[Update] Call for help supporting devices - building and maintaining ports

lapineige · May 2, 2016, 8:53pm

Big edit here

Let’s forget this poll idea, I did it really badly, that was useless.
So thanks to @lissyx help now it’s a bit more clear:
For the moment, the main supported phones are Z3C and Flame. There are builds for them, people help to fix builds issues, and so on.

We could start “officially” (as a community effort) starts to maintain more devices, it already possible on a lot of Xperia devices, some Nexus, Fairphone 2, Open C (…) - because there were supporting Firefox OS, and they can adapt to Cyanogen Mod (or AOSP for Xperia devices).

So we need help to build for those devices, and make change to get them working if needed - and maintain it after that.
Who can help on this point ? For instance by making builds, or testing them.

Regarding the Cyanogen Mod part, there are some need of help making gonk working with CM 13 base (and not the previous CM 12). If there is C/C++ devs’ here, come on

Hello everyone !
As said during the transition meeting today, it can be a good idea to make a quick poll to know which devices you use, or want to use if it’s supported.
Right now the Z3C is officially supported, Flame is working too. They are the “core” of the supported phone list, used by developers as reference.
We now need to understand which phones will be the more useful for the community, in the first time to contribute, and in a second time to use it.

Here is a quick poll, if you have a phone in mind that is not in this list, I will manage to add it
Don’t forget to add phones that you know people use a lot, like Open C for french people.

Xperia family devices (please, precise which model)
Nexus 5
Other Nexus devices ? (please, precise which model)
Galaxy family devices (please, precise which model)
S4 was supported by Firefox OS
Fairphone 2
Fairphone
Is it possible ?
Fx0
Open C
Any other ? Please add details below (and vote)

0 voters

Show results

NB: Something that can be useful, when you add a new device into the last, try to know what CyanogenMod version it support (CM 11/12/13). This can help to understand what device can (not) be ported.

Also if you can help for porting a device, please say it ! It can be just testing, or also building, doing some code, filing bugs…
If you have any background in CM port/building, please say it too.

Let’s vote !

Post Scriptum: I just want to share an idea here, fell free to react.
If for instance we can support 3 phones, I would suggest that apart from the easiness fact, we should focus on have an high-end phone, a middle-end and an affordable device (we need also to think about contributors from developing countries, that could need a cheap device).
In that way, we allow contributors to have a phone that fits their need: an high-end one for those that want it, and cheaper one for those that can’t afford expensive phones / have 1+ phones and buy some phone to help porting.
Let’s give and example: Open C as a cheap device, Xperia E4/M2 as a middle-end phone, Nexus 5 as high-end phone.
What’s your toughs ?

anon1576192 · April 25, 2016, 7:27pm

I personally have a Xperia E3 (flamingo) so I’d prefer that as cheap device. I had bad experiences with ZTE (although it was with the original Open) so I would not choose that one.

livethetruth · April 25, 2016, 7:28pm

I would personally say that the LG Fx0 is a good choice. It’s available on both Ebay and Amazon for very little in the US, and has the best specs of any Firefox OS designed phone that I’ve seen. It natively runs Firefox OS 2.1. And of course I’d love to help port for it.

lapineige · April 25, 2016, 7:29pm

Thanks @enrico_ghiorzi for your reaction.

Yeah ZTE made a pretty bad work on supporting Firefox OS

But the ZTE Open C, at least, is very popular - French people almost have only this phone.
So that can add a lot of users.
And it supports CM 13 (I installed it without any trouble).

I’ve took note about E3, if more people talk about it, maybe I can add it in the list (and split the Xperia point)

lapineige · April 25, 2016, 7:34pm

Thx @livethetruth

Fx0 is a great choice too, even if it’s not working in Europe, at least US and Asia can use it - that make available an affordable, geeky looking and quite correct phone for a lot of people.

livethetruth · April 25, 2016, 7:32pm

Oh, it doesn’t work in the UK? I didn’t realize that…

lapineige · April 25, 2016, 7:37pm

I’m not sure, but I think so.
Someone has more info here ?

dionysos01 · April 25, 2016, 7:46pm

there is a very cheap smartphone i have in mind. the problem is, to aquire that phone you need to subscribe the magazine “Test-achat” https://offre-cadeau.test-achats.be/newseq/fr/2016/index.html?codeprom=4994&cn=EAA3C822-82A2-4799-BE08-A58329D3FD42&utm_source=EVO&utm_medium=All&utm_content=all&utm_campaign=Affiliates#/login , i don’t know if you can get it elsewhere , if you make a search of the image on google image, you can find it on other website. it has no name. i don’t know if it’s worth to get it, if we can get it, or if it will brake sooner.

lapineige · April 25, 2016, 7:53pm

So let’s forget about it ^^

Do you see the results too guys ?

Remember, you can vote several times

lissyx · April 25, 2016, 7:57pm

Just FYI, there is b2g support for a lot of those phones already: Xperia devices, Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Fairphone 2 and Open C are within this list. For all of them, getting B2GOS transition is trivial and the real problem is people committing to do builds and QA on the devices, handling updates.

Galaxy devices are another story. S4 was not supported, but someone got a build (thanks to Adam’s port of CM) that we could never test.

Fairphone first is just a no go. The Fx0 is maybe the same story, since we have no port at all, so the amount of work is much more important.

tiipiik · April 25, 2016, 8:02pm

I personnaly have an Open C, which does not support the comparison with my good old iPhone 3GS (yeah it’s stiil alive and works pretty good !, even if it’s an iOS…)

I don"t think that FirefoxOS would be supported on the iPhones but it would be great

Thatoo · April 26, 2016, 2:59am

I have a Nexus 5 that I use daily with a test nightly build (Dogfood* and Spark), see http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/development/nightly-firefox-os-t2960953 and https://ffos.vosky.fr/ . I think they were waiting a bit that the transition branch work before building it.

As soon as there is a transition build available, then I install a 2.5 build for daily usage and the transition build for test…

Floriano · April 25, 2016, 8:48pm

I love my Fx0. It’s a head-turner for sure and makes people curious about FxOS (and hopefully B2G, soon ;))

Looks like Fairphone 2 is crushing it! Which is great. An ethical phone for an ethical OS.

anon1576192 · April 25, 2016, 9:03pm

There are many interesting proposals here, but I think we should keep in mind that we don’t need a cool phone, but a well supported one!

Floriano · April 25, 2016, 9:18pm

Why not both? Also, Fairphone 2 is modular, and “future-proof” in that way. You want to build for a device with a long shelf life.

lapineige · April 26, 2016, 6:15am

That’s just impossible, we will have almost no drivers, it will just be a pain and need a lot of reverse engineering work. Sorry

lapineige · April 26, 2016, 6:16am

I strongly agree for the Fairphone 2. It is a phone I’d like to use, it’s an ethical one, we have a lot of drivers information (and it seems that will continue), they are planning to support more OS like Sailfish and Ubuntu Phone, and it’s a really good device to highlight - it’s really good for B2G image.
That’s definitely a good one to support.

lapineige · April 26, 2016, 6:24am

Yeah I was not clear: it includes port work but mainly support work, starting with a brand new device is not a really good choice, use a CM compatible one is easier, and our first target can be devices supporting Firefox OS.

That’s why we need to understand which phone is more used/owned by contributors, and also we need to know who can help testing/maintaining the port.

I will edit the poll in a while, and add some of these informations.

For the Fx0, we have firefox os builds, isn’t it ?

tiipiik · April 26, 2016, 7:07am

That was a kind of joke Just to point that some old phones would run FirefoxOs/B2G very well.

People need something stable at first, on a phone that does not seems like a piece of plastic, which is clearly the case for the Open C

But the phone needs to be cool as well, because a lot of people take a look at first at the phone, not the OS.

And, most important, the phone MUST be easy to find. It took to me some weeks to find an Open C, which is the only one (except the Alcatel but…), distributed in France.

anon1576192 · April 26, 2016, 8:52am

I don’t feel like we are anywhere near being ready to target the mass market, so it’s of little use trying to impress people. Let’s be honest about this: for a couple of years (at the very least) B2G will be under heavy development. We’re not going to impress anyone with our barely working niche OS for quite a long time, no matter which device we have. On the contrary, I wonder how many would flash an experimental OS on a ~600€ device, voiding the warranty and with the possibility of bricking it too.

If it was up to me, I would focus on low-end, cheap (but recent) devices with good support for devs. And the first coming to my mind in this regard are some Xperia devices (some are very cheap) and Nexus (not so cheap, but good for devs).