We just discovered an issue in both 1.0.0.5 and 1.0.1.10 today which causes update of the store token required for accessing store repositories to fail. A fix for that has been pushed a few minutes ago: The update to version 1.0.1.12 you might be seeing on your device soon contains exactly this one fix to keep store access working.
My Jolla arrived this morning, and I’ve been playing with it all day. It is by far the most exciting device and operating system I’ve used in a long, long time. When it arrived, the first update to the operating system was already waiting for me to be installed – and only a few hours later, another update is hitting the device. They have promised another large bugfix and stability update before the end of the year, with updates with new features arriving early next year.
These men and women know what they’re doing. They’re not overselling, and they keep their promises. A very promising start.
nta
There’s a lot to be said for quiet competence and persistence.
As long as they don’t over reach and start a debt-fueled death spiral, Jolla has the potential to evolve into a serious smartphone player over time. Though I’m not in their target market, I’m rooting for them.
Always one step ahead! I have been dying to get my hands on my Jolla (got the shirt and everything!) Unfortunately I’m in the USA, and who knows if/when it’ll be available here. Though with a few of the (currently) missing features, I’d probably be using my N9 for the first couple of months with it. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be tweaking and playing around with the innards until I move it to my normal phone usage.
It really is a win on all sides. You don’t have to use crappy Android, and yet you can run the massive amounts (of mostly crapware) software for it. So even the few things that may end up missing as native applications can be fulfilled with those.
Still waiting for them to address the US market. The FCC and patent minefields will be just a few of expected hurdles.
Even more reason to completely ignore the US market. It’s simply not worth it.
It’s not fair for their users in US. It has to be addressed, but with caution.
Uh, they don’t have any users in the U.S.
It does? Why? With access to markets like Asia and Europe that greatly outnumber the U.S why would they bother?
The U.S market is simply not as important as it once was.
Potential customers are still customers, if there is demand. I’d love to buy this phone.
I would say because the US is still a world player no matter how much you wish it wasn’t. I simply don’t understand this attitude; why wouldn’t they want to reach out to a large, consumer oriented populace? Are you afraid that if it didn’t perform well in the US, it would somehow hurt sales in Europe and Asia? Because I doubt that would be the case; the Nokia N900 was basically a failure here, but thrived in other markets.
You say the US isn’t as important as it once was, so why muster up the effort to oppose Jolla coming here? What are you so afraid of?
Because (especially for a small company) costs of fighting with those gigantic-patent-trolls simply outweights potential benefits? There are other markets and it seems that Jolla is doing quite ok in Asia.
This goes both ways (we may want netflix or whatever – not on the speed with those services, don’t use them, netflix pops up quite a lot so I gather it’s desired) but I don’t see it happening anytime soon and huge potential userbase outside US is understood yet this changes nothing…
Quite OK? They will barely register, Android is all the rage.
yup… and your data comes from?
nevertheless – jolla/sailfish just debuted, android is present for a while… you expect that jolla would be predominant mobile os right now? =,=
You made an extraordinary claim, not me. But at least you backed off… (yes, Jolla just debuted, “doing quite ok” was rubbish)
No, they’re still just potential customers, not actual customers. That’s not saying they’re not important but they’re not the same.
I never said it’s not a player, I said the U.S market is not as important as it once was. It’s perfectly possible to be an important global player and make good profits without having a presence in the U.S.
Because of the stated problems with your patent system, among other things. Apparently the positive aspects of entering that market does not outweigh the negative ones at this point in time. Maybe your legislation will change (yeah right) or Jolla may at some point grow to such a size that they feel differently about it. That time is however not now.
I really don’t care if they enter or not.
Thrived?
And how would you know? Jolla didn’t publish any statistics so far. And those who preordered from US are still waiting. There surely is a demand for Jolla/Sailfish in US which they didn’t address yet.
Saying US market is not important is not just short sighted, it’s insulting for users there. It’s weird for companies to segment out markets just to dismiss people based on “unimportance” (like many media companies do with regional exclusive releases). Jolla is not ignoring anything out of bad will, they just have limited resources and do things gradually.
Edited 2013-12-17 16:53 UTC
Because like it or not what becomes a hit in the USA ends up a hit elsewhere? And don’t forget we in the USA have the most powerful advertising on the planet in the form of Hollywood,why do you think Apple made sure so many shows and movies have them using Apple devices? Folks want what they see in the movies and the vast majority of the big flicks? USA.
Jolla disagrees and obviously does not think it’s worth the effort.
Really, there’s no need to get so defensive.
Hollywood doesn’t care about startups. I don’t think Jolla should care about Hollywood either. Dealing with them means obliging their DRM craze which Jolla has no interest in: https://sailfishos.org/wiki/QA
Edited 2013-12-17 19:45 UTC
None of that really matters. The market in the U.S. is wholly start-up hostile and it’s not a good place for Jolla to enter yet. How the patents system over there works is so that the larger your patent pool the easier it is for you to defend yourself and to harass others, and this again translates into more resources and you being able to prolong and prolong any possible court-cases over and over so long that a small start-up like Jolla simply has no chance to grow. The system is stacked in favor of already-established, large players and against newcomers.
Jolla may enter the market later on, but for now growth is in their best interests and that is best achieved in other markets.
Wow…the very same attitude that Europeans claim Americans suffer from, coming from a European. Stay classy, dude.
Small-mindedness is small-mindedness, no matter which side of the pond you’re on.
Do you have examples of what you mean?
The attitude here is: the US has such a stupid minefield of patents that it is not worth it to enter it until you have a big warchest with which to pay for those millions of lawyers you are going to need.
The attitude Americans suffer from: we are number one
I didn’t see it as a patent issue (though surely it will be), but as a more personal “I hate fucking Americans” type comment. Maybe I was wrong, I’m just so used to the anti-America attitude on this site (deserved or not).
Yes, we have a corrupt government, yes there are a lot of idiots running things here…but the same can be said about most European countries. The difference is, the Americans on this site don’t go around bashing European countries over a damn phone. Like I said, small-mindedness.
It’s perfectly OK for you to chastise Europeans. But God forbid one of those uppity Euros dares mention the US with less than glowing praise. Did I get the double standard right?
Sometimes criticism of a country’s markets conditions is just that; a critique on the difficulty of carrying out business there. Not a personal indictment against your character for being a citizen of said country.
And as I said, I was likely wrong about that particular comment.
But the fact remains there is a long-standing anti-American attitude on this site. I tolerate it because I know it’s not directed at me, and I believe this is the first time I’ve brought it up. There’s no double standard, and you’re putting words in my mouth, things that aren’t even in my vocabulary. (Uppity? Really?)
I could see you taking that position if I were constantly making comments and accusations, but that isn’t the case.
I was simply using a bit of a hyperbole to highlight the double standard I perceived in your post, that’s all.
Thinking that other people’s critiques of us come from a place of bigotry, while at the same time assuming our criticism of others is perfectly reasonable (and justified), is a pretty common occurrence.
E.g. I don’t see that all that anti-American sentiment you seem to feel from comments in this site. While at the same time if I had a skin thin enough I could perceive some anti-European harping from your post(s). Even though I’m sure that was not your intention…
Sorry for the tangent, as this has nothing to do with the contents of the news item in question.
I think we can both agree that it goes both ways.
I will say that I think it was unfair of you to paint me as a hypocrite when I chose to speak up one time about something I’ve been silently observing for a very long time now.
Anyway, enough of all that…I want a Sailfish phone to play with! And I’m adding my voice to the ones hoping for Thom to review it soon.
Well, to be honest I was not in any way trying to indict your character. I don’t consider you (the person) to be the posts you write, I don’t know you personally so it would be awful of me to claim you’re a hypocrite from just a couple of sentences you wrote. If that’s the impression you got, please accept my apologies.
When there are people from far away attempting to communicate through a medium as limited as this one, there is bound to be miscommunication.
It’s about something else, there is a difference (perceived one, rightly or wrongly; it’s present) between the US and “most European countries” – the latter don’t really meddle in the affairs of others like the US does.
Luckily, now we have the EU to balance it out… ;p
Didn’t you get the memo? Double standards equal enlightenment now.
P.S.
I sure hope you’re prepared to be modded down to oblivion and/or dogpiled by the “Rah-rah, EU #1!” folks.
I really don’t care about mod points, as I’ve said in the past. My reputation here speaks for itself, and I like to think I’m a liked or at least respected person. When I say something controversial or unpopular, I expect a backlash and it’s fine.
I’ve never taken the anti-American attitude here personally, and even with this discussion I didn’t. This is just the first time I’ve been moved to bring it up. I’m not anti-European, and this discussion won’t change that. An entire continent is not measured by the words of a few of its members.
And as Forrest Gump would say, “that’s all I’ve got to say about that”.
Mod points are useless for their intended purpose, of course – but they are a useful indicator of which way the group-think winds are blowing.
I don’t think it requires an anti-European stance to to find it tiresome when the usual suspects immediately pounce on any mention of the US, and try to spin it as an excuse to take lazy cheapshots & or hop up on their soapbox for some smug bragging about how everything is oh-so-much better in the EU.
Even ignoring the obnoxious nationalism, it betrays a dangerous level of “things like that could never happen in MY country” naivete. To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, “People mistakenly assume that these are uniquely-American issues. The reality is that these are societal issues that can occur in any country; it’s just that, as the most advanced country on Earth, we’ve reached that stage first.”
Thom, any chances for an in-depth review? You always write nice and insightful articles about devices.
Yes. And (though I know it’s not your style) perhaps a comparison of Sailfish, Ubuntu Phone, and FIrefox OS? When my contract runs out in a year I’m going to make a switch off of Android, and I’m torn.
I’m afraid that would be a bit expensive. Don’t have any devices with FirefoxOS or Ubuntu.
I have a FirefoxOS phone:
http://shop.geeksphone.com/en/phones/5-peak.html
For less than 2 weeks now, here is a mini-review:
I have Firefox 1.1 on my phone, Firefox 1.2 was released a couple of days ago. There is a new release every 12 weeks.
I like it, it has the apps I need and it works for what I do with it. I wasn’t a heavy smartphone user before though. I don’t notice any lag in the applications. Sometimes there is lag when it gets out of standby.
My biggest missing features are: copy&paste and text selection.
And I would really like some arrow keys on the virtual keyboard (which smartphone or tablet has a virtual keyboard with those ? Seems to me many don’t. Sailfish has it by default).
Text selection is coming and after that copy&paste will also be developed on top of that. The release of copy&paste is on the roadmap for Firefox 1.5.
So I guess I’ll have to wait till Aug. next year or something like that. Unless I help with coding. 😉
As I didn’t see an annoucement on OSNews, I thought I would mention it here, FirefoxOS also had it’s third release:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Releases/1.2
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/notes/1.2/
There release schedule is every 12 weeks.
I’m glad these open platforms are now available on real hardware.
I heared Ubuntu Phone also had a deal with a hardware manufacturer.
Interesting times. 🙂
So the one left behind is Tizen ? No release yet and some news about possible Samsung and Mozilla collaboration ?:
http://firefoxosguide.com/firefox-os/samsung-seeking-help-mozilla-s…
Edited 2013-12-17 10:14 UTC
Debian for my general purpose machines
Debian fork Kali for infosec specialized machines
Debian 2nd fork Security Onion for monitoring machines
For the company that can deliver a tablet/mobile phone running Debian or a very close Debian fork, I got a nice big phat available amount waiting on the credit card. I’d even go Ubuntu if it proves out as a general purpose Linux distribution under the tablet/phone GUI interface.
Yes, Firefox OS is moving very fast. I think they now have phones in 13 countries, and a large base of open-source advocates.
Ubuntu says they have a hardware vendor, but no one knows who or where.
It looks like Sailfish uses QT-type programming, but their Wikipedia page list HTML5 but without details. If they do HTML5 apps, I’m interested. So far, the only 100% HTML5 app phone is Firefox OS.
Tizen sort of has HTML5 but their development environment seems a little complicated. That article about collaborating with Mozilla hasn’t had much followup. The two cultures of Samsung and Mozilla don’t seem like they would get along well.
One of the things I like about Firefox is their development environment. Write your app in HTML5 in Firefox, use the plug-in emulator to test it, use the emulator to load it on to the phone. Opposite end of the universe from MASM.
Tom, you can buy an unlocked Firefox OS phone for $79 on eBay (or at least I did). It’s a developer phone, but it works, makes calls, plays music, games, surfs the web, etc.
And lastly, the Firefox OS has a very vibrant multi-cultural community. HTML5 opens the door to all kinds of people, allowing a new flood of creativity.
Okay, I’m a fffanboy!
Nope, you’re not a fanboy until you start making outrageously false claims that it somehow mops the floor with the competition, butters your bread, discovers new star systems, etc.
I love the concept of Firefox OS, and it’s on the table as a future long-term solution since it runs on phones compatible with my chosen network. I’m trying to ramp down my tech purchases though; after all I still have an N900 if I want to play around with an open phone. Wait, now there’s a cool idea: FFOS on an N900!
You want to ramp down your tech purchases ?
This is what I have:
I now regularly use a FirefoxOS phone, the Peak from Geeksphone and a Samsung ARM Chromebook with Desktop Linux (base install was ChrUbuntu).
One was 300 euro including shipping, the phone about 150 euro including shipping. Weight is 1 kg and 0.2 kg, for on the couch or on the go with always Internet. The Chromebook has a keyboard and gets about 6 hours battery life after many charges.
I think that is a pretty good deal.
(I also use a desktop at home and at work)
Yeah, I’ve been through way too many phones the past few years, as well as various laptops and tablets. Granted, I rarely put out much, if any, real money; I tend to trade within a small circle of like-minded friends and family. But I’m trying to pare down to essentials and find a good long-term solution for mobile use.
I recently sold and traded off a few devices, including my netbook just today. I hope to end up with one desktop, one tablet and one phone in my collection, and my wife has her laptop, iPad and Kindle (though she is good about squeezing all the life and then some out of her devices, hence her first generation iPad and two year old phone and laptop).
I’m not counting our desktop PC-based DVR, of course, or my Raspberry Pi which is currently serving as a media player for the TV…see what I mean?
I’m not much into games, but I wonder if a machine with SteamOS would be useful as a DVR. I’m not very impressed with the DVR I have now. I would guess it should be able to do that, SteamOS is just standard Debian with some Valve software sprinkled on top.
Mine is a Dell Core2Duo slim workstation with 2GB of RAM and it can play perfectly smooth 720p (highest res supported by the screen connected to it) with the built in Intel video. I use Plex as the media server software.
You should be able to install Plex, and possibly MythTV if you intend to record live TV; beyond that there are no real requirements for a good base machine. I’d say any box capable of getting the most out of SteamOS would be overkill as a DVR or media server. I think that’s the direction Valve wants to go anyway.
I would rather install XBMC. It does support recording and managing live-TV nowadays and it can do so much more besides that. Plex+MythTV is still a good solution, too, and both are worth checking out to see which suit OP better.
Yep, any of those should run fine on a Steam-capable machine. I use Raspbmc on the RasPi and it works great considering how underpowered that board is.
I’ve never had a lot of luck with XBMC on the DVR though; Plex is just easier and supports pretty much any device I have either through an official app or the web interface. Between it and OwnCloud’s new document features I’m a very happy camper in the “cloud” arena these days. Who needs Google anyway?
I assume you haven’t tried the latest, ie. XBMC 13? It brings a lot of improvements on the DVR-end of things. Granted, I haven’t tried them personally, I have absolutely no use whatsoever for a DVR.
Well, I use Google’s search. Haven’t found anything better. But aside from that….
Question: Are the FF phones all still using REALLY crappy hardware?
Not trying to dis the OS, it looks nice, but it seems to be falling into the same slum that befell those Linux boxes that the BB retailers would carry. Take a FOSS OS, slap it on out of date hardware that you can’t move anymore, call it a day.
If they put it on something with decent specs at an affordable price? Say something similar to what I’ve been seeing the $150 Android phones, 1.2 Ghz+ with 1Gb of RAM? Hell I’d be happy to try it, especially if they come out with a slider, but so far all I’ve seen are phones that have worse specs than my 2011 LG I got for free from the prepaid just for buying a phone card!
I’ve tested it on a Nexus S and Nexus 4. It really doesn’t matter so much about the raw hardware specs, as it is a very lightweight OS to start with. That’s one of the things I really like about it, and why I’m only partly joking when I say I want it on the N900. Because lately, Maemo just seems so S-L-O-W compared to modern phones! I’d love for the N900 to have an OS as fluid and modern as Android on the Nexus 4 or Windows Phone on, well, any Lumia.
Anyway, because of its light footprint it can run well on very basic hardware. With Firefox OS I’d be focused more on screen quality and battery life than processor speed and RAM.
The elephant in the room is video though, sure a crappy CPU and a teeny tiny bit of RAM can surf all day on static webpages, heck I recently sold my 2003 Sempron and with even a CPU that old and a lousy 1Gb of RAM it’d do static webpages and webmail all day long.
But folks today want to be able to watch videos on their mobile devices and THAT is where not having enough horse is gonna bite it in the behind. IMHO the worse thing that happened to mobile was the press kissing Jobs’ behind and letting him kill Flash (not a single media outlet pointed out how killing Flash gave him complete control with his appstore? Really?) because frankly H.26x is a pig. My 2011 LG can play SD flash without a bit of stutter but H.264 is a stutter monster, I can only imagine what it must be like on the specs the MozPhone comes with.
I wouldn’t say they were crappy (everything works), but as a retired engineer, I’d say that this is a developer phone and I don’t drop it on the floor very often (I did accidentally and it burst open but wasn’t hurt). I have a ZTE Open and for $79 (unlocked) I think the value is there. It could use more system memory. But everything works. I can make calls (just put in a SIM card), play music, play games, and write programs that run on it.
If anyone wants to know more about the practical Firefox OS programming, my blog is http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/.
Firefox OS is still growing but growing fast. And the main point is that the barrier to entry is very low.
I think the official list is:
FirefoxOS: html5 apps only
Sailfish: HTML5-apps, Android apps, and QT-apps
Ubuntu: HTML5-apps, QT-apps (GTK-apps ?)
Tizen: Enlightment-apps, HTML5-apps and source-compatibility for Bada-apps
And the winner is…..
Well: HTML5 runs on all platforms and the proprietary platforms too. Including laptop and desktop.
So it could still be the winner.
Firefox OS phones are cheap and work pretty well. And needs less memory because it only needs to run one runtime.
I don’t think there is a real high-end FirefoxOS phone yet though.
So maybe FirefoxOS ? Or at least HTML5-apps for many applications.
Is there an anything missing from a FirefoxOS-phone which it couldn’t support ?
Anyway the goal of FirefoxOS, like the Firefox browser is to promote the use of webtechnologies. It does not exist to win the platform or browser wars. Just for the open web platform to win to platform wars.
I might be on the losers side, but I side with the native guys.
HTML5 has it’s advantages, but it is hard to predict what will happen.
Usually the open platform eventually wins, but it takes a lot of time and hard work, because the proprietary, probably closed and possibly native solutions are always first in a market. It takes time to create standards.
Have a look at for example what things Mozilla had to implement (a lot did not have a web standard yet):
https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI
You have to think of a solution, create it in a way which is portable and still flexible, supporting many different implementations or devices and screensizes. And propose that to the different W3C working groups for development as a standard.
Then other companies can join the effort to write a specification. They might have different ideas or priorities. So you’ll have to collaborate.
Before you get to that stage you might be able to start to develop parts of the code, but you can’t release your code as-is to the public yet. As the API isn’t stable yet.
At the moment Firefox OS has a small following, but there are millions of webdevelopers and only 100’s of thousands of iOS/Android developers.
I write portable native code. That is what C++ is for.
Good. Very good, there is nothing wrong with that.
Programming is a very useful skill. I think more people should have these skills, after all: “Software is eating the world”. As an example, Amazon is not a books company, or a hosting provider, but a software development company.
I’m just saying: webtechnologies are open standards with widespread adoption. Because the webtechnologies are faster to develop for it is quicker to get a result. And you can deliver to more, diverse platforms with mostly the same code. And it has a built-in update system.
Which makes it cheaper to develop, because the time needed to do so is shorter and the people needed to do so can be less skilled.
There is some overhead, but on one hand the overhead is getting smaller and on the other the performance of the systems running the code is improving.
This means a lot of applications could be build with webtechnologies.
It also means the applications build with webtechnologies will most of the time not be the fist in a market. So native a lot of the time has the first-mover advantage.
It’s a battle. A platform battle.
Good point. The Firefox OS phone is fast and light (and doesn’t seem to drain power as often as my Androids and iPhones).
I think it has everything a cell phone wants. Right now there’s 700 games in the Marketplace, some of them good. That’s enough for me. Call, surf, play music and games.
I’ve looked at the other development environments and they all seem to want additional tools or extra frameworks. FFOS has a framework you can use for UI, but isn’t required. You can do vanilla HTML5, Firefox Browser, the B2G plug-in, and notepad. That’s it.
Has anyone figured out the Windows 8 Phone story on HTML5? I hear yes and no and maybe.
Microsoft keeps telling people it’s possible, but I haven’t looked at it.
This has a bunch of links:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17205844/is-it-possible-to-devel…
The answer is yes and no. The HTML5 support is via an embedded browser control and PhoneGap which apparently has the official blessing of Microsoft.
Now YMMV with the experience, it isn’t as seamless as it is on Windows 8 itself with HTML5 and the WinJS WinRT projections.
I’m not sure how big of a priority it is for Microsoft, HTML5 Windows Store apps are few and far between. IMO its been a massive distraction which probably negatively impacted design decisions around the Windows Runtime. Annoying.
This HTML5 fad needs to die already. Web tools belong on the web.
Fully agree, back in the first .com wave, I jumped with both feets into web development.
Nowadays I jump of joy every time I am requested to do native UI coding or backend stuff instead of web UI.
HTML/CSS/JS is such a clusterfuck for UI development to get right across all browsers and operating systems, specially when enterprise customers ask for desktop like UX.
That’s what I thought, but I didn’t know whether it had progressed since I last looked.
I wonder how Windows Phone 8 HTML5 performance compares to similar use-a-browser-control in Android (and maybe iPhone). It still feels like a hack, whereas Firefox OS is designed for HTML5 from the ground up.
I’ve been fascinated to watch the priority of HTML5 apps drop as Windows 8 progressed. In the early days the focus was on HTML5, changed to XAML, and finally to DirectX by the time they shipped. Kraig Brockschmidt and Jesse Freeman have written books on HTML5 for Windows 8 (not the phone), but I’m intrigued with your saying that HTML5 Windows Store apps are few and far between.
At their core, I think those Microsoft guys still love native, hard core, grit-your-teeth C (forget that modern C++ crap) and anything else is just not good enough. Which is okay but I also love the speed and freedom of HTML5 and the easy development environment of Firefox OS. Make it easy and I’m there, even though my background is machine language and bit-twiddling.
HTML 5 on one platform may not be the same HTML 5 on another. With different JS libraries to manipulate the DOM and interface with the hardware and OS.
It might not be, but you always gain from having more portable code. And the same goes for the design of the app. You can use responsive design. Which scales your application to the screensize.
Also there are design principles like degradation graceul and progressive enhancement which allow you to only support what a device supports.
Someone asked today in the comments about HTML5 apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Have a look at home easy it is:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Inside+Windows+Phone/Developing-in-H…
You can probably skip the introduction at go directly to 3:45.
Edited 2013-12-17 23:48 UTC
It kind of depends on your app. Some apps can only be degraded so far before they are no longer useful.
Most of the time that just means the author didn’t take (or have) the time to implement some platform specific code.
My phone already runs Firefox and Chrome, no need for another phone.