KaiOS is a mobile

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

for keypad

feature phone A feature phone (also spelled featurephone) is a type or class of mobile phone that retains the form factor of earlier generations of mobile telephones, typically with press-button based inputs and a small non-touch display. They tend to use an ...

s based on the Firefox OS open-source project. It is developed by KaiOS Technologies (Hong Kong) Limited; a company based in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

, whose largest shareholder is Chinese multinational electronics conglomerate

TCL Corporation TCL Technology (originally an abbreviation for Telephone Communication Limited) is a Chinese electronics company headquartered in Huizhou, Guangdong Province. It designs, develops, manufactures, and sells consumer products including televis ...

.'''' KaiOS runs on feature phones made with low-power hardware and low power consumption (and therefore long battery life). KaiOS supports modern connectivity technologies like 4G LTE E,

VoLTE Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is an LTE high-speed wireless communication standard for mobile phones and data terminals, including Internet of things (IoT) devices and wearables. VoLTE has up to three times more voice and data capacity than older 3G ...

, GPS, and

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

. KaiOS runs

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

-based apps. KaiOS supports over-the-air updates and has ''KaiStore'', a dedicated

app marketplace An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the co ...

. Some applications are preloaded, including

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

and

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

. , there are 500+ apps in KaiStore. The

mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablet computer, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal computing, personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical laptops are "mobi ...

is comparatively lightweight on hardware resource usage, and is able to run on devices with just 256

megabyte The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes o ...

s (MB) of memory.

History

The operating system was first released in 2017, and is developed by KaiOS Technologies Inc., a

-based company headed by CEO Sebastien Codeville, with offices in other countries. In June 2018,

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

invested US$22 million in the operating system. India-based telecom operator Reliance Jio also invested $7 million for a 16% stake in the company. In May 2019, KaiOS raised an additional US$50 million from Cathay Innovation, and previous investors Google and TCL Holdings. In market share study results announced in May 2018, KaiOS beat Apple's iOS for second place in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

, while Android dominates with 71%, albeit down by 9%. KaiOS growth is being largely attributed to the popularity of the competitively-priced

JioPhone Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, doing business as Jio, is an Indian telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, headquartered in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It operates a national LTE network with coverage across all 2 ...

. In Q1 2018, 23 million KaiOS devices were produced. In March 2020,

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...

and KaiOS Technologies announced a partnership to update KaiOS with a modern version of the Gecko browser engine, and more closely aligned testing infrastructure. This change should give KaiOS four years worth of performance and security improvements and new features, including TLS 1.3,

WebAssembly WebAssembly (sometimes abbreviated Wasm) defines a portable binary-code format and a corresponding text format for executable programs as well as software interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environmen ...

, WebGL 2.0, Progressive Web Apps, new

video codec A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, '' codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an ...

s like WebP, AV1, and modern

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

and

Cascading Style Sheets Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone tec ...

(CSS) features.

Devices

Devices that are installed with KaiOS include (KaiStore may not be included, if device vendor removed it): * Alcatel Go Flip (known as Cingular Flip 2 on

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...

, Alcatel MyFlip on

TracFone Wireless TracFone Wireless, Inc. (TFWI) is an American prepaid, no-contract mobile phone provider. TFWI is a subsidiary of Verizon Communications, and offers products and services under several brands. It operates as a mobile virtual network operator ( ...

) and 3088X * Advan Hape Online (

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

) in partnership with Indosat Ooredoo. * Reliance Jio's

, F10Q, F101K, F120B, F220B, F211S, F221S, F250Y, F271I, F30C, F41T, F50Y, F61F, F81E, F90M, LF-2401, LF-2402, LF-2403, LF-2403N, all branded as LYF, JioPhone 2, F300B, F310B, JioPhone Lite, F320B *

HMD Global HMD Global Oy, branded as HMD and Nokia Mobile, is a Finnish mobile phone manufacturer. The company is made up of the mobile phone business that Nokia sold to Microsoft in 2014, then bought back in 2016. HMD began marketing Nokia-branded smar ...

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

8110 4G, 2720 Flip, 800 Tough, 6300 4G, 8000 4G, Nokia 2760 Flip and 2780 Flip * Energizer Energy E220, E220S, E241, E241S and Hardcase H241, H242, H280S, E282SC *

Doro Doro may refer to: * Doro (musician), rock singer, former vocalist of the German heavy metal band Warlock ** ''Doro'' (album), a 1990 album by Doro * AKA (rapper) (born 1988), South African hip hop recording artist * Dorothy Bush Koch, often calle ...

7010, 7050, 7060 *Cat B35 *Maxcom MK241, MK281 *WizPhone WP006, launched in

in partnership with

and Alfamart. * MTN 3G phone (MTN Smart S 3G) * Positivo P70S (Brazil) *

Multilaser Multilaser is an electronics company based in Brazil. Multilaser are manufacturers and marketers of tablets, media players, GPS, pen drives, computer accessories, games, smartphones, sporting goods, audio and video, with greater highlights ...

ZAPP (Brazil) * Tecno T901 *Jazz Digit 4G (Made in Pakistan for Pakistan) *Orange Sanza 2, Sanza XL *Kitochi 4G Smart *Vodacom Smart Kitochi (Vida), Vodacom Smart Kitochi (Azumi) *QMobile 4G Plus (Pakistan) *GeoPhone T15, T19, T19i (Made in India for Bangladesh) *Sigma mobile X-Style S3500 sKai (Ukraine) *Ghia KOX1, GK3G, GQWERTY (Mexico) *myPhone Up Smart, Up Smart LTE (Poland) *symphony PD1 4G( Made in Bangladesh for Bangladesh) All KaiOS devices have ABC keypad with exceptions being Jiophone 2 and Ghia GQWERTY having a

QWERTY QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden ty ...

keypad.

Partnerships

, KaiOS Technologies has partnered with

, Airfind, Avenir Telecom (Energizer),

Bullitt ''Bullitt'' is a 1968 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by Peter Yates and produced by Philip D'Antoni. The picture stars Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, and Jacqueline Bisset. The screenplay by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleine ...

, Micromax,

NXP NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXP) is a Dutch semiconductor designer and manufacturer with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company employs approximately 31,000 people in more than 30 countries. NXP reported revenue of $11.06 billion in 2 ...

, Spreadtrum,

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, ...

, Jio, Sprint,

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic ( T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland ( T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobil ...

, and Orange S.A. In March 2020, KaiOS Technologies partnered with Mozilla to bring the modern version of Gecko browser engine to future KaiOS builds.

Release history

Jailbreak

With the release of the

Nokia 8110 4G The Nokia 8110 4G is a Nokia-branded mobile phone developed by HMD Global. It was announced on 25 February 2018 at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona, Spain, as a revival of the original Nokia 8110, which was popularly known as the ...

, an active community around both KaiOS and the phone arose and released the first version of a

jailbreak A prison escape (referred as a bust out, breakout, jailbreak, or prison break) is the act of an inmate leaving prison through unofficial or illegal ways. Normally, when this occurs, an effort is made on the part of authorities to recapture t ...

. This gave users the ability to use apps outside KaiStore including old Firefox OS apps on KaiOS devices, as well as flashing their devices with community-created ROMs, such as GerdaOS.

References

External links

*
An introduction to KaiOS and app development for it

An alternative app marketplace for KaiOS
{{Portal bar, Software, Hong Kong 2017 software ARM operating systems Embedded Linux distributions Firefox OS Gecko-based software Linux distributions Mobile Linux Open-source software converted to a proprietary license Software that uses XUL