All of the early early reviews are confirming our suspicions. For example this one from the verge: "Lag is a major concern — apps took multiple seconds to load, to change toggles, and to make UI transitions"[1] Or this one from CNET: "unresponsive screen makes typing a laborious process requiring painstaking precision. Every action from swiping to tapping onscreen controls takes a beat until you see results, so using the phone for a prolonged period steals minutes of your time... Lag carries into the camera, which is slow to launch, snap, and reset."[2]

This is why I'm looking forward to the Edge w/ its Ubuntu OS. It doesn't try to hide its Android heritage, even gives you the option to boot to AOSP. Also has a modern gesture based UI unlike Firefox's dated iOS rip off. And most importantly, on resource limited mobile device gives developers the option to write native apps.

[1]http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/24/4024530/ztes-open-is-the-f....

[2]http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/geeksphone-keon/4505-645....

yeah, 256MB of RAM is just not enough. The CPU speed is not relevant when you have so little memory to work with. I guess it's an OK deal for $79, but it's not going to do a good job running javascript apps with so little RAM. Even if it is only running one at a time. My GMail tab alone is using 237MB right now and every tab in my browser is > 50MB. That 256MB also has to hold the OS code.

> Deny them access to fast native apps on entry level hardware.

> I also wonder about the wisdom of taking low-end hardware, where every bit of efficiency at the software level matters, and shackling it by not allowing third-party native code.

This is what asm.js and OdinMonkey are for. You're right that forbidding developers from getting the control that native code buys you is a nonstarter, but asm.js gives you that control.