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Sailfish Can Officially Be Installed To Android Devices

Posted by timothy on from the jolla-good-old-chap dept.

jones_supa writes "Talouselämä Magazine met Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki and asked a puzzling question. If Jolla truly is compatible with Android devices, is Jolla going to let individual users to install the Sailfish operating system on the Android devices that they already have? Pienimäki answers: 'That is the plan. We are on device business and OS business. It is fairly easy to install the OS on Android devices'. He says that especially in China, changing firmwares is a mainstream thing. About half of the smartphone buyers are upgrading their older or cheaper devices with a better version of Android. Therefore, Jolla's plan is to get some Sailfish installations sneaked in, too."

27 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting. by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So this means both Sailfish and Ubuntu Phone can be installed on Android devices. This is an interesting development -- perhaps we're moving toward a PC-like standard for phone and tablet hardware?

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Interesting. by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Interesting

      perhaps we're moving toward a PC-like standard for phone and tablet hardware?

      Well; most Android devices have a bootloader you'll have to hack and void warranty if you do so.... yes!

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    2. Re:Interesting. by hydrofix · · Score: 2

      So the next logical step is that someone starts selling Android hardware where you can replace the OS component without voiding the warranty.

    3. Re:Interesting. by substance2003 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I believe such a phone already exists.

      http://oppostyle.com/find-5/8-find-5-white.html#/capacity-16gb

    4. Re:Interesting. by AvitarX · · Score: 3, Informative

      What company?

      T-Mobile has consistently given me a new phone on the spot if I have a box and one under warranty that's broken.

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    5. Re:Interesting. by hydrofix · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Interesting. It's slightly better hardware than Jolla for €100 less. But at least for now without Sailfish OS, of course.

    6. Re:Interesting. by EETech1 · · Score: 2, Funny

      If you are using Android, try using "fast burst camera (pro)" I love it, and it works better than my stock camera at taking burst shots.

      Everyone always asks how I got such a perfect shot with my camera, I don't tell them I took 50 and went through them all to get just the right one:)

      Cheers

    7. Re:Interesting. by suy · · Score: 4, Informative

      As I understand it, that is not going to happen if you want Google's bless (i.e. their applications and Google Play Services, which are critical for some applications to work). Read Google’s iron grip on Android, especially page 3.

      Since the Kindle OS counts as an incompatible version of Android, no major OEM is allowed to produce the Kindle Fire for Amazon. So when Amazon goes shopping for a manufacturer for its next tablet, it has to immediately cross Acer, Asus, Dell, Foxconn, Fujitsu, HTC, Huawei, Kyocera, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and ZTE off the list. Currently, Amazon contracts Kindle manufacturing out to Quanta Computer, a company primarily known for making laptops. Amazon probably doesn't have many other choices.

      Seems like a terrible move against market freedom. Even worse for consumer freedom.

    8. Re:Interesting. by jovius · · Score: 2

      Google play and services can be installed on Jolla (and other devices too?).

  2. Re:LOL!!! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can it be officially installed up my anus?

    What are you going to talk out of then?

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  3. Re:sailfish eats ice cream sandwich by Geeky · · Score: 2

    Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock, Sailfish, Ice Cream Sandwich, KitKat, Ubuntu.

    --
    Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
  4. What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Talouselämä Magazine met Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki and asked a puzzling question. If Jolla truly is compatible with Android devices, is Jolla going to let individual users to install the Sailfish operating system on the Android devices that they already have?

    That certainly is a puzzling question if you have absolutely no idea what Jolla and Sailfish are.

    Go ahead, rant and rave all you want and ask me how I dare to read Slashdot if I don't know what they are already, but would it kill you just to give a hint of what Jolla and Sailfish are? At least then I'd have some idea whether the article might fall within my interest without having to research it. That is what a summary is meant to be for, isn't it?

    And it can be done so easily without looking like you've dumbed it down - they do it all the time proper news sites.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Thank you for posting this, even though you'll surely get flamed six ways from Sunday for it.

      This kind of news item on this site is a perfect example of the myopia and arrogance that runs rampant here. I've been reading this site since it's earliest days, and I still check in (via RSS reader) a couple of times a day. But I am constantly amazed by how hard people here work to ghetto-ize themselves -- just like the so-called "Linux community".

      Here's a hint: If you want to maintain the security of being a fringe player with no responsibility that everyone else laughs at, then keep up your lazy, selfish ways. If you want to be a major player, then clean up your act.

    2. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by pspahn · · Score: 2, Informative

      And you'd think if someone was paying for a slashvertisement, they would want to make sure potential customers/users knew how to pronounce the name.

      Since they didn't, I'll just go ahead and let everyone know that it's pronounced JOE-lah and that any other pronunciation is totally incorrect.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    3. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by preflex · · Score: 2, Informative

      would it kill you just to give a hint of what Jolla and Sailfish are?

      They gave you several hints.

      "Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki": Hmm. Jolla must be a corporation. That name sounds Finnish.

      "If Jolla truly is compatible with Android devices...": Jolla seems to be making some sort of cell phone software.

      "Is Jolla going to let individual users to install the Sailfish operating system ..." Sailfish is an operating system for cell phones.

      So, Jolla is a Finnish cell phone company that is producing an OS called Sailfish. It will be installable on Android devices. It seems like you would have enough information there to know if you want to know more. They've even provided all the relevant keywords: "Jolla", "Sailfish", which you can enter into a search engine to find more information

      Complaining about this makes you appear stupid and lazy.

    4. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by Jiro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Generally, the detail which is important to the reader is what distinguishes the referenced item from other things like it. It is uninformative for a Slashdot article to name a disease, type of food, operating system, or anything else without saying what it is. Just the fact that the reader can figure out that it is a disease, food, or operating system doesn't make the article informative. It's possible to figure out something from almost any article, no matter how poorly written. It's still poorly written.

    5. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by foobar+bazbot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ... I am constantly amazed by how hard people here work to ghetto-ize themselves -- just like the so-called "Linux community".

      Here's a hint: If you want to maintain the security of being a fringe player with no responsibility that everyone else laughs at, then keep up your lazy, selfish ways. If you want to be a major player, then clean up your act.

      Right now, I have a free OS that does what I need it do, and that I can tinker with whenever I feel like it. And I've got plenty of choice -- i presently use Arch, but I've used (and could go back to) netbsd and slackware, and I could go pick up gentoo, debian, etc. if arch stopped updating, or decided to go in a direction I don't like.

      What do I get out of making the "Linux community" a "major player"? At best, those things stay the same when it becomes "a major player" -- in fact, it's liable to become worse, because of the need to cater to the lowest common denominator (cf. Ubuntu).

      You say lots of other people (who I don't care about) would start using Linux? OK, then maybe they should wish Linux community becomes "major player" (in reality, they should probably just use OS X -- all the same UNIXiness, a nice polished layer of user-friendliness, and neither them nor we of the Linux community need to get on one another's nerves!), but you're not preaching to them, you're preaching to me, and I just don't care what OS they use.

      You say the increased market share would force manufacturers to provide hardware drivers? Well, that might actually be a good argument -- particularly if there were some reason to suppose this doesn't just mean more buggy binary-only drivers. (If this argument was sound, wouldn't we see lots of good from the "success" of Linux by way of Android in getting usable hardware drivers? No, we've got a ton of binary junk, and dozens of separately-maintained hardware-specific forks.) And the only times in the past decade I've run into this hardware-support problem that Linux supposedly has were 5 years ago when I had trouble with a USB-attached webcam in a laptop, and 3 years ago when I made the mistake of getting a UMPC with GMA500/Poulsbo graphics because I skipped the research, thinking Intel graphics==good support. I'm sure there's a lot of unsupported hardware out there, I'm just not running into it very often, and when I do, I don't see any evidence that being a "major player" would actually make it any better.

      And I'm just not insecure enough to need the validation of knowing I'm a Major Player, or to care that "everyone else laughs at [us]" (And I note that's the one argument you could be arsed to actually make... good lord, man, see a shrink!) -- unless there's some real benefit to me, I don't see a reason to expend effort helping people who don't care enough to help themselves.

    6. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not like you could search it or Google on a separate browser tab, anyway, right?

      It's not like I should have to, if Slashdot wants to be a news site which informs its readership. Call me lazy if you wish, but I prefer to be less mystified after reading the news.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    7. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by trackedvehicle · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's pronounced yol-lah. "Jolla" means dinghy in Finnish.

    8. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by aliquis · · Score: 2

      The name make sense.

      Jolla is created by former Nokia employe(s) and Sailfish is a continuation of MeeGo which was a Nokia OS.

      When Stephen Elop had had become CEO of Nokia and revealed the future direction about how they would ditch Symbian, just relase one MeeGo phone and switch over to Windows Phone he compared the situation to a burning oil platform where you may not want to jump into the cold water but ..

      And if you look back at that and where Nokia went it isn't all that weird that someone took their little boat http://www.trabatsakuten.nu/batbilder/jollar_roddbatar/images/Jolle2.jpg and row away with MeeGo and see where that would take them :)

    9. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by aliquis · · Score: 2

      .. or that people who are left into the water may want to get picked up by one and rescued :)

    10. Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? by foobar+bazbot · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure what to think of an OS created by former Nokia programmers. It isn't as if they did a bang up job when they had the resources of a giant corporation backing them.

      Have you used an N9? Because IMO they did a really outstanding job of going from the nerd-centric Maemo 4.x (and earlier) on the 770, N800, and N810, through the kinda-sorta-enduser-ready Maemo 5.0 on the N900, to the fully enduser N9's "Meego/Harmattan" (which despite the name was essentially Maemo 6, with Meego libraries added; the next version would have been the first one built solely on Meego). Not saying N9 was a great enduser OS, just that they did a much better job that I expected of making that specific transition.

      While there are plenty of faults to be pointed out with any version of Maemo or Meego/Harmattan, I felt that Meego/Harmattan really was in fair shape to compete with iOS and Android if/when Nokia reallocated enough resources from Symbian to Meego to make a serious effort. Keep in mind they didn't have the resources of a giant corporation -- they had the resources of one small division of that corporation.

      I hope for them, their failures with Nokia were more a result of poor management then they were a lack of quality or value proposition.

      Everything I've heard suggests there were serious management issues, because much of Nokia upper management were "old guard", committed to Symbian, and were prone to viewing Maemo as a competitor.

      Then again, if the truth was "Well, we kinda suck at our jobs", I suppose "Management stabbed us in the back" is exactly what one would expect to hear.

      Right now there are many flavors of Android - mature with a large test, install, and app base - that are worth voiding warranties for. Unless Sailfish gets picked up by a handset mfg, I'm not sure why one would bother.

      While it's not obvious from TFS, Jolla is a handset manufacturer as well. They're making and selling (in Finland only, at the moment) a handset running Sailfish, but they are also promoting the idea of running that Sailfish on Android devices.

      While this does sound like enabling their own competition (why buy a Jolla phone when you can buy an HTC and install Sailfish?), the idea, as I understand it, is to come at the install-base vs. app-base chicken/egg problem from both ends -- by bootstrapping the app base with android apps, and bootstrapping the install base with android devices. Sailfish uses Android video drivers, so it can be relatively easily run anywhere Android runs (even platforms where no open-source video drivers exist). It runs Android apps with a compatibility layer. So it's most people with Android phones could switch to Sailfish, even though it doesn't start with a huge store of native apps, because you just use the same Android apps you already use. Only a tiny fraction of them will, of course, but a tiny fraction of all android users is still a good many. This gets you an install base, even though you don't yet have a good native app base.

      Now that install base is hopefully big enough to make app development attractive; soon, users who switched from android start finding better native apps for a few things, and then they're hooked in the Sailfish ecosystem. Next time they buy a new phone, they may go with one made by Jolla, to save the hassle of installing Sailfish. They also evangelize others who are looking for a new Android phone, and get some of them to buy a Jolla phone instead -- particularly others who aren't skilled enough to or simply don't care to install a new OS on their new phone.

      Eventually, Sailfish becomes so popular that HTC, Samsung, etc. all start shipping phones with it, and Jolla fades into obscurity? Or HTC (or whoever) buys out Jolla? Or something... Maybe they pull a Google and have some non-open stuff available for license by manufacturers, as well as the open base system. Or maybe they just become one of many Sailfish handset makers, and compete as best they can on features.

      I'm really not sure how the endgame works. I don't know how well the parts of the plan I do understand will work out for them, but "success" in one form or another is not inconceivable.

  5. Re:The Chinglish. by Stormwatch · · Score: 2

    Suomi.

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  6. It's MeeGo++ by Burz · · Score: 2

    It's got some slight new UI twists. Other than that, in this benighted post-Snowden era, not one whit of apparent concern for security and privacy.

    In looking for a new name, they should have called it MeeToo.

  7. So Sailfish / Jolla supports all baseband chips? by jphamlore · · Score: 2

    So Sailfish / Jolla supports all baseband chips that can be found on all Android devices in China? In addition to ST-Ericsson, Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung, MediaTek, etc.?

  8. Re:So Sailfish / Jolla supports all baseband chips by foobar+bazbot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It will support Android apps.

    Think of how desktop linuxen can support Windows apps using WINE -- they mostly won't be mistaken for native apps, some won't run, some will have odd glitches, some will run just fine. (I'm not saying that the proportion of apps in each of those categories will be anything like WINE, merely that there's bound to be some of each type.)

    If the Android app support is good enough, it could make a huge difference in uptake -- after all, if anyone who can flash a custom ROM can flash Sailfish instead, then install all the apps they had under Android, then carry on like nothing's changed, it won't take much UI improvement/novelty to get a bunch of geeks to do just that, thus boosting their install base well above the number of handsets Jolla sells themselves. That larger install base makes development of Sailfish-native apps more attractive, which means more native apps, which means more reason to switch from Android to Sailfish.

    Of course, if the Android app support isn't good enough, people will flash back to android because only half their apps work, Sailfish won't have the big install base, so you'll never get the native apps to replace all those borked android apps, and the whole thing collapses in a heap of fail.

  9. Re:S4 by jalyst · · Score: 2

    It won't run well on anything that's not officially sanctioned/supported, people STILL don't seem to get the the Sailfish(Jolla) model/plans. Nemo will probably be slightly better longer-term, but it needs more time...