Kai OS is a mobile operating system designed for feature phones. It is based on the Linux kernel and is a separate version of Mozilla’s Open Source Firefox OS, Boot to Gecko. Mozilla discontinued Firefox OS in 2016.
Developed in 2017 by Kai OS Techonoligies Inc., Google’s $ 22 million investment in Kai OS in 2018 and $ 7 million in India’s Telecom operator Reliance Jio.
In May 2018, Kai OS overtook Apple’s iOS to become India’s second most popular operating system. In 2018 Q1, the number of devices running Kai OS reached 23 million. Kai OS version 1.0 was released in March 2017 and reached version 2.6.0 in May 2019. Kai OS does not work well with smartphones. Designed for out-of-reach areas, its interface is specifically designed for phones that do not have a touch screen and physical buttons called Dumbphones.
Using apps with pysical buttons Navaigate is smooth and provides a good user experience. Later, Kai OS will be developed for feature phones as well as other IoT (internet of things) devices.
Kai OS supports 4G / LTE, NFC payments, GPS, dual sim, Wifi, etc. You do not need any hardware to use Kai. With at least 256 MB of memory, you can run Kai OS smoothly. Therefore, phone manufacturers can make phones running Kai OS at a very affordable price without having to look at specifications. In India, Reliance’s JioPhone running Kai OS costs around $ 20.
One of the main popular developments of Kai OS is its HTML5 App store. There are many apps and the number of apps is increasing day by day. The other is open source, so developers can easily build powerful web apps that can be easily downloaded from any Kai OS device. This is an advantage over Java based OS used on other feature phones.
Kai OS is slowly winning the battle of feature phones because of the need for more resources when creating dedicated apps on Java based OS. And OS updates can be easily updated OTA (over the air).
Kai OS has social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp that we use on a daily basis, as well as file sharing apps like Xender. Kai OS has its own apps and apps from many developers. Thanks to Google’s investment, Google Apps is now officially supported on the Kai OS. (Google’s official services are included and do not need to be re-installed xD) So apps like Google Maps, Youtube and Google Assistant also work well on Kai OS.
Some Kai OS phones even have physical buttons for using Google Assistant. Send text messages using Google Assistant You can play YouTube playlists just like any other smartphone. Kai OS has become the third most used mobile OS, starting at $ 20, starting with the Kai OS feature phones, which can run almost any smartphone.
Whether you are interested in Kai OS or not. If you are buying Kai OS feature phones for use as a secondary phone, here are some of the most popular Kai OS phones available today
Alcatel Go Flip 2 (U.S.A., Canada)
JioPhone 2 (India)
Nokia 8110 HMD Global (most countries except for the U.S.A.)
Cat B35 (Europe)
Phones
In the next article, I will write about Puffin OS, which will compete with android Go, which is designed for low-cost touch screen phones.