Mozilla has been coding and refining its mobile-specific Firefox OS for quite some time now.
This week, Mozilla officially unveiled its Firefox OS developer phones and quite frankly, the screenshots are somewhat reminiscent of Apple’s iPhone. As such, I’d wager Cupertino won’t be too happy with Mozilla.
Then again, these are the first phones specifically designed to run the Firefox operating system and the devices are developer phones with basic specs. As you may recall, Firefox OS doesn’t require super high-end hardware to offer a quality user experience, as apps for the phones are written primarily in HTML 5.
Mozilla reportedly collaborated with Telephonica and Geeksphone on the first developer devices. The smartphone hardware is powered by a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 processor and features a 3.5-inch display with a meager 480 x 320 resolution.
Additional specs? 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of storage, a three-megapixel camera, a 1580 mAh battery for power and support for GSM/HSPA networks. The smartphone is also equipped with an integrated microSD memory card slot for storage expansion and integrated Wi-Fi. Charging is handled via a micro USB port, and the phone is loaded with light and proximity sensors in addition to GPS. The developer phones will be offered in unlocked versions allowing devs to insert their own SIM card.
A second developer phone, dubbed called the Peak, offers devs a larger 4.3-inch screen with a resolution of 960 x 540. It is also powered by a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual core processor and includes an eight-megapixel rear camera, 512 MB of RAM, and an 1800 mAh battery. Both phones are expected to be available starting in February.
It should be noted that Firefox OS is also expected to tip up in other devices like tablets, and we’ve already seen early versions ported to the Raspberry Pi.
