KaiOS is a

mobile Mobile may refer to: Places * Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city * Mobile County, Alabama * Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S. * Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Mobile ...

Linux distribution for keypad feature phones 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 city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, whose largest shareholder is Chinese multinational electronics conglomerate TCL Corporation.'''' KaiOS runs on

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

made with low-power hardware and low power consumption (and therefore long battery life). KaiOS supports modern connectivity technologies like 4G LTE E, VoLTE, GPS, and Wi-Fi. KaiOS runs HTML5-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, Dustin ...

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 most ...

. , 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 megabytes (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 seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

, 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, Trade name, doing business as Jio, is an Indian Telecommunications in India, telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, headquartered in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It operates a nationa ...

. In Q1 2018, 23 million KaiOS devices were produced. In March 2020, Mozilla 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, WebGL 2.0, Progressive Web Apps, new video codecs 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 Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

and Cascading Style Sheets (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, Alcatel MyFlip on TracFone Wireless) 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 Guine ...

) 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's

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, Finlan ...

8110 4G, 2720 Flip, 800 Tough, 6300 4G, 8000 4G,

Nokia 2760 Flip The Nokia 2760 is a clamshell Mobile phone released by Nokia in 2007 and manufactured in Hungary. Its operating frequency is Dual band GSM 900/1800 or 850/1900. The phone supports EDGE for mobile broadband. The Nokia 2760 was popular in the la ...

and 2780 Flip * Energizer Energy E220, E220S, E241, E241S and Hardcase H241, H242, H280S, E282SC * Doro 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 for ...

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 Mozilla, Airfind, Avenir Telecom (Energizer),

, Bullitt, Doro, HMD Global, Micromax, NXP, Spreadtrum, Qualcomm, Jio,

Sprint Sprint may refer to: Aerospace *Spring WS202 Sprint, a Canadian aircraft design *Sprint (missile), an anti-ballistic missile Automotive and motorcycle *Alfa Romeo Sprint, automobile produced by Alfa Romeo between 1976 and 1989 *Chevrolet Sprint, ...

, AT&T,

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-Mob ...

, 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, 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 the ...

. 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