Wireless Archive

During an emotional speech delivered today at the Slush conference, Jolla's Marc Dillon unveiled the company's next product: the Jolla tablet, running Sailfish OS 2.0. He launched a crowdfunding campaign for the tablet, with a goal of $380,000 - which was achieved in less than three hours (this may be one of the fastest funding consumer electronics devices ever). I got in early, and was one of the very first people to back the tablet (just as I was one of the first to back the Jolla phone a year ago). A second round has already been announced. Big news for American readers: it'll be available in the US too.

The tablet itself is very similar in specifications to Nokia's N1 tablet, with an 1.8GHz quad-core Intel processor, 2GB RAM, 2048x1536 330ppi 7.85" IPS display, 32GB storage, and all the usual sensors and ports you have come to expect. It's quite light and compact, and has its own design - there's no way people are going to twist this one into an iPad copy.

The tablet is expected to be delivered to us early backers in May 2015, and I can't wait. Also, Mr. Dillon, keep rocking that beard.

Nokia - the part that remained in Finland after dumping its failing phone money pit at Microsoft - has just unveiled its first new hardware product: an Android tablet.

It runs what looks like stock Android Lollipop (yes! Yes! Yes!), with the only change being that it includes Nokia's own launcher. It's made out of aluminium, has a fully laminated display, and will supposedly cost a mere $249 - which is insanely cheap for a tablet with these kinds of specifications.

Nokia should have done this years ago, but it's great to see them do it now.

Update: LG will begin updating its G3 phone to Android 5.0 starting next week. It's pretty clear by now that things have changed with regards to Android updates. Very good.

Sony, Motorola (already releasing Lollipop for select Moto X models!), and Samsung all seem to be quite far along in updating to Lollipop. Great news for consumers.

I was on vacation in the US and Canada the past two weeks, and one of the things I wanted to buy there was a Moto 360. I went to Best Buy - the store that sells them - but they were all out. The sales person told me that they get new shipments every week, but that they sell out in minutes. I had no luck finding one.

These new options are only going to make it sell better. I'm very curious to see just how well.

The Samsung SM-Z130H/DS with dual SIM, Samsung’s first low-end Tizen phone, has just been spotted undergoing certification at the FCC. According to the FCC filing under FCC ID "A3LSMZ130H," The Samsung SM-Z130H is a dual-sim smart phone. The device will come with support for GSM 850/1900, Wi-fi 802.11b and GSM 850/1900 bands.

China’s Xiaomi only sells its smartphones and other devices in a handful of markets… but they’re big markets with large populations including China and India. So even though you can’t easily buy a Xiaomi phone in the US or Europe, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that the company is selling a lot of phones. In fact, with Xiaomi shipping 18 million phones in the third quarter of 2014, two different reports suggest the company just became the third biggest smartphone company in the world.

The AQUOS Crystal (and its higher-end, Japan-only brother) looks stunning. Hopefully, this is where the future is going: displays becoming nothing but glass, without bezels or bodies. This way, displays would truly integrate and disappear into our surroundings, so they aren't always the centre of attention. Put the AQUOS Crystal next to any other current phone, and they all look decidedly dated and old-fashioned.

I hope this new US effort works out well for Sharp, because it's really too bad that their often interesting and striking devices are Japan-only.

Jaakko Roppola, senior designer at Jolla, writes:

That's all well and fine, and we all know why native applications are superior to less-than-native counterparts - which in the case of Sailfish comes down specifically to Android applications, which it supports quite well. The reality, however, is that these reasons are not even remotely enough to draw developers of native applications to Sailfish.

Early this year, I wrote a comprehensive review of Jolla and Sailfish. Since then, a lot of people have been asking me to revisit that review, and go into the current state of the platform. It's something that I've been wanting to do for a while now, but I've been putting it off because to be honest - there is very little to tell.

The general conclusion of the review was that Sailfish was a good operating system considering its age, with a comprehensive user interface that was a joy to use, and that was both fast, smooth, and intuitive. Being a new platform, its biggest issue was of course the lack of third party applications - but even there, the platform got off on a good start with a few high-quality applications such a WhatsApp client, a great Twitter client, a barebones but decent Facebook client, and a few others. For a platform that was only a few weeks or months old at the time, that was a great running start.

Sadly, even though we're almost a year down the line, the state of the platform is still pretty much exactly the same. The operating system itself has improved even further, and continues to do so at a decent pace. Every time I boot my Jolla, Sailfish delights me with its intuitive and smooth, one-handed interface. Between the review and now, we've seen like 10 proper operating system updates, and each of them have improved the operating system in noticeable ways. It's nowhere near as complete or full-featured as Android, iOS and WP, but it will certainly cover users of those platforms just fine.

As far as third-party applications go, however, the situation is - and let's not sugar-coat it - dire. The applications I highlighted in my review and again a few paragraphs above are still pretty much the only proper Sailfish applications today, with the note that the Facebook client hasn't seen any development in months and is, as far as I can tell, abandoned. Other than that, virtually every time I get my hopes up when I see tweets about "new" Sailfish applications, it's yet another Android application that also works on Sailfish.

Of course, we all knew this was going to be the hardest - and largest - piece of the Sailfish puzzle. However, I did expect more than what we have now. I'm sure the lack of support for paid applications plays a role here, discouraging more professional, non-hobby developers from joining in on the fun as a side-project. Whatever the cause, we're still looking at a third-party applications landscape that isn't much better than what I saw back in January.

It could be that there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes to get developers interested, but so far, we haven't seen much sign of that. I'm obviously not going to write off the platform or anything like that - the operating system is too good and fun for that - but progress on the application front is sorely, sorely needed.

Right now, my Jolla spends most of its time in my device drawer, only to be booted up when there's an update or when I'm bored. Sailfish deserves more, but I'm not sure how they're going to get it.

Today was the day! You marked it in your calendar, you counted down the nights, and last night, as you went to bed, your stomach had that tingly feeling you get when you're nervous about what that long-awaited day would bring. Yes, today, BlackBerry officially released the Passport - the first high-end smartphone with a proper keyboard in years. Since everything was already known about this device, let's go straight to CrackBerry's review:

This pretty much sums up how I feel about the Passport (but obviously without actually having used it). It looks a little quirky - and therefore interesting - and I am very happy that at least someone has the gusto to try something new in the physical keyboard department. At this point, the Passport is literally the only high-end, modern smartphone with a hardware keyboard.

That's sad, but at least we have an option now.

Chris Nacca has posted an interesting video, in which the startup times of applications are compared between a Nexus 5 (released about a year ago) and the brand new iPhone 6. As you can see in the video, application startup times are essentially the same between the two devices, and in both cases, applications open very quickly.

This raises an interesting question, more so because of this article I read on The Verge today, about some guy who was very depressed about his brand new iPhone 6 Plus because he couldn't use it with one hand. Aside from two obvious points - one, you have two hands, and two, didn't you know how big the phone was? - it struck me that with phones being used almost exclusively for very lightweight tasks, why would you rush out and buy the latest iPhone or Galaxy or whatever when it doesn't bring you any obvious benefit?

The iPhone 5S, or even the 5, is still a perfectly fine, fast, and capable phone, and other than getting a larger screen, upgrading to an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus will get you absolutely nothing. If even a year-old Nexus 5 that's only half the price gives you about the same performance when checking Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and so on, what's the point in spending $700-$900 on the new iPhone or Galaxy?

The video is not interesting because a Nexus 5 and iPhone 6 show equal application startup performance, but because it illustrates that the specifications race has already run its course. On desktop computers, newer machines at least give you better gaming performance, but on phones? Are you going to notice that little bit of extra AA or whatever the iPhone 6 is going to give you over the 5S?

Phones have really gotten into the numbers game, and it serves absolutely nobody, except the bank accounts of Apple and Samsung. The person in The Verge article is exactly how Apple and Samsung like their customers: rushing out to buy the latest and greatest phone, without giving it any obvious thought - not because they need it, but because they feel inferior if they don't have the latest and greatest, actual needs be damned.

If Apple's iPhone Mini won't make you look enough like a dork, there's always this thing.

The Galaxy Alpha is a very interesting device, because it's essentially Samsung's answer to Apple's upcoming iPhone 6, while the upcoming iPhone 6 is Apple's answer to Samsung's devices with larger screens. The same applies to Samsung's Note 4, which now also sports a metal construction. Over the coming months, we're going to see which of these two answers will have the biggest impact.

I don't like making predictions - people, and thus the market, are fickle - but I'm fairly convinced that once the dust of the new iPhones settles down (they will sell very well, of course), nothing much will have changed, market share-wise, compared to now. People aren't going to switch away from iOS because Samsung now offers metal phones, and similarly, Android users aren't going to switch to iOS because they're going to get an extra row of icons on their homescreen.

Still, all this shows competition in action: companies producing better products. We, the people, win.

This - and the Moto360 - looks like the first smartwatch that appeals to me. The Gear things from Samsung, the Pebble devices, and so on, all look like you strapped a computer to your wrist that happens to be able to display the time. They look like computers, not watches. This, however, is starting to look like an actual watch - that also happens to display Android notifications.

Today, I devised the funeral test. You see, a watch is something I always wear when I'm outside the house, no exceptions. All my regular watches can be worn at any time, during any occasion - even a funeral. The moment I can wear a smartwatch to a funeral and not look like an inconsiderate ass (because it looks like a smartphone and thus people might think I'm checking Twitter or something - which I will not be doing, of course), that's the smartwatch that will be a winner, because it can replace an actual watch.

This LG watch is getting closer, but it's still not there - it's still bigger than even my biggest watch (the red one in this photo), and looks uncomfortable. However, it's getting closer, and I'm very curious to see what Apple will come up with.

Once the Moto360, the round LG G Watch R, and Apple's supposed entry come out, we will look at these ridiculous Samsung contraptions in the same way we look at these now.

My favourite moment in the video: when the full QWERTY keyboard pops up. Samsung just has no taste.