Today open-source foundation Mozilla announced a new partnership with Spanish startup Geeksphone. The two companies will be working together to produce a couple of Firefox OS developer smartphones called Keon and Peak.
As you’d expect for an OS that’s targeting users in emerging markets, the lower-end Keon model is being more highly promoted. This phone will be powered by a single-core 1 GHz Snapdragon S1 processor, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage with support for micro SD cards. The display is low-end too at a resolution of 480 x 320. The phone also includes a 3-megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi N and 3G capabilities.
The Peak model is the higher-end option, with specifications more in line with what you’d expect for a contemporary low-end Android smartphone. That includes a 1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of storage upgradeable via micro SD card. On the camera front, we’ve got an 8-megapixel camera on the front and a 2-megapixel unit on the rear. The display is also greatly improved, with 4.3 inch diagonal and a resolution of 960 x 540. Finally, connectivity is the same as the Keon model with Wi-Fi N, GPS and 3G HSPA connectivity.
While the announcement is exciting, we don’t yet have any pricing or availability information for these sim-free smartphones beyond the official word from Geeksphone which is that these phones will arrive at a price that “you could never have imagined” – so expect big things?
If you’d like to get your hands on Firefox OS already, you can try out many Firefox OS apps on Android. Just download the Firefox Aurora apk to your phone, then launch it and look for ‘Apps’ in the Options Menu. From there, you can try out the Firefox apps. Pretty cool, huh?