GeeksPhone Keon with Firefox OS, first impressions

GeeksPhone Keon is one of the two first developer preview devices specifically designed for Firefox OS. Let’s take a peek at what Keon and Firefox OS has to offer by reading our first impressions below.

GeeksPhone is a Spanish start-up company and producer of smartphones that was founded in early 2009 and used to make Android phones. Their most recent projects are the Developer Preview smartphones for Mozilla’s Firefox OS, namely the Keon and the Peak.

The GeeksPhone Keon is the lesser-powered model, sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 7225AB clocked at 1Ghz and 512MB of RAM. It has a 3.5-inch HVGA (480 × 320) so it’s a relatively tiny device. Although small, it’s one of the nicely-built smartphones we’ve encountered. The removable shell is made of durable plastic with a smooth rubber-like finish which feels great in the hands.

Running the whole show for the Keon is Mozilla’s Firefox OS which is built entirely using open web standards, where HTML5 apps can do “phone things” like make the phone vibrate, make a phone call or send a text message. It’s a Developer Preview version so it’s not complete yet but is regularly updated. Basic smartphone functions are already working though like phone and texting capabilities, WiFi, mobile data, and camera functions.

The UI looks clean and pleasing to the eyes and somehow looks like a marriage between Android and Meego. Navigating the UI is easy to understand and feels like a simplified version of the Android OS – swipe left or right to see the apps, swipe down to see notifications and shortcuts, use the home button to exit or see background-running apps.

Even if it’s just running a Developer Preview version on a not so beefy hardware the Firefox OS feels snappy and relatively smooth, so everything looks promising indeed. We’ll be publishing a thorough hands-on of the Firefox OS in the next few days so stay tuned.