The idea behind Firefox OS phones, like the ZTE Open C, is that by being pure Web phones based on open-source software from a nonprofit, they can bring a quality smartphone experience to lower price points than anyone else. It looks like Mozilla will deliver on that promise with its upcoming $25 smartphones in India, but competition is tougher for $100 phones.
The $99 ZTE Open C still makes a good argument against today's cheap, messy $100 unlocked Android phones. But the gap is closing dangerously fast: The $129 Moto E is getting close, and we may soon see inexpensive Windows Phones that breach the $100 barrier. If it doesn't have a price advantage, what does Firefox OS have to offer?
Why Unlocked?
Before I get to the real review, I should probably address why it's important that this smartphone is unlocked. After all, many smartphones are available in the U.S. for under $100 locked to a specific carrier's service plan. But owning an unlocked phone lets you use the cheapest possible prepaid services, or none at all. The Open C is compatible with AT&T's and T-Mobile's networks, so you can dip into virtual carriers who use those networks, like GoSmart, Consumer Cellular, MetroPCS, ReadySIM, and Simple Mobile. (Check out the Best Prepaid SIM Cards, for an idea of some of your options.) If you're willing to put up with often-shaky customer service, you can save huge amounts of money.
Physical Design and Call Quality
The Open C is a pretty nondescript, standard slab-style phone. Really, at $99 for an unlocked smartphone, all you want is something that won't fall apart. The phone is 5 by 2.55 by 0.43 inches (HWD) and 4.4 ounces, clad in matte black plastic, and slips easily into a pocket. The screen is a 4-inch, 800-by-480-pixel TFT LCD—not that bright, but sharp enough in this form factor. The cheap-looking camera sensor bulges a little off the back. You can snap off the back of the case to remove the battery or SIM.
The Open C has pretty basic calling and networking capabilities. Using a full-sized SIM card, it connects to the AT&T and T-Mobile networks (or any virtual carrier which uses one of those networks) on the 850 and 1900MHz bands at HSPA+ 21 speeds—there's no 4G here. The phone also supports 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. Unfortunately, like on the earlier ZTE Open, the Open C wasn't able to use any location-based services indoors.
Call quality isn't great. My calls sounded wobbly, although the earpiece had decent volume. My unit also had a proximity sensor failure where the screen wouldn't light back up when I pulled it away from my head—to hang up a call, I had to hit the physical power button and only then tap the hang-up button on the screen. The speakerphone is too quiet for outdoor use. Transmissions through both the handset and speakerphone mic sounded fine, though. There's no voice dialing with Bluetooth headsets.
Battery life, at 7 hours, 2 minutes of talk time on the 1,400mAh cell, was shorter than competitors like the Nokia Lumia 521 (8:37) and the Moto E (16:09).
Firefox OS 1.3
In Firefox OS, there is (almost) only Web. That's good and bad.
You wake up the phone to two options: You can slide left to jump straight into the camera, or right to go to the home screen. The main home screen is the usual multi-page collection of rearrangeable icons plus a bottom bar of most-used functions, such as the phone, contact, messaging, and the browser.
Contacts can be imported from Gmail, Outlook, or Facebook. The email client handles POP, IMAP, Yahoo!, and Exchange. The calendar supports CalDAV, but there aren't any enterprise-friendly features like invitees or free/busy monitoring.
The OS has a Marketplace, but the Marketplace has few big-name apps. In general, you'll swipe left to the unique "I'm Thinking Of …" screen and enter a keyword like "movies," "food," or "gmail," to get presented with a set of curated bookmark icons for mobile Web sites. The only reasons I found myself dipping into the actual marketplace were for games—of which there's a poor and casual set—and for navigation apps. There are two, Here Maps and Evernav, which offer voice-guided directions.
For a super Web-phone, I wasn't impressed with the quality of some of the Web experiences being driven here. It isn't just about the lack of plug-ins such as Flash; some sites see Firefox and don't deliver their best HTML5 pages. Gmail and Grubhub, for instance, are the most basic experiences possible, without thoughtful design or interactivity. Streaming media was also very weak: The phone won't load Netflix or Vevo videos, or play Spotify or Pandora music.
The processor in here is a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon 200, and performance is a lot snappier than with the earlier ZTE Open. The Browsermark benchmark didn't run on here—another strike against Firefox—but the 1599.7ms Sunspider result showed respectable enough, midrange performance, and the original ZTE Open's lag problems were gone.
I'd be remiss not to mention that Firefox OS will probably get lots of upgrades quickly, as there are no carriers in the way. The OS has already gone from version 1.0 to 1.3 in less than a year.
Camera and Media
Audio and video recording and playback are some of the big things you don't want to do through a Web browser, so Mozilla offers native apps for those uses. The Open C has 1GB of on-board storage plus a microSD memory card slot under the back cover; our 32GB card worked fine.
The 3-megapixel camera takes purplish, overexposed photos, and its video mode is pretty useless, recording at 352-by-288 at only 15 frames per second. The small size of the video is less of a problem than the jerkiness of a 15fps recording. There is no front-facing camera. The competing Moto E may not have a great camera, but this one is no better.
The phone plays MP4 video files at resolutions up to 720p, but make sure to bring headphones, because video playback had a very low maximum volume in my tests. That's probably a software error which will be fixed by an update, as music files played much more loudly; the phone supports M4A, MP3, and OGG formats, but of course no DRMed files are allowed. There's an FM radio, which I couldn't make work even with a headset plugged in.
Conclusions
There are very few unlocked smartphones available for under $100 in the U.S. Note that I'm saying unlocked; it's perfectly possible to get a prepaid, but carrier-locked Android or Windows Phone for under $100. For unlocked phones, though, your best options are lower-end devices from BLU or gray-market Samsung or LG devices. That's why we're rating the Open C as high as we are: It's quite a feat for a sub-$100 device.
But U.S. consumers aren't quite as price sensitive as the folks in developing markets who are the real target for Firefox devices like the Open C; a $20 difference isn't a big deal here. That makes the $113 unlocked Nokia Lumia 520 and $129 Moto E direct competitors to the Open C, and unfortunately, the Open C doesn't have anything that those two phones don't have more of. If Firefox OS is to find a place here, rather than in countries where every dollar counts, it's going to have to open up an even bigger price gap with the OS leaders. That's going to get even more difficult as sub-$100 Windows and Android phones flood the market next year.
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