If you were on a mission to make the cheapest possible mobile phone, you would probably not do much better than Intex Cloud Fx. Running Firefox OS, it will cost users about $35 to purchase it outright. Its goal is to bring the internet to places which would otherwise have nothing.
I believe the largest concession made by this phone is its RAM — 128 MB. Yes, I had a computer with 32 MB of RAM and it browsed the internet just fine (on Netscape Navigator 2 through 4). I also had a computer before that (which was too slow to run Windows 3.1 but hey it had a turbo button). This is also the amount of RAM on the first and second generation iPod Touches. Nowadays, it is very little. Ars Technica allegedly made it crash by scrolling too fast and attempting to run benchmarks on it. This leads into its other, major compromise: its wireless connectivity. It does not support 3G. Edge is the best that you will get.
Other than those two points: it has a 1 GHz Spreadtrum SoC, 46MB of storage, a 2MP camera, and a 1250mAh battery. You do get WiFi, Bluetooth, and a microSD card slot. It also supports two SIM cards if necessary.
Again, at $35, this is not designed for America or Western Europe. This is for the areas of the world that will probably not experience the internet at all unless it is through a mobile phone. For people in India and Asia, it is about the lowest barrier to entry of the internet that is possible. You can also check out phones from other partners of Mozilla.
128 MB of RAM, can you say
128 MB of RAM, can you say text browsing! Hell one annoying video ad is going to take this phone down, maybe even some animated GIFs, better have 2 MicroSD card slots, that can be configured into RAID 0, to even get enough speed for a rudimentary swap file. Does this phone’s SOC even support segmenting, or virtual memory/paging? The Hobbyists may get this, if it can be had without a contract, Just to modify, or hook up to the pi, Parts is Parts.
It depends on how the phone
It depends on how the phone actually loads the content, for example, some old flip phones with the crappy web browsers, can still load a site like this, or a 200 image thread on 4chan. The way they do it on a low spec device, is by loading the code, but only actually pulling the necessary resources for what is in your view, thus minimizing the memory use. (browsers on the old windows mobile devices did this also since it was common to only have around 65MB of RAM, where the OS would use around 7-15MB of that RAM depending on what you has in the startup. (my ancient PDA is still able to load this site okay using the opera mobile browser for windows mobile)
That’s rudimentary swap file.
That’s rudimentary swap file. But the performance is not going to be great, and It’s not the fault of the CPU/SOC. I guess the developing world could use it, I could also, as I only have a flip phone, and do not want all the surfing in the first place. A large screen, with a better resolution than a flip phone is not so bad, but the device must come with all the metrics gathering disabled, maybe I’ll get one just for the Larger Key/screen numbers, my Flip Phone’s key pad is getting harder to read. 35 dollars is getting close to what I paid for the flip phone, but I just need the basic Phone functionality, and the ability to use the recharge cards for a by the minute billing. Before I buy, though the phone needs the ability to turn off all the functionality I do not need, and that includes texting, and automatically uploading my contact list(Hear that T-Mobile)
I just want a dumb phone with a large readable screen, and a fat on screen 10 number keyboard/pad for my fat fingers, I have a laptop for the text/other stuff.
Same here, I still use a flip
Same here, I still use a flip phone, mainly because the battery life is really good. My smartphone had not been upgraded in a long time (HTC MyTouch 3G Slide) Though I use my flip phone 80+% of the time since it is more convenient to have a flip phone, and a tablet for the more advanced stuff than to have a smartphone with a small display and requiring me to charge it daily. I also like having the physical number pad. fewer steps needed to make a call.
Only issue is the phone lacks a wifi hotspot and thus if I do not have access to a wifi hotspot, I have to use the tethering via bluetooth which is a bit slow.
Anyway, it is hard to beat only having to charge the phone once or twice per week, and the tablet every 2-3 days.
I wonder if something from
I wonder if something from Mozilla would bit better in terms of privacy/NSA issues. Security through obscurity, if nothing else.
Fuck yea! firefox os workin
Fuck yea! firefox os workin fo the masses! The first question is “why not a qwerty function phone?” but it’s all about multi language, then its all “Edge sucks, this phone is a piece of shit” but no, this is for the rest of the world, the world who doesn’t shit into a clean porcelain bowl of clear clean water.
There are Android phones with
There are Android phones with better specs which cost not a lot more (sub-$45) and I think it would be much better to buy one of those.