I like this Idea. A lot. One of the reasons I don't use my Android tablets
much is the relatively poor app experience compared to smartphones I
actually use it for web browsing and little else. The rumors of a Chrome OS
tablet have been circulating for years, but nothing has come to fruition
yet.
This actually sounds similar to how Chrome OS started, but which then
turned into a full desktop style OS and is no longer suitable for the
tablet UX. Personally I think there is a chance of success here with a full
screen browser tablet UI.
We already have Sony tablets working on B2G so we can get the community
involved pretty easily with those.
The only point I would disagree with is leaving out RIL. Lots of consumer
tablets are LTE capable, it would be a shame if the community could not
take advantage of that on the devices they already own.
Brillo is based on Android, but do you have any ideas how easy/difficult it
is to port Android devices to run something based on Brillo? ('ve not
looked at it much myself) One of the big barriers to porting new devices to
B2G was the fact that the AOSP base is not designed to support devices that
are not Nexus devices.
If we build on top of CyanogenMod it will make it massively easier for
community members to get involved with their own devices. I fear Brillo
will only make things harder for the community than the current AOSP base.
On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 6:38 PM, David Rajchenbach-Teller <
[email protected]> wrote:
> I like the idea of a web-first device, and I believe that we can do much
> better than the marketplace approach, in particular now that we have
> Service Workers, but I think you'll need to come up with a very strong
> pitch to get Mozilla to try that.
>
>
> So let me ask the first few pitch questions :)
>
> 1/ Who would use it? Market trends indicate that by now, at least in
> rich countries, most people who want a tablet already have one and have
> no incentive to change.
>
> 2/ Who would build the hardware? Experience shows that working with
> hardware partners is &*^%*&^ hard.
>
> 2bis/ Ok, you propose to flash it on top of an Android, until success,
> but who would do that when it only has a subset of the features of Android?
>
> 3/ What's the benefit for the Web and/or Mozilla's mission?
>
> Cheers,
> David
>
> On 09/02/16 18:14, Benjamin Francis wrote:
> > Dear Firefox OS Community,
> >
> > As you know, Firefox OS for smartphones is going to be "sunset
> > <
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.fxos/q23oHD8fXHY/jg6cAT-tBwAJ
> >"
> > after version 2.6 as the Connected Devices team at Mozilla expands into
> > new types of connected devices. Firefox OS will continue to be used for
> > Smart TVs and will be evaluated for its suitability for other product
> > proposals going through a new Product Innovation Process
> > <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Connected_Devices/Product_Innovation_Process>
> > at Mozilla.
> >
> > A little known fact is that tablets were actually the original target
> > form factor for B2G, but once we partnered with mobile carriers they
> > were more interested in smartphones, which is why we ended up building
> > smartphones. I believe that tablets are, and always were, a more
> > suitable target for Firefox OS than smartphones.
> >
> > I'm considering pitching a product proposal to the Product Innovation
> > Board at Mozilla for a simple tablet device dedicated to using the web.
> > The idea is that the entire device is a web browser. There's no app
> > store, no packaged apps, no built-in apps and no app install process.
> > The home screen is automatically populated with your top sites based on
> > frecency and web content is front and centre. This would be pitched as a
> > secondary device for casual web browsing and entertainment, and as a
> > companion/control device for smart TVs and other connected devices in
> > the home.
> >
> > As the Connected Devices team at Mozilla expands into new product areas,
> > there is an ongoing discussion about how to simplify the Firefox OS
> > stack to make it is more manageable to maintain going forwards. This
> > proposal would be in support of that effort as a use case for a
> > drastically simpler Firefox OS architecture with less features and a
> > much smaller API surface than the smartphone product. That also makes
> > this proposal different to the previous tablet project, which was really
> > just a scaled up version of the smartphone UI.
> >
> > Remember this is just an idea at this point and it doesn't have Mozilla
> > approval, it hasn't even got to gate 0
> > <
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Connected_Devices/Product_Innovation_Process#Process_.22Gates.22
> >
> > of the innovation process. But if this product were to succeed I think
> > it would require a small core team of full time Mozilla staff supported
> > by a large community effort. I would expect it to be developed first as
> > an open source project you can flash onto off-the-shelf Android tablets,
> > and only turned into a commercial product if it demonstrated the
> > necessary level of success. It's for this reason that I'm sharing this
> > very early stage idea here, to gauge the level of interest from the
> > community.
> >
> > You can find some information on the wiki
> > <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_Pad> and a very early draft of a
> > presentation
> > <
> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WqFOsf6M2iRIjJbzwYIgTh6OguZALRnrEn5SVawE1gs/present#slide=id.p
> >
> > to pitch the idea to the Product Innovation Board. Let me know what you
> > think, and whether this is something you'd be interested in contributing
> to.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Ben
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > dev-fxos mailing list
> > [email protected]
> > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-fxos
> >
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