Gadgetory

what would a smartphone looks like that's based off of the Firefox browser like this of course I'm Jessica doll court for cnet this is the geeks phone key on this is an interesting device we first saw it at Mobile World Congress in Spain last februari this is a developer preview version so it's meant to go specifically for developers they can use it as an environment to test and create applications for the very new firefox operating system this is not intended for people to actually pick up and buy but it does give us a very interesting window into phones like this that consumers eventually will buy now the Firefox OS phones will go to emerging markets and they're going to be very inexpensive the operating system is meant to be extremely lightweight components aren't expected to get very high so you will find a whole range of different features but these are never meant to be very premium phones there for a very specific purpose mostly affordability one of the most notable things about the key on is its blazing orange color which I personally kind of like this is a nod to Mozilla and Firefox of course it's got a soft touch finish that I find really comfortable it's got sort of rounded edges on the back makes it comfortable to hold the screen does for Trude a little bit from the sides which kind of dampens down the comfort level just a little bit but it does make it very easy to pop off the back cover and get to the microSD card slot and sim card slot underneath the operating system itself is sort of like a cross between Android iOS and Windows Phone you've got very familiar elements like a notification shade that pulls down in front you've got a couple different home screens there's multitasking as well you navigate with a touch-sensitive button at the very bottom there is camera on the back of this phone it's 3 megapixels also takes video the camera app is extremely simple that's mostly so that developers can use it to just make sure that things work this phone really isn't intended for excellent camera quality navigating the phone is pretty easy you can slide it over to the left to get to a bunch of grouped icons this is organized by things like social game music movies weather and TV so it's nice that there are a lot of apps to get started everything is pretty much based on HT ml5 so these are web apps one problem I had is that most of them are not yet skin and optimized for mobile they will be in the future because of course this is a developer phone but it's nice to be able to get an idea of what the apps might look like this handset itself has some very low in specs again to keep it cheap but I do notice a lot of lag eNOS so that's a problem if you've got a phone that's based off of the web speeds are also going to be pretty slow 2g and 3G there won't be any 4g support because this isn't intended for markets that really rely on 4G LTE at this point in the game Firefox OS is in very early development stages we're going to be keeping an eye on that and on phones like this key on that showcase the operating system and what it can do it's a very interesting alternative for emerging market I'm desig adult court this has been the geeks phone key on developer preview for Firefox OS