Look inside the settings app of a discontinued phone
Discontinued platforms tend to vanish along with the hardware, and their interfaces survive only in screenshots. This one is different, because the settings app was open source and the whole tree can still be read from it. Thirty-nine sections and three hundred and sixty-five rows is a complete phone, preserved rather than remembered.
At a glance
Firefox OS runs here as a working phone. You navigate it the way you would the physical thing: tap a row, land on its screen, go back, take a different branch. Every number below was counted directly from that tree.
- 39top-level entries
- 365rows in total
- 3levels deep
- 2versions
| Device family | Retro and classic |
|---|---|
| Frame shown | Phone |
| Versions | Firefox OS 2.5, Firefox OS 2.2 |
| Deepest path | 3 levels below the main list |
| Interface languages | 12, switchable while you browse |
| Account needed | No — it runs entirely in your browser |
How Firefox OS organises Settings
The top level is long and unapologetically flat. Airplane Mode, Geolocation and Wi-Fi come first, then a solid block of telephony with SIM Manager, Call Settings, Messaging Settings and Cellular & Data, followed by Bluetooth, NFC and Internet Sharing. Sound, Display, Home Screens, Search, Navigation and Notifications handle the interface. Then come Date & Time, Language, Keyboards, Themes and Add-ons, and a security run of Firefox Accounts, Find My Device, Screen Lock, SIM Security, App Permissions, Do Not Track and Browsing Privacy. Storage is split three ways, and Developer sits in the open near the end.
Two things stand out against phones sold today. First, the browser vocabulary leaks everywhere: Do Not Track and Browsing Privacy are top-level phone settings here, not options buried in a browser, because the whole system was the browser. Second, telephony gets four separate sections where a modern phone gives it one, and dual-SIM handling is treated as normal rather than as an edge case. Depth stays at three levels throughout, so the list is long but never deep. Newcomers get lost among USB Storage, Media Storage and Application Storage, three sections whose names describe implementation rather than what you actually want to clear.
Three settings worth finding
Settings > Call Settings > Fixed Dialing NumbersThis restricts outgoing calls to an approved list stored on the SIM. It was standard on feature phones and has largely disappeared from modern menus, so it is a good example of a control that ordinary users once expected to find.
Settings > Wi-Fi > Wi-Fi SleepDeciding whether wireless stays awake with the screen off was a real battery choice on hardware this modest. Modern phones make the decision for you, which is exactly why seeing it offered as a user setting is interesting.
Settings > Messaging Settings > Delivery ReportsAsking the network to confirm a message arrived was a normal expectation of text messaging. Finding it here, beside read reports and roaming behaviour, shows how much messaging configuration once lived in the operating system rather than in an app.
Versions of Firefox OS you can open
You can load 2 builds of Firefox OS. That matters when you are writing instructions for someone whose device is a release or two behind yours.
How this menu got here
The settings app was part of Gaia, the interface layer written in web technologies, which is why its structure can be read directly from source rather than reconstructed from screenshots. Sections were added as the platform reached new markets, particularly around dual-SIM handling and low-cost hardware, and the browser-derived privacy controls were present from early on. The two versions offered here, 2.5 and 2.2, come from the final stretch of the project, so the differences between them are small refinements rather than the larger reorganisations of earlier years.
Who this is useful for
Interface researchers and students studying how mobile platforms diverged get concrete material rather than recollection. Developers who worked on web-based platforms can check what shipped against what they remember. Collectors running the hardware, and anyone writing about the period, can confirm a menu path instead of guessing at it. Teachers covering the history of mobile operating systems can show a full working tree during a lesson.
What is real and what is sample data
The structure is the real thing: menu names, their order, how they are grouped and what sits inside each one. That is why this article can quote a path such as Settings > Call Settings > Fixed Dialing Numbers and expect it to match your phone.
The state cannot be. A device name, an address, a build number, a network name, a storage figure, whether a particular switch is on or off — those belong to a physical phone, not to a menu tree. Those values appear here as clearly-marked samples. They are there so the row has the right shape, and they should never be read as a fact about a real phone.
Try it yourself
Give yourself a task — change a language, find a privacy switch, locate a build number — and do it in Firefox OS here first. The step recorder will keep the route for you. If you are weighing one system against another, put Firefox OS beside a second one and compare the same screen on both. The search will also work backwards: give it a setting name and it reports where every system files it.
Open Firefox OS in the simulatorFree, no account, works offline — 365 settings rows across 2 versions.Key points
- Firefox OS shows 39 top-level entries and 365 rows in total, nested up to 3 levels.
- Nothing in the menu listing above was retyped by hand, which is why a path from this page can be followed on a real phone.
- Values such as device names, addresses and switch positions are sample data and are marked as such.
Questions about Firefox OS settings
Can I still use Firefox OS on a phone?
The platform was discontinued and no current handset ships with it, so this is a record rather than a guide to a device you can buy. Some community forks continued afterwards with different names and different menus. The tree here reflects the original releases listed in the picker.
How accurate is this reconstruction?
The menu titles, their order and their nesting come from the open source interface layer, so the structure is faithful rather than approximate. What cannot be faithful is device state: SIM details, network names and storage figures belong to physical hardware and appear here as sample values marked as such.
Why does a phone have browser privacy settings at the top level?
Because the whole interface was built from web technologies and the browser engine was the system, not an application on top of it. Controls that other platforms hide inside a browser were phone-wide here, which is one of the more revealing structural differences between this design and its contemporaries.