Tablets By Lee Mathews Jan. 14, 2014 10:15 am
With the obvious exception of Mozilla themselves, Firefox OS might not have a bigger fan than Foxconn. The Chinese manufacturing behemoth just sent the first batch of Firefox OS tablets to Mozilla so they can forge ahead with development.
Foxconn kicked in the tablets as part of the Firefox OS Contribution Program. They’re decent devices, with 10-inch, 1280 x 800 displays, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi.
Mozilla hasn’t revealed other specs like processor speed or battery capacity, but they’re really not that important at this point. Firefox OS has been developed to run on very modestly equipped phones up until now, so any reasonably current processor/battery combo in this tablet should suffice.
But don’t count on being able to buy this particular tablet any time soon — if ever. Foxconn has offered this up to Mozilla as a developer tool so that Firefox OS can be fine-tuned for use on tablets. It may eventually get re-branded and offered for sale by a company like ZTE or LG, but you’ll have to be patient. Mozilla only recently announced that they were, in fact, going to push Firefox OS beyond smartphones.
The new Firefox tablet is Foxconn’s latest show of support for Mozilla’s mobile OS. Last June they committed to hiring 3,000 software engineers that would focus on Firefox OS.
Why do that? To prove to other companies that are thinking about marketing Firefox OS devices that Foxconn is the manufacturing partner to choose. Foxconn doesn’t want all their eggs in one basket (Apple) or even two (Android). They want to be able to provide devices running any OS their customers desire.
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Foxconn kicked in the tablets as part of the Firefox OS Contribution Program. They’re decent devices, with 10-inch, 1280 x 800 displays, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi.
Mozilla hasn’t revealed other specs like processor speed or battery capacity, but they’re really not that important at this point. Firefox OS has been developed to run on very modestly equipped phones up until now, so any reasonably current processor/battery combo in this tablet should suffice.
But don’t count on being able to buy this particular tablet any time soon — if ever. Foxconn has offered this up to Mozilla as a developer tool so that Firefox OS can be fine-tuned for use on tablets. It may eventually get re-branded and offered for sale by a company like ZTE or LG, but you’ll have to be patient. Mozilla only recently announced that they were, in fact, going to push Firefox OS beyond smartphones.
The new Firefox tablet is Foxconn’s latest show of support for Mozilla’s mobile OS. Last June they committed to hiring 3,000 software engineers that would focus on Firefox OS.
Why do that? To prove to other companies that are thinking about marketing Firefox OS devices that Foxconn is the manufacturing partner to choose. Foxconn doesn’t want all their eggs in one basket (Apple) or even two (Android). They want to be able to provide devices running any OS their customers desire.
More...
