Agree on a few months back perhaps being ancient history.
Disagree that it is unfair to compare FirefoxOS and Android, consumers don't care who started when, they care about the product now. (and let's not forget FirefoxOS is bootstrapped off of Android so they are hardly starting from scratch)
They care about what is on their phone when it is released. I'm pretty sure that's not going to be a version "of a few months back" from now!
Conversely, all the really cheap Android phones on sale here run either 2.2, 2.3, or if you're very lucky, 4.0. And I don't expect those to magically get 4.1.2/4.2 anytime soon.
I get the impression the HN crowd doesn't really know what a low end phone is, let alone they have seen or used one.
I live in Rwanda, so I very much know what the IDEOS and company are like. As a matter of fact I have both versions of the IDEOS in my drawer actually.
I'll check out Firefox OS on the latest builds for sure, but I'd be surprised if we weren't seeing the new IDEOS coming out this year with the latest 4.x Android. We'll see.
I hope Firefox OS does well, I'm just saying that their window of opportunity for addressing the low end market with something unique is very quickly closing.
Firefox OS is not bootstrapped off of Android. In fact, it is nothing to do with Android. Firefox OS is a Gecko engine (the one behind Firefox) being run by a light-weight Linux kernel. There is no Android in there.
Err, well, no. You're both right. The lowest levels of B2G are the kernel from Android, RIL (telephony stack from Android), and other little bits like that (e.g. gralloc, which is what allows the fast texture sharing). There's a lot of Android in B2G, but it's well out of the view of users.
Disagree that it is unfair to compare FirefoxOS and Android, consumers don't care who started when, they care about the product now. (and let's not forget FirefoxOS is bootstrapped off of Android so they are hardly starting from scratch)