Mozilla 'thrilled' at demand facing first Firefox OS phones

Phones running Mozilla's Firefox OS are today making it into the wild.

Spain-based Geeksphone opened orders for two dev preview handsets this morning and within hours Keon and Peak had sold out. The startup OEM's online shop is currently displaying a two-line message that it's temporarily shut down for maintenance, an indicator it's reached maximum order capacity.

Mozilla, for its part, is well aware of the situation at Geeksphone.

"Mozilla is thrilled to see such high demand for the Firefox OS developer preview devices, made available today by Geeksphone," Stormy Peters, director of websites and developer engagement at Mozilla, said in a statement sent to TechRadar.

"The support for these devices has been overwhelming, and we are pleased to see the development community excited to create content for the open web on mobile. We believe developers working with Firefox OS will help to bring the next two billion users online, through the power of the open mobile web."

On fire

While Mozilla stayed high-level as to why developers are flocking to the phones, one very terrestrial factor may be playing into demand.

Geeksphone priced the Keon at $119 (around UK£77, AU$115 ) and the higher-end Peak at $194 (around UK£127, AU$189). Devs will get to play around with the Linux-based, open-source OS before retail units start shipping in June.

Mozilla plans to offer Firefox OS devices in five countries then, with more added by the end of the year.

Neither device is a barnburner, but that's not really what Mozilla is after.

The burnt orange Keon is home to a single-core 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, a 3.5-inch HVGA display, 3MP camera and a 1,580mAh battery.

The Peak struts in white with a 4.3-inch qHD IPS display, 1.2GHz dual-core chip, 2MP front camera 8MP rear snapper complete with flash, 1,800mAh juicer and the same RAM and internal storage as its little brother.

Geeksphone is reportedly looking to get orders out at a rate of about 5,000 per day, though it's unclear when the first units will start shipping.

The hope is to have the handsets back on sale before the week is up, so if you're holding on for a dev unit, sit tight. Neither Mozilla nor Geeksphone seem eager to disappoint.