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Comment by RivieraKid | Hacker News Reader

Yeah... new mobile platform is a really hard thing to do - and without a designer (whom they clearly don't have), it's impossible. Nobody will use this.

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Why are you so negative? Why do you say they don't have a designer? Did you ask? This is a technology preview, and for a new development platform, it's quite nice already.

The interface looks as if it was designed by a programmer. I would be really surprised if a professional designer designed it.

As a technology preview, it sucks. Not many technical details at all.

So it's a full stack, and you can run apps from a variety of (Qt-based) sources on it. It also has a few phrases like

ENJOY NEW USER EXPERIENCE

ADAPTABLE USER INTERFACE

Focus on mobile devices.

FREE OS FOR YOUR PHONE

Uhh, okay? Oh, and the video shows that the phone is basically an Android clone. Great.

I can't talk about the other person, but if I'm being negative it's because this has a really hype-ey 6-minute trailer advertising nothing of interest. Rule of thumb: Your trailer should never be more than two minutes, because otherwise it's probably really damn slow, and frankly a minute is pushing it.

This is not a marketing video. It mostly shows how Qt apps work with little or no modification, and that it is possible to use existing software with minimal adaptation. I think it is interesting because if a few people can make a usable prototype with some effort, there is hope that some more people and effort can actually produce a reasonably nice open-source mobile system to build on; that a phone running on open-source software is not an impossible or far-fetched idea.

Let's be honest, even if they did have a talented team of designers nobody would use this.

Probably.

>Let's be honest, even if they did have a talented team of designers nobody would use this.

Why?

Because it has very few advantages over it's competitors and tons of drawbacks.

It will run apps from every major mobile OS except iOS, and it will be completely free. It will be able to do "convergence" desktops before even Ubuntu Touch because its running an identical software stack to Kubuntu, you just need to switch the running shell.

What drawbacks, again?

Windows Phone has a talented team of designers, an innovative and easy to use UI, and backing from a major corporation with practically unlimited funds. It also has a tiny sliver of market share. Jolla has great designers, compatibility with Android apps, and killer hardware. Their marketshare is even smaller. Realistically, right now Android and iOS have all the mindshare and there is not a chance in hell that a me-too mobile OS is going to get any meaningful traction.

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