LG is launching its first phone designed to run Mozilla’s Firefox OS. It’s called the LG Fireweb, and it’ll be available soon in Brazil from wireless carrier Telefonica.

Like most other Firefox handsets, the Fireweb features entry-level specs, but it has a few features that help set it apart from the ZTE Open and Alcatel One Touch Fire, including a 5MP camera with auto-focus and an LED flash. Those features aren’t exactly hard to find on Android, iOS, or Windows Phone devices, but they do help the Fireweb stand out a bit.

LG Fireweb

The phone has a 4 inch, 480 x 320 pixel display, a 1 GHz processor, and just 4GB of storage. It features 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and comes preloaded with a few apps including Facebook and Cut the Rope which don’t come standard with other Firefox OS devices (although there’s nothing stopping you from installing them manually.

Firefox OS is a mobile operating system designed to run web apps written in HTML5, JavaScript, and other web technologies. It ships with basic apps including a web browser, map application, calendar, and clock. The phones feature the Firefox Marketplace app store where you can find other web apps — many of which you could also run in the Firefox web browser on any device.

via Engadget

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18 replies on “LG introduces its first Firefox OS phone, the Fireweb”

  1. Hey LG, we don’t want a web dependent OS on our phones, we want Ubuntu Mobile!

  2. People are still using single core processors!!! Uhm what?? Really??? Oh what a sin….. Truly what a terrible deadly sin!!! Listen up tech snobs….. Some people actually use their phones to CALL and be CALLED, you know the thing that phones, are supposed to do in the first place? Some people actually prefer simplicity, without all the tons of useless apps, and don´t want to spend a lot on a phone! Oh and btw the Nokia Lumia 800 is fast and is single core, not that i care but you might care you snobs! xD

    1. I have a single core Windows Phone 7 device… It’s single core but *very* impressive when compared to a slightly better-specced Android phone I have. Because FirefoxOS heavily uses web-based apps it makes a lot of sense to use dual core because of all the heavy/inefficient JavaScript applications make the phone frequently unresponsive. The reason Windows Phones get away with single core so well is because of the extensive use threading and non-blocking APIs… This type of design is not common in HTML5 and JavaScript applications.

      I totally get your thing against tech-snobs, but take into account you can *easily* get sub-$100 dual core platforms… So why bother with using crappy single-core platforms that are *already outdated*. Have you used a single-core Android device lately? It lags out when people call and you are trying to unlock the screen… So yeah, you have a lot of trouble being CALLED and sometimes have trouble trying to CALL too because some background process is hammering the CPU and low-bandwidth storage, causing the interface to be unresponsive.

      Also – supposing that this phone is being targeted at 3rd world countries, offering a device that help offer services and information (thus the need to run actual applications) to poor people in remote locations is a big deal. We’re not talking about some silly little cosmetic feature here – we’re talking about the effectiveness of a *tool*.

      1. Isn’t the OS based on the Firefox browser (I’m just assuming here). If so then multiple cores won’t help much. If not, does each Web app run as a separate process?

        1. That’s a good question. I don’t know if each app has it’s own process… But each page definitely has it’s own thread. Multiple cores definitely are effective with multiple threads.

      2. That’s the thing: WP7 and Firefox OS are both optimized to run on lower-end hardware. That’s why Windows Phone runs so well on higher-end phones.

        1. …You mean low-end phones.
          Don’t get me wrong, FirefoxOS has done a much better job of optimising than Android has (you can tell) but it still doesn’t magically fix the limits enforced by the hardware.

  3. Still waiting for a Firefox phone with decent specs. I guess it really must only be targeting the low end. I would ok with dual core and less than 2GHz, but it needs to have a decent screen, not something 5 years out of date.

  4. I can’t believe people still release single-core hardware. It just doesn’t cut the modern mustard.

    1. What planet are you on? Oh, the first world planet. Things are very different in the developing world, which is of course where this phone is targeted. I still use a dumb phone, 10 cent a minute plan. Partly because I don’t want or need the features of smartphones, partly because I am a frugal Mustachian bastard. But, I might buy a Firefox OS phone, cause its open, and I am sure it would be a revelation compared to my POS alcatel go phone.

    2. The price difference between a single core processor and a dual core processor is minuscule but the performance difference is huge. Don’t get me wrong I know where you’re coming from. I never buy a phone over $200 – so I am intimately familiar with cheap and nasty smart phones… They’re really terrible! Also, how do you know this is targeted at third world use? “Comes with Facebook…” is surely a clue? Is LG a known manufacturer of products targeted at the third world? No. This product is aimed a the low end first world market, IMO.
      As for “needing smartphones” – the idea of pushing smart phones into third-world countries is to be able to deliver education, health, social and business services to poor and hard-to-reach places. They already have dumb phones, and they’re not cutting the modern mustard. You may not need a smart phone because you probably have easy access to any service you need already – and you clearly also have access to an acual computer and internet. People in the third world are likely to have only one computer – the phone – and one *possible* way to access the internet: the phone.
      The thing that has stopped me from getting a FirefoxOS phone is the lack of STARTTLS support (for encrypted email – yes it’s important. It has been fixed I think.) the lack of CardDAV and also the lack of software updates provided by manufacturers (and thus the “no STARTTLS”). I am however still rooting for Firefox OS and true openness rather than the quasi-open POS that is Android.

      1. This is being released in Brazil according to the article. Some consider it a developing country with huge gaps in wealth there.

      2. Clearly someone has never heard of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) which are the largest, and fastest growing economies, but are ALSO DEVELOPING nations.

        1. This phone is also being released in Australia… The other reason I was under the impression it was aimed at the low-end first-world market. And your point is? Hell, in China it is even easier to get cheap dual-core hardware.

          Case in point: 3 pages of phones with better specs (dual core, larger resolutions) for under $128 – most around $85. There’s even some big-ish name brands in there such as ZTE and Lenovo.
          https://dx.com/s/dual%2bcore%2bphone?PriceIntvl=4-128

          If this LG phone isn’t $50 it’s missed the mark.

  5. Great step for Firefox os. Let’s hope we see more releases from other operating systems. (Ubuntu!)

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