The Revolution is not only more powerful than most, but also a first-of-its-kind. Geeksphone MultiOS technology allows you to choose your operating system. Starting with Google Android operating system, you can seamlessly switch to Boot2Gecko by Mozilla, or any other community-supported flavor of an OS. You choose, and we will keep you updated thanks to our 1-click OTA system.
There are three reasons why this phone fascinates me. One, it is the first non-crappy device for Firefox OS, which I’m interested in, but never got into because I didn’t want to waste money on underpowered hardware. This phone seems to solve that. Two, it’s designed to provide dual-boot from the get-go, so you can truly run multiple ROMs. Three, it’s an x86 phone, which fascinates me simply because it isn’t ARM – and opens up possibilities of craziness like desktop operating systems on your phone.
It’s also relatively cheap at EUR 222, which is almost doable as an impulse buy. I’m keeping my eye on this one.
battery life?
Good question.
Since it has an Atom processor and an LCD display it isn’t likely to be one of the longest lasting handsets. I would guess that it will give 8 to 10 hours of medium duty service.
From the pictures on the web site it looks like a sealed battery. So hopefully it will be easy to replace it or they will have fast warranty/repair turnaround for a reasonable cost.
Aside from the electrical power usage: No mention of LTE, but at least is has HSxPA.
make it 720p and i’ll buy it. qHD is so 2010…
Edited 2014-02-21 19:47 UTC
Does this mean I could slap Debian Wheezy on it and use it as a phone? That’s what I’ve personally been waiting for.
Then I can run handy commands for dialing frequently used contacts like:
sh phone.sh –dial < cat /home/myself/contacts.txt | grep “John Doe” | sed -r ‘s/.+([0-9]{3})([0-9]{3})([0-9]{4}).+/\1-\2-\3/’
😉
Edited 2014-02-21 20:14 UTC
Nah man, Debian is going to systemd now.
systemd-dial –person=’John Doe’
Its great, it logs all the output for later playback, redials on disconnects, and performs all the features that we want from a modern init system phone dialer.
I seriously hope that is a Silvermont Atom and not an Atom Atom. Otherwise it will suck like its 2008.
God, I hate Intel decision to make their processor names generation ambigious.
Edit: 4 cores at 1.6Ghz should make it Silvermont Atom. Though it would have to be an underclocked Baytrail-T or the elusive Merrifield.
Edited 2014-02-21 20:20 UTC
Web site says it’s a dual core Z2560 @1.6 GHz. That’s a Cloverview/Clover Trail 32 nm SOC.
I didn’t know that existed. Looking it up. That is an original Atom Atom, and not a modern Silvermont, a chip that was slow and outdated when it was released in 2008. (though this model has four of those turd cores at double speed)
Edited 2014-02-21 23:59 UTC
Here’s a [pretty limited] spec. sheet on it.
http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/mobileworld/2013/pdfs/Intel…
I also looked it up on Wikipedia.
[replied to wrong comment]
Edited 2014-02-21 20:13 UTC
If this thing is using PowerVR graphics then forget about it! That will seriously kneecap your options for running custom OSes… Let’s wait and see what the early adopters say!
It’s worse. It is Intel graphics, not the new almost usable stuff they have in laptops now, but Intel graphics at its worst, the embedded kind.
Should be fine, great even for running Linux on as long as you don’t mind bad performance.
Edited 2014-02-21 20:23 UTC
No, it’s PowerVR graphics.
Specifically, dual-core PowerVR SGX 544MP2, clocked at 400MHz.
Apparently, Google isn’t too keen on the Dual OS thing:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20140221PB201.html
Geeksphone has a habit of selling out *really fast* (in fact my order was labeled as “backordered” within 5 minutes of the launch window opening), so I’ll see if/when it comes.
Looking forward to fiddling with it though — Firefox OS is starting to look very cool in 1.4 dev master, which I’ve managed to get running on a Nexus 4 but it’s not really an ideal configuration.
I’ve had *terrible* luck with the ZTE Open, which seems to be keeping their drivers proprietary and isn’t currently compatible with the dev versions of Firefox OS.
Honestly the biggest functional problem I’ve had with Firefox OS is that the mail client is very flaky and sometimes just gets stuck not loading messages. (On the low-end hardware it’s also *very* hard to multitask as apps get paged out of memory aggressively, but if I could read and answer my email I’d be a much happier camper even on that ZTE Open.)
I’ve got a ZTE Open and I’m miffed that there’s no official firmware updates and I’ll have to spend 24 hours compiling Firefox OS myself to get anything better — a prospect I’m not looking forward to.
Have you any advice / direction on what version of FFxOS I can run on it and what instructions I should use for compiling (there’s lots of conflicting advice)
I think ZTE Open Updated both Firefox OS versions (v1.0 & v1.1) 2014-01-20.
There also looks to have a downloadable driver pack Date: 2013-10-21.
There isn’t a listing for the US ZTE Open.
You have to go to the UK listing, it has the US one too.
http://www.ztedevices.com/support/smart_phone/b5a2981a-1714-4ac7-89…
or backup to here for other locations.
http://www.ztedevices.com/support/selectproduct.html?type=software
Somebody was making builds for the ZTE Open up to 1.3 and maybe even master (1.4) but had to hack up the boot partition and such…
Depending on how many of the official updates you’ve installed, you *may* be able to install the builds from https://github.com/diafygi/b2g_inari_nightly
However if you’ve installed the official 1.1 updates, it seems to break those…. sigh.
i just compiled firefoxos according to instructions, it took 20min total (downloading + compiling)
granted ive a reasonably fast/recent machine with fast internet, but 24h…. that’s a little exaggerating.
If you want to know more about updating your ZTE Open to 1.2, I wrote a blog post about my adventures with the ZTE Open updates here: http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/02/zte-open-triumphant-gam….
I needed Firefox OS 1.2 so I could use App Manager to put apps on my phone and debug them. But I haven’t been concerned with later builds yet.
My understanding is that if you want to build your own, Fedora 20 is a good way to go. I’ll want to do that at some point, but right now I’m just too busy making apps and testing them.
Part of it depends on what you want to do. If you want the cutting edge, build nightly and slap it on your phone. Once you have your ZTE Open running Fastboot, it’s easy to update with any later builds. But you need version 1.1 with Fastboot or you can’t do much!
I still like the ZTE Open because it works and it is small. I’m also playing with the Geeksphone Peak and that also I updated to 1.2 (more easily) and has more memory!
I’ll probably be getting the Revolution soon, but I have a VIA APC Rock which also runs Firefox OS that is calling to me, and I’ll probably get a Firefox OS tablet when I come up for air.
I guess I am a hardware junkie. But aren’t we all (at least at OS News)?
Now, if only a phone suppliers would create a phone that would dual boot to one that the service providers recognize only as a basic phone. I have wifi available all the time, and I don’t want to pay an extra $30/month for data that I can get for free (even if it is slower than 4G).
I would call a fully open specified, Intel Atom based tablet or phone with plain vanilla standard UEFI or BIOS boot system a revolution.
Greetings,
pica
I know Thom isn’t really interested in the low end, but for the third world markets it could finally start to replace all those feature phones:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/23/mozillas-partners-launch-new-firef…