Firefox OS-powered smartphone ZTE Open spotted at MWC

ZTE had made its intentions of revealing a Firefox OS-powered smartphone at MWC pretty clear byincluding the hashtag #ZTEMozilla in the invitations it sent out for its press conference scheduled at the event.

Now, Engadget has posted a picture that clearly spells out the details of the phone from the MWC floor, and as far as pure specs are concerned, the phone looks nothing to write home about.

According to the image, the ZTE Open will be powered by the Qualcomm MSM7225A processor alongside 256MB RAM and just 512MB internal storage. A microSD card slot in not mentioned, but is almost certainly there given the paltry storage on the phone. It sports a 3.5-inch HVGA TFT display with capacitive touchscreen and connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Micro-USB. The phone will also come with FM radio and a 3.2-megapixel fixed-focus rear camera and an accelerometer as well as an ambient light sensor. It will carry a 1,200mAh battery.

Based on the specs of the phone, it seems Mozilla is targeting the entry-level smartphone market to begin with, which means it is competition for Android, rather than iOS. It will be interesting to see how the OS performs on this hardware - we look forward to the demo - and if it offers a compelling enough alternative to Google's Android.

Last month, Mozilla unveiled unveiled two preview Firefox OS-based smartphones, Keon and Peak. The announcement marked a major step forward for the new Firefox OS which is being built using open Web standards, like its Firefox Web browser.

We first heard about ZTE planning to release Firefox OS-based smartphones in Q1 2013 in September last year.

Apart from the Mozilla smartphone, ZTE will also be showing off Grand Memo smartphone at MWC. ZTE Grand Memo sports a 5.7-inch screen with 720p display, 1.7GHz quad-core processor, a 13-megapixel rear camera and runs Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean). It has a 8mm thick body and is expected to come with a "one-hand" T9 keyboard. This smartphone was teased at an event in Hong Kong on January 30, 2013.