KaiOS Takes on the iOS-Android Mobile Duopoly (economist.com) 58
An anonymous reader shares a report: Firefox browser made by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, was born as "Phoenix." It rose from the ashes of Netscape Navigator, slain by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In 2012 Mozilla created Firefox OS, to rival Apple's iOS and Google's Android mobile operating systems. Unable to compete with the duopoly, Mozilla killed the project. Another phoenix has arisen from it [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. KaiOS, an operating system conjured from the defunct software, powered 30m devices in 2017 and another 50m in 2018. Most were simple flip-phones sold in the West for about $80 apiece, or even simpler ones which Indians and Indonesians can have for as little as $20 or $7, respectively.
Smartphones start at about $100. The company behind the software, also called KaiOS and based in Hong Kong, designed it for smart-ish phones -- with an old-fashioned number pad and long battery life, plus 4G connectivity, popular apps such as Facebook and modern features like contactless payments, but not snazzy touchscreens. Most such devices are found in India. Reliance Jio, a network that has upended the local mobile industry with heavily discounted 4G data plans, sells subsidised, Jio-branded phones that use KaiOS software. Google, which invested $22m in Kaios last year, prioritises getting people in emerging markets online, where it can sell their attention to advertisers, over getting them onto Android smartphones. Smart-ish phones help with this.
Smartphones start at about $100. The company behind the software, also called KaiOS and based in Hong Kong, designed it for smart-ish phones -- with an old-fashioned number pad and long battery life, plus 4G connectivity, popular apps such as Facebook and modern features like contactless payments, but not snazzy touchscreens. Most such devices are found in India. Reliance Jio, a network that has upended the local mobile industry with heavily discounted 4G data plans, sells subsidised, Jio-branded phones that use KaiOS software. Google, which invested $22m in Kaios last year, prioritises getting people in emerging markets online, where it can sell their attention to advertisers, over getting them onto Android smartphones. Smart-ish phones help with this.
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Each phone would only take up a few city blocks. Communal phone?
So, it's like a modern phone with less bloatware? (Score:5, Insightful)
with an old-fashioned number pad and long battery life, plus 4G connectivity, popular apps such as Facebook and modern features like contactless payments, but not snazzy touchscreens.
Where do I buy one? ;) Why are these not marketed here?
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I'm a 53 year old American with two college degrees, and I don't have money. :(
So - fuck off.
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What solution do you recommend for someone who faces "we went with another candidate" 20 times in a row?
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You can buy them on Amazon, look for feature phones or candbar phones. Some even have GPS.
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Candybar*
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They ARE marketed here.
The Alcatel Go Flip is supplied by Sprint. I own one.
The reason you don't hear about it is quite simple: the KaiOS software is total, complete, utter, absolute CRAP.
It works. MOST of the time. It periodically locks up, to the point that the only way to reset it is to PULL THE BACK COVER OFF AND YANK THE BATTERY. This has to be done EVERY FEW DAYS OR SO.
I usually discover that it has locked up when it rings for an incoming call, I open the phone, and I see a complete white screen,
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(Harass me trying to hook up, gay or straight, after having been warned exactly once, and you'll be dining on pepper spray, straight up.)
How is this not being a dick?
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One can only hope.
Goodbye "Sell their eyeballs" (Score:2)
"Sell their attention" hoorah!
This news also brings us a snappy, descriptive, replacement for the disgusting "Sell their eyeballs" metaphor.
Sebastien Codeville (CEO of KaiOs Tech) (Score:2)
"Codeville"...so appropriate. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Hardware commodification? (Score:3)
Honestly (Score:3)
I already have a smartphone, but I would certainly be interested in trying a phone that met the description given... if it actually worked well and had multi-day battery life.
A phone that could serve as a hotspot, could securely offer NFC payments, handled calendaring intelligently, and supported secure messaging of some sort (which wasn't a pain to type) - that's really all I need for a phone. I like to play things like Words with Friends and browsing the web, but I much prefer my iPad Mini for that sort of stuff.
As always, though, the devil is in the details. Have to use a T9 keyboard for messaging? No thank you. Is the vendor vacuuming up all your personal info and behavior? Might as well just have a smartphone.
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You never have to use T9, it was a quicker option than standard texting. I loved T9 and could text much faster than with just clicks, but I could also do either without looking at my phone.
What about another PalmOS (Score:3)
This may be ancient history, but one of the reasons Palm did so well with their PDAs, was, unlike Windows Mobile, their OS was simple, to the point, and was not intended to bristle with features. It did eventually suffer from feature creep, but even now, the Palm V still is something that has a timeless quality about it, especially because only the buttons are plastic.
Maybe we need a return to that. It would be nice to have a phone that has a week standby time again.
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All in the name of (Score:3)
Am I the only one who thinks they really missed an opportunity by not naming it "KaOS"? I'm thinking it would have been an obvious choice for a product they hope will disrupt the mobile OS marketplace.
https://youtu.be/zclelXTZVc4 [youtu.be]
I'd prefer a FOSS/privacy centric option... (Score:1)
Tough hill to climb (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently experienced KaiOS in the form of an Alcatel GO Flip, which I used to replace an old LG flip phone.
It looked pretty, but my day-to-day experience was terrible. For example, open the phone to check the time and wait 2-3 sec for the display to come on and update the time from what it was when you last opened the phone (?!?!) As a longtime flip phone user, I enjoyed my week-long gaps between charges, but this thing barely went a day and a half.
The interface had many features, like custom ring tones for particular callers, which never actually worked. The thing that drove me absolutely nuts though, was bluetooth pairing. I paired it to my car so that I could answer calls. Whenever I got in the car, it popped up a screen asking whether the car could access the phone contacts. Every. single. time. That screen would persist until I clicked yes or no, and you couldn't do anything until you did so. Used the car a couple hours ago? Want to check the time now? Click through that damn screen.
I have come to understand that they settled on HTML 5 for all of the UI stuff on the phone. Makes sense, but seems to be a high fixed cost for small things. Overall, I wanted to like it, and it has a lot of promise, but shows how crucial UX work is for mass market things.
Re:Tough hill to climb (Score:5, Insightful)
I have come to understand that they settled on HTML 5 for all of the UI stuff on the phone. Makes sense, but seems to be a high fixed cost for small things.
It makes no sense at all. Portable pocket-sized devices have extremely limited amounts of power available. HTML 5 was designed to use ALL the power. It's a stupidly heavyweight "solution" to a problem that can be solved beautifully in C.
Week long battery life in a candybar touchscreen is possible today. Modern lithium batteries really do have a lot of energy in them compared to even a decade ago. But the software has to not be an utter pig. Which means it can't be iOS or Android or KaiOS. It can't be motherfucking Javascript or Java. It needs to be compiled code, for the CPU in the phone, with all the compiler optimizations cranked up to 11 (or 3, as the case may be).
It is not actually required for software to expand to use all available computational resources. We could do better.
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It makes no sense at all. Portable pocket-sized devices have extremely limited amounts of power available. HTML 5 was designed to use ALL the power. It's a stupidly heavyweight "solution" to a problem that can be solved beautifully in C.
I completely agree with you from a technical perspective, however from a business perspective, they need to quickly reach parity with the wide variety of things already available for iOS and Android. Most of those apps already have a plain web version that uses HTML 5. Now, can they make it work well enough on low end hardware? My experience says not yet, but I still recognize it as a rational choice.
Wat? (Score:2)
Smartphones start at about $100.
Wat? Candybar smartphones running Android, with full Google services, start at $29 [walmart.com] plus tax. Around Black Friday, they're $20. They're carrier-locked for a few years and their battery life absolutely sucks, but they exist and they work.
phones should be free (Score:2)
Google "can sell their attention to advertisers"
In the eyes of business people, this software/hardware combo is a marketing tool. For the users in underdeveloped economies it is a survival tool. Without it they can't buy groceries or pay debts or connect to schools, jobs, government, etc.
I argue that even a $500 smartphone in the first world should be free. It is still a marketing tool, and the wealthier users will be spending much more with it. And of course the premium smartphones should cost far less whe
I'm sure it will do fine (Score:3)
Just like the other operating systems that have tried to compete against iOS/Android:
- TizenOS
- Windows Phone
- webOS
- FirefoxOS
- Symbian
- BlackBerry OS
- BlackBerry 10
- Sailfish OS
- Pure OS
- Ubuntu Touch
- MeeGo
- Bada
But yes, I'm sure Kai OS will be the one to crack it.
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Symbian and MeeGo are special cases: they were sabotaged by Stephen Elop.
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You mean the same Tizen on MILLIONS of Samsung smart tvs? I think it's doing fine.
Dunia kesehatan (Score:1)
Google spoiled it (Score:4, Insightful)
not smart-ish, straight dumb (Score:1)
Hello,
My pal has a 12-year-old son, and she wants to buy him a phone. We tried last year and failed to find one that meets her requirements. I was pretty surprised we had no luck.
We are in California and use one of the four mobile carriers broadly available, Tmobile. She wants the kid to have a phone without a browser. The phone needs to have a decent phone reception, so 4G. The olden days and the current nokias did not have 4G capable phones. Call it the Pre-4G era. Sort of inherent in a 4G capable p
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Slashdot to the rescue for all the "hoary details"
https://mobile.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Same problem as Android (Score:1)
I have a KaiOS flip phone. Love it for a lot of reasons like:
* multi-day battery life
* Great reception. (My S4 dropped all the time and my Motorola was garbage)
* Tactile feedback when texting. I didn't have to look at the phone to text. And when I hit a button, that button was pressed. No pressing a letter on a touch screen and the letter next to it is selected!
* Pre-programmed responses to common texting (eg: I'm on my way)
* Plus many more.
However, it has the same problem as Android. In the last eight year