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Jolla's First Phone Goes On Sale
jones_supa writes "Jolla, the mobile phone company formed by ex-Nokia employees, has officially launched its first phone. It will be initially available in Finland, paired with the local telecom operator DNA. After that, it will be made available in 135 other countries. The Jolla handset runs the Sailfish OS, which is itself based on the former MeeGo platform developed by Nokia and Intel several years ago to produce Linux-based smartphone software. Sailfish can run Android apps and it also integrates Nokia's Here mapping and positioning technology. Looking at the hardware, the device sports a 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor, 1GB memory and 16GB of flash storage, plus a 4.5in 960x540 IPS touchscreen with Gorilla 2 Glass. It has the usual mobile network support, including GSM/3G/4G, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth, 8MP autofocus rear camera and 2MP front camera. SIM-free pricing is expected to be €399."
First things first. Let them get themselves established, away from the history of Nokia's self-dealing CEO, and show that the direction the company was going before he sabotaged it is a viable business model. Then maybe they can consider whether they can afford to attempt to rescue Nokia's current customers.
It would not come close to a 2006 macbook pro.
ARM cpus are not that performant. Ghz is not something you can compare that way.
There's more GNU/Linux in this thing than most if not all Android computers.
i doubt you'd question this, if you had owned N900 or N9
So how do they make money if they don't sim lock?
This is how you know the providers have won, when consumers wonder why they're NOT being treated like dirt.
The specs are "low" because it's what you can get to manufacture and sell for $400 when your order is not in the millions of units. It's already amazing they managed to sell it at less than a $1000 each for such a small order.
The specs are actually quite close to the iPhone 5C (at half the price), and are low only if you compare them to Android phones specs, which are so huge because of two things: 1. Android is a resource hog, 2. due to Google's tight grip over Android, the only way OEMS can differentiate is through specs.
The Jolla folk are actively trying to fight the second point, and the first point is not applicable to them since they use a "standard" Gnu/Linux stack (Systemd, Wayland, dbus, Qt, zypper).
As the owner of two Nokia N900s, HTC Desire (Nexus One), HTC Sensation, and LG Nexus 4, as well as a former owner of a Nokia N9, I can say the hardware keyboard on the N900 is highly overrated. Yes, when the N900 came out touchscreen keyboards were garbage, and the small screen and low resolution of the HTC Desire made typing on it an adventure. Same went for the Nokia N9 by the way, I loved the swype interface, hated the lack of keyboard. Fast forward to the HTC Sensation and LG Nexus 4, and I can type MUCH faster than I ever could on the N900.
I can think of a couple of reasons a hardware keyboard may be useful, such as typing in a terminal where sharing half the screen between the keyboard and the command line output IS a pain. And also using the phone in cold weather with gloves is much easier with a hardware keyboard.
But writing off the ONLY new phone running a real Linux distribution, with real native apps, open ecosystem from a company that is not interested in stealing your private data just because it lacks a keyboard just seems like trolling to me.
I personally will buy one as soon as it becomes available in Canada without being on pre-order.