Jolla phones now available for sale in Europe | Hacker News Reader

Jolla phones now available for sale in Europe

shop.jolla.com

48 pointscromulent41 comments

The Verge's reviewer didn't like it. I have yet to get my hands on one. It is strongly a "global gestures" UI. Some people like that as a way of enforcing consistency. That will have some possibly confusing effects on Android apps running in Myriad's compatibility environment. Also, the last time I looked at Myriad's technology, they were using their own Java VM, which means, at least,some kind of Dalvik to Java bytecode converter for apps as they are installed, or an SDK plugin to produce "Myriad-VM-ready" apps.

It looks pretty clean. It should appeal to the people who were buying Nokia's Harmattan and Meego devices. If Jolla can pick up a majority of the Qt apps that had been developed for those platforms and grow that developer community, they may have a chance.

It will take at least a year, and probably some more hardware to tell where Jolla is going and if it will be successful. There are several dimensions to measure that success: Can Jolla pick up many of the distribution channels, and their customers, in Europe that previously favored Nokia? Can they penetrate the China market, as they appear to be aiming to do?

The Jolla UI looks and behaves similar to the Blackberry 10 OS, which is a good thing, and an improvement on Android and iOS.

I have a Blackberry Z30[1] and I don't think I could go back to the "old way" of using a smartphone. BB 10 feels like a true smartphone experience, as subjective as that is.

[1] http://ca.blackberry.com/smartphones/blackberry-z30.html

Which means it could face the one of the same challenges as BB10 - these global gestures are very demo-unit-unfriendly. You go to a store and pick up a BB10 device and you're freaking lost with no visible buttons or UI to use.

A non-discoverable interface on a device this late to the party is not going to be good for market-share.

Fascinating insight. Reminds me of the Pepsi Challenge. In the famous Pepsi vs Coke taste tests[1], people picked Pepsi due to it's favorable first impression - it had a sweeter taste. In reality, most people prefer a less sweet beverage over the course of an entire can.

Maybe BlackBerry should attack the problem the same way Coke did, by conducting a (longer-term) OS interface challenge.

[1]http://www.slate.com/articles/business/rivalries/2013/08/pep...

Just making sure that cellphone vendors use devices properly imaged with a demo-oriented environment that returns to tutorial mode every time it idles would be a big help.

I remember that was my first experience with the Nokia N9 (spiritual and technical predecessor of the Jolla phone).

At the store, I picked it up, turned it around a few times to confirm that there are indeed no buttons, then tried tapping the screen all over but it stubbornly displayed only a screensaver.

Later someone told me that I was supposed to rapidly tap twice in one place (like a double-click on the mouse) to get to the home screen. Nothing in the unit's physical design or software suggested this.

The point is, once you figure out what to do, you really appreciate the comfort of such interface.

It is pretty discoverable through a tutorial which is offered for all new users. If you skip it - things can be initially harder.

I've checked out the two BB10 Blackberry devices at various cellphone kiosks - the first two times I got lost not knowing the gestures, the 3rd time I knew from reading online. After three kiosks, I still have never seen the tutorial. Obviously I would see it if I bought one, but first I need to decide to buy one.

That can't be good for BB.

I meant it's discoverable in Jolla. They offer a tutorial. There should be a way to view it again probably, in case you aren't using a completely new installation.

BB10 has a similar tutorial. As I said, it's never turned on in store demo units.

For anyone finding the verge review- http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/11/29/5156446/jolla-smartpho...

> Nonetheless, that group is small whereas the software evolution required is large.

It's also open source and I'm sure they have a lot of goodwill within the community given their history, so that might alleviate the problem somewhat.

I think that one of the revolutionary things on this is the I2C and power connectors available under the cover. It's the start of things becoming modularized. You want IRDA, get the back cover that adds it. You want what's next after NFC? Add it. You want a hardware slide out keyboard? Add it. You want an eInk back like the Yotta phone? Add it. You want a full USB port? Add it. All of those things can be done over i2c.

Random List of i2c components: http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/99160-List-of-I2C-...

Spark Fun: https://www.sparkfun.com/search/results?term=i2c&what=produc...

I'll probably buy a Jolla. I'm just so tired of the mainstream phone manufacturers like Sony and Samsung, it just feels like they don't care about me as a user. I've had way too many annoying problems with my Galaxy S2 because of the pre-installed apps, locked-in OS and design flaws.

I had the same problems with my previous Motorola defy. Then I switched to BlackBerry 10 and I'm happy with that. I'll try Jolla for sure as soon as possible, but I suggest you trying the blackberry z10 (that is priced at ~250E now) if you are interested in something different and more polished. Just my 2 cents

>Locked-in OS

I'll agree on that point. Have to root your phone using closed-source hacks from questionable sources, just so you can use your phone the way you want to, makes me a little sad. I believe that Samsung and others do this to decrease support costs and perhaps for DRM/piracy reasons. It still is a shitty business decision.

The marketing and sales copy is horrendous.

> Jolla is powered by Sailfish OS, a truly open and distinct mobile operating system. Navigate effortlessly with the gesture-based user interface and load the phone with top Android™ apps.

That's pretty much it. Bland, uncompelling, and unemotional. It's a poorly positioned phone that isn't cool -- but it could be with decent marketing and a great sales pitch. Way back when, if Apple had marketed the iPhone with this pitch, there'd be no iPhone today.

There's a lesson here: prospects don't know or care about you unless you make them. I have no idea who these people are, why I should care about them, or why this product will make me feel good or alleviate some pain in some way.

Marketing can be very expensive, but it's useful as well. Jolla probably prioritized development and production vs investing millions in marketing. They have limited resources and had to make choices and the first priority was a functional product. It affected many areas besides marketing (for example lacking community infrastructure, no public bug tracker and so on). Hopefully they'll gradually catch up in these aspects, but so far they seem to have enough of demand for their level of production. Don't compare them to Apple - they aren't huge company which pours millions into marketing from the start and expects some crazy numbers in sales in return right away. They aren't Nokia either - they are a small startup.

That's the build-it-and-they-will-come mentality! (It almost never works too!)

Great marketing is as important (possibly moreso) than a great product. It's probably easier to make a mediocre product a success with great marketing than to make a great product a success with ho-hum marketing. There's no point in having a great product that nobody knows about or worse, cares about.

Product development is like eating out: if you can't afford the marketing, you can't afford the product development. Paying for one and not the other is a great way to throw away the investment. It's just such a rookie mistake and completely unavoidable.

No, it's make things gradually and don't overstretch mentality. They know their resources and limits and apply them appropriately.

> There's no point in having a great product that nobody knows about or worse, cares about.

You didn't read carefully what I wrote above. They already have a lot of people who know and care about the product to buy it. They aren't running to increase that number up to the extreme. They match that number with their current production level. When that will grow, they'll have to boost the effort in marketing too. They do plan to grow, but gradually.

Personally I think they cut the marketing / community side a bit too much, but I understand that they have limited resources, so the product is their priority #1.

It's not overstretching to have great marketing from the outset; it's almost mandatory. Tofu marketing from the get-go (especially on launch day) is a great way to nudge the company into the deadpool. If their financial limits proscribe marketing, their company will be gone and forgotten soon enough when their sales are lackluster and insufficient.

Companies, new and established, just can't afford to be conservative when it comes convincing people to give them money. Bad marketing = bad sales.

> It's not overstretching to have great marketing from the outset

Your general logic seems to circle around expecting massive sales and huge production mindset (where investment has to be compensated with millions of sales). Jolla has modest expectations for the starting stage, so massive marketing would be an overstretch. But it shouldn't be abysmal either, I agree.

No, it doesn't. My mindset in this case revolves around one thing: convincing people they should buy. Their sales and marketing, from what I've observed today, is so poor it fails to do the only thing it should: sell.

I never said they should grow unsustainably and run out of cash, but my money is on them running out of cash anyway because their marketing is so poor it'll fail to drive the sales they need to keep the lights on. Frankly, supply shortages would be the best thing that could happen to them because scarcity drives demand and perceived value.

> Their sales and marketing, from what I've observed today, is so poor it fails to do the only thing it should: sell.

How is it exactly, if they were serving all their preorders already? They don't seem to have the lack of demand atm.

Exactly, keeping the early adopters happy and getting them to advertise their product for them is much more important. And regarding that: even the otherwise sceptical review by The Verge praised their interaction with the people who bought a Jolla.

What are "top" Android apps?? What does it mean?

It sounds like only top-selling Android apps are available, because they need to be ported somehow to the Sailfish OS and that the porting takes resources that are only applied to those "top" apps...

... which is not very reassuring: if the porting effort dries up then the phone won't be able to run any app...

... which is scary for something that costs almost as much as a top-brand phone (at under EUR 100 I'd be willing to take a chance, but not at EUR 400).

I believe they say "top" because they have only two alternative app stores installed on the phone. They could not install Google play.

You should be able to install more app stores, since app stores are themselves Android apps. So you could add Amazon's app store, for example.

Google Play is also installable, but "unofficially".

There are un-marketable features to consider, which make it quite compelling and emotional.

It's how Finns speak English. I work in Nokia and this is exactly the sort of stuff I hear from them. It's something they could use some help with, but hey that's why we native English speakers are around...

Technically on an English proficiency test I imagine Finns would beat lots of Americans ;)

I'll have to wait until they'll release US networks compatible version.

For those who missed it, there is a community Q&A about Jolla and Sailfish here: http://piratepad.net/ep/pad/view/JollaFAQ/latest

I'm intrigued by Jolla, if not enthused by it.

I'm not sure what it gives me that Android doesn't - can anyone enlighten me?

It depends on what you are interested in. Distinctive features:

1. It has strong focus on real multitasking (performance and design wise). Both Android and iOS are weak on that and prefer to avoid multitasking in order to gain battery life advantage.

2. It has innovative approach to UI, not being stuck in ideas developed a while ago, which hold Android and iOS back from advancing.

3. It's DRM free and aims to be privacy respecting unlike competition. It gives control over the system to the user and doesn't attempt to lock things up and make it hard to modify.

4. For those who care (developers probably more than others) - it's real glibc based Linux which gives synergy with the global Linux community. Android while using the Linux kernel is a completley different beast from libc and middleware up to the top of the stack. Mer/Sailfish on the other hand uses glibc, Wayland and other conventional Linux middleware and tools.

5. They plan to allow better participation of community in the development. Right now things aren't so open though, except the open parts Sailfish is based on (Mer Core and Nemo Mobile which are openly developed open source projects).

6. It's a startup and not some monstrous stonewalling corp with no face. So you often can communicate with Jolla directly (they even have official presence in Diaspora: https://joindiaspora.com/u/jolla) and they are interested in the community.

For more details see:

* https://sailfishos.org/about.html

* https://sailfishos.org/design.html

* https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Main_Page

* https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Nemo

Thank you, that's really useful.

What do you think Jolla is?

Here is some material from the launch event last year: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/jolla-sailfish/

In the same boat. It runs on mostly the same broad hardware (as I understand it leveraging much of the Android BSP work via libhybris). Obviously if you prefer Qt to Java/Dalvik it's a win, but the fact that it includes the Android runtime means that most app developers are going to target Android anyway.

It's sort of a wash from the perspective of open source. The SailfishOS core seems more open and "project-like" than AOSP, but just like with Google/GMS the core apps and user-facing bits are proprietary to Jolla. And being new, the ecosystem doesn't yet have good open source replacements you can find for Android.

I think I’ll wait for a true ‘high-end’ phone from them in the future. I wouldn’t mind paying 800 € for a phone, but I do expect it to run for a few years and really outperform my current N9.

Hopefully by the time they get that to any market, they will also have fixed most of the bugs in Sailfish OS.

It says €399.00, but then €414.00 for tax and shipping in Europe.

I changed from "Ah, same as a Nexus 5" to "Wow, that's two Nexus 4!".

€399 including tax + €15 shipping = €414 final price

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