It has been over one month since my ZTE Open arrived. For those of you who do not know the ZTE Open is a smartphone that runs Firefox OS. Firefox OS is the first operating system that is run by web technologies (well most of it). I still remember how excited and happy I was when my ZTE Open arrived. In this post I am going to write a summary of how it has been using the ZTE for just over a month.
My ZTE Open has finally arrived! Time to start making something on FirefoxOS
— Lovepreet (@LovepreetNL) December 21, 2013
Positives
- Battery Life: I really think the battery life is one of the best things on this phone. It is much better compared to other smartphones. One of the reasons the battery is so good is because the ZTE Open does not as many features as other smartphones.
- Price: to get a smartphone at this price which is this good is unheard of. It has not got that many fancy features but everything that I need is on here (navigation, maps, etc.).
- Functional: the phone works as intended. There was no long procedure to set it up the phone. All I had to do was put in my sim and I was ready to use my phone.
Negatives
- Not That Open-Sourced: the ZTE (and Firefox OS) is not as open-sourced as I thought it would be. But to be fair, I don’t believe a phone will truly ever be open-source and Firefox OS is the best you can get. The phone not being open-sourced as expected does not concern me but some other developers might not be too happy with this.
- Features: you can see why the phone is as cheap as it is. It is much thicker, the screen is less nice to look at and the touch screen is sometimes a bit fidgety for someone with big hands like me compared to other smartphones. But this does not effect me since I like phones when they are a bit thicker compared to the paper-thin phones that are coming out these days. This way I know my phone is in my pocket and I don’t have to keep checking it in case I have lost it.
- Updates: currently the updates for Firefox OS are not send by Mozilla. Instead I had to wait for ZTE to release the Firefox OS 1.1 update, which they did when Firefox OS 1.2 was released. I have no idea how long it will take for Firefox OS 1.2 update to be released. Also the updates had to be installed from a microSD. I would have expected it to be over the air but that could be changed maybe in a future version.
Summary
If you are looking for a smartphone full of the latest features and apps, then the ZTE Open and Firefox OS is not for you. Well not yet anyway. More apps and features are being announced and released everyday so the platform is growing. And as announced at CES 2014, Firefox OS is coming to to new devices such as smart TV’s. This is good news for Firefox OS as it will continue to grow. But back to the phone. Me personally, I have been enjoying using it and have even managed to use it as my primary smartphone. This is mainly since I don’t really use any apps on my phone and I use my phone as a ‘phone’. Would I recommend this phone? I would, but depending on what the person is looking for in a phone.