Mozilla announces developer smartphones with Firefox OS

The Keon and Peak development phones
Source: Geeksphone

Mozilla has announced that the Spanish manufacturer Geeksphone, together with carrier Telefónica, is working on two developer phones with Firefox OS pre-installed. In the announcement by Stormy Peters, Mozilla's Head of Developer Engagement, the company invites developers to join it in developing applications for the devices and says the phones should be released in February.

Geeksphone will be offering two different devices: Keon, which uses a single core 1 GHz Snapdragon S1 and comes with a 3.5" HVGA screen, and Peak, a dual core, 1.2 GHz Snapdragon S4 powered Peak with a 4.3" qHD screen. Both phones have 4GB of on board storage, 512MB of RAM and 2G and 3G connectivity. While the Keon only has one 3 megapixel camera, the Peak has an 8 megapixel back-facing camera equipped with an LED flash and an additional 2 megapixel front camera. The bigger Peak also sports a higher capacity battery.

With a release targeted at February, it is likely that Telefónica and Geeksphone will demonstrate the devices at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It is also a possibility that developers will be able to have some hands-on experience with the phones at the Firefox OS App Days taking place in various locations around the world, including London, on 26 January.

Firefox OS applications are written with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript and are basically web applications packaged to make use of the extra APIs available on Firefox OS devices. The Firefox OS's user interface and built in applications are constructed in the same way; there are no "native" applications on a Firefox OS phone. Moziilla hopes that by encouraging developers to write web applications which also run on the phone, it can strengthen the freedom of the web. The Firefox OS Simulator, which has already allowed developers to test their Firefox OS applications for the mobile operating system, has been available since December.

(fab)