Orange Klif, Firefox OS's $40 phone for Africa (pictures)

The Orange Klif is a $40 Firefox OS phone that the French carrier will sell in 13 African and Middle Eastern countries starting in the second quarter of 2015. The price includes six months of voice, text, and data service.

The Orange Klif has a rounded-corner design and a white body. Along one edge are the power button and volume rocker. On the back is a 2-megapixel camera with an LED flash.

The Orange Klif can take either video or still images with its 2-megapixel camera. The camera app can be reached directly from the lock screen.

The Orange Klif comes with 512MB of storage, 256MB of memory, a microSD card, dual SIM slots, and a 3.5-inch 480x320-pixel screen.

The Orange Klif is hardly the thinnest phone you'll find -- but it is cheap.

Firefox OS is a browser-based operating system, but it supports dialers and other apps that must communicate directly with the phone's hardware.

Orange will bundle several apps with the Orange Klif, including the Dailymotion video service and Orange Foot for tracking soccer.

The Orange Klif has the same hardware as the Alcatel OneTouch Pixi 3 but different colors.

A virtual keyboard on the Orange Klif lets customers thumb-type, but the keys are smaller than on higher-end modern big-screen smartphones.

On the bottom of the Orange Klif is a USB charger and microphone. The camera is powered by a dual-core 1GHz MediaTek processor.

The Pixi 3 and Orange Klif handle contacts and other basic smartphone tasks through Firefox OS.

In its 3.5-inch configuration, the Pixi 3 from TCL Alcatel will be sold by Orange, America Movil, and Telefonica.