919420 - Support 3rd party management app for FirefoxOS.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia, defect)

Description

[Pin Zhang [:pzhang] (inactive)]

Here is the background information about this requirement:

In China, there are several popular management apps for Android phone, like Wandoujia[1], and 91 Phone Asistant[2] (acquired by Baidu for 1.9 billion dollar last month), so people could manipulate their personal datas in their phones on *PC* easily, like:
 - Export/import/delete the media files: pictures, musics and videos.
   Mobile network is slow and expensive in China, so lots of people prefer downloading musics/movies from internet.
 - Export/import contacts in vCard format, create/delete contacts etc.
 - Save/restore the SMS/MMS, send SMS/MMS on PC directly, and notify user when new SMS/MMS/call coming in.
   It's much easier to type and select contacts on PC.
 - Manage the mobile apps, including upgrade all the lower version apps, delete apps, and install apps directly from local app store etc.

Basically, there are two parts of such a management app:
 - A server endpoint which is an Android app.
   The mobile app will register a background service, and create a socket on a special port, say 10010. User don't have to install the mobile app manually, if user installed the PC client and connect his/her device to the PC, the client would install the mobile app automatically through adb.
 - A client endpoint which is a PC software.
   The PC client will connect to the server endpoint socket either by sub cable or wifi which depends on the user's choice.

On android, there is no limit for an app to access the related APIs, like contacts/sms etc., but in our B2G, some of the APIs could only be accessed by the certified apps[3], like SMS and webapps-manage, so we need to provide a server endpoint in Gaia, either as part of the system app or a separate app, both are fine to me.

[1] http://www.wandoujia.com/
[2] http://zs.91.com/
[3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Apps/App_permissions#Certified_app_permissions

Comment 1

[Yuan Xulei [:yxl] (Leave from May 18)]

We created a demo tool for this. It allows user to manage, backup and restore data (such as contacts, sms, pictures, music...) of a Firefox OS 1.3 phone from a host computer. For details and screenshots, see:http://1drv.ms/1fUzBbk

The tool is composed of a host application running in a Firefox desktop tab and a standalone device application.

The host application can establish a connection to the device application by either USB cable or WIFI. Once connected, use can view the data and manage them directly. The host application and the device application keeps data synchronized after user's operations.

I have a idea that we may integrate these functions into the app manager of desktop and extend the app manager to something like a device manager. User can manage or backup their phones' data through Firefox on a computer without installing other tools.

The source code is available on github:
Host application - https://github.com/MozillaOnline/pc-sync-tool
Device application - https://github.com/MozillaOnline/pc-sync-gaia-app

Comment 2

[BMO Automation]

Firefox OS is not being worked on