Hello Firefox OS Enthusiasts. A while ago, the Mozilla Developers have announced that they have teamed up with many mobile phone carriers and manufacturers, in order to standardize the Firefox OS mobile operating system.
This morning, Via Technologies have announced that they have also teamed up with the Mozilla developers. The two companies have worked together before, Firefox OS powering VIA’s APC Paper and APC Rock, two ARM single-board computers, using Cortex-A9 processors.
VIA Technologies also gives away their low-cost Firefox OS ARM computers to the community members that offer help for the implementation of some missing feautures, like: HDMI monitor hot-plugging support, USB support, TV scaling or support for video hardware acceleration.
For those who don’t know yet, Firefox OS is a new Linux based mobile operating system, built by using the new HTML5 technology by the Mozilla developers. For now, it is used as default on smartphones with modest hardware specs, developed by LG, ZTE, Alcatel and Geeksphone. The next Firefox OS based phone will be Huawei Ascend Y300II, which has better hardware specs than all the existing smartphones using Mozilla’s OS. It has been also ported experimentally on the Google Nexus 7 tablet, but there are some apps that don’t work yet. The latest version available is Firefox OS 1.2, which has been released in mid-December, 2013.
Also, there are rumors that Tizen and Firefox OS will unify, in order to have more chances to become important Android and iOS competitors.