Jolla C, a new Sailfish OS phone from Jolla
jolla.com
jolla.com
I liked the idea, Open Source, you can code your app in Python, compatible with Android apps, etc.
At the begining, I was very tolerant with the quirks of the phone, being a FOSS believer and all.
But after months and months of use, I'm getting more and more frustrated with it:
- it's slow.
- apps randomly crashes or don't start at all.
- Android support is limited.
- network is unreliable.
- the performances don't allow any decent Web
surf experience, and I already hate the Web
on mobile so it makes things irritating for me.
- it requires a lot of fiddling to adapt it to
your needs. It can be good if you need customization,
but some basic stuff (such as emoji) are not included by
default. Some might consider that a feature, but when
a girl text me a smiley when I flirt with her, I want to
know what face it has because it kinda condition
my next answer.
- some bugs are incredibly annoying. The worst being
the poor handling of group text messages which lead
to very confusing conversations. A smartphone that
can't text, really?
- ergonomy is lacking at best. While I think there
are some neat ideas, the hidden menu for simple tasks,
the absence of resize in some picture mode and the
presence of it in others and plenty other subtle
details make it cumbersome to use even for basic
stuff. The color scheme and overall design is
not a good fit on the long run.
It's where smarphones were 5 years ago, but with bugs.
I don't regret I bought it, it was a nice experience, but now I'm going for something that will just work.
Nowadays it's either Android or iPhone. Pick your poison.
The specs for Jolla C are quite limited, but maybe with their OS those specs are enough. At least now they gotten better display panel (IPS) because the one of the biggest fails the first Jolla phone had, was the display.
Jolla C looks like it's priced at zero-margin. They just want to have lots of developers at this point. And the 169 € sounds a lot better than 400€
- frequently restarts for no apparent reason,
- no global copy and paste. I was hoping that would be implemented in 2.0, and I was very disappointed it had not.
Although now I have switched to an Android phone, I wish Jolla best of luck. Hope to try their products in future.
Would not surprise me if that is related to their use of systemd.
Doesn't happen to me. Not argueing one way or another, just stating a different experience.
I once had a Sony Xperia, bought the same model as my then-girlfriend, from the same company, probably the same batch. She had often spontaneous reboots, but I never had. She complained quite much about that and would never buy a Sony smartphone again.
My only complaint is that the software (Sailfish OS) is let down by the hardware. I wish Jolla had been brave enough to gamble with the Mirasol display; too late now, since Apple's acquired the tech (and will probably do awesome things with it).
With my bluetooth keyboard, I'm happy playing with emacs (Slime and SBCL), and hopefully soon Erlang - all through a native terminal. For lightning fast web browsing, I use Links2. I certainly can't do any of this on an Apple device, and Android - is it possible? I'll never know - I'm spoilt with my Jolla.
The only use case I can think of would be wanting to access a terminal on the phone when I don't have a network connection, but so far that has never come up.
I'm not saying it isn't nice to have a native terminal, just that renting a VPS to me is so much better to mein every way. I can definitely see the case for people on a very tight budget or with poor connectivity, but is there any other reason? Not trying to contradict you, just really can't think of a reason why I'd want to go back.
There are immense possibilities for useful software, all starting with a terminal, but which can be built into full graphical applications. A hacker's delight!
(BTW, this post is being written on a Jolla phone)
It is made much worse by the fact you can't open many apps at the same time. The OS frequently keels app you don't use, so you have to regularly wait another 23 second all other again if you multitask.
So clearly there are differences between phone models (if indeed my phone has some minor upgrades over previous ones), and/or OS versions.
My thought would be to try a btrfs balance (can be done through one of the menus); or trying to free some space from the internal storage.
It made a large difference in how the performance felt on mine last time I did so. (A bit sad that it's often required, the fs is one of the main pain points ime.)
(For reference, mine took ~15 seconds, but think that about 5 of that was network related -- because the browser was open and responsive at the 10 second mark. Had 4 other apps open at the time.)
(Irrationally excited too.)
I'd assumed that after the tablet fiasco that Jolla wouldn't be doing any hardware for a long time. (I'm not personally grumpy in any way, but I think fiasco is the most accurate word :-s )
I'd been holding out hope for an official Fairphone 2 deal (or even the Puzzlephone), but this is awesome :-)
(<3 to jolla for trying to provide a more open and friendly ecosystem, wish you were a billion-euro-strong company)
Smart move for a developer phone.
Jolla said to focus more on the software, and now they come up with this?!
I really don't get this. The specs are subpar, the unique selling points (no bloatware, premium jolla support) are no different than before, and it is all made even weirder to get the product via this first come first serve idea with only a 1000 phones.
Jolla has been criticized that they are crappy at opening up and telling the real deal. They really are. In the months following the tablet debacle the updates were just crappy. It was until the rebate email (with a link to get fill in your details) that I discovered that I would actually get a tablet. Somehow it was too complicate to tell the first 1000 backers per email that they would get a tablet.
Jolla, get your communication act together. If you want to get people to believe in you explain your motives, explain your ideas of how the future would be. Skip the marketing bullshit, your target audience is not that much interested in hollow PR words. Be sincere, open and direct. Understand that people might be disappointed and explain the relevance of the Jolla C. But don't just act like nothing happened.
I always find it funny when "open source" projects require you to join anything.
I really think we need an alternative to the Android / iOS duopoly and I hope this is it.
It runs its own native Sailfish apps (there's few hundred of them) and Android apps (you can install Google Play, if you follow a bit cumbersome instructions). However, the UI logic in native apps is different than in Android apps. Native apps use a lot of wiping gestures, while Android apps use more tapping and the back button.
There is also a native web browser (built on top of Gecko) and it has its own UI logic (the usual web browser logic with a back button, no gestures).
So, all together, it has three way to navigate, which makes the whole experience a bit fragmented.
But, if you want to escape the surveillance riddled Android and iPhone, Jolla is a good basic phone. It offers a lot for hackers, because its built on top of Linux and you have access to almost everything without rooting. I got my phone three years ago and I'm still getting OS updates regularly, which is also nice. I just wish the UI was better.
Linux may offer some advantages, such as access to the phone file system. OSX has a bit cumbersome ways to access it [2].
If you want to write programs for it, you can use Qt C++, QML or Python. It also has a terminal with the usual bash commands. And, of course, you can always write Android apps with tools given by Google and run those apps on Jolla.
As a niche hardware feature, the original Jolla phone has a hackable i2c bus under its back cover. Some people have tried to build keyboards, e-ink screens etc. connected to it. The specs for the bus are public [3].
I'm not sure if the new Jolla C is really meant for casual users, because you need to participate in their community device program to get one.
EDIT: removed some speculations about the community program
EDIT2: looks like the original Jolla phone isn't sold anymore
[1] https://sailfishos.org/wiki/Application_SDK_Installation
[2] https://jolla.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201440867-How-do...
The cumbersome interface and missing native application features were the main points why I switched back to Android.
The interface was nice, the open system was nice (it was easy to code desktop notifications: just connect to dbus on the phone and call the notifier on my desktop machine) and the Android subsystem worked well enough.
Since one and a half year I have a Jolla now. Some things are quirky, but some things are really great.
Pro:
- No ads. Really, no ads, not anywhere.
- I can just install my own host file with ad networks routed to 0.0.0.0 for the browser.
- Android apps are available. I don't need much apps and Whatsapp and sometimes Skype are enough.
- Updates are available every month and every update has good features. Now with the meltdown a few months ago things have slowed down. We will see how it comes back up. There has been one update in the last months.
- The interface is consistent. I have an all-black ambience, and every app just follows that ambience and is just black. I like it that way, life is too distracting already.
- Just a checkbox to enable root access. No futzing with rooting or jailbreaking my own device (really bad mentality, if that is considered a good way to sell me something).
- SSH by default to copy files to and from the device.
- Backup is in Git and you can copy it to your desktop. Haven't needed a restore. We will see how it goes :).
- Most of the times I get an uptime of about a month. Not sure what Android and iPhone users get normally.
- I like the screens and the tiles with apps. I enjoyed that on my N9 as well, there it was even better. With Sailfish 2.0 they improved it a bit, and put some ideas back from the N9.
- People claim the camera is bad. For me it is good enough. Even better when recently a friend failed to take good photo's with an iPhone 5, and the Jolla made them fine (really, not made up). We were taking pictures in the direction of the sun.
Con:
- It isn't that fast, and with Android apps open like Whatsapp and Skype, 1GB is too little and you can notice it while browsing. I don't run into the OOM-killer often though (if ever).
- The default browser (Gecko based) isn't fast either. For JavaScript heavy sites I use Webcat (Chromium based).
- For a while I had my calendar working with my Owncloud calendar, but it broke somewhere. Haven't taken the time to see if that works again. There are logs, but I just haven't taken the time.
- Whatsapp notifications come in slow. Sometimes WA loses connection, allthough the network is up. Turning Wifi off and on brings it back online.
- For a while I enjoyed native apps for Whatsapp, like Mitakuulu and Whatsup, but I suspect Whatsapp is actively blocking them or changing connection settings for them. I now settled on the main Android app, which is worse in every way, compared to Whatsup.
/edit
And Oh boy, this HN editor is bad...
Huh? I have used Android phones for over 5 years and almost never see ads.
Yes, some free apps have ads but you just need to spend a dollar or two to remove them. Developers don't work for free you know. An app doesn't give you that option? Uninstall it. I have two exceptions to that rule because the apps in question are great and the ads are non-intrusive.
The Ubuntu phone is a tolerable placeholder. A Jolla seems like it would be just tolerable also (as per sametmax's comments) but I'll have to keep waiting for something decent and open.
Also still holding out for convergence... Give it another 5 years probably!
You can just rsync to get the data off. That port only needs to work if you need to reimage, or you only have one battery/don't like swapping batteries every day..
So it's a case of (I think) soldering a new USB cable into place under the battery, charging, exfil the data, then reflash to finally have it back in business. Albeit with a rat-tail hanging out the case.
--
[0] Never figured out what the utils were, but seem to recall it being part of a python dependency chain. So autoremove had somehow, probably incorrectly, thought it was OK to get rid of a key component of some kind. It was the power kernel with a bunch of mods, so probably my own fault somewhere along the line.
I would say to make sure that you have all of the Maemo images saved somewhere, and know where the repos currently reside. I just reimaged another N900 and got it current in order to avoid dealing with its broken USB port, and it's starting to become a bit of an ordeal. t.m.o. is dying...
The N900 can. Shameless plug: https://github.com/dderby/debian900/
It's a real shame because all I want is a fast, simple OpenSource phone OS (that is as responsive as iOS). AOSP is okay but it does not feel as snappy as when I tried iOS for which I blame Dalvik. There are not a lot of contenders, only Tizen, Ubuntu Phone and plasma mobile. I hope one of them will be installable on the Fairphone 2 in the near future...
There's nothing terribly wrong with the closed parts of this system. Much of the phone is readily accessible to developers, and Jolla provides a lot of support. It's far more open than Android or iOS.
The thing I can't stand about android aps is that many are not available unless you login to google. It really pisses me off too. Why does my banking ap or my email provider ap have to come directly from google?? Is it that hard to host miniature files on the sites for which the apk's are designed?? My email ap says that the playstore needs to update but the apk still works even though playstore is disabled. Stupid, stupid, stupid. On the jolla phone I would install a barebones version of gapps, if at all. Right now I am using ~9 apk's I can find nowhere else but the playstore and tbh If my phone was rooted I would remove them all.
Dalvik hasn't been used since Android 4.4. It was replaced with ART in 5.0, which was released towards the end of 2014.
I'd say the one feature that is game changing for both Jolla and Ubuntu Phone is being able to run it as a desktop device as well as a phone. If the hardware supported USB Type C, there'd be no question that this would be my next phone, even if the desktop functionality wasn't supported at launch it would be a clear statement of intention.
The idea is cool but the computers and smart phones are so cheap everyone has somekind of computer (or access to one) + smart phone. This would've awesome in the mid-2000s, though ;-)
+ Haven't seen a device that really solves different usage patters of mobile phone and desktop in the same UI. If you're going suggest Windows 8-10, I'm sorry to break it to you but they failed miserably.
I don't own a x86 PC, all I have access to are work computers and my smartphone. This is partly out of choice, I want to keep my possessions to a minimum.
As for your other points, I would suggest that previous attempts have failed because they were clunky, with USB Type C the potential is there for a much better user experience.
> "If you're going to suggest Windows 8-10, I'm sorry to break it to you but they failed miserably."
You're treating your own opinion like a breaking news story. Nice try, but it doesn't give it any extra weight.
If they can catch up with basic functionality, web apps continue to develop and are integrated well, there's decent android app compatibility, and they can add an extra interesting feature like convergence (which requires that the next-generation hardware is fast enough), I personally would be quite enthusiastic to have an Ubuntu phone as my next smartphone.
And yes, web apps need to get better to work. Android compability is nice but will never be nicely integrated (especially if dependent on Google Services). And only a fraction will develop native apps.
But convergence is a killer feature, indeed!
BUT I'd still like a Linux phone and/or tablet that runs the legacy Linux apps. Then I could have a mobile device on which I could compile Android and run Android Studio for app development. That would be fun.
I also think two mobile ecosystems isn't enough.
The OS is a breeze to use, even if you're using Android apps.
However after the whole Jolla Tablet fiasco, I am reluctant to buy more from the company.
Does it mean it's incompatible with T-Mobile in US? That's just annoying. Aren't Qualcomm already making universal modems by now?
The idea was great. They tried to keep the Maemo spirit alive. But they failed.
I really wonder if they think about the product name in terms of people who try to look it up. "jolla" in Finnish also means "on which" (in addition to "dinghy" or some little boat), which makes it really difficult to look up on finnish websites.
People in the rest of the world are a lot more used to paying up-front for a phone, potentially through a third party, and getting a SIM-only plan.
If you like total linkdark from your manufacturer coupled with emergency releases of news (because someone else leaked they missed a critical funding round) that leaves users even more befuddled and calling for clear feedback.
But it didn't take off really much. There is only a small community, and they worked years on a half-decent keyboard. For the rest there are just some LED-based backcovers.
I doubt they will ever try that again.