Hands On: Alcatel One Touch Fire Firefox OS Phone

BARCELONA - This year's Mobile World Congress is shaping up to be the year of the Firefox. We aren't seeing particularly good Firefox-powered phones, mind you, but they're an interesting change from the usual Apple/Google/Windows wars. You've probably already heard about ZTE's Firefox phone, the ZTE Open (originally the ZTE Fire), but Alcatel just announced one of its own, the One Touch Fire. We got a chance to spend some time with it at the show.

I know, I know. The ZTE Open. The One Touch Fire. These names are kind of boring. I'm afraid the same apparent lack of originality in Firefox phone-naming conventions has befallen the phones themselves. I get that these phones are supposed to be inexpensive. The problem is that they look and feel so cheap.

The One Touch Fire features the same 3.5-inch, 480-by-320-pixel display as the ZTE Open. Now, that looked fine on Android phones… two years ago. Today, most budget phones are hovering around the 4-inch, 800-by-480-pixel mark, and I would't call this a game of limbo - you really shouldn't go any lower.

That said, I actually prefer the design of Alcatel's One Touch Fire to the ZTE Open. It feels lighter, brighter, and just more fun overall. It's a cute little phone that almost feels like a toy. Unfortunately, right now it sort of works like a toy as well. Navigating my way around the phone felt laggy, from opening up apps to swiping between home screens. That could be due to the single-core 1-GHz processor, which is a pretty low-end part these days. Then again, the Firefox OS itself isn't fully complete, so it could be that too; I'll withhold any judgments about performance until the hardware and OS are ready for prime time.

Just what is the Firefox OS, anyway? It's a new mobile OS from Mozilla, and the whole idea is that everything on it is a Web page - from the apps, to the Web browser, to the home screen itself. I didn't get to spend much time with it, but to be honest, it looks and works a lot like Android and iOS.

In addition to the brand new OS and 1-GHz processor, you also get a 3.2-megapixel camera. There's a scant 180MB of free internal memory, but a microSD card slot allows you to add up to an additional 32GB.

The Firefox phones we've seen so far are interesting, but i just wish they felt a little less low-end. Even at the right price, these phones just don't instill a burning sense of desire.

Alcatel doesn't expect to release the One Touch Fire until June. We're curious to spend some more time with the first fleet of Firefox phones, as well as with the OS itself.