In that spirit, we now have answers for those of you who have been waiting for the next Jolla Tablet update – thanks again for your patience. As already stated in our New Year’s post, we plan to ship an additional small batch of Jolla Tablets to early Indiegogo backers. And, for the rest of our backers, we now have a refund process in place.
They’re shipping 540 tablets – no, that’s not a typo – to early backers, of which I am one, but whether or not I’ll actually be one of the ‘lucky’ 540, I don’t know yet. Otherwise, it’ll be the refund program. I’m glad they’re offering this program, because the whole ordeal has been quite the letdown.
It’s very frustrating, as clearly there are many people like me who would happily buy a Jolla device if new hardware were available. Even though my current Jolla’s showing its age from use, I can’t justify replacing it with identical hardware.
Jolla needs licensing rather than individual sales, which has been their plan from the beginning. I hope they can still succeed with it. With Blackberry moving to Android I guess it’s the last QT-based phone available?
Canonical’s Ubuntu Touch is based on Qt/QML…
That’s a good point, I’d forgotten about Ubuntu Touch. Maybe I’m just out of the loop, but it feels like it’s been moving slowly, or maybe just quietly. Odd given it’s shipping on real hardware.
If this list https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0hz00dzrmqgj2x/backers.txt?dl=0 is to be considered somewhat definitive – the guys over at TMO have put a lot of time into it – you’re #70 and more than likely will receive your Jolla Tablet Thom.
Kudos. If that holds true, you’ll have something with a storied past and quite rare to boot.
Great find! By the numbers, it looks like I won’t get a refund until like, 2017.
i dont even
How did they create this list? That seems like a lot of personal info…
I would assume they used this and a scraper:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-crowds…
This is why I made my contribution with the ‘anonymous’ option ticked.
Aside from a name, what personal information?
How would anyone look up their name if the list didn’t have names???
I am also on this list under the first 500.
Though I am still a little sceptical as I ordered a 32GB version and it is not yet clear to me if there are any of those under the 540 tablets they will ship.
As far as I know the first 121 tablets shipped were all 64GB versions.
So keep that in mind
This:
http://i.imgur.com/oCn9Pg4.jpg
I understand people who crowdfunded unique (at the time) pieces of hardware like the Oculus VR kit or the Pebble watch, as back then there was the existing possibility of nothing similar appearing again on the radar for years, and hence the risk was worth it…
…but, did the world run out of tablets or something? Does sailfish OS has a killer app that makes you see only pleasant dreams or some other killer app I don’t know about? Shouldn’t those backers have waited for it to reach production before giving the money? It wasn’t an inexpensive device as far as I can remember.
Anyway… the majority of backers have every right to be pissed, as they provided an interest free loan to Jolla (and will keep doing so), just so Jolla can build the 2.0 version of their OS, which if it gets licensed to some OEM, it will have other users buying those other devices and enjoying it right away…
PS: Yes, I understand that people who crowdfunded the Jolla tablet probably already have other tablets, but still that was a lot of money for a plate that stayed empty for a long time or forever. I am pointing out the absurdity of crowdfunding or preordering hardware without any killer app or killer feature.
Edited 2016-01-29 02:40 UTC
Joke’s on them. The S&P 500 is down 10.42% since I made my purchase. If I get the full refund back while the market’s on its current downward trajectory, then I come out ahead.
If I were to offer 90% of the refund amount today, how many people would take that offer? I’d be really surprised if the refunds ever happen.
The company isn’t making any money, they have new investors to attract, and other owners they need to keep happy. Refunding tablet orders isn’t going to be high on their list of capital expenditures. The focus will be on things that will earn them money: licensing sailfish on terrible devices for BRIC populations that don’t care about the tablet.
Sailfish was always a terrible idea. Giving them any money was just silly.
Ever heard about banks? You also provide them with an interest-free loan, but the money is available to you 24/7, at least in non-failing countries.
The S&P 500 investors are there to make a neat ROI. The Jolla tablet wasn’t a huge price bargain to begin with, so what’s the point of crowdfunding it? (where is the ROI?) Not that if it was a huge bargain you should have gone for it. Just look at the guys who preordered the OnePlus One, and when they eventually got it.
Edited 2016-01-29 12:36 UTC
Dude, I’m just trying to make the best out of a shitty situation. I was optimistic (wrongfully) about a privacy-oriented open ecosystem, and to me, that was worth the $300 to a company that had already delivered a decent product. Who could have predicted they would sell out their loyal customers for a contract with the Russian government?
Anyone keeping tabs on what their finances looked like? Though I grant you that we’d probably not have predicted Russia specifically.
I am not trying to make fun of anybody. I am just trying to point out what a bad deal preorders and crowdfunds are for the person bringing the money… and why you should not “fund” or “preorder” stuff that has functional equivalents as already existing products for sale.
Companies who have a name for themselves don’t even do preorders anymore, because all it does is kill the excitement. The product goes up for sale and that’s it. Thank you Steve Jobs for pioneering that model and ridding the world of preorders (but it doesn’t make it up for all the locks in your products unfortunately)
Edited 2016-01-30 04:01 UTC
The killer app for me was that it was not Android nor iOS. Anyway, I can wait a few more months to see if the final specifications of the planned Bq Ubuntu tablet are a good alternative. ATM I have no tablet, only a slow netbook running Lubuntu with a ruined battery that I plan to replace with a tablet since several years. I rather wait a very long time until a decent tablet hits the market.
I agree. Once the design is done, manufactured and ready to ship the item has outdated specs and there are better things for that price point.
I suspect that was the point. I mean, what was otherwise interesting about this tablet, other than the company behind it and the software?
Edited 2016-01-29 10:45 UTC
I’m horribly impressed that they failed so utterly. 540? Really?
Granted, from what I understand, their manufacturer pretty much fisted them. I think they were showing they had several thousand in stock, didn’t they? I wonder how many they sold, and if I could order one…
I wanted a Jolla tablet because, quite frankly I hate Android. So people may tell me to go Apple. I hate them more. That leaves us with what? I actually would get a new Blackberry if I thought they would have stuck with their OS, but nope.. onto Android they go. Guess I’ll be applying for a refund…
For me the main benefit of the Jolla tablet was a good Intel SoC. Not newest one (it was Ivy Bridge generation), but decent enough, and what’s more important – one with Intel GPU, which means there was a possibility of running Sailfish or any other mobile Linux with open drivers without that whole libhybris hack. Plus it supposedly should have supported compute shaders, so Vulkan was a possibility too.
Now the whole thing is scrapped. I can get some Android targeted tablet and install Sailfish 2.0 there using same libhybris, but it would be some another Qualcomm mess. And even if Freedreno is cathing up on the GPU side, there are many other parts of the SoC which are unlikely to have open drivers. Intel is really the best in this regard.
Edited 2016-01-29 05:30 UTC
Are you joking? Jolla tablet has anemic Atom Z3735F 1.8GHz
It is somewhere in between of old ARM Cortex-A12 and A15 cores.
Do you know any other decent tablet that you can run with open drivers? Anemic or not, it’s Intel.
Edited 2016-01-29 06:43 UTC
Intel gives these “for free” to chinese companies for low-end $50-100 tablets.
Define “decent”? Anything on Atom is low-end.
http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatI…
(3736F is a faster version of 3735F)
Anemic or not, it’s Intel.
LOL
Most of Intel SoCs are using PowerVR, and not Intel GPUs. Jolla’s was a proper Intel one.
I posted the link to the tablets based on Atom 3736F with Intel GEN7 GPU (like Jolla).
You can search for newest z8700 Cherry Trail SoC. It is somewhat faster.
Jolla tablet is outdated and unlikely any better than random chinese noname tablet.
Edited 2016-01-29 07:16 UTC
And in which way you plan to use open source drivers on a random crap tablet?
At least with Jolla there was a chance at getting it to work with open drivers (albeit smaller than I’d like)
Sorry, but this _you_ who plan to use open source drivers on a tablet.
I’m happy with my iPad Pro =)
Why do you think these “crap” tablets are inferior to Jolla? They have better hardware.
I wonder how many of the first 540 will decline the tablet and take the refund instead?
On one hand you’d have an interesting tablet, a novelty/collector item perhaps.
On the other hand, you’ll have an expensive tablet on outdated hardware and limited support. If the device breaks under warranty, SOL because there are no replacements. There will likely never be many apps for it. OS updates and patches and driver fixes, probably not. And finally, having a product from a company that yanked me around so much would leave a bad taste every time I turned it on.
I would assume 100% of them take the tablet. Then a few of them pop up on eBay as a collector’s item for $1500, similar to what happened with the Nokia N950.
I’ve read several comments on the blog page from people who no longer want the tablets.
I’m an early backer too; However, I think I’d prefer the refund. What use is a tablet with next to no support?
If any future versions of Sailfish OS or OS updates are compatible with these 500 tablets, it’ll be purely by coincidence.
And this is why companies need to make a profit. Companies don’t run on air.
Sad to hear this.
Well this ‘company’ ‘ran’ on $2 million from crowdsourcing donors, plus an unknown amount of money from pre-order customers, plus an unknown amount of outside imvestors’ money.
They’d of probably saved money by just buying every donor an iPad…
Don’t forget the money from Nokia!