Which smart phone should I choose?

Once upon a time your choice of smart phone would be influenced by form or functionality – meaning some people would go for the iPhone citing its desirable design, whilst some would plump for the Android platform lured by the free apps.

All that is changing this year though, and Mozilla has already published details of the first smartphones to be powered by its Firefox operating system.Two handsets are to be made by a small Spanish firm called Geeksphone and will be targeted at developers ahead of the system’s formal launch.

The platform is based on the HTML5 web programming language and is being marketed as offering software writers more “freedom” than alternatives.

The two new handsets are codenamed Keon and Peak.

Keon is the more basic model, including a 3.5in (8.9cm) screen, a 3MP (megapixel) camera and Qualcomm’s low-end Snapdragon S1 processor.

Peak has a bigger 4.3in display, an 8MP camera and a more powerful Snapdragon S4. Mozilla noted this was probably “slightly faster” than the first generation devices that would be marketed to the public.

It said that when devices went on general sale they would be cheaper than many alternatives and would be targeted at emerging markets which I guess means we should find them in Big C Extra and Tesco Lotus in the not too distant future.

However, it faces competition from other soon-to-be-released systems.

Blackberry 10, Ubuntu, Tizen and Sailfish are all due for release for smartphones before the end of 2013, joining a market already occupied by Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry 7 and Symbian among others.

Now that is a whole lot of new stuff to choose from … and can they all survive the market place?

Firefox is trying to make the ‘web’ the ‘app store’ and bring the openness of the web to phones but the question is what does this offer over a cheap Android phone to a consumer looking to buy a low-end handset, as on Android you got Google services pre-installed and the 700,000 apps in its store for free, but Firefox OS isn’t going to have these so inevitably will have reduced functionality, at least initially.

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