheapest Android smartphones cost about $50, and this price is still a barrier to entry to many, as about 46.4% of phones sold worldwide in 2013 were feature phones according to Gartner, which still corresponds to about 838 million units per year. Mozilla and Spreadtrum are currently working together to bring $25 smartphones to market, and that’s retail price, running Firefox OS and powered by the latest Spreadtrum SC6821 SoC.
The $25 smartphone will come with 128 MB RAM, 256 MB NAND flash, and feature a 3.5″ HVGA touchscreen, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, FM radio, and run Firefox OS with HTML5 apps such as Twitter and Facebook, and access to a full web browser, according to Spreadtrum representatives. You would certainly not trade this phone with your existing Android phone, but if all you could afford until now was a feature phone, these upcoming ultra low cost Firefox OS smartphones could be appealing.
Spreatrum also put out a press release about their new SC6821 SoC with WCDMA support, but gave very little details, preferring to mention Mozilla partnership. I could not even find out if it is ARM based or not.
The $25 phone prototype is now being showcased in Mozilla booth at Mobile World Congress 2014.
Via EETimes
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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SC6820 & 6825 are Cortex A5; barring a complete breakdown of their naming convention SC6821 should be too. Will Firefox really run ok in 128MB RAM?
eg: http://www.spreadtrum.com/en/products/basebands/view/sc6825
@onebir
They are working on it, now Firefox OS uses about 92 MB RAM after boot. http://goo.gl/JuDCCL
https://wiki.mozilla.org/FirefoxOS/Tarako
Thanks. I think I could remove that “WCDMA” from my post though… I must have mis-read something…
SD slot ? If so I could find few uses for it.
I’ve just noticed there are $25 android phones, available without contract, albeit locked to a service called Tracfone.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_keywords_0?rh=n%3A2335752011%2Cn%3A!2335753011%2Cn%3A7072561011%2Cn%3A2407748011%2Cp_n_condition-type%3A6503240011%2Cp_36%3A2491156011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-bin%3A7107988011&bbn=2407748011&ie=UTF8&qid=1393431672&rnid=7107987011