Mozilla to launch $25 phone in India in partnership with Intex & Spice

Mozilla is all prepared to launch the first Firefox OS devices in India in next few months. For this venture, it has partnered with Indian handset brands Spice and Intex.

The specifications of these Smartphones haven’t reveled by the companies yet but according to the reference design, they might have a 3.5 HVGA touch screen display, integrated Wi-Fi, camera, FM along with a Spreadtrum SC6821 processor.

Mozilla earlier this year introduced its new range of Firefox OS devices at the MWC 2014. It also announced a $25 reference design powered by a Spreadtrum processor.

The Smartphones will start from $25 (Rs. 1,500 approximately). According to Gong Li, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Mozilla, with a price tag of $25, there will be no price gap left between a feature phone and smart phone. With this low price range, Mozilla will aim to motivate the people in making the switch from feature to Smartphones.

Low-cost Smartphones have become a hit in emerging markets like India. Though the Firefox handsets might not be able to fight with its Windows, iOS and Android counterparts but it surely will be able to grab the eyeballs of first time Smartphones buyers with its attractive low price range.

According to Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, Business Head, Mobile, Intex technologies (India) Ltd, Intex’s association with Mozilla will enable them to develop unparalleled smart devices on the Firefox OS latest platform. This will further give them an edge in upgrading feature phone users to Smartphones while at the same time making it affordable for the mass market. This association will make their devices much more than just a way to use the Web. It will take the engagement further and develop the Web as a mobile platform. Intex’s Firefox OS-powered Cloud FX Smartphones will be available in the Indian market by early August.

On the other hand, Dilip Modi, Co-founder and CEO of Spice states that they are pleased to be associated with Firefox OS devices as they have always been technology innovators in the Indian telecom industry. According to him, this association is symbolic of their commitment in providing first-hand technological innovations experience to their customers. Spice has announced that its Mozilla Firefox OS devices will be available in the Indian market by July 2014 and it would come with a dual SIM support.

 

Mozilla to launch $25 phone in India in partnership with Intex & Spice

Mozilla is all prepared to launch the first Firefox OS devices in India in next few months. For this venture, it has partnered with Indian handset brands Spice and Intex.

The specifications of these Smartphones haven’t reveled by the companies yet but according to the reference design, they might have a 3.5 HVGA touch screen display, integrated Wi-Fi, camera, FM along with a Spreadtrum SC6821 processor.

Mozilla earlier this year introduced its new range of Firefox OS devices at the MWC 2014. It also announced a $25 reference design powered by a Spreadtrum processor.

The Smartphones will start from $25 (Rs. 1,500 approximately). According to Gong Li, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Mozilla, with a price tag of $25, there will be no price gap left between a feature phone and smart phone. With this low price range, Mozilla will aim to motivate the people in making the switch from feature to Smartphones.

Low-cost Smartphones have become a hit in emerging markets like India. Though the Firefox handsets might not be able to fight with its Windows, iOS and Android counterparts but it surely will be able to grab the eyeballs of first time Smartphones buyers with its attractive low price range.

According to Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, Business Head, Mobile, Intex technologies (India) Ltd, Intex’s association with Mozilla will enable them to develop unparalleled smart devices on the Firefox OS latest platform. This will further give them an edge in upgrading feature phone users to Smartphones while at the same time making it affordable for the mass market. This association will make their devices much more than just a way to use the Web. It will take the engagement further and develop the Web as a mobile platform. Intex’s Firefox OS-powered Cloud FX Smartphones will be available in the Indian market by early August.

On the other hand, Dilip Modi, Co-founder and CEO of Spice states that they are pleased to be associated with Firefox OS devices as they have always been technology innovators in the Indian telecom industry. According to him, this association is symbolic of their commitment in providing first-hand technological innovations experience to their customers. Spice has announced that its Mozilla Firefox OS devices will be available in the Indian market by July 2014 and it would come with a dual SIM support.

Firefox OS Stable version released to compete with Android and Tizen

Mozilla released new Firefox OS first stable version, this is Mozilla's new mobile operating system that will compete with Android OS and Samsung backed Tizen mobile OS. Firefox OS is an open source OS with latest release brings a lot of new features and improvements that were missing on the initial release (not stable).

The Firefox OS running smartphones can be a lot cheaper options with equivalent or may be more more features than Android OS.

Firefox OS users can now send MMS messages, while the developers can use the new push notification APIs, which allow for timely notifications and reduction in battery consumption. Furthermore, Mozilla has enhanced the contact manager, which now supports Gmail and Hotmail contact import, adding a number to a contact when it’s listed in the call log, SMS message or email.Additionally, Firefox OS now have the smart dial feature, which works just as expected.

Android OS had made smartphones more affordable comparing to proprietary based mobile OS such as iOS, Windows or Blackberry. An Android smartphones can be bought within price range of Rs.8,000-Rs.15,000 easily, Firefox OS which unlike to Google or Apple backed by a non-profit organization and as Mozilla says - 'We're out to make a difference, not a profit', Mozilla will surely give a stiff competition to Android and iPhones once its available for sale across the globe.

One can purchase Firefox OS on a ZTE Open handset or on an Alcatel One Touch device. More devices will be announced over the next few weeks. ZTE Open powered by Firefox OS is available at price of $249 however in India ZTE Open 3G Unlocked phone is available at eBay India at mere price of RS.6,500.

Available in 3 languages - Spanish, Polish and English 17 operators spanning the globe are currently distributing Firefox OS devices: América Móvil, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison Three Group, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Qtel, SingTel, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia Group, Telefónica, Telenor, TMN and VimpelCom.

In Coming weeks more countries and mobile phone operators will be selling Firefox OS.

Most smartphones are made by a small number of people, all in one place, probably pretty far from where you live. Firefox OS phones are different they're made by a huge global community probably could give lot more features to users over the years gradually.

Internet Explorer 9 revealed, supports CSS3/HTML5, faster than Firefox

Microsoft has revealed the preview-only/test version of its all new Internet Explorer 9 far better than any of its earlier versions and especially because the standards IE used to follow are way back than any modern browser.  At MIX 10, a interactive gathering event of Microsoft and  innovative web professionals, Dean Hachamovitch presented the insight depth of "early look" phase of IE9.

This preview of IE9 is more targeted towards web developers/ designers to let them know and take advantage of new things they can do while developing web apps or websites.  Developers can have early look at IE 9 development here.

The prominent development and new things of Internet Explorer 9 are :

• A new JavaScript engine for IE9 which is designed to make Internet Explorer faster (faster than Firefox 3.6).


• Support for HTML5.


• IE9 now extensively support DOM, CSS3, SVG standards and XHTML.
  Able to render box-shadow, text-shadow and border-radius like CSS3 properties


• IE9 is the first browser designed to hardware accelerated graphics

Interestingly, the new JavaScript engine of IE9 is said to be faster than shipping version of Firefox today as per Webkit.org’s SunSpider benchmark test.

However, the available Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview is not be used as regular browse and it doesn’t even have a "back" button. But it released to run along with regular browser and is simply a preview and more specifically for developers/ designers so as to help them developing their web apps.