KaiOS And Mozilla Want To Enhance The Successor Of The Ill-Fated Firefox OS

KaiOS - Mozilla

When the world first saw the billions-of-dollars smartphone market potential, everything wanted to get involved. And that included Mozilla.

The creator of the popular Firefox web browser jumped into the bandwagon by introducing Firefox OS (formerly known as 'Boot2Gecko' or 'B2G'). First released in 2013, it was Mozilla's attempt at establishing a mobile operating system.

Unfortunately for Mozilla, the project that aimed to be the open alternative to the rising Android and iOS operating systems, fell short.

In 2015, Mozilla ceased its development. In 2016, it announced the end of the commercial development of Firefox OS, and then release the code as an open source project.

KaiOS Technologies picked up the source, and started using it as a central part of its KaiOS operating system.

Having success with the operating system by making it available on "more than 120 million devices" in "over 100 countries", KaiOS is regarded as the successor of Firefox OS.

According to KaiOS Technologies in a press release:

"KaiOS is the leading mobile operating system for smart feature phones with more than 120 million devices shipped in over 100 countries. KaiOS-enabled devices require limited memory, while still offering a rich user experience. This includes the KaiStore with over 400 apps such as Google Assistant, WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook, and Google Maps."

"KaiOS is based on HTML5 and other open web technologies and supports 3G/4G LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS, and NFC."

KaiOS targets the feature-phone market as its priority, the thing that Mozilla did not really entered when it developed Firefox OS.

And here, KaiOS Technologies said that it is partnering with Mozilla to benefit both companies.

KaiOS Mozilla features

KaiOS is actually created from Mozilla's Gecko engine version 48, which was released in back 2016.

In other words, it uses a relatively old version of the engine, meaning that features like the TLS 1.3, WebAssembly, or Progressive Web Apps, are not yet supported.

With the partnership, both KaiOS Technologies and Mozilla plan to introduce these newer features in the mobile operating system. All changes are meant to be released as open source, according to KaiOS' press release.

A list of improvements that should be expected, include:

  • Optimized OS performance for apps, websites, and services.
  • Enhanced device APIs and feature compatibility.
  • Upgraded internet security and connection speeds via TLS 1.3.
  • Additional hardware-optimized technologies, like WebAssembly for more optimized web apps, WebGL 2.0 for advanced graphics and 3D games, WebP, AV1 for new image and video codecs.
  • Additional modern web language support, that include Advanced CSS for better web experience, Async JavaScript functions for enhanced app responsiveness, and Progressive web app support for improved browsing experience and ease of advanced apps development.
  • Improved device stability and ease of obtaining certification for mobile carriers and OEMs.

And apart from support for new web technologies, users of KaiOS devices should also benefit from improved performance, reliability, and security.

Published: 
16/03/2020