> let you use Gaia (the user interface of FirefoxOS) on your Android device, as an alternative homescreen.
So.. this is just a launcher? Not anything to do with actually running an OS, just pretty icons and such? Shame. I was really looking forward to some kind of dual-boot or co-exist setup. I guess FFOS is in the same place a lot of small and hobbyist projects are at - without the marketshare of android, you simple do not have drivers available for your platform and considering the closed nature of most SoC's, its impossible to write you own.
Its kinda sad that smartphones didnt evolve like PCs. Drivers and specs have become proprietary trade secrets and that hurts us all.
That said, a FFOS Android distro would be pretty nice, especially if it broke away from the Google world of google play services, play store, etc. Imagine CM but without all the suckitude. I could see that having a chance and the driver problem would be solved.
Author of the project here. This is still very unpolished.
So... my goal with doing that is to lower the barrier to entry and get more people to try the Firefox OS user experience. Currently it needs some dedication (either getting a supported device, or flashing your existing one), and that's obviously preventing us to get mindshare, both from users and developers.
Having simply to install an android app is vastly simpler for many people that are just curious at first. Some things will always be a bit different in the android version compared to a full flash, but I expect that to be relatively minor. I'm trying to get as much meaningful OS integration, like opening links from android apps in our browser frames, bridging our Web Activities and Android Intents, etc.
Please make it an official Mozilla (sub) project and keep us updated with reoccurring news. Great work, it works really smooth on a highend smartphone, comparable to Android UI and iOS.
I haven't played with it, but if I had to take a guess, it should be functionally equivalent to FFOS (for apps, anyway). The closest parallel may be the iOS Simulator - it gives you access to the iOS APIs on your Mac. This _should_ allow you to run FFOS apps on your Android device.
Since the userspace of FFOS all runs on web tech, if this has enough of the runtime to power the homescreen, it should be able to power the apps too.
That's a good point. I think the interesting thing is that Android drivers do exist for all these device features, so any ODM that has an Android device could respin it as a Firefox OS device.
Right. As more of an enthusiast than any sort of developer (I've flashed my share of third party Android builds but never tried to create my own) I've always understood this to be why anyone can't just port the latest version of Android to a given device. Drivers need to be baked in and without access to proprietary driver code, you're still beholden to OEMs unless your hardware is supported by AOSP.
What value would FFOS really provide on a phone that was sold with Android? Is replicating the guts all that important, if Mozilla's innovations are elsewhere?
So.. this is just a launcher? Not anything to do with actually running an OS, just pretty icons and such? Shame. I was really looking forward to some kind of dual-boot or co-exist setup. I guess FFOS is in the same place a lot of small and hobbyist projects are at - without the marketshare of android, you simple do not have drivers available for your platform and considering the closed nature of most SoC's, its impossible to write you own.
Its kinda sad that smartphones didnt evolve like PCs. Drivers and specs have become proprietary trade secrets and that hurts us all.
That said, a FFOS Android distro would be pretty nice, especially if it broke away from the Google world of google play services, play store, etc. Imagine CM but without all the suckitude. I could see that having a chance and the driver problem would be solved.