Mozilla partners with KaiOS to enhance the Gecko engine

Recently, KaiOS Technologies, the manufacturer of KaiOS, announced cooperation with Mozilla. The two parties will work together to improve KaiOS, especially to enhance the performance of the Gecko engine. The main goal of this cooperation is to “ensure future versions of Gecko are compatible with KaiOS-enabled devices and their web-based resources.”

KaiOS is a mobile operating system based on Linux, developed by KaiOS Technologies, a US-based company. It is forked from B2G OS, an open-source community-driven fork of Firefox OS, which was discontinued by Mozilla in 2016. KaiOS’s main features are bringing HTML5-based applications to non-touch devices, supporting 4G LTE, GPS, and Wi-Fi, bringing an optimized user interface, less memory, and power consumption. With the partnership, Gecko will be able to stay up-to-date and continue to provide new features, website compatibility, and security fixes.

KaiOS Technologies Inc. / Public domain

In addition to operating system optimization, compatibility, and hardware optimization, KaiOS also hopes to further enhance its modernity in the next cooperation and obtain more modern language support, such as advanced CSS for better network experience, Asynchronous JavaScript features to enhance application responsiveness, progressive web applications to improve the browsing experience and simplify advanced application development, and more.

Like the previous Firefox OS, KaiOS focuses on the mid-to-low-end feature phone market. On these inexpensive phones, KaiOS is still able to build and provide a variety of applications with limited memory, including YouTube, Facebook, Google Maps, and more. Currently, its official app store KaiStore already has more than 400 applications.