The Jolla phone – first impressions
seravo.fi
seravo.fi
You can see hints in this review:
It should be is easy to search the web, enter URLs, open new tabs, save bookmarks etc. All of this can be done with the current browser in SailfishOS. The browser seems to work pretty fast and flawlessly. We heard at the launch event that the rendering engine is Gecko (same as in Firefox) so it is likely to have good support for HTML5 features. However in terms of usability, Chrome for Android is still the best mobile browser we’ve used so far. In particular the SailfishOS browser does not seem to have support for landscape mode. Hopefully while SailfishOS matures, the browser will grow to be more polished as well.
So.. the whole point of this phone is HTML5 apps. Yet Chrome is a more usable browser, and the author is hopeful the native browser "will grow to be more polished as well".
Android apps can be run using Alien Dalvik (probably some sort of virtual machine layer). You can either get both free and paid apps from the bundled Yandex store
No mention at all of the huge problems with this approach: this means no Google Play Services, and it removes all motivation for developers to build native apps: they can just point users at the Android version. (Also, Yandex has an Android store?!)
Native Sailfish apps are Qt based; with android apps as a secondary thing, presumably to kick-start the platform while they try to build an ecosystem. (Which makes sense, developers won't come unless people are using it but people won't use it if there are no apps.)
I'm guessing that was Blackberry's strategy too. Didn't work for them - be interesting to see how well it works here.
Personally I'm kind of rooting for them without being entirely convinced; if there are enough people like me, they're probably screwed.
Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view. Bazillion megapixels, bazillion megaherz, bazillion cores and etc. - nobody cares about that. It takes decent pictures - good enough. It is not camera with lens replacement anyway. It works reasonably fast - good enough, I take it. Replaceable parts(1) - meh I don't care unless I can attach lens but then it is mirrorless camera not smartphone. It doesn't have my favorite app (twitter, vine, endomondo, hangouts, skype... name whatever else is important for you) - I don't need it.
Basically software ate hardware. Now let's talk about software. Development tools for Android are good enough but far from perfect. iOS tools are better, Qt tools are better (at least for me), Windows tools are better, HTML tools are better. The only important advantage Android has its openness. iOS lose because of that (2), Blackberry lose because of that and Windows will lose because of that (IMHO). Jolla are much more open here but are they open enough? Does it matter anymore? Firefox OS is in much better position as a lot of people have explored using HTML for apps and writing app for Firefox OS is basically packaging it and you have app. Most probably you don't need to write app at all if you already have responsive design website.
Android problem - it is dependent on Google very much and it is both good and bad. It is good for users as they get good experience, it is bad as they are getting closed into Google's world and I doubt that it is good thing.
My question is: what next smartphone OS should offer to be considered winning?
1) Replaceable parts are still good thing if it will create market where you can buy cheaper parts to replace broken ones or outdated ones.
2) iOS market share in the world is low but pretty good in USA. So I'm using "lose" very loosely.
> Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view.
Just because vendors are falling over themselves to makes Iphone clones, doesn't mean there's no other way.
Personally, the whole current smartphone scene leaves me cold, because no-one is making hardware for me. I want a small, robust phone I can put in my pocket and forget about. Something with a big fragile screen is completely useless to me. I don't really care what software it's running - if I have to leave it at home because I'm afraid of breaking the screen, then the software is irrelevant.
Still there is nothing exceptional about this hardware IMHO.
http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Nokia-515_id8116/size#/phon...
You could almost always upgrade to Microsoft without losing your old data and programs. CP/M programs could be ran virtually unmodified on DOS. Lotus documents could be opened in Office. But if anything used special Microsoft-only features them the customer would need to keep using Microsoft products.
Assuming customers will only upgrade to a new system that can run their old programs, and open their old documents, then eventually they'd all end up stuck with Microsoft.
Obviously, not every customer is like that, and iOS customers won't have a reason to switch, but it's not a terrible strategy.
Offering Android means that users can upgrade from an Android phone. Offering Qt means that users will get trapped (at least, until there's enough users that Android makers start trying to fight back, but that's a good problem to have).
In that case Firefox OS is in the best position to compete against Android. FxOS phones can be very cheap as well. But is that enough to make it next big thing in smartphone's market?
Pretty bizarre interpretation, perhaps you're thinking of Firefox OS? Jolla includes an Android runtime, and also has its own native applications, it's clearly not all about HTML5.
I'm intrigued! Which bias do you think I'm showing?
It's true I'm doubtful about the prospects of Jolla - but I'm not sure I'd characterise that as a bias exactly.
It's true that I remember Maemo (and more broadly, Nokia). I think there are lessons there, but I'm not sure that is a bias either.
1. I'm not aware of any especially terrible flaws in N900s, so I already don't know what you're talking about. The mention of the "flaws of the platform" makes me think you're just stealing the language from Elop that he used to describe Symbian.
2. The browser is not as good as Chrome on Android, and lacks landscape mode at release. This is a (pretty huge) flaw? I see it as a pretty minor (and likely temporary) flaw, which could be alleviated by using Chrome for Android on the device. You see it as a major flaw, because the "whole point of this phone is HTML5 apps." What?
3. The other flaw is that it is not an Android phone, and isn't tied into Google Play services. Is that a flaw on the iPhone, or just on the Jolla?
There was a promise in your comment that was not delivered on. In the end it was weird, like when somebody tells you how their ex-wife has been mounting a campaign of harassment against them for years - then as they describe the individual incidents in this campaign, you feel sorrier for the ex-wife by the minute.
Maybe explaining a couple of the "(pretty huge) flaws" of the N900 might help?
Don't know how on earth you came to this conclusion considering the phone is designed to run native QT5 apps.
The fact that it has good support for HTML5 doesn't mean it's the focus... Maybe you have it confused with Firefox OS?
What is the "long term"? Has somebody actually managed to build a native HTML5-based UI that isn't a laggy and clumsy piece of shit yet? For example, webOS looked great but even the simplest lists scrolled with less than 30 frames per second. The videos I've seen of FxOS don't show much promise either (although those are running on really low-end hardware).
I'm really skeptical that trying to shoehorn something called "hypertext markup language" and a generic web rendering engine like WebKit into a UI toolkit is ever going to work smoothly. Even on my desktop computer complex sites can work slowly at times. But I'd love to be proven wrong.
I too believe that mobile web will one day overtake mobile native apps for most peoples' daily usage. I just don't think it'll look or act anything like what we're currently doing. Luke Wroblewski gives a great talk about the early days of a new medium being an awkward state where we try to shoehorn what worked in the last medium into it. At some point we'll figure out a design and usage patten for the mobile web that'll make a world of sense in hindsight. We're just not there yet IMO and of course I have no idea what this looks like.
People want apps that are easy to learn and use, have the features they need, and free.
Edit: thinking of program like Final Cut: someone will figure out how to do the hardcore processing over-the-wire using Thunderbolt or something. Dumb terminals, welcome back!
Off the top of my head,
1) Anything low level hardware (reading data via USB, or pushing data into HDMI, for instance)
2) Interacting with ANY hardware that's not explicitly supported by Javascript. Try creating an HTML5/JS scanner app.
3) Writing super-fast CPU-specific code, think Assembly language. That's the reason there are no HTML5 apps of the Photoshop caliber.
4) Disk access. Try creating a Javascript-based antivirus. Or an app that watches for changes in a certain directory.
5) Internal network access. Try writing a JS app interacting with your localhost or TCP/IP or UDP.
Eg: >1) Anything low level hardware (reading data via USB, or pushing data into HDMI, for instance)
I would expect that a Nexus device can do Chromecast from browser screen, if not today then soon.
>2) Interacting with ANY hardware that's not explicitly supported by Javascript. Try creating an HTML5/JS scanner app.
You mean like, taking a photo and processing it? You can do that right now.
>3) Writing super-fast CPU-specific code, think Assembly language. That's the reason there are no HTML5 apps of the Photoshop caliber
Yet, agreed. But soon - only CPU is slowing it down, not the technology.
>4) Disk access. Try creating a Javascript-based antivirus. Or an app that watches for changes in a certain directory.
There won't be a filesystem as we know it. The 'cloud' and browser-accessible storage will be all we need.
>5) Internal network access. Try writing a JS app interacting with your localhost or TCP/IP or UDP.
Sockets, it's possible now.
No, that's not what I meant. Pushing any data into HDMI, controlled by the app, not the screencasting.
> You mean like, taking a photo and processing it? You can do that right now.
No, I mean connecting to a scanner, scanning a document. You can't do it now. And don't tell me taking a snapshot with a built-in camera is the same thing
> There won't be a filesystem as we know it. The 'cloud' and browser-accessible storage will be all we need.
Sorry, I wasn't aware you could predict the future, and I thought we were talking about now.
> Sockets, it's possible now.
No, your JS app can't access the internal network, unless you expose it to the internet with TCP/IP. Sockets only let you connect to public servers. And no UDP (at least not explicitly).
Ah well, I was talking about the future. You're correct about the above you mention, and regarding sockets I was of course referring to TCP/IP. I'm keeping an eye on the Jolla/ChromeOS/FireFox OS types, more than iOS as I think there will be significant changes to allow the above and more.
(And no, "use JQuery" is not an answer; it's a symptom.)
Plus, it just feels shitty to not be able to own any of your tools. I don't want to rent my applications from some multinational corporation. I bought them, so they should be mine. (Yeah, yeah, nobody really owns anything anymore, but at least the bloody bits are on my drive!)
In short, if web apps are the future, I hope that a) they're only one of several commonly used paradigms, and b) we have something better than a browser to run them in.
People have been saying that for 5 years + , the "future" still has a long way to go. By the way , that's what the iphone was supposed to be, a phone where devs write browser apps... we all know what happened.
"When it [iPhone] first came out in early 2007, there were no apps you could buy from outside developers, and Jobs initially resisted allowing them," writes Isaacson. "He didn't want outsiders to create applications for the iPhone that could mess it up, infect it with viruses, or pollute its integrity."
Then reality happened.
However Jolla said that long term plans about opening things up aren't finalized.
> We heard at the launch event that the rendering engine is Gecko
On one hand, I feel a little sad. On the other hand, I can appreciate the idea of going with a browser engine that isn't as big a political playing field as WebKit. (Or its Google-fork: Blink.) The reasons that led to this decision might be interesting.
I know at least one very good reason, from personal pain.
Meego preceded Qt 5.0. QtWebKit was not part of official Qt releases until 5.1, and in 4.x the situation was even worse. Back then QtWebKit was always a second-class citizen. The browser engine was a separate "Qt component". This meant that all releases were done individually, outside and out of pace with the Qt proper. Any release lagged behind the Qt releases, taking anywhere from weeks to months to catch up and work with the most recent Qt release. I got the idea that the webkit team was severely undermanned and overworked.
This meant that for any product that wanted to use QtWebKit, the product manager had to make an early decision to lock the version of used Qt just to ensure that QtWebKit was available. (Customers demanded a working browser engine with bells and whistles.) So from a purely practical point of view it made sense to decouple the browser engine and Qt release at architectural level.
No wonder Meego hovered between the two options. They had the choice of not using the latest Qt releases but having a more finely integrated browser engine - or they could go with the latest Qt, a decoupled browser engine and doing a horrible amount of additional integration work to keep Qt and Gecko in sync.
As one can imagine, neither of those options is particularly appealing.
Not that it really matters I suppose, but why go to all that trouble building an apparently lovely device and giving it a slightly cumbersome name?
eg. http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/20/jolla-phone-hardware-tour...
(Agree that for global products, people should prefer names that are easier to pronounce)
Or I could be completely overreading this...
http://www.prisma.fi/tuotekuvat//large/71/1bz60y0a4pi3kq31.j...
But jolla is a small boat.
I wonder if the greek says Nee-Kei~, since Nike is a borrowing from greek mythology.
Indeed it is refreshing and is leads the industry forward by leaps and bounds.
Clearly an impartial review.
On the other hand, I like the Other Half concept, and I'd be interested with a more beefed-up version in a Galaxy Note form factor, with a stylus.
To me the resolution battle is the same BS that the megapixel count on photo sensors is. It's mainly marketing talk to sell devices.
So please, i don't care if the phone doesn't have fullhd, and i also don't need 5" displays.. or a 40 MP camera, i dont need octacore cpus or opengl XYZ capability. I want battery life, please work on the f*cking battery life!!
p.s.: my "rant" doesn't mean that the jolla has a good battery life, of course i wouldn't know about that. Just addressing my main problem with smartpones.
Jolla really should make their marketing material more concrete to target their true early adopter audience.
Combine this with a Jolla phone for a connection to a conventional cellular network and perhaps a handset could move seamlessly through peer-to-peer calling, handset-to-VoIP calling, and the PTSN.
Then the day may come where we can finally do away with these telecommunications companies, and have a decentralized and secure-by-design phone system once and for all.
English translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fi&tl=en&js=n&prev=...
According to the article the biggest problem seems to be Internet-connectivity, the reception is sometimes bad and it has problems connecting to WLAN. The browser is also quite slow and needs improvements.
Hopefully being the most open mobile OS means easy compiling...
Looking at this phone, which targets a far higher price point, I am forced to consider their differences: Contribute development effort towards getting the rest of the planet online and empowered? ... or help nords preserve their heritage of mobile device architecture?
Mozilla and Wikimedia are working hard to provide equal access to all under an open platform. Considering the growth trajectory for the developing world (widely recognized by macro-economists), we can each commercially justify time investment in the FirefoxOS platform. As the web's new primary class of access devices, mobile devices for the developing world are a big part of our shared future. Let's keep it open.
I lost interest when they said things like "there is one hardware feature that is unique to Jolla: The Other Half [...] a concept of user-changeable smart back cover."
Surely replaceable plastic covers have been around for decades and they are mostly associated with low-end feature phones... or really old Nokias.
My point is that I would prefer objective reviews, not glowing praise from fans etc. The key question for is not what tech did they pack in a small screen device, but does it actually feel better to use than the incumbents.
Whenever a Windows phone is presented, there are pictures of phones that have more square corners than other phones, and flashy colors like yellow and orange.
It seems to be almost a requirement of a phone with the Windows software, to have colorful and squary hardware.
Is that a coincidence, or a sort of design convention or requirement?
EDIT: Oops, apparently it does not run Windows. I saw the tiles in the screenshot and flashy colors, so thought it was Windows phone... Sorry...