Firefox OS phones now available from Geeksphone

http://shop.geeksphone.com/en/

by pepsi • 13 years ago

162 89 13 years ago

shop.geeksphone.com

jasonngpt4• 13 years ago

Trying to buy but the website seems overwhelmed. Good to know that it ships worldwide!

Edit: Sign up for an account first at "My Account" at the top. Seems to have less problems compared to signing up at the Checkout page.

Edit2: Bought a Peak!

santaragolabs2• 13 years ago

The site seems to be a bit overloaded; I got through to the entire process including verifying the Mastercard transaction but the order doesn't show up in my account's order history.

I just emailed them and now we'll wait and see. Could very well be just the mad dash of a lot of geeks trying to get these phones right now causing it to topple over some systems; I'll be patient :)

daviddoran4• 13 years ago

Exact same experience for me. Hit some database errors along the way but I managed to pay and verify the MasterCard transaction. Then nothing on the "My Orders". No email confirmation. Emailed them and fingers crossed a peak will be on its way soon!

jasonngpt4• 13 years ago

better check with them.. I received payment accepted and order confirmation emails from them..

rikacomet2• 13 years ago

error ridden.. oh the pain :(

rikacomet2• 13 years ago

Does not ships to India... Fuck!

sicksand• 13 years ago

and Malaysia. double fuck.

winsonlei• 13 years ago

Actually, i can find India in the country list.

ragsagar2• 13 years ago

Firefox OS phone will come to India when they release Firefox OS 2 phone in other parts of world. So unfortunate! :(

dscrd• 13 years ago

Got myself up to the payment page, but the page complained something about "tarjeta" even though my card number was absolutely correct.

Oh well.

terhechte• 13 years ago

CAUTION: After I had entered my payment details for my credit card (in Safari) the site forwarded to a white page and nothing happened. I checked the console, and realized that a javascript error caused it to not work properly in Safari. I could finish the process by manually doing a document.forms[1].submit() in the console. That placed my order, and forwarded me back to their homepage.

HOWEVER: On the homepage, I got the "User db59706 already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections" error. I reloaded, and my order history is empty. So I'm afraid that the payment-cleared transaction from their payment processor was lost because their database is overloaded. Thus, I think I just paid for the phone but they have no track record of my order. I'll contact them now.

Word of caution to everybody reading this, their site, store, and payment processing seem to be overwhelmed.

santaragolabs2• 13 years ago

Same for me (see my other comment). I contacted them too.

octy86• 13 years ago

I've just send them a mail regarding these two matters:

- paid but got a db max connections massage, my order was NOT saved

- they charge VAT while it's not allowed when doing intera-european purchases

I really hope they get back to us!

fstephany• 13 years ago

Same here.

Another problem: They charge VAT even if you have a valid non-spanish VAT number.

I guess it's a pretty wild day for a small company :p

Argorak• 13 years ago

Same thing occured to me as well.

einarvollset• 13 years ago

Is this a parody to get more people to buy iPhones?

CrazedGeek2• 13 years ago

Sigh. My order came to $155, and the site's trying to charge me 155 EUR. That's not really good, given that 155 EUR is about $200.

EDIT: It will charge the correct price if you switch the prices on the site to EUR. Second problem: one of my cards gave an unspecified error, the other was was denied by the bank for whatever reason. :/

area51mafia• 13 years ago

Getting the same. One fails with denied by bank, and the other fails with "wrong authentication". Their credit card processing website seems to kinda suck..

jbm• 13 years ago

I'm having the same issue. I switched to COD. I am hopeful they will fix the issue beforehand.

Either way, paying an extra 30 dollars to have a Firefox phone is worth it to me. I'm sick of my iPhone.

smcl• 13 years ago

This is just a taste of what it's like to be a european buying electronics from US firms - i.e. the US price=1000 USD, UK price=1000 GBP (1526 USD). I'd count yourself lucky the discrepancy is only 45 dollars :)

edit: not to detract from what is indeed an annoying problem, which you appear to have solved anyway

lucb1e4• 13 years ago

That's what most websites do, even Apple. Especially Apple actually. Buying something from America in Dollars is often much cheaper.

daviddoran4• 13 years ago

This is a completely different issue. The site is mixing up dollars and euro so it's overcharging. It's not a conscious price decision they've made.

jurre• 13 years ago

Apple USD prices are excluding VAT while EUR prices include that.

snogglethorpe• 13 years ago

Hmm, since the website is pretty much hosed, I can't see what it says, but...

Even if it ships worldwide, as somebody mentioned, how can one tell whether it actually works with <random carrier in country X>?

There's no doubt a lot of coarse-grained commonality between different carriers in different countries, but there also seem to be many differences when you get down to the details, and a lot of incentive to add gratuitous minor incompatibilities for the purpose of locking in your customers... I'd be pretty nervous about importing a random phone.

ckannan90• 13 years ago

I'm not familiar with the situation in Europe/USA, but I've never had trouble using a GSM phone with any GSM SIM card from any carrier in Asia. I'm not sure about the situation for CDMA or LTE.

le• 13 years ago

If you're in the US, this phone will only get 3G/HSPA service on T-Mobile, and it's MVNOs.

lucian1900• 13 years ago

It's the same in Europe, unlocked (GMS) phones work everywhere.

thristian• 13 years ago

I believe the main thing with GSM phones is what frequency it expects to transmit and receive GSM data on. This varies from country to country depending on what frequencies the various telcos could purchase at the time, but these phones support "GSM 850/900/1800/1900" and "UMTS 2100/1900/900" which I believe cover the majority of countries.

kencausey2• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, if I understand correctly these phones will not work with TMobile 3G in the US which only operates in the 1700-Mhz band.

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/phone-sim-card

CrazedGeek2• 13 years ago

You're half-right. T-Mobile's actually been adding service in the 1900MHz band, but it's limited at the moment. http://www.phonedog.com/2013/03/15/t-mobile-says-1900mhz-hsp...

kencausey2• 13 years ago

Thanks, I wish the carriers in the US were more forthcoming with technical details.

For anyone else who initially overlooked here is the PC Mag article with the list of relevant cities:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416666,00.asp

Unfortunately, I'm in none of them.

ragsagar2• 13 years ago

Link to database cannot be established: SQLSTATE[42000] [1203] User db59706 already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections

icebraining2• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the user id makes it sound like they're on shared hosting. I surely hope not.

mobiplayer• 13 years ago

They're hosted by MediaTemple and the IP doesn't look to be shared with other customers. Requesting the site without a host sends you to the main GeeksPhone site, so at least they're not on a shared hosting.

Maybe on a single VPS, but definitely not shared.

Jdfmiller• 13 years ago

If you're in the UK, leave the VAT field blank.

Also, KEONS ARE NOW SOLD OUT!

shared4you8• 13 years ago

I got the same error earlier, that "VAT is empty". Now they've fixed it. VAT is automatically added. For EU customers, including VAT, it comes to 110 EUR (Keon) and 180 EUR (Peak). And yeah, I chose the 18-EUR shipping option. Successfully ordered the PEAK for 200 EUR. Yay!

jasonngpt4• 13 years ago

seems like Keons are back in stock..

gilesbutler• 13 years ago

Awesome, just got a Peak!

I got the database error but just keep refreshing and it goes through eventually :)

Nux• 13 years ago

This is absolutely great news!

chankey_pathak• 13 years ago

Ordered, waiting to play with it :)

Su-Shee• 13 years ago

Looks like "killed by success". ;)

Couldn't get through with Firefox (haha) and my german VISA, too.

Also note that 55 Euros shipping is NOT the only option.. ;)

lawl4• 13 years ago

It's sad you can only pay with credit cards. I refuse to get a credit card.

daviddoran4• 13 years ago

You could buy a pre-paid card and just use it to buy the phone.

icebraining2• 13 years ago

It's sad that your bank doesn't offer virtual CCs. They're awesome ;)

lawl4• 13 years ago

Yes that's exactly what I'd want to use. Log in to your bank, create a virtual one-use CC, buy something and the CC no longer exists. Well, not exactly, there's still vast room for improvment but it'd be better that how it is now. Sadly, I could not find any finance instutite here that offers that.

_mhp_• 13 years ago

I paid with a debit card - transaction went through and I have an email confirming my order.

antninja• 13 years ago

All payment cards are commonly called credit cards in Europe. This requirement may be a translation error.

lawl4• 13 years ago

Well I'm from europe, so that's what I ment too. I do not have any master, maestro or visa card. And i refuse to get one, because I think they're a horribly, horribly broken system.

joelthelion• 13 years ago

How open is the hardware? Are the drivers open source?

MrUnderhill• 13 years ago

Apologies for replying without an answer, but I'd love to know this as well. Additionally, how/where is the hardware produced? I'd gladly pay twice this and more for full openness software/hardware/ethics-wise.

fabrice_d• 13 years ago

It is "Engineered in SPain, Made in P.R.C" It's as open source as it can, you can rebuilt from scratch and rebuilt a boot images with a new kernel if you wish (just clone https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/B2G and run ./config.sh keon). I just did that last week to add something we need for Firefox OS.

ShaneOG• 13 years ago

Site is being hammered.

I managed to get through and bought a Peak, but it's not showing up on the My Orders page, yet.

davidpronk• 13 years ago

Just ordered the Keon without using my creditcard. Payment: Cash on delivery with fee

navs3• 13 years ago

Darn, Keon is sold out. I wanted a small smartphone. OS aside, I'm hoping Firefox OS (is there an official abbreviation we can use) will rejuvenate the small screen smartphone market.

padenot• 13 years ago

We tend to abbreviate Firefox OS "FxOS".

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

The marketing guy in me wants to suggest FFOS since it immediately evokes "fast forward" in my mind.

(though to be honest, gamers will come back with the expected, "WHAT!? Final Fantasy OS???" :P

jasonngpt4• 13 years ago

Weird.. I just checked and Keons are still available (i saw the out of stock just now too..).. Try again?

navs3• 13 years ago

And it's back! Though I'd be hesitant to make any purchases, considering how fickle the site's performance is at the moment.

turshija• 13 years ago

No Serbia on the list even though official statements said it will be one of the first countries where phones will be available, so I sent them an email regarding that. I was amazed when less than 1 hour later, I got an email reply !!! "Dear Boris, We took some countries out because of maintenance, but we'll put Serbia back on the list, don't worry, thanks for the remark and sorry for the inconveniences."

jameswyse• 13 years ago

Just ordered a Peak, total impulse buy. Any word on when these will ship?

Jacqued• 13 years ago

Did just the same, 197€ with VAT and shipping isn't too bad.

I guess the first lucky few will have them by the end of the week, the rest of us by next week (I'd imagine they staffed up for deliveries but will still be overwhelmed since all their stock went away in 2 hours).

navneetpandey• 13 years ago

I want one, I may be my first smartphone. BTW: Is it smart enough?

lucb1e4• 13 years ago

If you don't have a smartphone already, I'd definitely buy it. Right now. I'd get a credit card right now if that's what it took ;)

Unfortunately I already have a Galaxy Note II, which is top of the line and really a great phone, so now I don't know whether I should buy it... https://plus.google.com/100221912051999668442/posts/dDkEuUzL...

shared4you8• 13 years ago

Well, now BOTH models are out-of-stock!

_pferreir_• 13 years ago

Yep. I was seriously considering buying it. Didn't do it immediately because I was hesitant. Now I just can't :(

shared4you8• 13 years ago

I wanted to order the Keon, but was late. When it first went out-of-stock, I realized that Peak might be running out soon. Got lots of db errors, hit F5 several times, payment stalled, but bought the Peak finally!

javis• 13 years ago

Their Twitter feed hints it isn't out of stock and they recommend trying again in a few minutes.

https://twitter.com/geeksphone/status/326661079826563072

lucb1e4• 13 years ago

Same for me. I was very surprised by the low price (usually a smartphone is over €400, this one €91) and might actually have bought it depending on the payment options (credit card is an instant no-go)... but both out of stock. Couldn't they anticipate that a decent number of hackers were gonna want one?

alexeston• 13 years ago

Peak seems to be good enough for most of us and Keon for our kids, most likely. I don't even care if it's out of stock or has errors buying it, what I care about is what does it _feel_ to use a Firefox OS. Can it compete with Android / iOS? Does it have potential to ever becoming a competing OS?

josteink• 13 years ago

5 hours and now completely sold out. Ow.

I know there would be demand for these, but that much demand? Sounds promising for the platform :)

shared4you8• 13 years ago

It's not really sold out. As per their tweets, it'll be back in stock in a few hours. It's just that their online store couldn't keep up with the page loads. Talk about software, man!

Ygg22• 13 years ago

Is it me or did the prices of these two phones jumped? I remember peak being like ~173$ (or was that euro).

shared4you8• 13 years ago

Same with me, it showed 91 EUR but when I created account and login it was 110 EUR. The reason is the taxes (VAT), herein EU. Probably, it's the same reason in US

Ygg22• 13 years ago

I don't think that's it. I think they are increasing prices due to high demand. I mean why increase the prices twice?

soapdog2• 13 years ago

guys,

congratulations for those who succeeded on buying. Remember: this is a developer preview phone. Firefox OS is not ready yet. Expect updates and bugs at this stage. I have two keons and they are pretty good but the system still in flux and not all APIs are implemented yet.

ps: I am a Mozilla Rep working with Firefox OS awareness.

shared4you8• 13 years ago

Will I be able to upgrade the OS/firmware when FxOS is "ready"? Do I need to "root" the phone to upgrade?

soapdog2• 13 years ago

The geeksphones are unlocked and open. You can reflash them at your leisure. It is as easy as:

    sudo adb reboot bootloader  

    sudo fastboot flash boot boot.img 

    sudo fastboot flash splash splash.img 

    sudo fastboot flash system system.img 

    sudo fastboot flash userdata userdata.img 

    sudo fastboot reboot

This will reflash the phone and reboot, provided you have the right images which can be built from source or downloaded from geeksphone (once they release it). The most important part is Gaia and Gaia can be built and installed from source.

These are open devices and the promise of an open web app ecosystem is far too fun for hacker like us to let it pass.

jwoah12• 13 years ago

Is anyone else getting this?

In order to perform site maintenance, our online shop has shut down temporarily.

We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that you please try again later.

gabriel• 13 years ago

I haven't seen anything other than this message. Whether it was last week, yesterday, or right now.

Firefox OS phones now available from Geeksphone

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