[
]1A couple of days ago
my phone ‘on’ button (which also activates the screen) stopped working
(most of the time…along with the heating in my flat). So that was all
fun…anyway, this gave me a good kick to finally move my primary phone to
the free (as in beer) [Firefox OS Flame]2 phone, based on the free
(as in speech) Firefox software. Happily, I was probably one of the few
people at [Mozfest]3 for whom the free test Flame phone was a step
up, it’s got a pretty decent spec but it’s not going to set anyone’s
world on fire… In short – it’s brilliant. I set it up pretty quickly
then faffed about, I was looking at it thinking “hm, what else am I
missing” and a big part of the answer was “all the crap you couldn’t get
rid of on the old android”. I like the principle of the phone too –
basing apps on open web technologies, and I hope people develop more for
Firefox OS (,etc.) e.g. WalkJogRun happened to be the site I used for
mapping runs, it developed an iPhone app but no android app…but hey,
right away on Firefox OS I found a GPS based run tracker, which of
course will work on any other phone too because it’s ‘just’ a html5 app.
The appearance of the phone is great too, it’s clean and fast, with
fairly familiar navigation through app-icons, and some nice “smart
collections” which list apps in a particular category (these seem to be
good apps so I don’t know who curates them). There’s also a nice
function in the ‘contacts’ where you can send someone something via
whatever method (facebook, twitter, phone, etc.) you have contacts for
them on, including for facebook posting a wall post, viewing their
profile or sending a message. I know I could do this on android, but I
don’t think it was as well integrated/attractive. Having said all that,
from 2 days use I’ve got a wishlist, some of which is pickiness (some of
which is definitely not). Not sure if some of these should go onto
[Bugzilla]4 (or somewhere else?) or not… Anyway, my wishlist (in
no particular order): Firefox OS and built-in app wishlist 1. A
better gallery – 1. it lumps all photos found into one gallery, so you
don’t get any folder interaction or other ways to organise the images
([feedback]5) 2. the only way to navigate them is to scroll
through all the dates 3. (there is a carousel function, but it
requires you to thumb almost off the phone, actually I think this is
this [bug]6) 4. you can only select one photo at a time (no
multi-deleting, sharing, etc.). I was wrong, there’s a little
‘square selector’ button you have to click to select multiple photos at
a time 5. And the images seem to cache at a really low resolution
([bug]7), so when you open the gallery up everything (including
good quality photos) is incredibly low-resolution, 6. while tiny images
(e.g. ones used in apps) default to ‘stretch’ ([bug]8) into the
preview window :-(. 7. And I can’t see an app to do this better (I.e.
you can’t just not use the default app) 2. A better email client – I’ve
grown reliant on gmail’s “mute” function, and hadn’t quite realised how
terrible the m.gmail.com site is, but there’s no gmail app for Firefox
OS. The native email client is alright, but I’ve got very used to having
more, for example, you can’t: 1. Mute threads 2. Search non-cached
emails (ARGH!) 3. Change your name once the account’s setup, so I’ve
accidentally set my name as an email on one account, and as ‘gmail’ on
my gmail account. ([bug]9) 4. It’s also not obvious how you’d
refresh IMAP folders (I added one on gmail but it didn’t appear a few
hours later on the phone, maybe it would have eventually…) 5.
Select multiple emails at once (e.g., to delete or move
them), 6. Mark emails unread(!) Turns out I was wrong
about both of these, there’s a small button bottom right to bring up
email-tick-box selector to: delete; flag; mark read/unread; change
folders on, multiple mails. 3. There’s no copy-paste functionality (or,
no UX for it [bug here]10, [app to partially solve is
available]11). There’s a nice long hold for cut n paste
functionality – a nice function on Android which lets you copy text
between apps. Having no copy/paste even through menus is a really
striking omission. 4. A screen lock tool – I like my finger swipe thing
on Android, I can set a keycode for this but that’s all at the moment 5.
Multiple browser support – for various reasons I tend to do different
things in different browsers. I can’t see any way to install more than
one browser (maybe other compatible open browsers will emerge?), nor
does ‘in-private’/’in-cognito’ mode seem to be available in the
installed Firefox browser ([but on the way]12 and [bug-report
progress]13??). 6. A profile selector – at the moment I can’t see
any easy way to select ringtone/volume/etc profile-sets so this needs to
be done manually. At the very least a “silent, vibrate, noisy” option
would be nice. 7. Keyboard selector (I got [emoticons by downloading an
extra keyboard]14 (and there’s another [here]15), but I’d
still like to modify the keyboard further, and ideally have
[swype]16 options) 8. I’ve had to update at least one app with it
losing all my login data in the process – ideally this should not
happen! 9. This is just a flat-out bug, but accessing one of the app
groups (‘Social’) seems not to be loading…not sure I care (I don’t even
remember what was “inside” it). (These can easily be ‘reinstalled’) 10.
Another flat out bug, adding a google calendar gets me to the
authentication page, but then doesn’t do anything after you
‘authorise’. (Nor could I get CalDav working) (I just got this
working…there seemed to be a HUGE delay between clicking ‘accept’ and
the page reloading, not sure if using googlemail (not gmail) helped, I
saw that suggested somewhere)
Footnotes
-
/static/2014/05/mozilla_firefox_cosplay.jpg ↩
-
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Developer_phone_guide/Flame ↩
-
http://sjgknight.com/finding-knowledge/2014/11/month-note-field-work-conferences-other-events/ “Month note: Field work, conferences + other events” ↩
-
https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/dashboard/response/4842714 ↩
-
http://www.codingfree.com/2014/01/copy-paste-for-firefox-os.html ↩
-
http://asadotzler.com/2014/10/17/private-browsing-coming-soon-to-firefox-os/ ↩
-
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/emoji-keyboard?src=search ↩
-
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nuance.swype.trial&hl=en ↩