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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."
Paired with here means that the phones are sold by the telecom operator in their stores(first the pre-orders are fullfilled), but there are no requirements for contracts and no sim-locking.
The online shop is Jollas own. I just paid for my pre-order phone through their website.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
... can it run Linu ... Yes? Oh, right. Nevermind.
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.
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Available Apps Include
-Car Analogy Generator
-Library of Congress Unit Conversion
-XKCD Reference Linker
-Shill Detector
-Basement Leak Sensor
-Voice Wreck Ignition Citation Search Engine
Fully compatible with
¦Android
¦BlackBerry 10
¦iOS
¦Nokia Asha
¦Sailfish OS
¦Windows Phone
¦Windows RT
¦Bada
¦BlackBerry OS
¦Grid OS
¦Linux
¦Mer
¦S40
¦Brew
¦SHR
¦Symbian
¦webOS
¦Tizen
*Unicode support included in a future update
Why are the specs so low?
This is like a phone from 3 years ago.
I switched from an N9 to a Galaxy S3 about a year ago (because the N9 lacked some apps I needed - thanks to Nokia abandoning it and alienating developers) and I still think the N9 was a much superior experience to both my Galaxy and my company-issued iPhone.
I' ll keep an eye for this. Hopefully if it catches on it might get a lower price-tag (given that it doesn't use very expensive hardware). The hardware does not seem very high-end, but the native apps are fast (the single-core N9 seemed faster than dual-core Android phones). Plus you get to run Android apps, if they run without problems this should allow people like me who had to switch to Android for the apps to get the phone.
One thing I don't like that much is the IPS screen. I don't mind it has a lower resolution than the current flagship phones, but I would prefer the S-AMOLED that the N9 had (with an always-on clock that did not use almost any battery power!).
Oh, there is also some talk that they will develop replace-able backs, e.g. you will be able to remove the back cover and put in a slide-out qwerty keyboard N900/950 style.
So, keeping an eye out for this, if it is really better than the N9, it could be the phone to have.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Phones capable of running Android are their major target. Interview of the CEO from today:
In addition to applications, Jolla exploits Android’s ecosystem also in another way. Jolla’s Sailfish operating system works in almost any Android device. Due to this Jolla can subcontract its devices for a reasonable price from any smart phone manufacturing company in Asia.
....
....
One more plus for Jolla is that the Android compatibility makes it very easy for other smart phone companies now using Android to change their OS to Jolla’s Sailfish.
According to Pienimäki, Jolla is also planning to let individual users to download Sailfish operating system into their Android-devices.
Lumia phones have an encrypted bootloader. Windows Mobile is the only operating system that can be installed. While there may be a way around this, it has not be discovered by the hacker community yet.
It's called BlackBerry Q10 (or Q5 if you're on a budget)
One of the most important features is the "Other Half" or whatever they're calling it, which is basically a back cover with a digital interface. There are already projects in motion to produce back covers with slide-out keyboards, extra batteries, among other things.
This feature has been seriously underplayed, it's one of the most exciting things about the whole phone!
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
i doubt you'd question this, if you had owned N900 or N9
As a political choice, or long term strategic move, you might want to support the neo 900.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Na ga happen. Nokia actually funded this company with contributions towards a federal goodwill program that provides funds for nationalistic (Finnish) startups. Jolla has access to Nokia's full patent portfolio under this program, as well as Nokia HERE maps.
The Jolla spinoff was a way for Nokia to continue development of Meego without Microsoft oversight. After the Microsoft acquisition is completed, Nokia cannot make phones until January 2016, after which, a merger between Nokia and Jolla is possible. Nokia has retained its brand, image, and importantly, the "Nokia ringtone" sound. It may be able to get by for a few years on patent royalties. Microsoft only gets the Lumia and Asha lines, and production centers, which were outsourced to Asia anyway.
Yes, because the moment we decide "we don't need any more OSes" is the moment we decide that "innovation" is done and nothing new is to be had unless it comes from Google, Microsoft, or Apple. And that's a bad, bad state to be in.
It's also interesting to note that Wayland just shipped on a device. So much for it being "hard to fit into a mobile device." Thanks to libhybris, they just wrap the Android blob for the GPU and continue on like a standard glibc-based Linux system.
Wayland. On every one of these Jolla devices. X11 was being used early on until recent versions of Qt were released, which added the Qt Compositor API, allowing them to create their own compositor (and do some rather interesting things.)
Yo-lla. Finnish for "dinghy". The joke being about getting away from Elop's "burning platform".
Maemo / Moblin -> MeeGo -> Harmattan -> Mer -> Tizen | Smeegol | Sailfish
Or, in other words, lets rename and start a new project every other week!
I got my N900 because it was based on the same GTK and Debian that I was familiar with on my desktop. But I never touched app development on it because of the promise of the "new" project completely obsoleting anything that I would create on the old. Why bother creating a GTK interface when the new UI gets rewritten in QT next month? Why bother creating Debian packages when the new system uses RPM? Meanwhile, the Osborne effect ensures that no mainstream apps get written for the current code base.
Portrait keyboards, like on the Q10, suck. You lose half the screen to the keyboard, all of the time, making it worse than an onscreen keyboard.
Landscape sliders are where it's at. You get a full-screen device, with an onscreen keyboard, and access to a full keyboard in landscape without losing any screen space.
It's just too bad there aren't any QWERTY sliders anymore. :( Was really hoping Motorola under Google would release a Droid5 with flagship hardware and the Photon Q keyboard. Alas, I'm still waiting ...
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.
Jollas concept about "the other half" actually includes plans for keyboard add-on. At first the other halfs (back covers if you like) just change the look, feel and settings of the OS for example red cover for work and blue for home. I haven't tested the phone myself, but this concept sounds cool. Later on Jolla is adding more physical gimmicks to those covers, hardware upgrades, keyboards, etc.