Since there's no new development happening with small phones, we'd have to settle for "older spec" screens (IE, new stock iPhone 5 screens, with none of the colour accuracy, frame-rate etc improvements from the last 10 years).
People don't like "old spec", so they'd probably not buy those devices.
If you're a small player, then you're downstream of the supply chain, you don't make the rules.
Chicken and Egg problem.
Ironically people think there's no market for small phones due to apple making a "small phone" which had a larger screen size than an iPhone 6.. which was when phones started getting too big for me, and many people I spoke to.
So, you make a small phone that isn't actually small, it sells like poop so you presume that people don't want small phones..
Variable frame rate screens aren’t just for making the phone feel snappier but are also needed for the battery to last longer.
If your production volume isn’t high enough to justify a custom screen to be cut you are stuck with what is available on the market.
And even if 5” screens are available now in the form of NOS or upcycled refurbs that may not be the case 2 or 3 not to mention 5+ years down the line.
So you have to go with what not only is available today but with what is still likely to be available throughout the expected usable lifetime of your product.
90% wouldn't notice, but of those 90%, 5% compared specs and got the phone with better color accuracy "just in case," and 95% just went to their local retailer and either bought the newest phone or the cheapest phone.
It will be pretty imperceivable when you stay within the same ecosystem. If you went from your 17 and then went to a mid tier phone like a Samsung A71, you would notice a difference.
Display is something I for sure started paying attention to when I was jumping back and forth between Android and Apple when I went from my OnePlus to Apple and then to Samsung noticed differences.
Are you really telling me that people wouldn't look at the spec-sheet and state (loudly) that they won't buy a phone because "in 2025 it doesn't even have 120fps"?
I'm not the OP, but if you ask me, I'll tell you that I think most phone users out there don't even know what a fps is, let alone how many fps their smartphone has...
You know what, that is exactly what Lenovo executives were telling their customers right up until the moment that Apple released Retina devices. Lenovo swore in a blog post that because of the overall panel market it was quite impossible to put an IPS display in a laptop, then a few days later Apple released a 221 DPI 15" IPS MacBook Pro.
I've been IT operations for years, and when I order laptops I sometimes do a little experiment. If I ask people if they want a 15.6" laptop or a 13" laptop, they always say 15.6. If I don't give them a choice and just start buying 13" laptops, everybody tells me how much they love the smaller laptop, and people still on the 15.6" models start looking around asking when they can get the smaller one.
People don't know what they want unless you give it to them.
Yeah I feel like putting it closer to the SE lifecycle is must be a better decision than fully axing the mini lineup. If we get a mini 13, then a mini 19 or 20? I can live with that.
What 5-ish inch screen phone has even been released within the past 5 years? The only ones I can think of are the Unihertz phones, and those don't get a single update after getting shoved out the door, not to mention that they're probably full of Chinese backdoors. I'd buy that exact phone in a heartbeat if it didn't have those problems, and all the other ones I've seen have similar dealbreakers.
How do you assess that? I'd imagine it would be more along the lines of is the phone frictionless to use?
This is just an anecdote but I owned every Google Nexus phone they made up to Nexus 5. A series of bugs caused priceless videos to get ruined and I decided to try iPhone after that. I didn't realize just how much I unconsciously hated using the Nexus phone and that contributed to me not actually adopting smartphone software until I got the iPhone. When the phone and the OS were a burden it led to the phone being avoided. I dont know which was better. I appreciate the battery life, camera and general stability but I hate the new addictions to social media it has caused.
I love the idea of the privacy switch, but I want more: I want a hard, electromechanical switch for each of: Mic, camera, GPS, wifi, cell, bluetooth. These can be tiny and aesthetically pleasing, as long as I can easily flip on/off the one I want.
The problem with having a single button, even configurable, is that it's all-or-nothing, and I might want different things at different times.
The PinePhone has 6 dip switches for this 1. modem, 2 Wifi/BT, 3. Mic 4, rear cam, 5. front cam, 6. headphone / serial port. They say it will stay in production for 2 more years, but a lot of the accessories (LoRa cover, keyboard, etc) are already gone.
If nothing else it is a fun platform to hack on. I'm currently hacking a toy OS for it, and the documentation for the SoC is fairly complete. I'd love an updated phone like this Jolly orange Jolla to hack on, but not at that price, and seems like it might be locked down.
I mean since it's linux phone with (hopefully) open architecture, it should be possible to create an external usb device that exposes any functionality.
Like, to keep core functionality simple and open it for extensions ("extra battery", "knobs and switches", "ethernet" etc)
"Physical controls" are those that you can physically sense. My point was everyone needs different things, so it's possible to keep core functionality simple and let users add what they need, via extensions. Like dongle hell but better.
It would be great if all these companies contributed to a some kind of a unified modular platform like Project ARA. I see a lot of new devices, but they all do their own stuff. They produce hardware for their software, the end result is the same as with big brands. Most of these devices are usable while they are supported by these companies. Some of them allow installing custom Android roms, but not many.
Looks like the market just gets more fragmented without any improvements towards better sustainability/reusability. The only thing that really caught my attention recently was Pilet, a handheld Raspberry Pi. That's a really cool thing, that gives mobility while maintaining functionality.
I hope not.
Projects like that to have any chance at surviving have to be good phones first. Adding modularity will make it worse in terms of specs, more expensive and in the result dead on arrival.
Once they launch a few successful (or at least sustainable) products, they can maybe try doing some modularity
Am I the only one who just feels burnt out on these type of projects? We have a plethora of raspberry pi and other arm mobile developer kits that all just fail to deliver. They make great pet projects but fail at what most mobile phones do great which is provide a computer I can reliably and safely take with me in life. This pilet thing has 7 hours of battery life, is huge and will probably explode if I put it in my bikes bag.
While it's not perfect I've been investing more time into learning to live with grapheneOS. I can run Emacs and clang on the go. It's a better start that won't turn into a paperweight.
There is probably one other person on planet Earth who also just feels burnt out on these type of projects (you can just call it cyberdeck).
Meanwhile, from [1]
> 2,777 backers pledged CA$ 1,264,707 to help bring this project to life.
> UPDATE: The project got fully funded within 5 minutes! Can’t believe the support—thank you so much!
ClockworkPi's DevTerm, uConsole, GameShell are constantly sold out [2]. Hackberry Pi, constantly sold out.
Jolla's strength is SailfishOS which is a successor of Maemo/MeeGo. It is a Linux-based solution with a good, gesture-based UI with Android emulation.
GrapheneOS has nothing to do with any of these projects. It is software-only, for Google Pixel devices, and it has a specific strength (security) no other OS/HW combo comes close to.
The strength of a modular smartphone is, it is repairable and you can physically alter its features without changing form factor, like Framework. For smartphones, I believe a Fairphone is very modular, and smartwatches Pixel Watch 4 (but it only runs WearOS).
I'm not sure what you think Jolla is, but they have a track record of releasing phones that are good enough to be used as daily drivers. They are also targeting enthusiasts, but I've been using exclusively phones that run Sailfish OS (their main product) since 2014.
Sorry if my post is confusing I'm referring to the poster I replied to mentioning the Pilet which is a raspberry pi based project. Jolla phone I really can't speak too. It sounds closer to graphene where they understand the benefit of reasonable hardware quality and battery life.
> As an American, I will order this phone as soon as it’s available to me!
It won’t be. From the time of their first phone the company actively made the choice to not support the US market. There’s the obvious spectrum difference and cost to certify, but the real reason they don’t want to touch it is litigation risk on patents and whatnot.
they did indeed have a crowdfunded tablet that went wrong in supply chain, and basically bankrupted the company. Many funders lost out. That's unfortunate, and perhaps might have been avoidable with better organisation. Absolutely it sucks. They did have a limited refund program as others have noted.
However, they do not have a continous history of not shipping. I personally owned their two previous phone handsets, both shipped. Also I've bought and run their firmwares on third party handsets, they also shipped the software.
They did offer refunds in the form of vouchers for their shop. I can understand if that's not something everyone is interested in, but it's not nothing. I made use of that successfully.
It wasnt offered to everyone. They did the whole thing by trickling out information based on batches based on when you ordered. And for the record I wasnt shipped a tablet, given a refund or offered a voucher and based on comments at the time I wasnt the only one. It was a total writeoff.
The operating system (Sailfish OS) is a mix of components, some open and some closed. Search for "open source" on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS . They have said years ago that it would be open sourced, but as far as I know the Silica UI is still proprietary.
It was mainly the investors that didn't want to move. Many things were stagnant that needed moving. Now that the investors are gone there is a chance to move things, and slowly things are moving into open sourcing their software.
The Camera app, Gallery app, Nexcloud accounts and other accounts components are open sourced and on github. There is now talk about Silica, the Wayland compositor. It hasn't been updated well in recent years and there is talk about moving it to Weston or Wlroots, while also supporting xdg-shell for GTK applications.
Look at the Wikipedia page, it's a mix of open source and proprietary copmonents. The OS project describes itself on https://sailfishos.org/info/ as "open source based" rather than "open source". It seems they have opened up some stuff since the last time I looked, but as far as I can tell the Silica UI is still proprietary. See for example https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/silica-components-license-and...
Android and iOS need to be shaken up so badly that I welcome more or less anything into this space, no matter how flawed. That said, I think the chances I buy one of these is very low. At the moment, I keep a smart phone solely so that finding work is not difficult. You need quite the personal network to explain that "I don't have a smart phone."
Otherwise, I'm trying to abstain from smart phone usage as much as possible: the market is probably _never_ going to solve one which solves addiction problem. (the best solution for this is to have a desktop computer which you only sit at for specific tasks)
On the other hand, if I could run my company's OTP and it were much more private than iOS or Android I would probably jump ship.
my lenovo laptop has a physical privacy switch for the camera... it's literally a piece of plastic that covers the lens, no way to bypass that (without physical access). I feel safe.
If it can be enabled in software, it can be disabled in software, and I don't trust software.
Yeah, the idea of having a physical switch marketed as a "privacy switch" that doesn't actually physically disconnect things seems ... kind of ridiculous? Dangerous even.
Yipee! Ok, I can't afford more hardware, but it's my favourite mobile os and I develop/maintain apps for it, so I'm happy to see the amount of effort Jolla has put in in the last 2 years to stay relevant and up their game!
Seems they still havent figured out a business model for their OS. Hardware at low volumes wont move ala kickstarter.
Would have thought after their ups and downs they would have landedon a sustainable businesss model.
The market oppurtunity is there and the timing is favourable. All thats needed to stick the landing and have a viable alt to the ios/android duoploly.
Personally would recommend they work with an established OEM to customize/port drivers to existing hardware and market to a specific vertical rather than a general purpose for normies device.
Thats part of it actually , they have(had) a nonstandard offering via Sony hardware. If it was a known OEM like Oppo/Honor/Oneplus theres already some familiarity/buyin from users and lines possibly can be opened for select verticals.
Instead with the SonyX offerings , they linited it to a tiny range, upgrades as i recall were sometimes not possible to newer versions and a separate support contract to Jollla was needed.
A pure play ala android would do better, they (jolla) do the software - the OEM does the hardware/updates similarly to how Linux distros like Ubuntu get bundled into Dell etc.
If they were a hardware firm like Huawei bulding their phone and OS makes sense , or with massive scale like Google with Pixel.They are neither. Hardware is hard, and scaling it at volume moreso.
I'm a bit torn about this. On one hand, I really think viable alternatives to Android/iOS are now more necessary than ever, and I'm eager to explore this OS. On the other hand, I'm not in the mood to buy new hardware (right now) just to try it out.
All phones end up reliant on proprietary blobs. Not that I disagree in principle, but we have to be realistic. Hardware manufacturers, telcoms and to some degree regulators all do not like user freedom with regards to phones.
No. The touchscreen firmware's source is not distributed[1] for one, and neither is the firmware for the baseband processor. Possibly more aspects.
Although "open" doesn't matter as much as "libre" does. Modifying source code is useless if you can't actually replace the running instance. It has all the same problems as closed source software. Baseband processors are legally required to be tivoized, thus the violation of user freedoms is encoded in law. Quite frankly, I think it's a huge mistake on the part of regulators. If somebody wanted to do undesirable things on cellphone bands, they can simply build their own transciever for it and there's effectively no way to stop that. These regulations aren't a real security measure, not even security through obscurity. Making a transmitter for a certain band is trivial if all you're doing is causing interference. If the malicious actor is doing more than just that, it already requires a strong understanding of RF principles such that they already effectively posses the knowledge to make an appropriate transciever. All regulators effectively do here with Tivoization is protect potential back doors and security vulnerabilities from being mitigated.
Darn well thats a damn shame. The phone compromises so much "nice to have" features to get to the supposed "privacy respecting" label. Its a shame they didn't actually go all the way. Seems like then all we really have in terms of communication devices is the BeTrusted platform (Precursor communication device)
There are driver blobs for the underlying device which they can't do much about, and then there are the last vestiges of Lipstick (the Sailfish OS UI), which are not released under an open source license. That's hardly "the whole OS", since everything else is a plain linux distribution.
Basically all the middleware in Sailfish OS was always open source and many of the apps as well. They have been also IIRC finally open sourcing the primary apps as there are no longer pesky external investors forcikg them to keep things closed for weird reasons.
Libhybris not halium, and those are open, the android driver blobs are closed and it's the same on pmOS with halium? They did start open sourcing a lot of their UI components recently, so hopefully this continues, we'll see
Hardware specs look pretty nice, SailfishOS should work nicely on this device. The design language remains faithful to the original Jolla Phone from more than a decade ago. :)
What is Jolla now? I remember it as startup created by previous Nokia employees that tried to build a Nokia-type of phone based on Maemo? Or do I remember it wrong?
In 2013 they released the Jolla 1, a phone with custom hardware and Linux software. In 2015 they tried again with a tablet, but it failed on the side of hardware production and the company became insolvent.
In 2017 there came investors, among others ROS Telecom, a Russion telecom provider. They pivoted to only providing software, mainly on Sony phones. That is still ongoing.
Since the Russia - Ukraine war the Russion investors went MIA. The Finnish people from Jolla started a new company and had all assets moved to that company. They are now trying to rebuild the company and apparently extend into hardware again, even though the PCB design is off the shelf.
I have been a user since 2014 and am quite happy with their offering. It offers ssh root access if you want. Optionally manually installing software. Very much a GNU/Linux experience. Privacy focused and user oriented. And now slowly but surely there are parts of the software being opensourced.
No, you're right. SailfishOS inherits the core of the OS from the old Maemo of Nokia N900 fame (though the UI was built from scratch I believe). I tried it back in the day on my Nexus 4 and it was buttery smooth, even with all its fancy animations and gesture-based navigation, which was way ahead of Android at the time.
I always thought SailfishOS would really take off by now, given how advanced and polished it already was at the time, but Jolla's mismanagement nearly jeopardised the whole thing (they filed for bankruptcy last year).
The platform always suffered from two big architectural missteps.
1 - the native browser being an old firefox/gecko fork embedded into their own UI framework, giving a poor performance and dated compatibility quirks
2 - the android emulating runtime meant that you get again, dated , poorly performing android apps, that you're driven towards because the browser engine was so poor.
these two mean you basically end up with a sub-standard android handset/UI, and a tiny market for native app development (because everyone made do with android), its a real chicken/egg.
In fairness I've not used it since the sony XPeria days, but it was my daily phone for 3-4 years since the Jolla 1. It was cool being able to emacs and irc natively on the phone, but that was limited in use cases tbh.
Same experience here, though from Sailfish OS run on their first Jolla phone.
Also permission model on Sailfish was much worse than on Android. I didn't use Android apps on Sailfish, though.
I really liked Silica UI, but available apps had much less functionality than their counterparts on Android and iOS. I think that open sourcing Sailfish and Silica would end up better for them.
Nevertheless, I kinda liked the phone, but ultimately went back to Android.
They filled for bankruptcy again last year (first was the Tablet debacle in I think 2015) but have since managed to survive it again, so all is well. :)
Although the SFOS community did express some interest in the 3.5 mm jack in the polls earlier, there's no headphone jack. The expected device sales volume probably would not cover the added engineering cost from such modifications to the mainboard reference design at the announced price point.
Some time ago I also thought that no 3.5mm jack is a deal-breaker, but I bought super cheap jack-usbc adapter that is 5cm long and it works pretty well.
I haven't tried a USB-C to 3.55mm adapter but your experience heartens me.
Headphone jack has been a hard line for me. Having recently moved into the world of wireless charging (I keep a phone 5-7 years and just missed wireless charging being normalized on my last phone purchase back in 2020) I think using the USB port for headphone is finally visible.
I spend a lot of the day with my headphones on and the phone on the wireless charging puck. Not being forced to choose between charging and headphones changes the equation.
Correct me if I'm wrong but those cables must include a DAC to function properly and so usually have a tiny kinda crappy one in them, right?
In this post headphone jack world I use a fiio Bluetooth/USB DAC that's really good quality. But it's about the size of two ipod nanos stacked on top of each other.
>those cables must include a DAC to function properly and so usually have a tiny kinda crappy one in them, right?
FWIW, audiophiles were very impressed with the measured performance of the €10 Apple USB-C to 3.5mm adapter and its DAC. The Google one is likely good too.
Show the operating system. That is the core of what people will be using - they need to know what it looks like. How easy it is. The phone looks like all other phones.
That shouldn't be a problem as long as you can still download apps from the Play Store itself (not the official app). Basically, take a look at how proxy stores like Aurora work, they connect to the Play Store servers and allow you to download apps directly from Google, without needing the Play Store app.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the downloaded app will work on such a device (if it doesn't have Google Play Services), but at least it lets you download the app, which isn't much different from downloading it from say, APK Mirror. And as long as you can extract the apps from either the Play Store or Android devices itself (via adb/root etc), I'm assuming sites like APK Mirror will continue to exist.
While WhatsApp is not very much used in the US, in some other countries such as Brazil it is basically the primary form of "phone" communication. It is everyone's default text, voice and video message platform. People don't ask if you have WhatsApp there, they just assume it. You talk to your Bank/Investor manager using WhatsApp. You order pizza through WhatsApp. Customer Support for services is WhatsApp bots that send you to the correct places. If I don't have WhatsApp, I can't voice chat with my mom, she won't see her grandkids. If you have any sort of business, you need WhatsApp.
And yes, I do have Signal installed, and there are only 2 people who talk to me through it (one being my partner).
Phone carriers got too greedy charging for every single SMS message and phone call, WhatsApp took over when smartphones became popular.
>Ruthless monopoly building on both Google and Apple side IMHO.
Microsoft spent a lot of money and resources trying to compete and failed.
Android/Apple just started early enough and by 2012 it was too late as most consumers have decided. To enter this market you have to be truly unique or else you are just copying the competitor and why would users switch if they are happy enough?
Is that really a monopoly if you had a third competitor come in and try?
Hard no on giving Jolla a cent. Jolla rug-pulled [1] people who crowd-funded [2] their tablet in 2014.
Jolla used the crowd-funding campaign to butter up VCs for their next funding round [3] and then decided the Asian LLC handling the crowdfunding would go bankrupt, leaving backers with no tablets and most with no refund. [4]
The real kicker was that the tablets were ALREADY manufactured by their ODM, Jolla just never paid them. Took backers money and stiffed their manufacturing partner too. For a while after the campaign folded you could buy Jolla branded tablets (running Android, it was just an ODM model they flashed Sailfish on) on eBay or Taobao [5]. I just checked and there's a Jolla Tablet listed on eBay right now. [6]
10 years later, it looks like they're trying the same thing. Maybe they think the internet has forgotten, but I have zero interest in supporting their next hardware rug-pull endeavour.
As someone that's contributed to the Jolla tablet foundraiser, I mostly got refunded when they canceled it. It took a long time, it was not directly the money I contributed, but I wasn't left with nothing, and I don't feel like I've been cheated. YMMV, of course, it sounds like you're talking from experience.
AFAIR, I got refunded the whole tablet price in the end - I think half the price immediately, and the other half a few years later. It doesn't mean others were refunded too, of course. It was long time ago, though, so I may have mixed something up.
afaik the tablet was in development hell for much of 2015, by the time it was ready it was no longer profitable and Jolla couldn't afford to buy more than about 600 units without going bust.
IIRC they were negotiating a startup funding round that failed, so they ended unexpectedly up not having enough money to run the company let alone pay for the tablet manufacturing. Even remember hearing about the manufacturers selling the units with Android by the time they secured at least some funding for the company, so there was really nothing to salvage.
Or it might have just been their excuse back then - if you have some newer details of how it actually all went down with the tablet, please do share! :-)
> leaving backers with no tablets and most with no refund.
I'm pretty sure we eventually all got refunds after they got the Russian cash. My refund came a couple years later iirc, with a check for half the amount coming a few months before the check for the second half.
Is this something generally understood to be a down payment in EU nomenclature? Just curiosity, as in the US I'd generally expect it to mean you get a phone on launch for the stated price, and a down payment to use something along the lines of "reserve for...".
HMD under NOKIA brand went almost out of business due to adding notches to their phones, now Jolla is doing the same mistake. Only Apple could get away with it. At least they aren't shipping a 720p display anymore. Why didn't they just replicate/rebrand Xperia?
Most people aren't willing to sacrifice half their screen real estate 100% of the time, or deal with a significantly thicker phone, just to get a physical keyboard. The market for that is very small.
The market is small, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a significant overlap between those who want a keyboard and the target audience of the Jolla phone.
Don't forget that SailfishOS is ultimately Linux (and not like Android) - it even comes with the zypper package manager that lets you install apps and update the OS using the terminal. Part of the fun of using SailfishOS is doing familiar Linux systems managements and general operations the terminal, which any Linux nerd would love. And Linux nerds make up a huge userbase of this OS.
I mean, look at the link OP pasted, they're straight up calling it a "Linux phone", it's clear who their audience is. And don't tell me majority of Linux users would NOT prefer to have a keyboard.
They're probably not interested in the Linux power user. They're interested in making their phone viable for everyone else, since that's a much bigger market, and for that customer base, a keyboard is very much going to be a negative and not a positive. The Linux part of their Linux phone also has the same problem, but they apparently have faith in that part.
eh, I was a Smartphone ‘it's gotta have a keyboard!’ hold-out too, but I've long-since embraced the Swype or whatever it's called, style of input. It's fine enough for 90% of my engagement with the internet via a phone. Anything more in depth I'm on a computer with a physical keyboard anyway.
But yes, the N900 was pre-slidey-smartphone peak brilliance.
Likewise; I had an N900, and I loved the idea of a physical keyboard, but now I figure I can pocket a folding keyboard for that.
What I would like is apps to pervasively support a keyboard. For instance, in most Android messaging apps, you can't even press "enter" to send a message, so if you want to use a physical keyboard, you have to type the message and then poke the screen to send.
Out of all the OS's on which you'd have to hack on a bluetooth implementation, I feel like a mostly vanilla linux is the best one you could hope for. [edit] If it's not obvious from my previous phrasing, I'm referring to Sailfish OS.
I low-key hate myself for this, but I went and preorder. I've been waiting for SFOS to come to my Xperia 10 IV but that seems to still be in beta, and after quite a few years it'd be hard to switch over ask well... But I have to try support Jolla as they've been my go-to phone OS maker for the last 10-15 years.
TLDR: while the OS is great (really GREAT), the real-world compatibility is not.
I had Sailfish OS for a daily driver for two years, and OS is great (let me say that again, Sailfish IS GREAT!), but there are "the details".
Jolla is completely ignorant to needs of their users. While they do have an android layer, they are ignoring to things that are of huge importance for daily life, like bluetooth passtrough, and are important due to daily needs, for instance, bluetooth passtrough is really important for using public transport here.
FFS, I was reversing banking application and patching it to be able to use it. And actually became very good at it :D
So at the end you will have a great OS, incompatible with the whole world. After 2 years of suffering, I ditched Sailfish, bought Pixel and installed Graphene OS.
Once Jolla starts to listen to their customers, they are on the path to very real android contender, but unfortunately they just dont understand, that people need some features, they are not providing while the vendors wont support some exotic OS. They need to adapt, not vendors - the whole thread is full of this mentality.
The android "container" was a step into right direction but they just shouldnt abandone it and keep on supporting it, adding additional layers of compatibility.
I really hope they will change their mind at some point and prioritize compatibility, would love to ditch android and its spyware driven ecosystem completely, but sadly, Graphene OS + NetGuard is just a far better alternative until Jolla stops behaving like an infant. They are literally sabotaging themself in a worse possible way.
For a company of their size that has to compete in the tech market of today, I'm surprised they're able to produce updates for the OS as regular as they do.
Blaming they can't keep up with user requests, granted reasonable ones, is a little short sighted in my opinion. If we want to break the Apple/Google duopoly we need to be able to bear a couple of paper cuts. If you wait for perfection before committing they'll just end up going out of business. :(
This is nonsense. They cant force vendors to support them, so the only viable strategy is to support the vendors. And they can, but they decided not to.
I feel like you're focusing on the wrong thing from what I said. Jolla is a small company, they don't have the man power to support everything. They already do a lot by supporting devices from vendors that are sympathetic to being open (the Sony open devices program for example).
They can support passtrough for bluetooth and NFC. It is not something they need to invent themself.
I cant emphasize enought how this feature is of most importance for my daily life. At 48, I am using either the bicycle or public transport for my daily commute (for 30+ years!). I can workaround it by buying a NFC card each month but very typically it is not available without considerate walk time. Not to mention banking app, but I have covered it by reversing and patching it. How many users will do that?
It is not my fault, that the world is as it is. But not supporting real life scenarios is certainly Jollas fault.
As far as I'm aware there's a Patchmanager patch for enabling bluetooth in the Android subsystem. But I don't really understand your vehemence against me, or them for that matter.
I am on Graphene OS now and they will really need to think of something revolutionary to get me back. No, nice GUI is not enough for all the years I have lost, desperately trying to adapt. Now, think of the normal, everyday user, not prepared to even buy a specific phone release for Sailfish. And this is how they will lose users. I consider this as constructive criticism from my side.
Believe me, I am in front row, for wanting the linux to succeed against bastardized OS as android is. But the wrong decisions are just wrong decisions, there is no excuse to it.
The revolutionary part is full linux with root a checkbox in the settings, no need to flash fishy roms, compile graphene yourself etc, it is mostly aimed for linux geeks who like to tinker, if you're fine with android, it's probably not for you (no matter how much they push for it being usable by normal users, there's always fixes/tweaks/workarounds that you'll need to use terminal for, or wait for proper fix, but again full root access is a checkbox in settings that will install terminal for you, for geeks it's the best option out there)
Sure, I am not complaining about that. Again, Sailfish OS is great (!!!!!), no doubt about it. Unfortunately, I need a daily driver instead of carrying 2 phones with me.
Once Jolla will understand that, I am prepared to get back. Until they don't, they will need to find users elsewhere. I can ditch a lot of bloat from my life, but unfortunately, public transport is not one of them.
I would not sey they are ignorant - rather, some things are unfortunately just not possible with their staffing and budget. Connecting Android bluetooth blobs compiled against bionic libc via glibc Linux distro to a container running Android emulation is one of these things.
Support for vital features needed for normal life is a must. And all available resources should be put into it as it is making their OS viable for usage. No android application support, no users.
Jolla never shipped me a tablet or offered me a refund back when they were making tablets. I would strongly urge people not to pre-order from the company since they have a track record of not shipping and being extremely irresponsible in their communications when they dont ship.
Hmm, I at least received a refund on the tablet; I think half of it was paid out and half of it I opted to use as payment for Sailfish X.
An email I have stored from July 4th 2017 mentions "the tablet refund tool", so there seems to have been a concrete system for this refunding process as well. I abstractly remember something like that, though I must say my memory is shoddy and should not be trusted.
This is the last response I have from them in my inbox (Sep 24, 2015, 8:56 AM). Never heard back from them after this inspite of repeated subsequent queries
----------------
Hi,
thank you for your message.
We are sending the invites out to contributors in groups according to the chronological order of contributions. Please also note that we are slowly ramping up the deliveries, starting with a smaller group to ensure that everything works as it should, but anticipate future groups to be bigger in size. This means that we are currently unable to estimate your exact order number in the queue.
To read all the latest on the Tablet campaign, please stay tuned to the Jolla Blog. For some commonly asked questions and answers, please see our Jolla Tablet Campaign FAQs.
Thank you again for your contribution!
Sincerely,
Jolla Customer Care
Operating hours: Monday to Friday from 9.00 - 17.00 GMT +2; close weekends and public holidays (Finland).
Join the Movement @ jolla.com
Like us on Facebook @ jollaofficial
Follow on Twitter @ jollaHQ
Dive deeper into the Jolla world @ Official Jolla Blog
It’s literally inferior security wise. The desktop Linux security model is antiquated when compared to the advances in security/isolation/etc that modern mobile phone OSs have developed.
It's in a different league as it's a linux phone first and foremost, not degoogled/hardened android, you get full root access as a checkbox in settings that will install terminal app for you to hack to your heart's content, user having root access is not an attack vector for them
"Real Linux on a phone" sounds to me like the worst user experience imaginable. And the whole thing about "no phoning home" should be interpreted as "we have no idea whether the latest release is crashing in the wild or not".
You probably never used Maemo, whose UI (and also Palm's WebOS UI) were ripped off for later versions of Android and iOS, which wasn't even multitasking yet. Literally hired the same people to do them. Jolla started with the FOSS parts of Maemo but went proprietary.
If Nokia hadn't been intentionally destroyed by its board in a romance with Microsoft cash, through a Canadian snake, Maemo would have been a real contender. You can get an vague idea what it looked like from here: https://maemo-leste.github.io/
Also, I don't know what's motivating you to just make negative shit up from whole cloth. Where did Linux touch you?
Again, starting from elements of Maemo is a surefire way to ship a ghastly user experience. The N800 that I still own had the most hostile UI of any device I ever bought with my own money. The reason it flopped was because it is really bad, not a great conspiracy.
Look at the TODOs for Maemo Leste, which you just referenced. "Phone calls should work, with audio, when alsamixer is set up properly". That is F-tier user experience. OpenMoko-level garbage.
47% percent of voters wanted a ~6" phone, and 12% of voters a ~7" phone.
I guess me and the remaining 41% of voters are still left wishing for 5" phones to make a comeback.
Supply chain has left us.
Since there's no new development happening with small phones, we'd have to settle for "older spec" screens (IE, new stock iPhone 5 screens, with none of the colour accuracy, frame-rate etc improvements from the last 10 years).
People don't like "old spec", so they'd probably not buy those devices.
If you're a small player, then you're downstream of the supply chain, you don't make the rules.
Chicken and Egg problem.
Ironically people think there's no market for small phones due to apple making a "small phone" which had a larger screen size than an iPhone 6.. which was when phones started getting too big for me, and many people I spoke to.
So, you make a small phone that isn't actually small, it sells like poop so you presume that people don't want small phones..
> colour accuracy, frame-rate
Absolutely irrelevant for what I do with a phone, and I'd wager that 90% of users would not notice the difference.
Variable frame rate screens aren’t just for making the phone feel snappier but are also needed for the battery to last longer.
If your production volume isn’t high enough to justify a custom screen to be cut you are stuck with what is available on the market.
And even if 5” screens are available now in the form of NOS or upcycled refurbs that may not be the case 2 or 3 not to mention 5+ years down the line.
So you have to go with what not only is available today but with what is still likely to be available throughout the expected usable lifetime of your product.
90% wouldn't notice, but of those 90%, 5% compared specs and got the phone with better color accuracy "just in case," and 95% just went to their local retailer and either bought the newest phone or the cheapest phone.
I had iPhone 12 Mini and then 14 and now 17. I can't practically tell the difference except for battery life, weight, and size.
It will be pretty imperceivable when you stay within the same ecosystem. If you went from your 17 and then went to a mid tier phone like a Samsung A71, you would notice a difference.
Display is something I for sure started paying attention to when I was jumping back and forth between Android and Apple when I went from my OnePlus to Apple and then to Samsung noticed differences.
Are you really telling me that people wouldn't look at the spec-sheet and state (loudly) that they won't buy a phone because "in 2025 it doesn't even have 120fps"?
I don't believe you if that's the case.
I'm not the OP, but if you ask me, I'll tell you that I think most phone users out there don't even know what a fps is, let alone how many fps their smartphone has...
I've never looked at the spec sheet when I bought a phone.
yet, every time there’s a “niche” product that people asked for on HN the first comment is almost always about specifications being out of date
Re us/we, you're not associated with Jolla, right? For clarity.
To clarify: no.
Though I suspect I worked with many staff members at Nokia. Their former CTO was my boss.
You know what, that is exactly what Lenovo executives were telling their customers right up until the moment that Apple released Retina devices. Lenovo swore in a blog post that because of the overall panel market it was quite impossible to put an IPS display in a laptop, then a few days later Apple released a 221 DPI 15" IPS MacBook Pro.
Apple definitely has the grunt I'm talking about to push the supply chain to change.
What about those of us that were expecting an earpiece and glasses with AR for calling by now?
FYI, if you have an Apple Watch with LTE you can take facetime calls with it using your Airpods.
Feels kinda weird, definitely works.
(same for music)
Every now and then some phone manufacturer mistakes online sentiment for actual demand and gets burned making a mini phone that won’t sell
I've been IT operations for years, and when I order laptops I sometimes do a little experiment. If I ask people if they want a 15.6" laptop or a 13" laptop, they always say 15.6. If I don't give them a choice and just start buying 13" laptops, everybody tells me how much they love the smaller laptop, and people still on the 15.6" models start looking around asking when they can get the smaller one.
People don't know what they want unless you give it to them.
Yeah...like Apple: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula...
As someone holding onto their iPhone mini 13 for dear life, I hope they will release a one off in a few years once support for the 13 mini ends.
Yeah I feel like putting it closer to the SE lifecycle is must be a better decision than fully axing the mini lineup. If we get a mini 13, then a mini 19 or 20? I can live with that.
What 5-ish inch screen phone has even been released within the past 5 years? The only ones I can think of are the Unihertz phones, and those don't get a single update after getting shoved out the door, not to mention that they're probably full of Chinese backdoors. I'd buy that exact phone in a heartbeat if it didn't have those problems, and all the other ones I've seen have similar dealbreakers.
iPhone had the 12 and 13 mini, but they didn't sell, so there was no iPhone 14 mini and hasn't been one since. That was a 5.4" display.
> but they didn't sell
What do you call "didn't sell" ? In numbers.
How about 3% of sales: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula...
I cherish my iPhone 12 Mini and treat it with great care as it is the form factor I want and I want it to last as long as possible.
I skipped that one because my SE 2 was less than a year old and I didn't want to go up a size.
iPhone SE 3 was released in 2022
Very fair. I skipped it because my SE 2 was still going strong when that came out, which I kind of regret now, since I can't get a new SE 3 anymore.
Only Apple would consider selling millions, but not tens of millions a failure.
Small phones are also way less addictive. It's not in the interest of the mobile ecosystem.
How do you assess that? I'd imagine it would be more along the lines of is the phone frictionless to use?
This is just an anecdote but I owned every Google Nexus phone they made up to Nexus 5. A series of bugs caused priceless videos to get ruined and I decided to try iPhone after that. I didn't realize just how much I unconsciously hated using the Nexus phone and that contributed to me not actually adopting smartphone software until I got the iPhone. When the phone and the OS were a burden it led to the phone being avoided. I dont know which was better. I appreciate the battery life, camera and general stability but I hate the new addictions to social media it has caused.
I love the idea of the privacy switch, but I want more: I want a hard, electromechanical switch for each of: Mic, camera, GPS, wifi, cell, bluetooth. These can be tiny and aesthetically pleasing, as long as I can easily flip on/off the one I want.
The problem with having a single button, even configurable, is that it's all-or-nothing, and I might want different things at different times.
But thanks so much for taking the first step!
The PinePhone has 6 dip switches for this 1. modem, 2 Wifi/BT, 3. Mic 4, rear cam, 5. front cam, 6. headphone / serial port. They say it will stay in production for 2 more years, but a lot of the accessories (LoRa cover, keyboard, etc) are already gone.
If nothing else it is a fun platform to hack on. I'm currently hacking a toy OS for it, and the documentation for the SoC is fairly complete. I'd love an updated phone like this Jolly orange Jolla to hack on, but not at that price, and seems like it might be locked down.
If it catches traction, there will be usb-connected phone cases that expose these switches to physical controls.
I do not really understand what you mean by this. Can you elaborate or clarify what you mean?
I mean since it's linux phone with (hopefully) open architecture, it should be possible to create an external usb device that exposes any functionality.
Like, to keep core functionality simple and open it for extensions ("extra battery", "knobs and switches", "ethernet" etc)
I don't think that's what anyone means by "physical controls" and if they do, then they don't know what they are talking about.
"Physical controls" are those that you can physically sense. My point was everyone needs different things, so it's possible to keep core functionality simple and let users add what they need, via extensions. Like dongle hell but better.
It would be great if all these companies contributed to a some kind of a unified modular platform like Project ARA. I see a lot of new devices, but they all do their own stuff. They produce hardware for their software, the end result is the same as with big brands. Most of these devices are usable while they are supported by these companies. Some of them allow installing custom Android roms, but not many.
Looks like the market just gets more fragmented without any improvements towards better sustainability/reusability. The only thing that really caught my attention recently was Pilet, a handheld Raspberry Pi. That's a really cool thing, that gives mobility while maintaining functionality.
I hope not. Projects like that to have any chance at surviving have to be good phones first. Adding modularity will make it worse in terms of specs, more expensive and in the result dead on arrival. Once they launch a few successful (or at least sustainable) products, they can maybe try doing some modularity
Am I the only one who just feels burnt out on these type of projects? We have a plethora of raspberry pi and other arm mobile developer kits that all just fail to deliver. They make great pet projects but fail at what most mobile phones do great which is provide a computer I can reliably and safely take with me in life. This pilet thing has 7 hours of battery life, is huge and will probably explode if I put it in my bikes bag.
While it's not perfect I've been investing more time into learning to live with grapheneOS. I can run Emacs and clang on the go. It's a better start that won't turn into a paperweight.
There is probably one other person on planet Earth who also just feels burnt out on these type of projects (you can just call it cyberdeck).
Meanwhile, from [1]
> 2,777 backers pledged CA$ 1,264,707 to help bring this project to life.
> UPDATE: The project got fully funded within 5 minutes! Can’t believe the support—thank you so much!
ClockworkPi's DevTerm, uConsole, GameShell are constantly sold out [2]. Hackberry Pi, constantly sold out.
Jolla's strength is SailfishOS which is a successor of Maemo/MeeGo. It is a Linux-based solution with a good, gesture-based UI with Android emulation.
GrapheneOS has nothing to do with any of these projects. It is software-only, for Google Pixel devices, and it has a specific strength (security) no other OS/HW combo comes close to.
The strength of a modular smartphone is, it is repairable and you can physically alter its features without changing form factor, like Framework. For smartphones, I believe a Fairphone is very modular, and smartwatches Pixel Watch 4 (but it only runs WearOS).
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/soulscircuit/pilet-open...
[2] https://www.clockworkpi.com
Graphene requires a Pixel device. I can hardly call it accessible.
7 hours is not bad, considering my iPhone 13 mini can only last for day with occasional usage.
I'm not sure what you think Jolla is, but they have a track record of releasing phones that are good enough to be used as daily drivers. They are also targeting enthusiasts, but I've been using exclusively phones that run Sailfish OS (their main product) since 2014.
Sorry if my post is confusing I'm referring to the poster I replied to mentioning the Pilet which is a raspberry pi based project. Jolla phone I really can't speak too. It sounds closer to graphene where they understand the benefit of reasonable hardware quality and battery life.
> Entering other markets, such as the U.S. and Canada are to be decided due course based on potential interest from the areas.
As an American, I will order this phone as soon as it’s available to me!
I’m not aware of any similar option for us at the moment so I’m a little sad.
> As an American, I will order this phone as soon as it’s available to me!
It won’t be. From the time of their first phone the company actively made the choice to not support the US market. There’s the obvious spectrum difference and cost to certify, but the real reason they don’t want to touch it is litigation risk on patents and whatnot.
https://www.androidauthority.com/graphene-os-major-android-o... hope fully soon
Even if it's not sold in America, you might still be able to buy it and use it, how well that'll work depends on the spectrum compatibility of course.
They have a history of not shipping. They took my money for a tablet pre-order but never shipped anything. Didnt offer refunds either.
they did indeed have a crowdfunded tablet that went wrong in supply chain, and basically bankrupted the company. Many funders lost out. That's unfortunate, and perhaps might have been avoidable with better organisation. Absolutely it sucks. They did have a limited refund program as others have noted.
However, they do not have a continous history of not shipping. I personally owned their two previous phone handsets, both shipped. Also I've bought and run their firmwares on third party handsets, they also shipped the software.
They did offer refunds in the form of vouchers for their shop. I can understand if that's not something everyone is interested in, but it's not nothing. I made use of that successfully.
It wasnt offered to everyone. They did the whole thing by trickling out information based on batches based on when you ordered. And for the record I wasnt shipped a tablet, given a refund or offered a voucher and based on comments at the time I wasnt the only one. It was a total writeoff.
Sorry to hear that. :( I doubt that it's any consolation that they've gotten better over time on not blundering their fund raisers and pre-orders.
The Linux phone that's more closed than Android, it's a hard sell for me.
Can you explain this a bit more? What is closed about it?
The operating system (Sailfish OS) is a mix of components, some open and some closed. Search for "open source" on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS . They have said years ago that it would be open sourced, but as far as I know the Silica UI is still proprietary.
It was mainly the investors that didn't want to move. Many things were stagnant that needed moving. Now that the investors are gone there is a chance to move things, and slowly things are moving into open sourcing their software.
That's nice, thanks for mentioning it. Is there anywhere we can read about this?
The Open Sourcing? There is more about it on the forum for Sailfish with phase 1, the weather app, notes app and a few other bits:
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/open-sourcing-proceeding/2468...
Then there is community news category with updates, but it's a bit haphazard and ongoing in this context:
https://forum.sailfishos.org/c/community-news/25
The Camera app, Gallery app, Nexcloud accounts and other accounts components are open sourced and on github. There is now talk about Silica, the Wayland compositor. It hasn't been updated well in recent years and there is talk about moving it to Weston or Wlroots, while also supporting xdg-shell for GTK applications.
Source please.
Look at the Wikipedia page, it's a mix of open source and proprietary copmonents. The OS project describes itself on https://sailfishos.org/info/ as "open source based" rather than "open source". It seems they have opened up some stuff since the last time I looked, but as far as I can tell the Silica UI is still proprietary. See for example https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/silica-components-license-and...
Android and iOS need to be shaken up so badly that I welcome more or less anything into this space, no matter how flawed. That said, I think the chances I buy one of these is very low. At the moment, I keep a smart phone solely so that finding work is not difficult. You need quite the personal network to explain that "I don't have a smart phone."
Otherwise, I'm trying to abstain from smart phone usage as much as possible: the market is probably _never_ going to solve one which solves addiction problem. (the best solution for this is to have a desktop computer which you only sit at for specific tasks)
On the other hand, if I could run my company's OTP and it were much more private than iOS or Android I would probably jump ship.
>User configurable physical Privacy Switch - turn off you microphone, bluetooth, Android apps, or whatever you wish
sus
I don't think it is a good idea to call this a "privacy switch", obviously it works in software and can't be trusted.
yep...
my lenovo laptop has a physical privacy switch for the camera... it's literally a piece of plastic that covers the lens, no way to bypass that (without physical access). I feel safe.
If it can be enabled in software, it can be disabled in software, and I don't trust software.
Yeah, the idea of having a physical switch marketed as a "privacy switch" that doesn't actually physically disconnect things seems ... kind of ridiculous? Dangerous even.
Yipee! Ok, I can't afford more hardware, but it's my favourite mobile os and I develop/maintain apps for it, so I'm happy to see the amount of effort Jolla has put in in the last 2 years to stay relevant and up their game!
Seems they still havent figured out a business model for their OS. Hardware at low volumes wont move ala kickstarter.
Would have thought after their ups and downs they would have landedon a sustainable businesss model. The market oppurtunity is there and the timing is favourable. All thats needed to stick the landing and have a viable alt to the ios/android duoploly.
Personally would recommend they work with an established OEM to customize/port drivers to existing hardware and market to a specific vertical rather than a general purpose for normies device.
They have been selling Sailfish X for selected Sony Xperia devices for years.
Thats part of it actually , they have(had) a nonstandard offering via Sony hardware. If it was a known OEM like Oppo/Honor/Oneplus theres already some familiarity/buyin from users and lines possibly can be opened for select verticals.
Instead with the SonyX offerings , they linited it to a tiny range, upgrades as i recall were sometimes not possible to newer versions and a separate support contract to Jollla was needed.
A pure play ala android would do better, they (jolla) do the software - the OEM does the hardware/updates similarly to how Linux distros like Ubuntu get bundled into Dell etc.
If they were a hardware firm like Huawei bulding their phone and OS makes sense , or with massive scale like Google with Pixel.They are neither. Hardware is hard, and scaling it at volume moreso.
I'm a bit torn about this. On one hand, I really think viable alternatives to Android/iOS are now more necessary than ever, and I'm eager to explore this OS. On the other hand, I'm not in the mood to buy new hardware (right now) just to try it out.
Nevertheless, I hope they succeed.
it's based on a proprietary os, which includes halium proprietary blobs.
imho, linux users should focus on phones well supported by postmarketos
All phones end up reliant on proprietary blobs. Not that I disagree in principle, but we have to be realistic. Hardware manufacturers, telcoms and to some degree regulators all do not like user freedom with regards to phones.
Isn't the Librem 5 fully open?
No. The touchscreen firmware's source is not distributed[1] for one, and neither is the firmware for the baseband processor. Possibly more aspects.
Although "open" doesn't matter as much as "libre" does. Modifying source code is useless if you can't actually replace the running instance. It has all the same problems as closed source software. Baseband processors are legally required to be tivoized, thus the violation of user freedoms is encoded in law. Quite frankly, I think it's a huge mistake on the part of regulators. If somebody wanted to do undesirable things on cellphone bands, they can simply build their own transciever for it and there's effectively no way to stop that. These regulations aren't a real security measure, not even security through obscurity. Making a transmitter for a certain band is trivial if all you're doing is causing interference. If the malicious actor is doing more than just that, it already requires a strong understanding of RF principles such that they already effectively posses the knowledge to make an appropriate transciever. All regulators effectively do here with Tivoization is protect potential back doors and security vulnerabilities from being mitigated.
[1] - https://docs.puri.sm/Hardware/Librem_5/advanced/firmware.htm...
Darn well thats a damn shame. The phone compromises so much "nice to have" features to get to the supposed "privacy respecting" label. Its a shame they didn't actually go all the way. Seems like then all we really have in terms of communication devices is the BeTrusted platform (Precursor communication device)
But AOSP is open source while Sailfish OS is not. Also "proprietary blobs" != "proprietary blobs" (there's varying level of obfuscation/debug info).
Which proprietary blobs in Sailfish OS are worse than the others you were referring to?
Whole OS?
There are driver blobs for the underlying device which they can't do much about, and then there are the last vestiges of Lipstick (the Sailfish OS UI), which are not released under an open source license. That's hardly "the whole OS", since everything else is a plain linux distribution.
Basically all the middleware in Sailfish OS was always open source and many of the apps as well. They have been also IIRC finally open sourcing the primary apps as there are no longer pesky external investors forcikg them to keep things closed for weird reasons.
Libhybris not halium, and those are open, the android driver blobs are closed and it's the same on pmOS with halium? They did start open sourcing a lot of their UI components recently, so hopefully this continues, we'll see
Hardware specs look pretty nice, SailfishOS should work nicely on this device. The design language remains faithful to the original Jolla Phone from more than a decade ago. :)
Is there some secret competition going on between phone makers, who can make the most obnoxious camera bump and get away with it?
Is a camera bump really that much of an issue? Most people have a case on their phone anyway
What is Jolla now? I remember it as startup created by previous Nokia employees that tried to build a Nokia-type of phone based on Maemo? Or do I remember it wrong?
In 2013 they released the Jolla 1, a phone with custom hardware and Linux software. In 2015 they tried again with a tablet, but it failed on the side of hardware production and the company became insolvent.
In 2017 there came investors, among others ROS Telecom, a Russion telecom provider. They pivoted to only providing software, mainly on Sony phones. That is still ongoing.
Since the Russia - Ukraine war the Russion investors went MIA. The Finnish people from Jolla started a new company and had all assets moved to that company. They are now trying to rebuild the company and apparently extend into hardware again, even though the PCB design is off the shelf.
I have been a user since 2014 and am quite happy with their offering. It offers ssh root access if you want. Optionally manually installing software. Very much a GNU/Linux experience. Privacy focused and user oriented. And now slowly but surely there are parts of the software being opensourced.
No, you're right. SailfishOS inherits the core of the OS from the old Maemo of Nokia N900 fame (though the UI was built from scratch I believe). I tried it back in the day on my Nexus 4 and it was buttery smooth, even with all its fancy animations and gesture-based navigation, which was way ahead of Android at the time.
I always thought SailfishOS would really take off by now, given how advanced and polished it already was at the time, but Jolla's mismanagement nearly jeopardised the whole thing (they filed for bankruptcy last year).
The platform always suffered from two big architectural missteps.
1 - the native browser being an old firefox/gecko fork embedded into their own UI framework, giving a poor performance and dated compatibility quirks 2 - the android emulating runtime meant that you get again, dated , poorly performing android apps, that you're driven towards because the browser engine was so poor.
these two mean you basically end up with a sub-standard android handset/UI, and a tiny market for native app development (because everyone made do with android), its a real chicken/egg.
In fairness I've not used it since the sony XPeria days, but it was my daily phone for 3-4 years since the Jolla 1. It was cool being able to emacs and irc natively on the phone, but that was limited in use cases tbh.
Same experience here, though from Sailfish OS run on their first Jolla phone.
Also permission model on Sailfish was much worse than on Android. I didn't use Android apps on Sailfish, though.
I really liked Silica UI, but available apps had much less functionality than their counterparts on Android and iOS. I think that open sourcing Sailfish and Silica would end up better for them.
Nevertheless, I kinda liked the phone, but ultimately went back to Android.
They filled for bankruptcy again last year (first was the Tablet debacle in I think 2015) but have since managed to survive it again, so all is well. :)
Awesome, this has a user replaceable battery! Sadly I do see no headphone jack, so not an option for me. Did I miss it on the pictures?
Although the SFOS community did express some interest in the 3.5 mm jack in the polls earlier, there's no headphone jack. The expected device sales volume probably would not cover the added engineering cost from such modifications to the mainboard reference design at the announced price point.
Some time ago I also thought that no 3.5mm jack is a deal-breaker, but I bought super cheap jack-usbc adapter that is 5cm long and it works pretty well.
I haven't tried a USB-C to 3.55mm adapter but your experience heartens me.
Headphone jack has been a hard line for me. Having recently moved into the world of wireless charging (I keep a phone 5-7 years and just missed wireless charging being normalized on my last phone purchase back in 2020) I think using the USB port for headphone is finally visible.
I spend a lot of the day with my headphones on and the phone on the wireless charging puck. Not being forced to choose between charging and headphones changes the equation.
Correct me if I'm wrong but those cables must include a DAC to function properly and so usually have a tiny kinda crappy one in them, right?
In this post headphone jack world I use a fiio Bluetooth/USB DAC that's really good quality. But it's about the size of two ipod nanos stacked on top of each other.
> Correct me if I'm wrong but those cables must include a DAC to function properly and so usually have a tiny kinda crappy one in them, right?
Not necessarily. If the device is using audio over alt-mode, it can use its own DAC.
>those cables must include a DAC to function properly and so usually have a tiny kinda crappy one in them, right?
FWIW, audiophiles were very impressed with the measured performance of the €10 Apple USB-C to 3.5mm adapter and its DAC. The Google one is likely good too.
Show the operating system. That is the core of what people will be using - they need to know what it looks like. How easy it is. The phone looks like all other phones.
https://sailfishos.org/
That page caters to corporations who want to restrict employee phones - worst possible marketing for consumers.
This doesn’t show OS, sadly. Only a list of some features that nobody outside of geek cultures care. Show flashy videos, images, gorgeous animations.
If someone from jolla reads this: Just hire DHH as your hypeman, he’ll be able to sell anything to lemmings.
> hire DHH as your hypeman, he’ll be able to sell anything to lemmings
Nah, they can have this slogan for free: "Yo, with Jolla YOLO!"
Anyway, I wish Jolla well.
Isn't it SailfishOS? It shouldn't be too hard to find screenshots/screencasts. I just hope it has good mainline kernel support.
Yeah - its a real daily usable thing on supported hardware & I have been using it on primary phone since 2013. :)
I went down a 1-minute rabbithole. I hate Whatsapp, but it's not optional. So I was curious if it's compatible.
There's a Sailfish help page [0] showing how to get the APK from Aptoide, or downloading directly from Whatsapp.com .
But with Google killing off 'sideloading', is it credible that independent APK sources are going to dry up in future?
[0] https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Help_Articles/Whatsapp_S...
That shouldn't be a problem as long as you can still download apps from the Play Store itself (not the official app). Basically, take a look at how proxy stores like Aurora work, they connect to the Play Store servers and allow you to download apps directly from Google, without needing the Play Store app.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the downloaded app will work on such a device (if it doesn't have Google Play Services), but at least it lets you download the app, which isn't much different from downloading it from say, APK Mirror. And as long as you can extract the apps from either the Play Store or Android devices itself (via adb/root etc), I'm assuming sites like APK Mirror will continue to exist.
”I hate Whatsapp, but it's not optional”
Yes it is.
While WhatsApp is not very much used in the US, in some other countries such as Brazil it is basically the primary form of "phone" communication. It is everyone's default text, voice and video message platform. People don't ask if you have WhatsApp there, they just assume it. You talk to your Bank/Investor manager using WhatsApp. You order pizza through WhatsApp. Customer Support for services is WhatsApp bots that send you to the correct places. If I don't have WhatsApp, I can't voice chat with my mom, she won't see her grandkids. If you have any sort of business, you need WhatsApp.
And yes, I do have Signal installed, and there are only 2 people who talk to me through it (one being my partner).
Phone carriers got too greedy charging for every single SMS message and phone call, WhatsApp took over when smartphones became popular.
This. Some people just don't realize how pervasive and essential WhatsApp is in some countries, mine included.
I'd much rather use Signal but that's not realistic.
To rephrase: Social contact is ultimately higher in my needs than technology choice.
Warning, the OS doesn’t work with many European banking apps like BankID. If it did, I’d be all over it
> A successor to the iconic original Jolla Phone from 2013
does anyone own this 2013 version? why did it not crash the market?
Also, will my banking app be supported on sailfishOS?
I have it - Wayland, BTRFS, RPM and systemd on a phone - in 2013!
Why did it not set the wolrd on fire back then ? Ruthless monopoly building on both Google and Apple side IMHO.
It's a great success Jolla still exists and does its thing. :-)
>Ruthless monopoly building on both Google and Apple side IMHO.
Microsoft spent a lot of money and resources trying to compete and failed.
Android/Apple just started early enough and by 2012 it was too late as most consumers have decided. To enter this market you have to be truly unique or else you are just copying the competitor and why would users switch if they are happy enough?
Is that really a monopoly if you had a third competitor come in and try?
Same reason why Linux is not crashing the desktop market?
(I have a Jolla 1 and a Jolla C sitting in a drawer, now I fully switched to Graphene OS.)
I have both the original and the C model they released in 2017.
Can it be reinstalled with a standard linux (for me at the end of it's life)? That would make me buy it.
Hard no on giving Jolla a cent. Jolla rug-pulled [1] people who crowd-funded [2] their tablet in 2014.
Jolla used the crowd-funding campaign to butter up VCs for their next funding round [3] and then decided the Asian LLC handling the crowdfunding would go bankrupt, leaving backers with no tablets and most with no refund. [4]
The real kicker was that the tablets were ALREADY manufactured by their ODM, Jolla just never paid them. Took backers money and stiffed their manufacturing partner too. For a while after the campaign folded you could buy Jolla branded tablets (running Android, it was just an ODM model they flashed Sailfish on) on eBay or Taobao [5]. I just checked and there's a Jolla Tablet listed on eBay right now. [6]
10 years later, it looks like they're trying the same thing. Maybe they think the internet has forgotten, but I have zero interest in supporting their next hardware rug-pull endeavour.
[1] https://together.jolla.com/question/97695/information-regard...
[2] https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/jolla/jolla-tablet-wor...
[3] https://jolla.com/content/uploads/2017/02/46_JOLLATABLET_STR...
[4] https://blog.jolla.com/second_phase_refund/
[5] https://old.reddit.com/r/Jolla/comments/3x2s7e/jolla_tablets...
[6] https://archive.ph/Ncf17
As someone that's contributed to the Jolla tablet foundraiser, I mostly got refunded when they canceled it. It took a long time, it was not directly the money I contributed, but I wasn't left with nothing, and I don't feel like I've been cheated. YMMV, of course, it sounds like you're talking from experience.
AFAIR, I got refunded the whole tablet price in the end - I think half the price immediately, and the other half a few years later. It doesn't mean others were refunded too, of course. It was long time ago, though, so I may have mixed something up.
afaik the tablet was in development hell for much of 2015, by the time it was ready it was no longer profitable and Jolla couldn't afford to buy more than about 600 units without going bust.
IIRC they were negotiating a startup funding round that failed, so they ended unexpectedly up not having enough money to run the company let alone pay for the tablet manufacturing. Even remember hearing about the manufacturers selling the units with Android by the time they secured at least some funding for the company, so there was really nothing to salvage.
Or it might have just been their excuse back then - if you have some newer details of how it actually all went down with the tablet, please do share! :-)
I know that the specification changed multiple times prior to launch (mostly screen related I think).
> leaving backers with no tablets and most with no refund.
I'm pretty sure we eventually all got refunds after they got the Russian cash. My refund came a couple years later iirc, with a check for half the amount coming a few months before the check for the second half.
Does Jolla do product or update announcements? How to follow them? RSS feed?
Follow this forum: https://forum.sailfishos.org/c/announcements/17.
Their last announcement is from November 2024: https://jolla.com/press
I guess they'll start PR once the phone is funded.
> Pre-Order Now for 99 €
Is this something generally understood to be a down payment in EU nomenclature? Just curiosity, as in the US I'd generally expect it to mean you get a phone on launch for the stated price, and a down payment to use something along the lines of "reserve for...".
I live in Poland and I'd expect the same as you.
HMD under NOKIA brand went almost out of business due to adding notches to their phones, now Jolla is doing the same mistake. Only Apple could get away with it. At least they aren't shipping a 720p display anymore. Why didn't they just replicate/rebrand Xperia?
Add a keyboard, and you would have piqued my interest.
I dont understand how ex-Nokia devs could have built a phone like the N900 and then just walked away from it for 15 years
Most people aren't willing to sacrifice half their screen real estate 100% of the time, or deal with a significantly thicker phone, just to get a physical keyboard. The market for that is very small.
The market is small, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a significant overlap between those who want a keyboard and the target audience of the Jolla phone.
Don't forget that SailfishOS is ultimately Linux (and not like Android) - it even comes with the zypper package manager that lets you install apps and update the OS using the terminal. Part of the fun of using SailfishOS is doing familiar Linux systems managements and general operations the terminal, which any Linux nerd would love. And Linux nerds make up a huge userbase of this OS.
I mean, look at the link OP pasted, they're straight up calling it a "Linux phone", it's clear who their audience is. And don't tell me majority of Linux users would NOT prefer to have a keyboard.
They're probably not interested in the Linux power user. They're interested in making their phone viable for everyone else, since that's a much bigger market, and for that customer base, a keyboard is very much going to be a negative and not a positive. The Linux part of their Linux phone also has the same problem, but they apparently have faith in that part.
But destroyed the interest of many others ;)
Keyboard phones are a great thing, but not as the sole option for a company. As a second current model, sure.
eh, I was a Smartphone ‘it's gotta have a keyboard!’ hold-out too, but I've long-since embraced the Swype or whatever it's called, style of input. It's fine enough for 90% of my engagement with the internet via a phone. Anything more in depth I'm on a computer with a physical keyboard anyway.
But yes, the N900 was pre-slidey-smartphone peak brilliance.
Likewise; I had an N900, and I loved the idea of a physical keyboard, but now I figure I can pocket a folding keyboard for that.
What I would like is apps to pervasively support a keyboard. For instance, in most Android messaging apps, you can't even press "enter" to send a message, so if you want to use a physical keyboard, you have to type the message and then poke the screen to send.
Low hopes and low expectations given Jollas previous dealings, not to mention Linux phones' typical issues. But one can hope.
"... It is governed by European privacy ..." - This is not inspiring in today's climate.
I hope instead it's governed by a principal of people's privacy.
No jack, meaning I'll have to fight a hacked together Bluetooth implementation. Its an interesting project, but not for me.
Out of all the OS's on which you'd have to hack on a bluetooth implementation, I feel like a mostly vanilla linux is the best one you could hope for. [edit] If it's not obvious from my previous phrasing, I'm referring to Sailfish OS.
It uses Bluez for bluetooth connections. Or maybe that's what you meant ;) Bluetooth is a hack anyway.
Bluetooth barely works on Android.
I have no confidence in it working constantly on a new OS like this.
The new OS launched in 2013 on production hardware and has a legacy even longer in the Maemo project under Nokia.
I low-key hate myself for this, but I went and preorder. I've been waiting for SFOS to come to my Xperia 10 IV but that seems to still be in beta, and after quite a few years it'd be hard to switch over ask well... But I have to try support Jolla as they've been my go-to phone OS maker for the last 10-15 years.
I wouldnt recommend it.
TLDR: while the OS is great (really GREAT), the real-world compatibility is not.
I had Sailfish OS for a daily driver for two years, and OS is great (let me say that again, Sailfish IS GREAT!), but there are "the details".
Jolla is completely ignorant to needs of their users. While they do have an android layer, they are ignoring to things that are of huge importance for daily life, like bluetooth passtrough, and are important due to daily needs, for instance, bluetooth passtrough is really important for using public transport here.
FFS, I was reversing banking application and patching it to be able to use it. And actually became very good at it :D
Here is a bluetooth feature request thread, that is open for 5 years: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/bluetooth-support-in-android and being blatantly ignored.
And lets not get into details, like NFC.
So at the end you will have a great OS, incompatible with the whole world. After 2 years of suffering, I ditched Sailfish, bought Pixel and installed Graphene OS.
Once Jolla starts to listen to their customers, they are on the path to very real android contender, but unfortunately they just dont understand, that people need some features, they are not providing while the vendors wont support some exotic OS. They need to adapt, not vendors - the whole thread is full of this mentality.
The android "container" was a step into right direction but they just shouldnt abandone it and keep on supporting it, adding additional layers of compatibility.
I really hope they will change their mind at some point and prioritize compatibility, would love to ditch android and its spyware driven ecosystem completely, but sadly, Graphene OS + NetGuard is just a far better alternative until Jolla stops behaving like an infant. They are literally sabotaging themself in a worse possible way.
For a company of their size that has to compete in the tech market of today, I'm surprised they're able to produce updates for the OS as regular as they do.
Blaming they can't keep up with user requests, granted reasonable ones, is a little short sighted in my opinion. If we want to break the Apple/Google duopoly we need to be able to bear a couple of paper cuts. If you wait for perfection before committing they'll just end up going out of business. :(
This is nonsense. They cant force vendors to support them, so the only viable strategy is to support the vendors. And they can, but they decided not to.
I feel like you're focusing on the wrong thing from what I said. Jolla is a small company, they don't have the man power to support everything. They already do a lot by supporting devices from vendors that are sympathetic to being open (the Sony open devices program for example).
> And they can, but they decided not to.
They can what, exactly?
They can support passtrough for bluetooth and NFC. It is not something they need to invent themself.
I cant emphasize enought how this feature is of most importance for my daily life. At 48, I am using either the bicycle or public transport for my daily commute (for 30+ years!). I can workaround it by buying a NFC card each month but very typically it is not available without considerate walk time. Not to mention banking app, but I have covered it by reversing and patching it. How many users will do that?
It is not my fault, that the world is as it is. But not supporting real life scenarios is certainly Jollas fault.
As far as I'm aware there's a Patchmanager patch for enabling bluetooth in the Android subsystem. But I don't really understand your vehemence against me, or them for that matter.
I am on Graphene OS now and they will really need to think of something revolutionary to get me back. No, nice GUI is not enough for all the years I have lost, desperately trying to adapt. Now, think of the normal, everyday user, not prepared to even buy a specific phone release for Sailfish. And this is how they will lose users. I consider this as constructive criticism from my side.
Believe me, I am in front row, for wanting the linux to succeed against bastardized OS as android is. But the wrong decisions are just wrong decisions, there is no excuse to it.
The revolutionary part is full linux with root a checkbox in the settings, no need to flash fishy roms, compile graphene yourself etc, it is mostly aimed for linux geeks who like to tinker, if you're fine with android, it's probably not for you (no matter how much they push for it being usable by normal users, there's always fixes/tweaks/workarounds that you'll need to use terminal for, or wait for proper fix, but again full root access is a checkbox in settings that will install terminal for you, for geeks it's the best option out there)
Sure, I am not complaining about that. Again, Sailfish OS is great (!!!!!), no doubt about it. Unfortunately, I need a daily driver instead of carrying 2 phones with me.
Once Jolla will understand that, I am prepared to get back. Until they don't, they will need to find users elsewhere. I can ditch a lot of bloat from my life, but unfortunately, public transport is not one of them.
I would not sey they are ignorant - rather, some things are unfortunately just not possible with their staffing and budget. Connecting Android bluetooth blobs compiled against bionic libc via glibc Linux distro to a container running Android emulation is one of these things.
Support for vital features needed for normal life is a must. And all available resources should be put into it as it is making their OS viable for usage. No android application support, no users.
I have struggled for 2 years. Most users wont.
Don't confuse Jolla https://jolla.com/ with Volla https://volla.online/en/index.php
Both are European companys with a great privacy drive.
Nobody has confused Jolla with Volla, mostly because nobody has ever heard of Volla.
I actually confused them many times, when I started researching Android alternatives and Linux phones. Now I learnt :)
And to my eternal puzzlement here's two companies that are made for one another and so far they've never worked together on a project. SMH...
we need a .olla TLD
I hope they've learned their lesson after the tablet fiasco.
Based on a Mediatek CPU, so not for me.
That threw me off, too. They probably chose it to keep the costs low. I wonder about the overall impact, though.
Fool me once shame on you.
Fool me twice shame on me.
Jolla never shipped me a tablet or offered me a refund back when they were making tablets. I would strongly urge people not to pre-order from the company since they have a track record of not shipping and being extremely irresponsible in their communications when they dont ship.
Hmm, I at least received a refund on the tablet; I think half of it was paid out and half of it I opted to use as payment for Sailfish X.
An email I have stored from July 4th 2017 mentions "the tablet refund tool", so there seems to have been a concrete system for this refunding process as well. I abstractly remember something like that, though I must say my memory is shoddy and should not be trusted.
This is the last response I have from them in my inbox (Sep 24, 2015, 8:56 AM). Never heard back from them after this inspite of repeated subsequent queries
----------------
Hi,
thank you for your message.
We are sending the invites out to contributors in groups according to the chronological order of contributions. Please also note that we are slowly ramping up the deliveries, starting with a smaller group to ensure that everything works as it should, but anticipate future groups to be bigger in size. This means that we are currently unable to estimate your exact order number in the queue.
To read all the latest on the Tablet campaign, please stay tuned to the Jolla Blog. For some commonly asked questions and answers, please see our Jolla Tablet Campaign FAQs.
Thank you again for your contribution!
Sincerely, Jolla Customer Care
Operating hours: Monday to Friday from 9.00 - 17.00 GMT +2; close weekends and public holidays (Finland).
Join the Movement @ jolla.com Like us on Facebook @ jollaofficial Follow on Twitter @ jollaHQ Dive deeper into the Jolla world @ Official Jolla Blog
wow, I never expected to see them come back
They'll have my money if they meet the requirements for GrapheneOS.
Sailfish OS is better than GrapheneOS through virtue of being mostly a vanilla linux distribution with Android being just an optional bad dream.
It’s literally inferior security wise. The desktop Linux security model is antiquated when compared to the advances in security/isolation/etc that modern mobile phone OSs have developed.
It is not trumping Graphene any time soon.
GrapheneOS' main selling point is security. Is Sailfish OS better at that, or at least in the same league, nowadays?
It's in a different league as it's a linux phone first and foremost, not degoogled/hardened android, you get full root access as a checkbox in settings that will install terminal app for you to hack to your heart's content, user having root access is not an attack vector for them
Well, that could help drive the production numbers up, hopefully driving the per unit price down. :)
> "Markets: EU, UK, Norway and Switzerland"
Well, crap!
"Real Linux on a phone" sounds to me like the worst user experience imaginable. And the whole thing about "no phoning home" should be interpreted as "we have no idea whether the latest release is crashing in the wild or not".
You probably never used Maemo, whose UI (and also Palm's WebOS UI) were ripped off for later versions of Android and iOS, which wasn't even multitasking yet. Literally hired the same people to do them. Jolla started with the FOSS parts of Maemo but went proprietary.
If Nokia hadn't been intentionally destroyed by its board in a romance with Microsoft cash, through a Canadian snake, Maemo would have been a real contender. You can get an vague idea what it looked like from here: https://maemo-leste.github.io/
Also, I don't know what's motivating you to just make negative shit up from whole cloth. Where did Linux touch you?
Hear, hear.
I once asked David Potter what happened post-symbian, and he smiled and shrugged
Again, starting from elements of Maemo is a surefire way to ship a ghastly user experience. The N800 that I still own had the most hostile UI of any device I ever bought with my own money. The reason it flopped was because it is really bad, not a great conspiracy.
Look at the TODOs for Maemo Leste, which you just referenced. "Phone calls should work, with audio, when alsamixer is set up properly". That is F-tier user experience. OpenMoko-level garbage.
If it costs Apple $5 to fully manufacture a iphone, how much for one of these $10? So why is it $500?