Discussions/opinions on Sailfish OS and the new Jolla phone - Jolla General Talk Discussions on JollaTides Community Port

andreibechet

Let's have here all the discussions related to our direct experience with/impressions on Sailfish OS and the new Jolla phone.

Thank you!

andreibechet

So you have tried 1st hand the sailfish os? Which hardware: n9 or new phone?

JollaTides

Sailfish OS running on the first Jolla handset prototype back in May. ;)

andreibechet

And and ... ? How did it feel?

JollaTides

The handset itself was very comfortable and aesthtically pleasing with good ergonomics, not too heavy at all with nice texture and lovely matte colours to choose. The finishing was nice too with great attention to detail with the 'Jolla' signature and aluminium frame around the screen.

The Sailfish OS was super fluid, intuitive and felt like it was very unbloated (opposite of android). Sailfish flew along at light speed and had great inbuilt integration with eg. FB, twitter etc. Sailfish was also very easy (almost purpose designed) to use one handed which was refreshing also. Extras like being able to interact with multitasking tiles, ambience, live multitasking and of course the integrated message centre made it feel powerful yet without the feeling of bloat you get with android devices.

Just take a look at our YT channel - those early videos are all just before we had our own hands on: JollaTides youtube channel ;)

andreibechet

Here are some videos from the official youtube Jolla channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/jollaofficial

KnuX

I know the apps were still very much in development, but what did you think about feature completeness?

I'm a bit worried that the first version tends to go too much to the pretty side, leaving functionality on the way side.

For instance, while I loved that the N900 threw away most of what I expected of a phone and its base software (and did it well), its calendar and e-mail app were very very sub-par.

andreibechet

To be honest I expect that this will be more like a beta version and I am totally going to support it with bug reports and so on. They need our help. If i wanted a phone to work directly out of the box I would have went for iphone/htc/samsung, right? Now I am willing to experiment.
(anyways i will not through away my current phone :p)

JollaTides · Post edited by JollaTides at 2013-11-13 11:48:03

KnuX said:
For instance, while I loved that the N900 threw away most of what I expected of a phone and its base software (and did it well), its calendar and e-mail app were very very sub-par.

Actually the N900 wasn't exactly the 1st - the N770; N800; N810 were all predecessors which eventually lead to the N900 although the others didn't have phone functionality. But I agree there were many elements of the N900 that were unpolished for mass appeal.

I somehow think that Jolla know they have too much at stake to not get it right first time. Unlike the bigger companies who can absorb losses to some extent and have a wide range of products to fall back on, Jolla rely solely upon the first release to gain traction and therefore are throwing everything into it to make a success. :-)

andreibechet

I am still sure that the first couple of weeks will find Jolla guys updating and creating new features according to our feedback (as you said, they cannot afford to many bad steps).

JollaTides

You're probably right Andrei as with any new product there is always likely to be teething problems... although from what I can gather all of Jolla employees are acting like Beta testers for at least the last month. So hopefully they should iron out most of the kinks in the meantime. ;-)

KnuX

But I have to say I have high hopes. Maybe it isn't like this for other people, but there were things that were different in the N900 that you would look at, and really consider, and end up saying "yeah, I can see how they thought about this and arrived at the conclusion that they should do it this way". And yes, I know that the N900 wasn't the first one, but I was referring to the more phonesy and communication parts.

I contrast that with Android where there are some features and behaviors that leave me thinking "has anyone tested this outside the googleplex or a huge powerful nexus phone?". It seems like Android developers have never been to a place with bad connectivity, or used a low-end Android phone. I sometimes wonder if at the end of the day they just pick up their iphones and go home...

andreibechet

I also have high hopes, but somehow (even though we/I did not get to see much) I have a lot of faith in them ... what impresses me is their passion, and if passion is involved only great products can arise.

Don't even get me started on the low lever android phones ... android was shit in my opinion till 4.1 or 4.2, and it is still shit just by the fact that it needs more cores than I have on my laptop just to run smooth.

andreibechet

Is it me, or the phone which Mark had in his hands actually looks really sleek (and I mean no more big spaces in between the bezel and screen, or thinness)

andreibechet

As I was saying:

JollaTides

@andreibechet

Looking SWEET! :-)

richardski

The vision is great. This is a brilliant new eco system for phones but it does need a declaration to support FOSS to support customer security and choice.

Richard

andreibechet

Which color are you guys getting yours?

JollaTides · Post edited by JollaTides at 2013-11-16 00:27:40

@andreibechet - Black is favourite for me.. and you ? :-)

andreibechet

Not sure .... turquoise maybe, although I like the dark brown as well (I am a bit tired of pure black ... maybe I will buy a black second half with a qwerty keyboard when it comes out)

JollaTides

Yeah, brown's probably the new black I reckon! TBH I don't mind what colour as long as it comes before Christmas! :)

blue787

I truly love three Colors I have seen: the orange, the torquoise and the yellow one. Black is a bit basic now for phones, plus the ambiances should be quite interesting for these other halves.

JollaTides

The turquoise is seriously tempting and could sway me for sure! <3

Lacrimosa

The Jolla website says that the Jolla phone will ship with Sailfish OS beta. Not sure what this means in terms of bugs, missing features, etc.

andreibechet

Lacrimosa said:
The Jolla website says that the Jolla phone will ship with Sailfish OS beta. Not sure what this means in terms of bugs, missing features, etc.

Presumably it will not have everything and there might be some bugs. Anyways, even if they would have not said "beta" I would have still expected that as it is their 1st phone ever. If you want something to work just like the iphone or nexus I would then wait a couple of months and then buy it. And if you don't mind I would say go for it and help them develop a great phone. They will listen to all our feedback and fix all the missing features/bugs.

Lacrimosa

Nah, the Jolla device will be my next phone anyway. I would never go for something closed like iOS and Android just seems like a step down from the N9 despite its bugs. Sorry if my comment seemed negative, I just thought it would be something interesting to point out in this thread.

andreibechet

Lacrimosa said:
Nah, the Jolla device will be my next phone anyway. I would never go for something closed like iOS and Android just seems like a step down from the N9 despite its bugs. Sorry if my comment seemed negative, I just thought it would be something interesting to point out in this thread.

:) Great! More people in the beginning results in a better experience obtained faster.

I did not take it in a negative way, I wanted to explain both options while trying to be impartial. Every information and opinions are welcomed. Thank you!

JollaTides

If you think about, the N9 could have probably been considered 'beta' when it first arrived and the N900. That didn't stop them from being great phones. :-)

andreibechet

The 1st version of any electronic device can be considered beta (take iphone, 1st google phone, 1st kindle paperwhite ... and so on). Since Jolla is a special company which actually listen to the community, I think it will be a big plus for the whole experience if a lot of people actually buy it now.

JollaTides

Yes you're right - the first iPhone was (apparently) more of a 'beta' experiment. And the first android phones were pretty bad compared with how much smartphones have advanced today.

The good thing is that the general level of smartphones today is so much more advanced than back a few years ago, so a beta phone now is still so much better than it would have been back then!

And you're right, Jolla will be there for us, waiting, listening to the feedback and acting accordingly if there is anything out of sync. Being part of that (for me at least) is actually rather exciting! :-)

technicus

I don't see there no problems eigther. As long as they provide us with software updates, everything is easy :)

Lacrimosa

And as long as the most basic/essential phone functions work like calling, contacts, camera, SMS, I will be happy and anything else is a bonus.

PJW_2273

My feeling is the Sailfish OS Beta will do 99% of day to day tasks OK. My first Android was Gingerbread and that felt like a Beta OS with most things work but damn ugly, and a strange sense of logic.

Really looking forward to being able to contribute as a user, and help build a better OS for mobile.

JollaTides

@PJW_2273

Agreed, and my first Android was also Gingerbread for the record... what a mess that was after coming from Maemo 5. I hear Jelly Bean is/was a big improvement, but I stopped using Android after ICS. 8|

KnuX

JollaTides said:
@PJW_2273

Agreed, and my first Android was also Gingerbread for the record... what a mess that was after coming from Maemo 5. I hear Jelly Bean is/was a big improvement, but I stopped using Android after ICS. 8|

JB isn't much better. It's just the hardware is better (normally) so it covers up the issues somewhat. You have more RAM, so you can multitask, instead of apps getting randomly killed if you have to look up something in the browser to paste in your chat client. You have more flash so you don't have to have root to use hackish programs that allow you to move applications to the sd card. etc.

I wish I was kidding...

Faz · Post edited by Faz at 2013-11-23 03:16:10

JollaTides said:
Actually the N900 wasn't exactly the 1st - the N770; N800; N810 were all predecessors which eventually lead to the N900 although the others didn't have phone functionality.

N900 being 4th to the final N9 fifth in the series.
Technically the first wasn't N series so the model number was simply 770. (Would still love to obtain one to complete my collection though!)

Faz

andreibechet said:
As I was saying:

I love what Marc says at 1:44 "It should be easy enough that anyone can use it, but it should be powerful enough that you're satisfied in your ability to do many things"

This is exactly the kind of language that I find exciting, attracted me to Nokia's internet tablets and I feel the Jolla team is passionately continueing where ~~no man~~ no company has gone before. :)

Lacrimosa

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know whether the Jolla phone has wireless charging? It's not mentioned on the website, but I'm not too worried if not because anything is possible with the Other Half and wireless charging is not really an essential feature.

aironeous

PJW_2273 said:
My feeling is the Sailfish OS Beta will do 99% of day to day tasks OK. *snip

But the web has not fully converted from flash to html5 yet. Android dominates the market and they all play flash in the browser. Practically every website I go to will need to have flash playable or else I can't watch the video or interact with it. How am I supposed to function like that scared to click links because what if there is flash on that page. I just don't see the logic of throwing the old technology out suddenly when the reality is the web still uses flash.

I tweeted to Jolla about flash and they just say (I'm paraphrasing and shortening the conversation here) "please understand flash is no longer supported on mobile"
Yet my HTC One is playing it, my laptop, 100's of millions of android phones and my N9 played it and I bet you the majority of tablets play it.
My feeling is "please understand I want my phone browser to work like everyone else's."
I responded to them what if ford said they will no longer make gas cars or hybrids only electrics. How customer friendly would that be?

I like the Jolla phone but the flash thing is putting me in the not gonna buy it side of the fence. Hopefully some end users at XDA forums will hack a sailfish UI for my HTC One so I can have the UI or something similar but still have flash.

andreibechet

I do not want to be mean or anything .... but i really really wish for flash to die already :))
Anyways you already have a good phone, maybe you can try Jolla later. I am sure there will also be the option to install an android browser which supports flash.

BTW: I have an iphone4 for almost 3 years now and I haven't missed the flash because almost always the html5 version is available.

JollaTides

I see what you mean @aironeous but have recently been using the BB10 software which has flash built in to the browser. All I can say, after using the N900, N9, Z10 and other flash enabled devices is they are very heavy on resources and cause such slow browser performance from my experience.

I also tested an iPhone 4 on my travels like @andrebechet and the browser (by comparison) is super smooth and hugely responsive (even though it is running on 3yr old tech!).

I also didn't notice any problems with missing features but it depends on what you are trying to do with flash? For example with the HTML iphone browser, it is so optimised for web that you really don't miss much. And if there is something with flash you need to do, there are even apps that can allow you to watch flash videos even though the browser has no support.

In fact just go on the google play store and you will see many android apps available if you want to have a 'flash' experience. Hopefully we'll see those able to run through the Android compatibility layer on Sailfish or hopefully some native versions! ;-)

JollaTides

@aironeous

Flash is in fact not 'officially' supported from Android Jelly Bean onwards but the work around if you need a stopgap in the transition to HTML is to get apps/browsers like this one:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsverse.photon

Hopefully browsers like this one and others will run through the android compatibility layer on Sailfish. But let's also hope for some native support! ;-)

With an active dev community behind Sailfish, there may be other ways also to 'unofficially' add flash similar to the hack in this article which relates to android:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/google-android/3417930/flash-on-android/

blitzschlag

the question is if you really want or need a compromised piece of software that is flash on your phone?!

ok, i get it that ppl install all sorts of unreliable and uncontrollable software on their devices. Security and privacy still seem to be not priorized by the majority of users.

PJW_2273

Aironeous, Fair point about flash but for me I cannot recall the last time I visited a site where having not having flash was an issue. I use my mobile mainly for work so few of the sites i visit regularly use flash for their content.

I guess this issue is going to affect people differently depending on their browsing habits.

andreibechet

http://jolla.com/guide/

technicus · Post edited by technicus at 2013-11-28 00:00:06

From the JollaHQ Twitter account

Whippler ‏@Whippler_42 6h

@JollaHQ Onko exFat tuki, 64GB:n mSDXC korteille, vai pitääkö formatoida fat32.

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Jolla ‏@JollaHQ 6h

@Whippler_42 32gb on tuettu.

:! seriously? only 32GB sd cards are supported? I mean it's better than non but we live in the end of 2013 :D
I hope they will patch it like the N9 >:-)

JollaTides

@technicus

I retweeted that too... I think you're right, hopefully we'll see some future updates to support 64gb.

For me personally, 16gb + 32gb is actually enough for mobile, but of course, I'm always open to more storage. ;-)

technicus

For me too, but i am thinking that, if you have the possibiltity to get the maximum out of your resources you should try to reach it :)

KnuX

Only 32gb? That's weird. Even the N900 supports 64gb microsd cards, you just have to format them as fat32.
Many other older devices that don't claim support actually work -- I've seen my 64gb card work on a low-end samsung touchscreen phone (without android) from around 2009 too.

andreibechet · Post edited by andreibechet at 2013-11-28 08:52:00

More on the Jolla device here: http://www.youtube.com/user/arciusWatch?feature=watch

I feel the need to emphasize the fact that Jolla phone is still in beta stages for a few months ... guys, bear with them and let's help them make this phone truly wonderful :)

JollaTides

@technicus @Knux

A lot of it also can come down to the type of SD card. You read cases of some brand/type being compatible at eg. 64gb but others not. It can be a case of finding a brand/type of card that works, but often many manufacturers won't guarantee either way beyond 32gb if there are these potential incompatibility issues.

So it might be the same case with the Jolla ? :S

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