Just weeks after the first Firefox OS phones hit the market, an update is being made available adding new features, support for a number of new languages and significant performance improvements. There have been hundreds of improvements added to Firefox OS, but we wanted to give you a brief overview of some of the highlights from this release:
- MMS support: you can send and receive pictures, audio and video files via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service).
- Push Notifications API: developers can make use of push to deliver timely notifications to apps and reduce overall battery consumption.
- Adaptive app search is now front and center on the home screen, making it easier and faster to find the content you want.
- Contact Management enhancements:
- Gmail and Hotmail contact import: it’s now even easier to get your contacts onto a Firefox OS phone. We’ve now added the ability to import your existing contacts from either Gmail or Hotmail, in addition to the existing Facebook or SIM card import options.
- Add to contacts: You can easily add any phone number or e-mail address to your contacts that is listed in your call log, SMS messages or e-mail. Simply long tap the relevant information to directly create a new contact or add information to existing contacts.
- Dialer suggestions: Start entering phone numbers or names into the Dialer to quickly find a specific contact.
- Performance improvements: Experience faster application load times and smoother scrolling
- Firefox browser downloads: Save images, audio and video from the browser with ease
- Keyboard improvements: Auto correction fixes words that you accidentally misspell.
- E-Mail enhancements:
- Draft Mode: Automatically save in-progress e-mails offline so you can finish and send them later.
- Download audio and video attachments: Save audio and video e-mail attachments in addition to image files to your gallery.
- Sending image attachments: Attach and send Gallery images directly within the e-mail application.
- Music Search: Finding a favorite song is easy with the new music search functionality, simply swipe down from the top of the Music app to reveal a search bar and find music by artist, album or song title.
- Calendar enhancements:
- Direct event creation: Just tap on the desired time slot to create a new calendar event.
- Calendar event reminders: Set reminders to be notified of calendar events.
- Fourteen languages supported.
This Firefox OS update will be available for current users and on developer phones soon. For more details on how to purchase developer devices, visit MDN.
– Chris Lee, Director of Product for Firefox OS