Firefox OS fork KaiOS gets multitasking and tabbed browser

KaiOS, a phone operating system that grew out of Mozilla’s Firefox OS initiative, is getting multitasking, a tabbed browser, and text copy/paste functionality. A top executive made this known in an interview.

Functions such as multitasking will only be available on phones with 512MB of RAM, director Sebastien Codeville reports in an interview with Android Authority. The browser with tabs, multitasking and copy/paste should be available in an update this year, the CEO says.

KaiOS will not get a Chromium-based browser, despite its partnership with Google. For example, KaiOS does have services such as the voice assistant Google Assistant and Google Maps. A Chromium-based browser cannot, according to Codeville. “It would be too heavy for the phones we’re targeting. But we’re definitely improving the browsing experience on devices.”

In addition, KaiOS will also focus on products other than phones, but Codeville will not say which ones. KaiOS is on one hundred million phones so far and the operating system wants to distinguish itself by supporting 4g, nfc and bluetooth for cheap models. Some smartphone services also run on KaiOS, such as WhatsApp. The most famous phone in the West with KaiOS is the Nokia 8110 4G, the new edition of the ‘banana phone’ from Nokia. The operating system is based on Mozilla’s mobile project Boot2Gecko, which also produced Firefox OS. Mozilla has retired from Firefox OS and several developers from that team are now working at KaiOS.