News - ZTE Open Firefox OS smartphone will be an eBay exclusive

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The smartphones will be available on both UK and US eBay sites, priced £59.99 ($79.99).

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Read more.

'Discover a new way to surf the web' on a 480 x 320 screen, slowly with lots of scrolling I think.

The price is right for a cheap phone, but the specs may damage the reputation of the OS.

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Originally Posted by jimbouk

'Discover a new way to surf the web' on a 480 x 320 screen, slowly with lots of scrolling I think.

The price is right for a cheap phone, but the specs may damage the reputation of the OS.

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True - A better spec and I might have been tempted even at double the price. Doesn't need a 8 core CPU or 2Gb ram I'm sure but a half decent screen is a must.

I think they want it to be cheap though...cheap Android phones always suffer compared to the next tier up

SCreen resolution is very bad and the camera is also poor.

Always good to see a new competitor in the OS market, but agree with others, resolution and low res screen will do it no favours.

For nearly all phones under £150 the internal memory kills it for me, there's not enough space to load any additional apps. I've had issues previously trying to download apps to SD card and most of them won't run properly or require some sort of fudge to get them to work.....it should be standard and require zero additional input from the user.

Hmm, price is probably reasonable given the spec, but I can't help thinking that they'd have been better advised to try and sell (SIM-free and bundled with a SIM) via the supermarkets.

Second point, I can't see the networks being that impressed by an "open ecosystem" - from what I've seen, they'd be much happier with an OS that was locked down tighter than the proverbial ducks waste outlet.

As always it'll be down to the developers, if they come on board then it's likely to do well. If not, then it'll be less successful than webOS was in the phone arena.

i agree with the other post the specs are very low even for to day standards. but there will all way be room for improvements with the way the tech is advancing in our world.

The screen really might not be bad at all; it's 3.5" and I've used a similar screen on an Ace before my Nexus 4. Sure, you have less room to work, but provided it's reasonable quality it should be perfectly usable. And lets not forget it's a £60 phone!! If you want premium features, pay premium price! :P

TBH I find the technically higher PPI AMOLED screen on the SIII mini to be far more grainy than the IPS screen on the Ace. Sometimes looks like each pixel has a black border around it.

Starting out with a lower-end phone might not be a bad idea TBH, a several hundred pound phone with a new OS might put people off. People may be more likely to grab one of these to give it a go, etc. I'm tempted myself TBH.

It looks like a good OS. No doubt it will have it's teething problems early on but I expect it will come out shining. All it needs is the right hardware to help it sell, not this.

I can't wait to be rid of my Scroogle powered data thieving OS.

And go to somebody else's data thieving OS?

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Originally Posted by 3dcandy

And go to somebody else's data thieving OS?

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Firefox havn't been known to steal peoples data for financial gain, and they still allow AdBlock software to run without issues. I would expect the same from their OS.

Adblock doesn't block all ads now though does it. I agree that Firefox is *probably* less likely to steal data than other OS's we could mention, but if you seriously believe that your data is 100% safe you're mistaken.

It's nice to see new competitors come out however, I don't see any staying as the current field is being helled through the apps people have already perchased. Thus moving to a new OS generally means perchasing £50 of new apps. The only place I see the phone making it is with Drug Dealers, Hitmen, and the Mafia. Becaue this is the best burner-phone it would seem.

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Originally Posted by 3dcandy

Adblock doesn't block all ads now though does it. I agree that Firefox is *probably* less likely to steal data than other OS's we could mention, but if you seriously believe that your data is 100% safe you're mistaken.

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Even if they do have an spying software on the OS, its so open (when compared to android) that it could all be removed easily

Good thing it's only £60, priced any higher it'd be a rip off. An A5 and 512MB is going to crawl along and that screen is terribly low resolution. It's going to make FFOS look utter pants.

They should have at least tried for something with a dual core A7 and 1GB, 8GB internal storage and a 800/854 x 480 screen. Even the Intel Lexington platform explicitly described as being an entry level baseline for emerging markets is much better than this.