Sometimes a few inches is all it takes to make a difference. Back when Jolla first started, a team of former Nokians taking MeeGo and spinning it into their own Sailfish OS, it became a smartphone curio. The simple UI and gesture-based navigation had promise, but compared to an iPhone, Android, or even Windows Phone device, it felt underwhelmingly simple. Now, the Finns are back with not only Sailfish 2.0, but a tablet for it to run on, and it turns out that makes for a great pairing.
I can’t wait for my Jolla tablet to arrive and for Sailfish 2.0 to become available for my Jolla phone. Quite exciting times.
They need to make good in their open source promises, otherwise they are just more openwashing liars and I won’t trust them.
Well done for slagging off people who appear to be genuinely trying to improve matters.
No wonder few people bother, when all they receive is criticism.
I’m not sure what FOSS claims you’re referring to in particular, but I’ll assume it’s the UI. (Thinking anyone would be able to produce open source hardware layer is just daft).
At the end of the day Jolla are a company, not a charity and need to make some money. Therefore they have kept a (small) part of the system closed.
I’m happy to support that in the interests of competition and love my Jolla phone. Looking forward to the tablet too.
Exactly! Ever since I left webosnation to join together.jolla.com I feel that the community is totally, utterly overcritic with the sailors. While in the webOS world we had a company that killed our OS and we tried to help each other in getting some more use out of our phones, in the Jolla Community all I hear is constant nagging on almost every little move they make.
The Jolla phones screen is subpar? Big Deal! The phone is stable, runs fluid, is (mostly) opensource. Of course I don’t like everything about Sailfish, but what are the alternatives? Firefox OS is even worse, the Jolla phone is a powerhorse compared to FFOS hardware.
Don’t even get me started about Ubuntu phone. And, btw: Jolla can run web, Linux, Sailfish and Androidapps. How cool is that?
The last time a server from a client went nuts and I got a call on the train to do some analysis. Had nmap downloaded from openrepos in a minute and could send a detailed portscan to the customer little after (admittingly getting around Sailfish’s copy/paste issues took me most of the time ;-).
I don’t know about you, but using my trusty unixtools on the go really rocks my world!
250€ is no bad deal for what you get, I really like the concept of the other half and even managed to recycle my touchstone for wireless charging with some tinkering. Regular updates almost every month, a usable website to get in touch with the developers and the community, amazing battery life…there is a lot to love!
Really, Jolla is doing great for what little company it is. And the lack of professionalism? I for one, appreciate some enthusiasm over sleek press releases. The Jolla tablet looks fine, but I have no need for it. The real party is at Sailfish OS 2.0. And I think it’s GREAT that I don’t have to throw out my phone to get it!
Don’t misunderstand. I love the idea of Jolla and sailfish. However … what about anything that was covered in the article as great things about sailfish can’t be accomplished with an app launcher in android?
Is it really better enough to gain mainstream adoption?
Do they really have enough of an audience to continue development of the platform?
My heart wants to say “heck yeah”, but my brain has its doubts…
I have no idea. I wonder almost every day what their business model might be. Like you, I don’t think this thing will fly. But in the meanwhile we get a great OS and a dedicated team developing their vision. It will end up opensource eventually but with much better hardware support then openWebOS.
Yeah. I just can’t devote the resources to a second smart phone. Andoroid/IOS have enough mindshare that I depend on certain apps that are available for only those two platforms. I know, it “can run Android apps” but probably not the ones I need.
Jolla has never claimed they’re going FOSS, they’ve said they’re going as open source as they can.
If you’re holding your breath for Jolla to turn in to your Stallmannist utopia, please stop before you pass out.
They had their breaking promises issues: http://dontbreakthesails.blogspot.com/2014/04/sailfish-silica-half-…
Edited 2015-03-06 22:18 UTC
I can’t be arsed to delve too deeply in to this matter, but to me it looks like they were promising to try to open-source everything and then some people decided to insist that they promised to open-source everything, not just try to.
They promised to open Silica Qt components. They never did. That’s the main gripe that community has with Jolla regarding promises.
That stinks. It sounds like Jolla might be in a BEOS style situation where the ownership of some of the code might be owned by a company( Nokia? …Microsoft?) that has no intention of using it, or giving up the required rights to enable them to be open sourced.
Well, its a good thing that no one is forcing you to buy their phones then, eh?
One day, a man is waiting for his dinner reservation at a fancy restaurant and notices the establishment has a live lobster tank, so he goes over to have a look. When he gets closer, he notices that one of the lobsters has almost managed to climb out of the tank – so he immediately waves down one of the restaurant’s waiters.
Surprisingly, the waiter isn’t at all concerned after the customer points out the soon-to-be-escaped-lobster. “Oh, don’t worry, those are all FOSS lobsters. If one of them comes close to succeeding at anything, the others will just drag him back down.”
I’d love to buy a Jolla phone, but by the time I heard of the keyboard other half it’s crowd funding had already closed and as far as I know it’s the only sliding vertical keyboard you can get these days. Mean while I’m stuck with my no longer supported, randomly crashing E7.