Sailfish OS Gains Two-Way Android Compatibility

DeviceGuru writes "Jolla announced (PDF) that its Sailfish OS is now fully compatible with Android, letting the Linux-based mobile OS run Android apps, as well as operate on hardware configured for Android. This makes the MeeGo-based Sailfish OS the first alternative mobile Linux OS to achieve the feat. Jolla also announced that a second batch of pre-orders for its Sailfish-based Jolla phones will open later this week, after having sold out its first batch in August."

Comments

Shame

[Therad]

It is a shame this will never be mainstream.

Re:Shame

[Kazoo the Clown]

I presume the relevant issue is that no US carriers will support it?

Re:Shame

[Teun]

And what is on a world scale relevant about a single market?

Besides, what stops you from doing like the Rest Of the World and buying your own phone?
Between the first Motorola I bought nearly 20 years ago and my present Nexus 4 I've never had one with a contract.

Re:Shame

[GNious]

this is why they focused on chinese market - soon to be bigger than US market.

Re:Shame

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Besides, what stops you from doing like the Rest Of the World and buying your own phone?

I've noticed that US folks tend to think that you can only get a phone from a carrier . . . and just assume that the whole world also works like it does in the US.

Re:Shame

[Therad]

No, the problem is that they are late to the party and will have to compete with juggernauts like android. Microsoft with all their money has trouble gaining in this field. They will have a hard time attracting developers to their phone.

Re:Shame

[Eunuchswear]

I presume the relevant issue is that no US carriers will support it?

I don't understand.

Why does a carrier need to "support" a phone?

Once upon a time, in a previous century, you had to rent your phone from the "phone company", but those days are long behind us.

Re: Shame

[Kazoo the Clown]

So are you telling me that I could build my own custom hardware and software and Verizon would allow me access to their US LTE network using it? Note that I spend most of my time in areas where only Verizon has decent coverage, the rest of them are a joke as far as I'm concerned. Not that I like Verizon all that much, but I've tried the others, Verizon is what works. I have not had the impression that Verizon allows you to tie any old piece of equipment up to their network. And if this ISN'T the reason such phones would never be mainstream, what is? And why should I care if a phone isn't mainstream if I have no trouble myself using one with the local carrier?

Re:Shame

[cbope]

In the US, almost NOBODY buys mobile phones off-contract. Yes, most of us know that is the worst way to buy a mobile phone, but the simple fact is most Americans don't want to pay up-front for the phone. The average US consumer will not do the math and figure out how much more they are paying on-contract, not to mention that US mobile call and data rates are among the highest in the world. I've been trying to convince my parents in the US, who are in their 70's and retired, to get phones off-contract, but they just don't get it. All they see is the bigger up-front cost. It's a cultural thing, Americans tend to want their stuff now and with no starting cost, even if it costs them more over time. I see this both in the consumer and business worlds.

Carrier lock-in via contracts and locked devices is still a big issue in the US, unlike many other parts of the world.

Disclaimer: I'm an ex-pat American living abroad for 12 years.

Re:Shame

[Carewolf]

The phone will not be available in US not matter if the carriers want it or not. Jolla has right from the start said they would avoid the US due to the software patent situation there.

Re:Shame

[dbIII]

I'd say it's already bigger. Even Nokia sold 53 million phones there last quarter so who knows how many Samsung and other phones got sold there.
Think about it - if that continues for a year that's equivalent to 2/3 of the total US population buying a phone from the second, third or whatever ranked vendor in a year. That makes me think that the Chinese mobile phone market exceeds the entire US population by quite a bit.

Re: Shame

[Eunuchswear]

Oh, sorry, you are living in the previous century.

Say Hi to Ma Bell for me.

(Those who give up freedom to have a working phone network...)

(P.S. I really am sorry, didn't mean to troll, I just forgot about those wierd non-sim networks).

Re: Shame

[Eunuchswear]

In fact, I'm wrong.

The verizon LTE network does use SIM's.

There is no need for them to "support" a compatible phone.

Apparently they refuse to activate phones they don't "support", but the trick is to activate the SIM in a "supported" phone and then transfer it to the phone you want to use.

I suggest you contact your local consumer advocate or anti-monopoly authorities, Verizon seem to be behaving in anti-competetive ways that would get their arses kicked where I come from.

Re:Shame

[petermgreen]

AIUI in the US only one of the major networks (t-mobile) gives users who bring their own phones a decent deal. Another (AT&T) doesn't forbid their use but structures their traffifs such that you effectively pay for a phone from them every couple of years whether you take them up on the offer or not. The remaining two use mostly "CDMA"* technology which doesn't use sims meaning you can only use phones the carrier will agree to activate. This may change with the introduction of LTE but AIUI that is not yet available in most places.

There are "virtual networks" out there too which can sometimes give better deals for those who want to bring their own phones to the AT&T network but AIUI they get lower priority and don't get to benefit from roaming arrangements AT&T has.

* Strictly speaking all modern mobile systems use CDMA modulation but there are still two sets of standards, those that grew out of the old CDMA standards and those that grew

Re: Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

most Americans can't do the math to figure out the savings of buying a phone without a contract.

Re:Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

The average US consumer will not do the math and figure out how much more they are paying on-contract

Carriers charge the same monthly rate if you bring your own phone, so you might as well get one on contract for a cheaper up front cost.

Also if you update your phone to new models often as Americans tend to do it is cheaper to do so via contract phones.

Re:Shame

[evilviper]

In the US, almost NOBODY buys mobile phones off-contract.

That's absolute nonsense. It's a minority for sure, but a VERY significant one.

Sprint alone has 16 million pre-paid (Boost/Virgin) customers, which means they ALL bought their own cell phones. That's just #3 Sprint, and doesn't even include their dozens of MVNOs like Ting, Republic, etc. And of course that doesn't cover any of their contract customers who may have purchased their own phone.

T-Mobile has switched to entirely pre-paid, so ALL their 35 million customers either did, or in the future will need to, buy their own phones.

NET10/TracFone seems to have about 22 million prepaid subscribers... All purchased their cell phones.

A couple years ago when I checked last, AT&T and Verizon had about 10% of their customers as prepaid users. That's at least another 20+ million people buying their own phones or tablets.

So your "almost NOBODY" consists of AT LEAST 90 million people, about 1/3rd of the entire US population... I sure wish I had "almost no money..."

Re:Shame

[evilviper]

And what is on a world scale relevant about a single market?

The most valuable consumer market on earth? Nothing at all... It's quite insignificant I'm sure...

Besides, what stops you from doing like the Rest Of the World and buying your own phone?

You can buy whatever you want... But the carriers will tell you to go to hell when you want to get service for it. You decide what service you want, first, and then buy one of the phones that carrier is selling for whatever price they decide to charge for it.

It's partly a legacy of incompatible standards and varying frequency allocations. But it's also a self-sustaining cycle: The carriers sell or even give away phones, so nobody buys sextuple-band phones. so few or no carrier-independent phones are sold, so people buy from the carriers...

Re:Shame

[RavenLrD20k]

Unfortunately, as someone else in this thread stated, the Major Carriers charge for the phone subsidy whether you're on a contract plan or buy your phone outright, there is no line item for the subsidy on the bill that can be taken off; which means there is no savings and you actually wind up ultimately paying MORE for buying the phone outright. Hang on to a phone that you bought subsidized through the contract through the two years and don't upgrade with another 2 year contract when you're eligible? While you now have the ability to leave the carrier without any monetary penalty, your monthly bill isn't going down any. The only way one could get away with not having to pay the subsidy is to go with a No Contract carrier, which is fine if you don't go outside of your home area. Do any kind of travel, and coverage is no where near what you get on a contract carrier. For example: In Georgia going with Sprint's contract service, if a user travels outside of Sprint's coverage area (spotty areas along Interstates and good coverage in major metropolitan areas like Atlanta and Savannah), they would be roaming on Verizon's voice service for no extra charge. If they went with Virgin Mobile or Boost Mobile (Both serviced by Sprint) there is no roaming so if they go outside of Sprint's coverage area, they're SOL.

Even if you went with a no contract carrier with better coverage like Verizon Prepaid or AT&T Go phone, you're still no better than a third rate user. If you get onto a congested tower, the prepaid users are ALWAYS dropped first to guarantee priority to the higher paying customers in a contract. And even in contract, the more you pay, the better your service "uptime" is going to be, though that aspect is never advertised.

Finally, if you're a heavy data user, Verizon and AT&T no contract sucks, so you get a little better voice coverage, but paying out the nose ($60-80/mo) for 2 gigs of data, and then adding $15-20 for every gig beyond that within the limits of what the carrier allows.

Re: Shame

[RavenLrD20k]

Let's see. Buy a $600 phone subsidized down to $100, and pay the carrier for the cheapest plan at about $80/month ($50/mo + federal fees & taxes) for two years. $2020 total cost.

Now we buy that same phone on Ebay for a steal at $400, and put it on the same carrier, same plan which costs the same because they charge for the subsidy anyway and since the subsidy is not a line item, there's no way for them to reduce the bill (still $80/month) over the same time period of 2 years: $2320 total cost.

Wow... I saved -$300 by buying the phone outright!...wait.

Re: Shame

[h4rr4r]

Or use the same carrier and use a prepaid MVNO. If you are going to be stupid it will not save you money.

Re: Shame

[RavenLrD20k]

Just because the LTE network uses SIM's doesn't mean the phones themselves are now GSM Worldphones like AT&T's. Verizon and Sprint are still CDMA for voice & SMS, which means that the physical phone is still locked to the carrier... and the SIM won't activate the LTE network in an unregistered CDMA phone.

Re:Shame

[tepples]

And what is on a world scale relevant about a single market?

The most valuable consumer market on earth?

I think the insinuation is that the United States is no longer "the most valuable consumer market on earth"; the People's Republic of China is.

It's partly a legacy of incompatible standards and varying frequency allocations.

In areas where T-Mobile USA has LTE, I'm told that it uses a more compatible frequency plan, allowing imported phones to work better. So if you happen to live where you can get a T-Mobile signal, that might be your best plan.

Re: Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to adjust for inflation.

Re: Shame

[Eunuchswear]

So Verizon aren't doing VoLTE?

Re:Shame

[earlzdotnet]

It really is amazing more people don't do this. When I went out and got my own plan, I went with subsidy. Got a phone for like $50 from AT&T. But, the bill I was paying was $110/month. For a single line, a ridiculously low amount of minutes(I never talk on the phone, but if I did I could run through it quickly), unlimited text messages, and a data cap of like 1G

2 years down the road I started looking to alternatives. This was a few months before T-Mobile started to be talked about being bought by AT&T, otherwise I would've went elsewhere. So, I took a cheap, but decent phone my girlfriend had that she wasn't using and started a $50/month unlimited everything prepaid plan. Now, I put $30/month in a savings account so that I can buy a new phone eventually... but I'd rather me be earning interest on it, not AT&T

I've tried convincing my parents to do something similar. They use their phone constantly and their bill is somewhere around like $600/month for 4 phones... and their plan doesn't have the concept of unlimited minutes, so they still get overages. The even more ridiculous thing is that usually they will stick with their phone til it breaks.. They don't seem to get the concept that you can get new phones when your contract is up.. either that or they just prefer to not learn how to use a new phone every 2 years

Re:Shame

[lexman098]

The average US consumer will not do the math and figure out how much more they are paying on-contract

I'm not sure you've done the math yourself. A 300 dollar phone subsidized for 24 months costs the carrier about 12.50. An individual w/ data plan from ATT or Tmobile is 60 bucks a month. Straight talk is 45. 15-12.50 adds up to about 30 bucks a year (not much).

I personally avoid contracts just because I don't like the lock-in (I rotate between 4 different SIM cards).

Re:Shame

[mrvan]

Get a different carrier.

If all else fails: get a different country.

[in the Netherlands, carriers advertise with their subsidized plans, but most carriers have 'sim only' plans and there are also competing secondary carriers which don't have infra but resell the primary's bandwidth. Note that the (unsubsidized) phones in the shop display are priced way too high, so doing the calculation against the 'unsubsidized' phones in the shop will actually convince you to get the contract. Look on the Internet before you buy :-)]

Re:Shame

[gmuslera]

Android when launched looked like never would be mainstream. And a factor in its success was cyanogenmod letting install it even on phones that didn't sold with android, like old windows phones.

If Sailfish releases a version that enable to install it in most android devices (i.e. this list could be a guide ) that way to gain market share and buzz around will be available. And when becomes popular enough the phones with it includes will be the natural continuation.

Also, not sure how much "secret sauce" it will have (or will try to have open source version or something close), but at the very least the company that makes it is not american. It could be less probable to have NSA intrussions compared with phones with iOS, Android, Windows Phone or even Blackberry. That could give it a push over the existing alternatives, at least in other countries.

Re: Shame

[ttucker]

Mod +1, factually correct response to america bashing asshole.

Re: Shame

[mspohr]

Except that you're stupid to sign up for an $80/mo contract.
With an unsubsidized phone you can get contracts with T-Mobile or ATT for less than $50/month. (I have one for $20 - limited use and my wife who uses the phone a lot more has one for $30/mo).
Run those numbers through your example and you will come out way ahead.

Re:Shame

[mspohr]

You can get an ATT "Go Phone" SIM card and a nice plan for $30/month which is what I have for my wife... more voice, SMS and data than she ever uses for her smartphone.
I have a T-mobile plan which is even cheaper.
You don't have to be stupid and sign up for the $100/month plans.

Re:Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Even pre-paid phones can be subsidized. A few years ago, I bought a phone which retailed for £50 unlocked, for £35 locked to the mobile provider I used. This was in the UK, but I'm sure US operators do the same. Sure the subsidy is much less because they don't have a guaranteed income from you, but they can and often do subsidize it a bit with the phone being locked to their network.

Re: Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see. Buy a $600 phone subsidized down to $100, and pay the carrier for the cheapest plan at about $80/month ($50/mo + federal fees & taxes) for two years. $2020 total cost.

In other words:

You pay full price for a $600 phone and get locked into an exorbitant $55 per month plan on top of it.

Meanwhile I can buy a phone at full price and get a prepaid account at any network with no monthly fees or obligations, and I can change networks at any time simply by swapping a SIM card. According to my calculations, I could make 450 solid hours of outgoing calls every month and still be paying less than you. Oh wait - while doing the research to get those numbers I see that with the new prepaid accounts available the charge for a any call under 1 hour gets capped at 3 minutes. Excuse while I spend a few seconds dialling the free number which instantly upgrades my prepaid plan at no charge.

Re:Shame

[evilviper]

Even pre-paid phones can be subsidized.

Absolutely no bearing on the subject of this conversation...

Re:Shame

[Eunuchswear]

You can get an ATT "Go Phone" SIM card and a nice plan for $30/month which is what I have for my wife... more voice, SMS and data than she ever uses for her smartphone.

In France 20EUR (27 USD) gets you unlimited calls and SMS to French mobiles and landlines, unlimited calls to European landlines, unlimited calls to US and Canadian mobiles and landlines and unlimited data (speed capped after 3Gb/month).

Re: Shame

[RavenLrD20k]

h4rr4r, this response is actually for everyone on this thread who called me out for being "stupid." There are many like me who don't fit into the case where prepaid saves money, and this is simply to show how.

I've been on prepaid. Service SUCKS no matter who you go with. It's great if you never have to get off the beaten path, and never have to do remote administration from your phone while you're out in the deep wilderness of the Southeast. If you go with a Sprint based prepaid carrier (Virgin or Boost Mobile), 10 miles off the Interstate and you have NOTHING for service, so the cheapest carriers can do nothing for me, thus I'm not even going to list their price point. Go with AT&T prepaid and at best you can get 2 Gigs data for $60.75/month PREPAID. Go over that 2 Gig limit, and you're paying $10 per gig EXTRA. Go with Verizon? even more expensive than AT&T. I need at least 6 Gigs / month to operate for what I do. T-Mobile? In most of the state I work if there's service it's either 2G or Service Partner roaming. Only in the metro areas do I get fair to good coverage with spots of Very strong to excellent Oh, and if I wind up on a congested tower on prepaid, guess who's getting preempted off the cell and have their call get dropped first to ensure that there's room for the people paying the contract premiums. I could also go with Net-10 or TracPhone....If I wanted to be limited to my home Zip code as a calling area.

Just for fun: I'm going to apply your recommendation by using the pricing on AT&T's go phone based on MY specific needs and see how much it costs over the same 2 year period.

Same Ebay phone @ $400. Plan: Unlimited Voice & SMS with 2 Gigs Data: $60 + 75 cents federal 911 service tax. +$40 for an extra 4 Gigs of monthly data. ($100.75 monthly on Pre-Paid)

400+(100.75*12)=400+2418= $2,818.

Wow! I can pay $800 more with a BYOD on AT&T over the course of 2 years than I pay for a Sub'd phone on Sprint with Unlimited Everything and get comparable coverage area (no-charge roaming on Verizon's network).

If we use Verizon prepaid instead, since that's the only other carrier with enough coverage area to matter to me, the plan would be Unlimited Voice & SMS with 4 Gigs data @ $70.75/mo, Plus an extra $40 to cover the $20 per gig they charge so I can have the requisite 6 gigs. Guess what, we're up to $110.75 monthly on a prepaid plan. Phone and plan over 2 years? $3,058.

tl;dr version: Tool for the job "idiots!" You *Can* save a lot if you fit into the constraints of what a prepaid carrier or T-Mobile offers. If you're situation is even marginally outside those constraints, it's better to go with a post-paid option and take the subsidized phone.

no thanks

[frovingslosh]

They can call it "fully compatible" all they want. The real issue is that, unless devices that use it as their OS also have the Google Play Store app, then the experience will always be second class or worse. I've had devices that run real Android, but only get apps through alternative app sources like Slide or Getjar. This makes the experience awful or even dangerous. I don't see it likely that hardware running Sailfish OS will have access to the official Google play store, not when so many devices that run real Android don't. So this belongs more on a site of "news for chumps" than on a site for "news for nerds".

Re:no thanks

[Teun]

I don't care one cent about the Android compatibility, I want an Open Linux phone, a device that'll run things like Thunderbird. or Kmail and doesn't make me an entry in Google's or MS database for exploitation.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? You come here calling this news for chumps and you are the one who keeps burning his fingers on some chinese piece of shit gizmos with half baked androids in them? You are the only chump here.

Re:no thanks

[ChristW]

http://www.gta04.org/

Re:no thanks

[ChristW]

..or, as mentioned below, http://neo900.org/

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

No it wont. It requires QML... so existing linux apps will not work (X11, ah...)

Re:no thanks

[petman]

Google Play Store is just another Android app. The only reason that some Android phones don't have it is because the manufacturers choose not to put it on them, but Play Store is able to run on any phone running Android. Is there any technical reason why you can't install Google Play Store on Sailfish OS?

Re:no thanks

[EmperorArthur]

Google Play Store is just another Android app. The only reason that some Android phones don't have it is because the manufacturers choose not to put it on them, but Play Store is able to run on any phone running Android. Is there any technical reason why you can't install Google Play Store on Sailfish OS?

No, just legal ones. Though the play store has so many permissions you might as well grant Google, and by extension the NSA, root access when you install the thing.

Copyright means Google can set whatever terms they want when it comes to companies installing or people using the play store.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't be. I don't see how this is any different than having to flash gapps after installing a custom Android ROM.

Re:no thanks

[mwvdlee]

Manufacturers need to pay Google a fee for Play Store. It is just an app, which they could install, and it would work fine, showing all the apps.
It's just that the store would see the device as incompatible with every single app in the store, so you couldn't actually use it to install anything.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

They have confirmed that Google Play Store is not supported, but they are negotiating with other app stores (Amazon, Yandex ...)

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't bundle it with their OS, but they can provide a separate download like Cyanogenmod does. Spoofing a device ID is also trivial.

Re:no thanks

[dbIII]

Manufacturers need to pay Google a fee for Play Store

So? How do you know they won't be paying google to licence it? They are paying a third party for the android layer after all.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Though the play store has so many permissions you might as well grant Google, and by extension the NSA, root access when you install the thing.

Copyright means Google can set whatever terms they want when it comes to companies installing or people using the play store.

You know, another OS may have a permission system that favlors the USER instead of Google. Maybe you could, you know, allow the USER to decide what the application can and can't do---

Re:no thanks

[hobarrera]

Android compatibility is a plus for those very specific apps some people want, but Sailfish OS has it's own ecosystem, so it won't be second class. There's also plenty of meego/maemo apps being ported to sailfish OS.

Re:no thanks

[cyber-vandal]

Or they could put the Amazon App Store on there.

Re:no thanks

[cbope]

No, this belongs on a "news for nerds" site. If you are so dependent and coddled by the whole app-store experience, then you are not a nerd and you need to use that other news site you mentioned.

A real nerd/geek/whatever label you want to use is not going to be bothered that he/she can't get their apps through a single source.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I've installed Avatarrom on my SGS2. You can skip the Google registration. That will shut you out of the Play-store, but it works. And all Google apps are gone, so you cannot use the Google Maps app anymore, although you can open GM in your browser. With Titanium Backup you can backup apps and their data, then reinstall those apps after the installation. You won't get any updates because there is no Play Store, so you have to figure that out another way.

Re:no thanks

[marcello_dl]

You are very right, grandparent poster has a good point.

The solution: a free phone with an android environment , but in a sandbox.
So all the pretty android apps can ask for my sms, mail history, photos, sd, wife and pet, and I can choose what to feed them. For serious work instead I use the GNU/Linux environment.

Jolla are you listening? you are close to a killer phone, wait it's a killer home pc when technology lets it. Think about it.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of paying Google to license it is getting your device certified as meeting the requirements Google sets down as minimum performance for Android devices. Good luck getting an OS that is not Android to pass all the tests.

Re: no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

why not? Windows has POSIX and OS X has UNIX certification.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Though the play store has so many permissions you might as well grant Google, and by extension the NSA, root access when you install the thing.

Does the play store even work with the framework service package? (The one that silently force auto updates itself and has the permission to grant itself any permission.) If not, then installing the play store would be giving google root access to your device.

Re: no thanks

[mwvdlee]

Those certification organisations make money certifying products.
Google makes money by controlling the OS.

Re: no thanks

[h4rr4r]

Try using the windows POSIX support one time. It was put there just to get a checkbox, not to be useful.

Re:no thanks

[Madoc]

f-droid.org is an alternative to Google Play that's full of open source Android software, pre-built from the source. It's like the debian of the Android world.

I use it on all of my devices, both those with Google Play and those without.

Re:no thanks

[tepples]

Android compatibility is a plus for those very specific apps some people want

Unless the publishers of "those very specific apps" choose not to make them available to the public as an APK or through any store other than Google's.

Re:no thanks

[hobarrera]

That's quite right; users can't obtain application which the developers don't wish to sell/give them. Nothing new here.

Re:no thanks

[incongruency]

I so very badly want this project to be completed. My N900 is dying, and I sorely need a new phone.

Open Compatibility Layer for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

When will there be an open Android compatibility layer for Linux?
I am saving up for a http://neo900.org/ the N900/maemo5 upgrade project forked from Openmoko GTA04 hardware and existing Maemo5 OS.
It would be nice to see some unique android apps available, OTOH it could hurt native app progress.

Re:Open Compatibility Layer for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

WHat I mean is is there an active project like IcedRobot?
Over at talk.maemo.org they are making hand crafted lib config files to run OpenGL Android games on Maemo but whht is really needed is a FOSS suite like Wine.

Re:Open Compatibility Layer for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just run AndroVM in Virtualbox? That supports OpenGL acceleration.

Why?

[tuppe666]

It is a shame this will never be mainstream.

I am confused why not you should see it it looks pretty good. There are still Billions of users still on feature Phones. Microsoft has insisted that their is a need for a third OS in the Market. There is no reason why this shouldn't be the one, and unlike many of the pretenders it has 1Million Applications on launch. It sounds to me like an ideal phone for those wanting a massive application support without Google giving Sailfish a major advantage of many pretenders. Currently Apple are only selling 13% of its phones...and is only common in America(I know UK and couple of other countries), and Microsoft only managed 3% after years...its rumoured to suffer this quarter, and bought Nokia before the move to Android. This is not the PC market it could all change in a couple of years. More than anything its proved there is an interest in these phones.

Re:Why?

[cripkd]

And are you sure Jolla strives to ocuppy the $50 dollars phone market?
If you had $500 to buy a phone, what would you choose?

Re:Why?

[Therad]

I was one of those that REALLY wanted to buy n950. I didn't want the n900, first generations always have problems. So yes, I know it is good. But they are small fish in an ocean of sharks. (or a fiat punto among hummers if you want a car analogy ;)) But why are you talking about feature phones? This is a smartphone, it will not be as cheap as a feature phone to make. MS might want there to be a strong third alternative and there will probably be a third alternative in the same sense that Linux is the third alternative on desktop after ms and apple. Quite frankly the smartphone war is practically over, android is the windows of the smartphone world. The only thing I see that could stop them is if MS aggressively tries to win the corporate sector.

Re:Why?

[marcello_dl]

> If you had $500 to buy a phone, what would you choose?
I'd choose the $50 phone that does all that I need, the rest for blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget about the blackjack.

Re:Why?

[cripkd]

Then why are we talking about the Jolla?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

...blackjack and hookers...

>implying anyone watched that show past that episode.

Re:Why?

[marcello_dl]

You're right, forget about the phone, too.

Tiny Market

[tuppe666]

I presume the relevant issue is that no US carriers will support it?

...That sort of stupid logic is what ironically killed Nokia. Its even more ironic seeing Apple shares plummet (yes Again) at news that it failed to launch a cheap (to the consumer at least) phone on network with 740Million subscribers.

Personally though I'm wondering when the American carriers will cut Apple of at the knees.

Re:Tiny Market

[davester666]

Once somebody else makes a phone that a LOT of people want to have? Not one of a couple dozen models a company makes. A phone.

or was Replicant the first OS to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Replicant, the more Free/Libre Software-friendly OS like Android, has been able to run Android programs and run on hardware designed for Android for years... it seems Replicant was the first to do what Sailfish is described as doing... or does Sailfish do something else?

Re:or was Replicant the first OS to do that?

[Stormwatch]

Replicant is a fork of Android that replaces the proprietary parts with free ones, so that's by design; Sailfish is a different operating system, so it has to use a translation layer.

Re:or was Replicant the first OS to do that?

[tepples]

Aren't Replicant and Sailfish just userspaces that run on top of Linux? If so, why can't Replicant just be run in a chroot with a SurfaceFlinger that redirects to a Sailfish window?

Non US

[john.burton1765]

I think there is a demand for a device that has an operating system made by a company not based in the US. After the recent stuff, how many people trust apple, or google, or microsoft not to have inserted under pressure something to spy on us to the us government. If my own government wishes to monitor me, and if it has good reason to do so, then ok. But I don't see why a foreign government should have that ability too.

Re:Non US

[Anonymous Coward]

If my own government wishes to monitor me, and if it has good reason to do so, then ok. But I don't see why a foreign government should have that ability too.

And at least with your own government hopefully you can possibly effect their monitoring policies with a vote or a peaceful protest and/or petitions. With a foreign government all you can use is either money or guns to sway policy. And if you are a little nation with no guns or money, you are basically screwed. Votes and foreign opinions rarely work across borders.

Re:Non US

[Richy_T]

You can only affect their monitoring policies if you know about them. And they have that sewn up quite nicely, thankyou.

They announced this in a PDF?

[cripkd]

If only HTML would support the text tag...

Re:They announced this in a PDF?

[kthreadd]

It is very common with press releases.

Re:They announced this in a PDF?

[cripkd]

Yes, but how hard can it be to also have a text version on a press releases web page?

Re:They announced this in a PDF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? It is a press release. PDF is device independent representation of a document. When dealing with press having as few variables as possible sounds sensible.

Re:They announced this in a PDF?

[Njovich]

What are you doing on Slashdot? We don't read articles here. I find the fact that you are asking this very disturbing.

For Nokia it is a tiny market

[dbIII]

No, Elop is what killed nearly Nokia but it's not quite dead yet. Just last quarter they sold 53 million phones in China using the Sybian system that Elop tried to bury and halted all development on. Even hamstrung they sold more phones in a single market than Apple did in the entire world (new Apple record of 31 million phones in one quarter).
Now do you get some idea of why people are taking the Nokia takeover so seriously? A company that has been utterly gutted in a blatant corporate raid is still selling more phones than Apple despite people being told by the CEO of the company selling them that the platform is doomed.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[Anonymous Coward]

"No, Elop is what killed nearly Nokia"

Hear, hear. If a tiny startup can create an Android compatible Linux device, why didn't Nokia with it's tens of thousands of engineers didn't do the same, instead of being Microsoft's or Google's lapdog ? I would have bought a Nokia device in an instant if it was able to run Android apps and it was Nokia-level functional.

It's easier to support just a few hardware flavors and they had the patent clout to kill any defensive action from Google, especially since most patents are invalid in most jurisdictions when used to stifle compatibility.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[Eunuchswear]

No, Elop is what killed nearly Nokia but it's not quite dead yet. Just last quarter they sold 53 million phones in China using the Sybian system.

Uh, not Sybian

You mean Symbian.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[dbIII]

I would have bought a Nokia device in an instant if it was able to run Android apps and it was Nokia-level functional.

An earlier version of the Android compatibility layer they are using was run on a Nokia N900 and probably would have run on an N9 as well.
So the thing was already there and all Nokia had to do is buy the rights to use it.

I should elaborate in case people are confused - Jolla didn't do that specific part of the software themselves but are licensing it from another company which has been working on this for almost as long as Android has been available. There was a previous Slashdot article about it. Since it's commercial software only available to hardware vendors it's probably slipped under most readers radar.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[hairyfeet]

Oh what total horseshit, the ONLY market Nokia has is in dumbphones where they measure their profits in pennies, they had not one, not two, but THREE internal OS teams all backstabbing and cockblocking each other at EVERY turn, the OS that so many here thought actually had a prayer, the MeeGo? Was was being actively sabotaged from TWO fronts, Intel for fear that the ARM version would get more sales than the X86, and the Symbian team for fear that MeeGo might steal their thunder, and for those that say "Oh android would save them"? Tell that to HTC who despite increased sales is is losing money because that is what happens in a race to the bottom, only the leanest companies that can cut costs to the bone make any green.

So I'm sorry but Nokia was circling the drain long before Elop even walked in the door. the entire management was a mess, they had lost more than half their value in less than 6 years, they had no product that could compete with iOS 2 and Android froyo and gingerbread, and all they had left was dumbphones which thanks to motorola using the mediaTek SoC that allowed a complete dumbphone to be built for less than $5 USD they were fucked with a capital F. The situation at Nokia was an exact copy of what happened at Palm, they sat on ass and stuck with a profitable product without bothering to sink the R&D into a new OS until the world passed them by, Symbian for Nokia and Garnet for Palm.

So pretty much the only choice was to buy a fully complete OS and throw a Hail Mary and with HP paying insane-o money for WebOS (a better fit for Nokia IMHO) there literally wasn't any other OSes to go with, it was that or close the doors and give the money back to the shareholders.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[grcumb]

No, Elop is what killed nearly Nokia but it's not quite dead yet. Just last quarter they sold 53 million phones in China using the Sybian system.

Uh, not Sybian

You mean Symbian.

Dude, vibrate mode is its killer feature.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate Elop just as much as the next guy, but fact is that Nokia did not sell 53M Sybian (or Symbian for that matter) phones in China last quarter. They sold in total, 4.1M devices in "Greater China" Q2 2013 and this is S30, S40, Symbian and WP phones combined. Numbers from Nokia Corporation Interim Report for Q2 2013 and January-June 2013..

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[Anonymous Coward]

Elop is what killed nearly Nokia but it's not quite dead yet. Just last quarter they sold 53 million phones in China using the Sybian system that Elop tried to bury and halted all development on.

How do things like this which have nothing to do with reality get modded up to 5? Because it's what people wish was true?

In fact, "The whole China area bought 4.1 million Nokia phones in Q2 of this year, which was up slightly over the previous quarter, but down 48 percent year-on-year. "

That's ALL phones, not Symbian phones, which were only a tiny fraction of that.

Also from that source, or any number of other sources: "Nokia’s sales revenue for Greater China also fell by the greatest number anywhere in the world, plummeting 57%"

IMaking up what you WANT to be true doesn't actually make it true, but I guess it does get you modded up by others who also want to believe it.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[evilviper]

Just last quarter they sold 53 million phones in China using the Sybian system that Elop tried to bury and halted all development on. Even hamstrung they sold more phones in a single market than Apple did in the entire world

That number is no-doubt dumb/feature phones. A dying market with razor-thin profit margins, that nobody cares about any more. Nice way to twist things, though, just mention Symbian and people will assume you're talking about the smartphone platform, and not the tiny RTOS used on dumb phones.

Dumb phones has always been Nokia's bread and butter, and their demise is because they failed miserably to transition into the rapidly growing (and highly profitable) smartphone market.

Sure, Elop sounds like Microsoft's boy, and he's successfully driven Nokia into the ground, but staying on Symbian wouldn't have been a fix for Nokia's problem. And even switching to Android might have been very difficult, as the sales figures showing Samsung's massive dominance can attest. This may just be the time for a major shakeout of cell phone manufacturers who can't compete in the changing market, and Nokia will simply be first...

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[cyber-vandal]

Nokia has brand recognition that HTC can only dream of. The only reason Windows Phone has any traction at all is because of the Nokia brand. Samsung probably aren't the leanest company on the planet but they're making plenty of money on phones. I'd hardly say the Galaxy S4 and Note 3 (or for that matter the HTC One) are in any kind of "race to the bottom".

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[mrpacmanjel]

It would explain the constant weird expression on Elop's face.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[Hognoxious]

Just last quarter they sold 53 million phones in China using the Sybian system

That word does not mean what you think it does.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[dbIII]

A "few pennies" from 53 million phones adds up.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[hairyfeet]

Oh please! Nokia hasn't had GOOD brand recognition since the days of Win98, they have been trading on their past glory by selling shit dumbphones that you find in dollar stores. yep great brand, go get a Nokia next to the generic soda at Fred's. Sorry pal but this ain't 2002, Nokia has NO brand recognition that is positive as anybody who has had one of their shit dumbphones of the past 5 years can tell you. My mother refused to give up her dumbphone...until back to back Nokia shitphones that couldn't make calls for shit, had garbage sound, pathetic battery life, and controls that frankly glitched and hung more than a bottom of the line Android phone upgraded to Android 4.

Go to any forum where they talk about featurephones and see what kind of brand recognition Nokia has...its shit. You and too many others have rose colored glasses because of the N900 but they haven't put out anything quality in fricking years, the PHBs pinching pennies saw to that. Of course that is what you get when a company has piss poor management, it was ALL short term thinking, no vision, no thoughts of the future, I'm sorry but by ANY metric, profit per phone, market cap,share of market, Nokia has been going in only one direction...ever seen the commercial with the monkeys dancing and burning money to a sign that says profits are up when in reality the company is nosediving? That is Nokia.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[Anonymous Coward]

It would explain the constant weird expression on Elop's face.

Wait, that's his face?

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[cyber-vandal]

I don't know what country you live in but here in the UK Nokia has excellent brand recognition. I personally owned a few between about 1999 and 2005 and the N95 for example (released in 2007) was a huge success. I'm not interested in any forums full of 14 year old basement dwellers, I'm interested in the fact that quite a few people I know have been unfortunate enough to end up with a Windows phone because it had the Nokia name on it. I did own an N900 and it was a big disappointment which I couldn't wait to get away from. My memory goes back further than 3 years however to when Nokia was the top brand in the world (not counting the US) and sold phones by the truckload. Their business is fucked now but their brand is not. Microsoft didn't fork out 7 billion for a dead company, they forked it out for the world famous brand.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm.. you're wrong. Reason: Your perspective is utterly US centric and causes a significant distortion in your observed field of reality.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[hairyfeet]

And the UK is HOW big of a market again? And I'm sorry if you didn't hear but the consumer electronics market? VERY USA-Centric as what has been a hit here seems to translate well overseas, see iPhone,Samsung Galaxy, Huawei Ascend for examples. this is why most of the stock market isn't gonna pay much attention if you don't have at least one stateside hit and Nokia hasn't had one since they had Mulder and Sculley using Nokia on the X-Files.

And again with the rose colored glasses about the N series, the N series was NEVER a hit, it never sold in high enough numbers to justify itself, hence why they moved away from it. Its OpenMoko all over again where a few FOSS lovers trumpted it like it was the second coming when in reality? didn't ever even get 5% of the market. Last figures i saw had the N series sales hovering around 4% at its peak, in the high volume low margin market that is smartphones that equals a dud.

I know it sucks to hear that, I know what its like to like a product that fails as I thought the Asus brazos EEE netbooks were the best thing since sliced bread. AMD dual core APU, crazy long bettery life, less than 3 pounds yet had enough power to do 1080P over HDMI? It was a fricking sweet product. Sadly what a handful of geeks like rarely translates into market share and Nokia is a great example as while you sing the praises of the N series in reality they ended up with warehouses full of the things, they just couldn't move 'em for a profit and ended up dumping a ton of 'em on places like Woot!, shades of the Touchpad all over again.

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[dbIII]

And the UK is HOW big of a market again?

Are you really going to play that game after I've mentioned China?

Re:For Nokia it is a tiny market

[cyber-vandal]

From Wikipedia:

The N95's main competitors during its lifetime were the LG Prada, Apple's iPhone and the Sony Ericsson W950i. The N95 managed to outsell its rivals. Despite Apple's much-hyped iPhone with its multi-touch technology, thin design and advanced web capabilities, the N95 had several key features against the iPhone, such as its camera with flash, video camera, 3G and 3.5G connectivity, GPS, third-party applications and several other features

Yeah the N Series was a huge failure *roll eyes*. By the way the consumer electronics market is not just USA-centric. It's developed world centric and Nokia has excellent brand recognition outside the US which is why Windows Phones are selling at all.

The only way

[thegarbz]

You may not care but for the most part people care about the ecosystem not the OS itself. If these OSes have any hope of getting off the ground they either need to attract a humongous number of developers or support the ecosystem of another established platform.

Otherwise you'll find yourself with a dream OS but no hardware which runs it.

Re:The only way

[Anonymous Coward]

what people? you mean sheep.
linux has its own HUGE ecosystem of software.
not need for fancy shiny apps from big brother.

The best Value Phone

[tuppe666]

And are you sure Jolla strives to ocuppy the $50 dollars phone market?

If you had $500 to buy a phone, what would you choose?

Nothing even close to $500 most of the phones only a idiot would pay anything close to that. I have been looking at are around the $200, but I am waiting to see what the Nexus 5 looks like, but I don't have a contract so I'm really not in a rush.

The bottom line is why should an OS not fit on a $50 and $500 phone...Android is already there.

Re:The best Value Phone

[cripkd]

You kinda answered your own question.
Mainly because Android is already there.
If windows phone and blackberry missed the train on this one and Ubuntu and Firefox OS also taking a shot at this, what are the chances for yet another mobile OS?

Why, isn't that just peachy

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing how the gnu/techies keep on swooning as long as the linux kernel is in it. Of course, everybody is doing it everywhere, with a gazillion distributions on the desktop; meego is just as much linux based as android is. To me it amounts to changing the colour of the bikeshed a bit. But oh, look how many colours you can have!

In effect, having the same code base underneath means another monoculture in the making, and perpetuating the same design limitations and mistakes. It's not nearly as deeply innovating as people like to believe, and also not as much as we need.

Somebody port a *BSD, or minix, or haiku, or what-have-you to phones already.

Re:Why, isn't that just peachy

[mu22le]

Somebody port a *BSD, or minix, or haiku, or what-have-you to phones already.

Someone has already

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/09/17/2050200/inferno-os-running-on-android-phones

but it didn't get much attention

Re:Why, isn't that just peachy

[ladoga]

meego is just as much linux based as android is. To me it amounts to changing the colour of the bikeshed a bit.

Oh, so Android now ships with GNU/busybox userland and X (or Wayland in case of Sailfish) out of the box?

How is this not an Android?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how is it different from the run of the mill Android crap then? If it can run on Android hardware and run Android apps, then it is Android.. Thanks, I'll pass. Next please.

Re:How is this not an Android?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike android, it's got a standard Linux kernel, and a standard Linux stack (systemd, wayland), ad achieves compatibility through libhybris (allowing a Wayland compositor to run on Android drivers) and Alien Dalvik (running Android apps -- but not the whole Android UI -- in a sandbox).

Also the whole UX is completely different. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RVQVtiL1os for the how it works

Maybe it's a generational thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

My parents & people of their generation, who grew up in the Great Depression, don't buy anything without thoroughly analyzing it financially, so they always get the best deal available to them. Most of them did not get mobile phones until it was either cheaper than a land line, or their health issues made it worthwhile.

T-Mobile or MVNO

[tepples]

since the subsidy is not a line item, there's no way for them to reduce the bill (still $80/month) over the same time period of 2 years

There are two ways around this: use T-Mobile, which makes the subsidy a line item, or use an MVNO such as Straight Talk or Virgin, which specialize in unsubsidized plans.

Dice is a U.S. company

[tepples]

And what is on a world scale relevant about a single market?

Slashdot is operated by Dice, a U.S. company. There will usually be a U.S. slant to stories. That and the coinventors of the telephone in the first place (Bell and Gray) were both U.S. residents.

Re:Dice is a U.S. company

[Anonymous Coward]

It is fine to have a US slant. It is stupid to act like the rest of the world doesn't exist, especially when 50% of the ./ readership most likely doesn't live in the US (based on ./ poll results).

Look it up - not hard to find

[dbIII]

If you are going to call me a liar at least have the decency to check if it's a lie or not first. That number is real, which means the Chinese phone market must be enormous if even Nokia is selling so much stuff.

python?

[Kludge]

You seem to know alot about this device. Where did you get all this info?
I love the python phone/sms/gps libraries that I have in my N900/Maemo device. I don't suppose Sailfish still has that?

re:python?

[Phil Urich]

You seem to know alot about this device. Where did you get all this info? I love the python phone/sms/gps libraries that I have in my N900/Maemo device. I don't suppose Sailfish still has that?

Not so sure that it does, but you can certainly try and find out by installing the Sailfish SDK and poking around in the virtual machine! Also related to the question of Python on Jolla/Sailfish, http://thpmaemo.blogspot.ca/2013/07/the-way-forward-with-python-on-qt-5.html (blog post by perhaps the most noteworthy Python-on-Nokia-Linux-devices programmer out there, Thomas Perl).

Antifeatures

[tepples]

f-droid.org is an alternative to Google Play that's full of open source Android software

By default, F-Droid hides any application that includes antifeatures. So how should one fund the development and maintenance of an open-source Android application, especially a game, without including antifeatures? The business models I've always been told about for open-source games are to make the code open-source but add advertisements (antifeature Ads), or do as Id Software does and make the code open-source but restrict the distribution of the meshes, textures, maps, audio, etc. on which it relies (antifeature NonFreeAdd).

Re:Antifeatures

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to make an open source game, you should not expect anything in return besides the knowledge that you have contributed something to the world.

In your case, you want direct compensation, so make a commercial game.

Re:Antifeatures

[tepples]

Say I want to make software for contributing to the world. How should I do that and eat?

Different devices have different sizes

[tepples]

PDF is device independent representation of a document.

Different devices have different sizes. PDF assumes the document is divided into pages of a fixed size, which may not match the size of your device. There are still plenty of web browsers running on devices whose screen isn't tall enough to display an entire portrait oriented A4 or US Letter page plus the OS border.

People choose devices to run applications

[tepples]

My point is that people choose devices to run applications, and that involves choosing devices by compatibility with the stores on which developers choose to release their applications. If a user's must-have app is exclusive to Google Play, the user is locked into Google Play devices. It's not like game consoles, where someone can just buy one device of each platform and have them share a home Internet connection, because carrying capacity is limited. Consider before smartphones became popular: how often did people carry both a DS and PSP? Besides, cellular carriers in Slashdot's home country tend to impose a separate monthly fee on each device.

Re:People choose devices to run applications

[hobarrera]

My point is that people choose devices to run applications, and that involves choosing devices by compatibility with the stores on which developers choose to release their applications. If a user's must-have app is exclusive to Google Play, the user is locked into Google Play devices. It's not like game consoles, where someone can just buy one device of each platform and have them share a home Internet connection, because carrying capacity is limited. Consider before smartphones became popular: how often did people carry both a DS and PSP? Besides, cellular carriers in Slashdot's home country tend to impose a separate monthly fee on each device.

But this device not targeted to that particular country which has a very unique culture when it comes to mobile phones and carriers.

Also, the lack/presen