Boot2Gecko (B2G): Be Ready For Another Mobile OS

Boot2Gecko (B2G): Be Ready For Another Mobile OS
by Dharmesh Talaviya 18. July 2012 06:44
It's time to watch out for iOS and Android Application Development as one more mobile OS is
hitting the market with a bang. Mozilla, the owner of Firefox browser is planning to launch a new
mobile OS previously known as the B2G (Boot2Gecko) in the early 2013. It will be an open
source; HTML5 built, and license-free OS with most up-to-date Web standards. It is relied on the
Web technology therefore it should permit cheaper handsets due to lower RAM and hardware
requirements than required by the devices built with proprietary software.


This is one more mobile OS, which is an aggressive one, definitely -- might be the welcome
addition in mobile carriers to keep the flesh-eating mobile subsidies from consuming the bottom
lines. Two companies Deutsche Telecom and Sprint Nextel have decided to support Mozilla OS
for mobile -- renamed as Firefox OS -- for devices, which run on Qualcomm Snapdragon

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processor. Other players like Telecom Italia and Telefonica are also interested in supporting the
phones having Firefox OS.
Phone makers Alcatel and ZTE have got on-board for producing phones that run on Firefox OS.
According to Mozilla, a Brazilian company Vivo will launch this OS whenever it's ready. Vivo is
the division of company Telefonica.
Markets like Brazil can be perfect surroundings for the Firefox OS for growing up. According to
Mozilla, this OS will also run easily on the low-end devices made for the developing world. And
if they done it successfully, then the most affected company from it will be Nokia as it is relied
on low-end market for most of the revenues.
Mozilla is famous for the desktop software it provides and it's planning to enter in the
Smartphone OS market. Mozilla believes that mobile web is diverse than desktop web so they
can't depend on the `word of mouth' for getting into the Smartphones market and retail stores
just because they have huge amount of success on desktop.
The Boot2Gecko OS, with its user interface, as well as all apps it is running, are built completely
using the current web standards like JavaScript and HTML5. On backend of this OS, the whole
thing runs on the Gecko, which is a HTML engine that Mozilla uses in the Firefox browser --
therefore it has somewhat consumer-unfriendly and clunky name, Boot2Gecko.
It is promised that this web-based OS, with all its apps will eventually match performance and
functionality of Android OS as well as Android Application Development from Google, iOS
from Apple, and Windows platform from Microsoft. In the future, it will create path to
Outsource Android Development.
At current position, the user interface of B2G consists of some home screens, every of them can
be opened by just tapping the rectangular icon. Its apps can be web-based, however launched
blazingly fast as most of them were cached into the phones. Due to its caching scheme, the B2G
phones will work even if you don't have network signals.
To this point, the Mozilla is merely showing off its most fundamental apps. It comes with the
phone dialer to make calls, camera app, web browser, gallery app to check out photos that you've
shot, the video player, and the calculator app. The B2G also supports some games, including
Android, Android Application Development, and iOS.

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