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Geeksphone Peak Review - Phone on Firefox OS



Hi, Habr.

I finally waited for the cherished box with the Geeksphone Peak device and I want to share photos and screenshots in order to warm up the interest of readers to the Firefox OS platform .
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I want to warn you in advance that the phone is positioned as the Developer Preview , that is, it is not designed for the end user in general.
Periodically, Mozilla does the nightly builds of Boot2Gecko, so as soon as the next build appears on the server - the device is updated over the network, so the problems become less and less every day, the changes are tangible.

If you are not aware of what is being discussed at all, I highly recommend reading the article “The sales of the first phones based on Firefox OS have started on OpenNet.

For details, I invite under the cat.
Caution, pictures.
On a click - large versions.

Event log



I write approximate numbers of invoices, because Geeksphone, after the end of sales, closes the store entirely, including a personal account with a history of orders.

Device


Price - 149 euros.

Technical specifications:

Suppose that the presence of Android does not bother you, otherwise you should not have read the article “The sales of the first phones based on Firefox OS started ” on OpenNet.

The version of Boot2Gecko does not change yet, the hash of the last commit in the git repository branch from which the assembly was made is displayed as a distinctive feature.



Pro battery is difficult to write. Firstly, in standby mode, it does not discharge at all. You can leave the phone at night and in 12 hours it will take 1% of the charge. Secondly, with the load (especially wi-fi and the processor at the same time), it starts to discharge rapidly.
Wi-fi, in any case, strongly eats the battery, so it is better to turn it off at night. Apparently, while the developers have not reached the optimization of energy consumption.

The box and the appearance of the device








Before you is a box of recycled materials (I don’t want to guess what exactly was recycled). In my opinion, she has a good design - the inscriptions attract attention, in general, it looks neat. I draw your attention to the inscription "Firefox OS Developer Preview" , which tells us that the device is approved by the Mozilla Foundation. By the way, on the opposite side of the box, on the side, is the address http://devphone.mozilla.org .



Further. Box kit. Headphones with a headset, of course, went "in the trash" automatically (in the photo they are not).
Battery - 1800 mAh, made under the brand Geeksphone. I do not know if there is a chance to find an adequate replacement in retail.



Motivation letter about the web as a platform. It sounds tempting, if only vendors are tightened.
By the way, about the vendors: "Mozilla and Foxconn announced the joint development of a series of devices based on Firefox OS . "



The charger is good, at the output - 1 amp, with a charge, it beeps a little quieter than the one from Apple. After the end of the charge beeps loudly.



Screen. Pixels do not interfere, but the picture quality leaves much to be desired. First, it is not bright enough, and secondly, the image is rippled with stripes. It is difficult to describe or photograph, it is noticeable only when used. I suspect that this ripple is not the fault of the screen, but something inside the Gecko.

Touchscreen - no, inaccurate clicks. In combination with the problems described below (in the section on software), the problems are just fatal at the moment.



On the front side of the phone, we can see from above (from left to right) - a light and proximity sensor, a speaker, a front camera, and a charging indicator.
In general, this indicator could be used to display events (as in the BlackBerry), but at this stage of software development, it only displays the charging process. Red - charging, blue - full charge.



Bottom on the front side is a single button, touch, performs the function of managing running applications (similar to Apple devices).



Rear view, very appetizing. After all, you can also come up with a smartphone, which will be pleasant in appearance.
Camera, flash, speaker for music and call.



View from the corner. Headphone jack, microUSB port, power button and volume control rocker.



View under the battery. Without removing the battery, you can not change the sim-card and microSD-card.
In Spain, they are already engineering their phones, but we don’t have [x].



Searches UART have not yet been successful. Geeksphone ignores an email with a question; no one has answered the forum yet.
Nevertheless, the dmesg log will still be removed: http://pastebin.com/q1XV5mNV .

By the way, here is the reason for the strong heating of the rear part of the case: the radiator of passive cooling of the chip.
I'm afraid at this rate we will soon reach the coolers. [a place for jokes about JavaScript]



operating system


The internal structure of the system will not describe. The Mozilla website has an official draft of a description of the Firefox OS architecture , translation is in progress.

System boot log
pastebin.com/Axh1Fxr8

Occupied memory (you need to take into account the reserved for the GPU)
root@android:/data # busybox free total used free shared buffers Mem: 322708 193128 129580 0 17996 -/+ buffers: 175132 147576 Swap: 0 0 0


Interface and Applications




Work tables in a natural manner. In the center - the main screen, on the left - a bunch of links to incomprehensible sites that run in the browser without scaling and buttons. On the right - applications installed on the device. A day later, an update over the air arrived and a new icon appeared for the Importer, an importer of Google contacts on the phone.

In principle, any application is a cached directory with web page resources. Some applications written specifically for Firefox OS look good, for example, settings and SMS:


(in the messages, the button moved out, but in the last build of Boot2Gecko is already fixed)

I especially like the alarm clock (loud speaker contributes):



But a completely different feeling when working with a Twitter client:



Or with Nokia cards:



And if the cards claim to be an application, then Twitter is the most common cached web page that opens in the browser without zoom and buttons. To fall on the elements is unreal. And if you get it, it works exactly as expected by the most ardent haters of web applications and JS in particular.

The application of the market is not better:



By the way, I was in anticipation of finding an endless waiting ring. Well, you know, when an asynchronous request comes from JS, but there is still no answer and no answer, the ring is spinning. Usually it revolves either for half a minute or endlessly.

So, on the first day of the application's dating from the market, it was not possible to install it - when I clicked on the application, it met me, the most endless. On the second day everything went, obviously there were problems on the server. But +1 in the treasury of rings.
image

Notifications are displayed in the dashboard or on the lock screen:



There is nothing to tell about the sliding panel - this is already a familiar interface element, except that here you can watch the traffic counter, which by default is included in the standard set of system applications. Swing will have a lot, it seems.



Habr in Firefox browser ( YO DAWG! ) And keyboard. They have in common - in the first case it is impossible to get on the links, and in the second - on the buttons. Indeed, the touchscreen jerks heavily and get into something very difficult, even in seemingly large keyboard buttons. The keyboard currently has a bunch of input languages, so there is also support for Russian.



The camera in the device just in case. Front - all the more. And the pictures are taken with a resolution of 1280x960 and this is not subject to adjustment. The video is written 288x352 in .3gp, although it is clear from adb logcat that the camera also supports video recording in 720p .

In general, the camera application, like all other currently existing applications, is made with minimal features. It can be seen that the developers are trying to demonstrate and debug the platform, but there is simply no time for details.



On the left is a regular dialer, contacts can be linked to Facebook and then they will look beautiful. On the right is a menu for publishing something, in this case pictures. It is good that they decided to make a universal interface for the balls, this is very correct. You can write a simple plugin to fill the selected text on pastebin.



Minimal music player and minimal photo editor (there are filters, but there is no rotation).
The headset is not yet supported. Although I would have laughed heartily if there was any analogue of Siri, with only 2-5 voice commands, well, for debugging the platform. The loudspeaker from behind, though loud, but quite poor in terms of music, is more suitable for midi-polyphony.



All currently existing settings.



A small set of developer. Adb immediately under the root is provided, so everything is fine.

Developer Buns


By the way, the Geeksphone team is happy to upload their experience on GitHub - https://github.com/gp-b2g

Based on the above, you can build custom firmware for your phone based on AOSP . Or collect CyanogenMod .
The device supports firmware via fastboot,
To go to fastboot, you need to remove the battery, wait, insert and hold VolDown + Power .

 fastboot flash recovery recovery.img fastboot flash boot boot.img fastboot flash userdata userdata.img fastboot flash system system.img fastboot reboot


findings


After a couple of days of wearing this device in my pocket, I can confidently say that these mobile phones definitely have a future.
I felt a completely different experience of communicating with a mobile device - this is the first device that braked nicely . The essence is in uniform braking.

When navigating the menu, it sometimes lags by ~ 0.5 seconds before it processes the touch. The same interval is required to run the camera, browser, gallery, and so on. That is, everything that happens in the system happens at a predictable rate and is easy to get used to.

Applications? They rivet them, a bunch of curves of applications and a bunch of cheap devices, the characteristics of which resemble firewood.
I am sure that a huge number of web sites will be deposited in the caches of these mobile phones and they will be distributed in batches in the offices of cellular operators as a free addition to the contract for communication.

The system itself is developing rapidly, as I have already said, updates periodically come. The changes are noticeable - the controls improve, the layout changes, standard applications are added.

By the way, you can take part - https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/05/phones-for-apps-for-firefox-os

PS Special thanks to photo hosting Flickr for help in preparing and storing images.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/181440/

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