June 6, 2013 at 16:54

Geeksphone Peak Review - Firefox OS Phone



    Hi, Habr.

    I finally waited for the treasured box with the Geeksphone Peak device and I want to share photos and screenshots in order to foster readers' interest in the Firefox OS platform .

    I want to warn in advance that the phone is positioned as a Developer Preview, that is, in general, it is not designed for the end consumer.
    Periodically, Mozilla does nightly builds of Boot2Gecko, so as soon as the next build appears on the server, the device is updated over the network, so that there are less and less problems every day, the changes are noticeable.

    If you don’t know what this is all about, I highly recommend that you read the article “The first Firefox OS-based phones started selling” on OpenNet.

    For details, I invite you to Cat.
    Caution Pictures.
    Click-through - large versions.

    Event log


    • April 23, 10:00 Moscow time - the start of sales of Geeksphone phones in the store on their website ;
    • after a couple of minutes - the store falls;
    • April 23, around 12:00 - I managed to press the buy button, thanks to the continuous page refresh;
    • April 23, 14:30 - both devices are sold out (Keon first ended, but then added a little more);
    • At that time, my invoice was numbered about 870, the campaign was ordinal;
    • May 9, 15:35 - the manager contacted me and said that the UPS Cash on Delivery delivery method is not available for Russia;
    • In the meantime, I figured out a SWIFT transfer to a Spanish bank (by the way, everything is ok), the following happened;
    • May 22, 16:00 - sales started again .
    • This time I paid by card in advance, I chose the usual UPS. Sent on the same day. Invoice number was around 1600;
    • May 23 - the parcel got up at the customs office in Vnukovo, as the Spaniards recorded the delivery cost in the invoice cost of the parcel
      and it came out 204 euros, and the limit on parcels without clearance - 200 euros;
    • May 28 - drove to Vnukovo and issued 10 pieces of paper (one was enough at FedEx in Domodedovo);
    • May 29 - delivered home;

    I am writing sample invoice numbers because Geeksphone after the end of sales closes the entire store, including a personal account with a history of orders.

    Device


    Price - 149 euros.

    Technical specifications:
    • Android 4.0.4
    • Boot2Gecko 1.0.1.0-prerelease
    • Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 8225 1.2Ghz x2 CPU
    • GPU Qualcomm Adreno 203
    • UMTS 2100/1900/900 (3G HSPA)
    • GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (2G EDGE)
    • Screen 4.3 "qHD IPS Multitouch (960x540, 256 PPI)
    • Camera 8 MP (back) + 2 MP (front)
    • 4 GB (ROM) and 512 MB (RAM)
    • MicroUSB, MicroSD, Wifi N, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, FM Radio
    • Light and proximity sensors, gyroscope, GPS, flash
    • 1800 mAh battery
    • Weight: 118g

    Let Android not bother you, otherwise you shouldn’t read the article “Started selling the first Firefox OS-based phones” on OpenNet.

    The Boot2Gecko version is not changing yet, as a distinctive feature the hash of the last commit is displayed in the git repository branch from which the assembly was made. It's hard to write about the battery. 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% charge. Secondly, under load (especially wi-fi and the processor at the same time), it will begin to quickly discharge. Wi-fi in any case strongly eats the battery, so it’s better to turn it off at night. Apparently, while the developers have not reached the optimization of energy costs.

        




    Box and device appearance








    Here is a box of recycled materials (I do not want to guess what is recycled). In my opinion, she has a good design - the inscriptions attract attention, in general, 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 set. Headphones with a headset, of course, went “into the bin” automatically (they are not shown in the photo). Battery - 1800 mAh, made under the brand Geeksphone. I do not know if there is a chance to find an adequate replacement in retail. A motivation letter about the Web as a platform. It sounds tempting if only the vendors pulled themselves up.









    By the way, about 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 ampere, when charging it squeaks a little quieter than the identical one from Apple. After the end of the charge, it beeps loudly. Screen. Pixels do not interfere, but the picture quality is poor. Firstly, 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 have a suspicion that this ripple is not the fault of the screen, but something inside Gecko. Touchscreen - no, inaccurate clicks. In combination with the problems described below (in the section about software), this is simply fatal at the moment.













    On the front side of the phone we can see from above (from left to right) - the light and proximity sensor, speaker, front camera, charging indicator.
    In general, this indicator could be used to display events (as in BlackBerry), but at this stage of software development it only displays the charging process. Red - charging, blue - full charge. Below, on the front side, there is a single touch button, which performs the function of managing running applications (similar to Apple devices). Rear view, very appetizing. After all, you can still come up with a smarfton that will be pleasant to look at. Camera, flash, speaker for music and ringer. The view from the corner. Headphone jack, microUSB port, power button and volume rocker.
















    View under the battery. Without removing the battery, you cannot change the SIM card and microSD card.
    In Spain, they already engineer their phones, but we do not [x]. UART searches have not yet been successful. The Geeksphone ignores the letter asking, no one has answered the forum yet. Nevertheless, the dmesg log will still be dragged away: http://pastebin.com/q1XV5mNV . By the way, and here is the reason for the strong heating of the back of the case: passive cooling chip radiator. I'm afraid that at such a pace we will soon reach coolers. [place to joke about JavaScript]

        









    operating system


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

    System boot log
    pastebin.com/Axh1Fxr8

    Used memory (you need to consider 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


        

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

    In principle, any application is a cached directory with the resources of a web page. Some applications written specifically for Firefox OS look good, for example, settings and SMS: (the button has popped off in the messages, but Boot2Gecko is already fixed in the latest build) I especially like the alarm clock (loud speaker helps): But a completely different feeling when working with the Twitter client : Or Nokia cards:

        




        



        



        

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

    The market app is no better: By the way, I was looking forward to finding an infinite ring of expectation. Well, you know, when an asynchronous request comes from JS, but there is no answer and no, the ring is spinning. Usually it spins either half a minute or endlessly. So, on the first day of meeting the application, it was not possible to install the application from the market - when I clicked on the application, it met me the most, endless. On the second day everything went away, obviously there were problems on the server. But +1 to the piggy bank of the rings.

        




    image

    Notifications are displayed in the drawer or on the lock screen: There is nothing to tell about the drawer - this is already a familiar interface element, unless here you can observe the traffic meter, which is included by default in the standard set of system applications. You have to download a lot, it seems. Habr in the Firefox browser ( YO DAWG! ) And the keyboard. They have one thing in common - in the first case it is impossible to click on the links, and in the second - on the buttons. Indeed, the touchscreen twitches and getting into something is very difficult, even with seemingly large buttons on the keyboard. The keyboard currently has a bunch of input languages, so Russian support is also available.

        



        



        

    The camera in the device is just in case. Front - even more so. Moreover, 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 can be clearly seen from adb logcat that the camera supports video recording at 720p.

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

        

    On the left is an ordinary dialer, contacts can be linked to Facebook and then they will look beautiful. On the right is the menu for publishing something, in this case, a picture. It is good that they decided to make a universal interface for balls, it is very correct. You can write a simple plugin to fill selected text on pastebin. Minimal music player and minimal photo editor (there are filters, but no turning). 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 rear speaker, although loud, but completely of poor quality in terms of music, is more suitable for midi-polyphony. All currently existing settings.

        




        





    A small set of developers. adb immediately under the root is provided, so everything is fine.

    Developers Buns


    By the way, the Geeksphone team is happy to post its findings on GitHub - https://github.com/gp-b2g

    Based on the above, you can build custom firmware for a phone based on AOSP. Or assemble CyanogenMod.
    The device supports firmware via fastboot,
    to switch 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


    conclusions


    After a couple of days of carrying this unit in my pocket, I can confidently say that these cell phones definitely have a future.
    I felt a completely different experience in communicating with a mobile device - this is the first device that slowed down nicely . The bottom line is in uniform braking.

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

    Applications? They are riveted by a bunch of crooked applications and a bunch of cheap devices that resemble firewood in characteristics.
    I am sure that a huge number of web sites will settle in the cache of these mobile phones and they will be distributed in bundles at the offices of mobile operators as a free addition to the contract for communication.

    The system itself is developing rapidly, as I said, periodically updates come. The changes are noticeable - the controls are improved, the layout is changing, 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 the Flickr photo hosting for their help in preparing and storing the pictures.
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