While the whole tech world is busy with Mobile World Congress going on in Barcelona right now, I thought it’s better to do something different as I have nothing else to do being uninvited to the show.
Ladies & gentlemen, say hello to our next competitor in the OS wars – Boot 2 Gecko by Mozilla. I had already covered it in my previous post describing it’s basic elements and other aesthetics.
Thanks to the XDA crew, I got a chance to try it out the ‘HTML’ OS my Galaxy S II. Why HTML OS? Because every single element of the OS is purely built on HTML! I’m describing my experience in Bullet Style™ (no popcorn bowls please):
Want to test it yourself? Find the instructions here.
First Impressions of Mozilla OS
- It’s really amazing to see how a fully featured OS can be built on top of just HTML. SMS, Call, Browser, Gallery everything is present there.
- There is not much to play with the OS. It’s more like of a proof that Mozilla is really building something.
User Interface
- It is clean and neat. For a phone that would cost less than 100 bucks, the OS offers everything you would find in a smartphone. This could really kick out other feature phones out of the competition.
- There’s nothing innovative that Mozilla OS has packed in. On the whole, the interface is like a combination of stuffs from Android, Windows Phone 7 and iOS along with some HTML to spice it up.
- New notifications will splash at the bottom which will, after some time, get queued up in the (pull-down) notification drawer.
Firefox
- The OS, obviously, uses Firefox as its browser. Though it too is non-functional at the time of writing this article. Neither data connection nor WiFi works so there’s no chance of trying it out.
- The interface of the browser is very similar to its app on Android.
- It would be interesting to see how well Firefox would be able to perform on it. On my Android phone, it’s a browser that I rarely use for its sluggishness.
Camera, Photo Gallery and Videos
- Surprisingly, it could even play high-quality videos which were present in it. The gallery was very smooth and photo viewing was intuitive.
- Camera just works right now. over, nothing else. It doesn’t shoot pictures on the port
Screenshots
What to Expect Next?
Mozilla OS Boot 2 Gecko is really impressive, showing us the capabilities of HTML. But that’s it, there’s nothing more to see in the OS. But since it’s still in development, I have no rights to complaint. Let’s see what Mozilla comes out with its final release.
