They seem to put a lot of effort into telling you things other than "what is this thing?"
It sorta looks like a phone. Is it a phone? "Jolla is powered by Sailfish OS." Sweet. How is that relevant? It must be important because it spends the rest of the page telling you about the OS.
I'm back here, with honestly no idea what it is. Probably not the impression they want to leave on people, assuming (as a guess) that this is a consumer product of some kind.
It seems they put the engineers in charge of designing the website.
For the people who are genuinely confused, Jolla is a company that sells smartphones, their first smartphone is also called Jolla; it runs Sailfish OS, which is effectively a fork of the Meego operating system which Nokia used in its N9/N900 phones, before they switched to Windows Mobile. This is not very surprising, because Jolla is a Finnish company principally made up of ex-Nokia engineers, including a lot of the people who created the N9 in the first place. Sailfish OS stays closer to Linux than Android, using Wayland, Qt/QML, PulseAudio etc, and adhering to the Linux Standard Base specification. It also comes packaged with an Android runtime based on Alien Dalvik, so that it can run Android applications (similar to Blackberry 10), although it won't have access to Google Play or the Play Services APIs. The phone is being launched this week in Finland, and there are plans for release in the rest of Europe, and in China, though not so far in the US.
For comparison, Nokia's N9 / Meego Harmattan (Jolla Sailfish's predecessor) site from 2011: http://swipe.nokia.com/design/
Nokia made a clearer case for the OS. Jolla's video shows a bunch of rapid-fire tasks that are too hard to follow, and doesn't really showcase the simplicity of the swipe system like Nokia did. There's not enough that's surfaced here to show why you'd choose Jolla over Apple or Google.
Considering the choice of images on their front page, their current target seems to be more niche. Number of open source, Nokia, Maemo/Meego enthusiasts is probably big enough to give their sales a decent start.
Best wishes to Jolla. We truly deserve to have free-as-in-free-speech phones.
On the homepage "Jolla.com" it says: Jolla is powered by Sailfish OS, a truly open and distinct mobile operating system. Navigate effortlessly with the gesture-based user interface and load the phone with top Android™ apps.
I agree. I guessed quickly that it was a phone but all the networking junk it was sitting on top of in the top photo made me wonder if it was supposed to be something else. The first two questions I ask about anything technical (consumer product, programming language, branch of mathematics, ...) are 'what is this?' and 'when would I use this?' and it's depressing how poorly most advertising/documentation answers those.
I always wondered why Jolla is getting so little love from HN. To me and from a geek / hacker point of view, Jolla is an awful lot more interesting than Android.
Anyone who's had the chance to own a Meego device knows how incredibly talented and passionate the team behind Jolla is.
I'm really looking forward to see how the OS and apps feel on Jolla. The OS also appears to be a lot more open and hackable than Android (although the proof will be in the pudding so we'll see how it all pans out).
Probably hasn't been getting much attention because so far it is vaporware (until you can actually buy a device, it's not all that interesting), and it's a member of the complicated Maemo/Moblin/Meego/Tizen/Mer/Sailfish family that keeps on promising great things but seems to be reinvented every year and never actually delivers a working or supported ecosystem. Yes, a few devices have been released in that family, but have been immediately EOLed (the N900, DOA as it was released just as Nokia decided to go Windows only) or sold only as specialized developer previews or whatnot.
This whole family has been promising lots of things for a long time, but never seems to actually deliver, while you can get an Android phone in any corner store.
I might get interested once I can actually buy a device and write an application for it. Until then, I'm going to be extremely skeptical of this whole family of devices since they seem to consistently over-promise and under-deliver.
> I always wondered why Jolla is getting so little love from HN
As a hacker, I want to work on stuff that has a snowball's chance in hell of getting some traction, and in a market with very strong network effects, demonstrating this is up to newcomers. There have been other operating systems for mobile phones that looked cool, but suffered from lack of traction as well.
> I always wondered why Jolla is getting so little love from HN. To me and from a geek / hacker point of view, Jolla is an awful lot more interesting than Android.
Indeed, this is somewhat surprising. And so many people here had no clue what Jolla and Sailfish are.
>Jolla brings you the best of both worlds – super intuitive Sailfish OS apps and the latest Android™ apps.
The recent article on OS/2 [1] makes me wonder whether such compatibility (which, as I understand, is full and not selective) is actually good for them. Either way, tough, I wish Jolla success; I'd like to see Sailfish OS [2] on an actual device.
[1] See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6792010. The short of it is that the Ars Technica article claims OS/2's compatibility with Windows made developers less inclined to write native applications for OS/2. Some discussion on whether that was the case can be found in the comments to this response to the article: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=2144.
I thought of that article too, but I think one of the key differences is that neither OS/2 nor Windows had totally taken over the market when the Windows compatibility was introduced. So it turned the 'what to make apps for' question easy to answer.
The smartphone industry is way beyond that - people are making iOS and Android apps, and very little else.
os/2 vs. windows was about two players attempting to prevent each other from monopolizing the industry.
I don't think the Jolla guys go into this with a business plan of one day being a monopoly, or preventing another player from dominating the mobile industry.
Jolla is - I think - about offering consumers what nokia under elop was unwilling to give them: a MeeGo device.
As long as their business is based on selling hardware, it might not be a problem. Then they are not competing with Google in mobile OS development, but with Samsung etc.
Sailfish OS could then allow them to differentiate from other handset makers, without advertising it as such. In other words, market the capabilities, not the Sailfish "brand".
OS/2 Warp was released in 1994 just before Windows 95 and only supported Windows 3.1 applications. So it was necessary to abandon the OS to use new & upgraded applications designed for Windows 95. At the time, I found OS/2 was much better at running Windows applications as application errors didn't end up causing system instability and the dreaded GPF. I think the analogy would be more accurate if Jolla is unable to support applications designed for KitKat.
> The recent article on OS/2 [1] makes me wonder whether such compatibility (which, as I understand, is full and not selective) is actually good for them.
I would bet it will make Jolla a winner. Android apps will always be new and fresh, even after Microsoft stops throwing money at developers. Jolla will always have a fall-back in case some new popular app takes off.
One of their implicit pitch is that Jolla is "surveillance free". And it can run Android apps. I think these two features are good enough to spark an interest. The spec looks also impressive. But freedom doesn't come cheap at almost $550. Nonetheless, a very exciting development.
I'm also waiting for Firefox OS to mature and produce more devices.
I can't wait to drop Android. Each release takes more freedom away from the user and gets increasingly integrated with whatever social, cloud, data milking services they have at their disposal.
Funny how freedom becomes a competitive advantage for startups against the big and evil Internet giants.
One of their implicit pitch is that Jolla is "surveillance free".
Bullshit. Unless the phone can lie to the phone company about which cell tower its connected to, or some magic like that, it's not going to be anything like "surveillance free."
Jolla.com is more consumer oriented, so that can puzzle some who look for technical details. It's probably good to provide some links to the above from the Jolla.com. You can give them feedback, they are even present on Diaspora*: https://joindiaspora.com/u/jolla
It would be awesome if Jolla would become a successful company after Nokia sold out to MS (because it seems like Jolla is a continuation of what would have been Nokias route without MS). Also i only heard good things about the N900, i love linux, i hope the handset/os is "free"... and 399€ doesn't seem to be too expensive.
Also it looks well designed.
I think 400 euro is a lot for a device with these specs though. They are letting a huge number of devices "fly under them"(be cheaper) and the average consumer doesn't give a damn if the phone runs Sailfish OS or Android.
It really bothers me that they didn't do something about the flickering infrared light in the video. I know it's not going to show up in real life, but that's going to confuse some people who aren't aware of the fact cameras can see some things we don't.
What is interesting is that anyone that comes here, likes it (I do from what I see) and goes to check on the Mer Project where this work stems from will see their git repos have been largely untouched for two years. [0] I find that strange because I had to search a few pages into their wiki to even find that URL.
I wish people who liked Meego would support the latest update to the truly free OpenMoko project. [1] You can build your own upgrade or buy the whole thing in an old GA02 case (the second revision OpenMoko phone).
I am waiting out for pocket change to buy one of those. Buy a real open handset and fight the power guys!
> To get back to Home from any app, swipe from either side of the screen.
I don't think it's a great idea to reserve the "swipe from side of screen" gesture for the OS. Especially the left-swipe is used in many apps to reveal a menu, which is a UI-pattern I like a lot.
Anyway, looks interesting, would love to try one out!
Can anyone comment on how free this device will be? From what I recall, Sailfish is partially free software, but contains proprietary software as well which is a real shame.
Our goal with the Sailfish OS is to develop an open source operating system in co-operation with the community, thus ensuring the development of a best-of-breed operating system.
So it looks like the software will be open source. I just hope that the device will not be locked down..
I value my smartphone a lot, but I find it hard to get excited about this smart phone vs that smartphone. Android, Samsung android fork, iPhone, WinPhone, whatever. They're all good, they all roll out a faster better version every year. They all have twitter, facebook, email, maps, search, a camera, app store. etc. Oh yeah, and SMS and voice calls too.
So why should we get excited about this flavour of hand-held connected computer? What's the USP?
The Peek and Pull features exists on the iPhone - but the directions are reversed.
Changing the directions means that app developers cannot develop the same app for both iOS and Sailfish since they have to place important information that shouldn't be covered up by notifications, or shouldn't be interacted with in a way that could activate the notifications menu, on the bottom in iOS and on the top on Sailfish.
Is there any benefit to changing the directions notifications come from?
As a (still happy) n900 user looking for an upgrade path to a decent open phone with modern hardware, I'm hoping that Sailfish gives you command line/root access.
Realistically that probably won't happen in this first iteration, but I've held out for long enough now to be able to wait another 6 months to see what happens. A hardware keyboard would also be nice, the bigger the better, but you can't have it all...
I have no idea what the web design of the type Jolla has, but it's getting old really fast. Yes, it looks neat at first, but then it's confusing. Crashplan recently did their update with the same style.
I'll shut up now if I'm the only one bothered by this trend.
I think it's mostly just weird because the fixed header doesn't have a border or anything along the bottom to let you know where it ends and the content begins. I see no reason for it to be fixed at all to be honest, the content isn't extremely useful. I also wish more sites would do min-height media queries before fixing elements to my screen. The header and footer here are pretty greedy with the spacing on this site.
Am I supposed to be impressed by this? "truly open and gesture based OS". I thought the open card has been played and dead already. And don't iOS and Android both have plenty of gestures? I didn't see anything new at all.
My first language is Brazilian Portuguese, but I tend to read it in Spanish because of the double "L". But that in turn would make it sound like the Portuguese version of "cork", like a bottle cork.
[+] [-] jasonkester|12 years ago|reply
It sorta looks like a phone. Is it a phone? "Jolla is powered by Sailfish OS." Sweet. How is that relevant? It must be important because it spends the rest of the page telling you about the OS.
I'm back here, with honestly no idea what it is. Probably not the impression they want to leave on people, assuming (as a guess) that this is a consumer product of some kind.
It seems they put the engineers in charge of designing the website.
[+] [-] Brakenshire|12 years ago|reply
Edit: Some more technical details about the OS: https://sailfishos.org/about-technology.html
[+] [-] mortenjorck|12 years ago|reply
Nokia made a clearer case for the OS. Jolla's video shows a bunch of rapid-fire tasks that are too hard to follow, and doesn't really showcase the simplicity of the swipe system like Nokia did. There's not enough that's surfaced here to show why you'd choose Jolla over Apple or Google.
[+] [-] emilsedgh|12 years ago|reply
Best wishes to Jolla. We truly deserve to have free-as-in-free-speech phones.
[+] [-] jggonz|12 years ago|reply
So it is a phone since they call it a phone. :)
[+] [-] pekk|12 years ago|reply
You don't seem to understand anything about the context or audience for this phone at the present time.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] par|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MehdiEG|12 years ago|reply
I always wondered why Jolla is getting so little love from HN. To me and from a geek / hacker point of view, Jolla is an awful lot more interesting than Android.
Anyone who's had the chance to own a Meego device knows how incredibly talented and passionate the team behind Jolla is. I'm really looking forward to see how the OS and apps feel on Jolla. The OS also appears to be a lot more open and hackable than Android (although the proof will be in the pudding so we'll see how it all pans out).
[+] [-] lambda|12 years ago|reply
This whole family has been promising lots of things for a long time, but never seems to actually deliver, while you can get an Android phone in any corner store.
I might get interested once I can actually buy a device and write an application for it. Until then, I'm going to be extremely skeptical of this whole family of devices since they seem to consistently over-promise and under-deliver.
[+] [-] davidw|12 years ago|reply
As a hacker, I want to work on stuff that has a snowball's chance in hell of getting some traction, and in a market with very strong network effects, demonstrating this is up to newcomers. There have been other operating systems for mobile phones that looked cool, but suffered from lack of traction as well.
[+] [-] shmerl|12 years ago|reply
Indeed, this is somewhat surprising. And so many people here had no clue what Jolla and Sailfish are.
[+] [-] networked|12 years ago|reply
The recent article on OS/2 [1] makes me wonder whether such compatibility (which, as I understand, is full and not selective) is actually good for them. Either way, tough, I wish Jolla success; I'd like to see Sailfish OS [2] on an actual device.
[1] See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6792010. The short of it is that the Ars Technica article claims OS/2's compatibility with Windows made developers less inclined to write native applications for OS/2. Some discussion on whether that was the case can be found in the comments to this response to the article: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=2144.
[2] https://sailfishos.org/
[+] [-] untog|12 years ago|reply
The smartphone industry is way beyond that - people are making iOS and Android apps, and very little else.
[+] [-] dserban|12 years ago|reply
os/2 vs. windows was about two players attempting to prevent each other from monopolizing the industry.
I don't think the Jolla guys go into this with a business plan of one day being a monopoly, or preventing another player from dominating the mobile industry.
Jolla is - I think - about offering consumers what nokia under elop was unwilling to give them: a MeeGo device.
[+] [-] denis1|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbokun|12 years ago|reply
Sailfish OS could then allow them to differentiate from other handset makers, without advertising it as such. In other words, market the capabilities, not the Sailfish "brand".
[+] [-] dade_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salient|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
I would bet it will make Jolla a winner. Android apps will always be new and fresh, even after Microsoft stops throwing money at developers. Jolla will always have a fall-back in case some new popular app takes off.
[+] [-] znowi|12 years ago|reply
I'm also waiting for Firefox OS to mature and produce more devices.
I can't wait to drop Android. Each release takes more freedom away from the user and gets increasingly integrated with whatever social, cloud, data milking services they have at their disposal.
Funny how freedom becomes a competitive advantage for startups against the big and evil Internet giants.
[+] [-] sbierwagen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|12 years ago|reply
* https://sailfishos.org
* http://merproject.org
* https://wiki.merproject.org
* http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2013/04/wayland-utilizing-an...
* http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2013/05/wayland-utilizing-an...
Jolla.com is more consumer oriented, so that can puzzle some who look for technical details. It's probably good to provide some links to the above from the Jolla.com. You can give them feedback, they are even present on Diaspora*: https://joindiaspora.com/u/jolla
[+] [-] atwebb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudomal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buster|12 years ago|reply
Good luck, Jolla Team!
[+] [-] purringmeow|12 years ago|reply
Nevertheless, I too wish them luck :)
[+] [-] Fauntleroy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] easytiger|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kfinley|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 616c|12 years ago|reply
I wish people who liked Meego would support the latest update to the truly free OpenMoko project. [1] You can build your own upgrade or buy the whole thing in an old GA02 case (the second revision OpenMoko phone).
I am waiting out for pocket change to buy one of those. Buy a real open handset and fight the power guys!
[0] http://gitweb.merproject.org/gitweb
[1] http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/
[+] [-] CookWithMe|12 years ago|reply
I don't think it's a great idea to reserve the "swipe from side of screen" gesture for the OS. Especially the left-swipe is used in many apps to reveal a menu, which is a UI-pattern I like a lot.
Anyway, looks interesting, would love to try one out!
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|12 years ago|reply
In iOS 7 a gesture from the left side towards the right navigates back in an app.
[+] [-] davexunit|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buster|12 years ago|reply
Our goal with the Sailfish OS is to develop an open source operating system in co-operation with the community, thus ensuring the development of a best-of-breed operating system.
So it looks like the software will be open source. I just hope that the device will not be locked down..
[+] [-] pekk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SideburnsOfDoom|12 years ago|reply
So why should we get excited about this flavour of hand-held connected computer? What's the USP?
[+] [-] daliusd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gesman|12 years ago|reply
Forcing me to watch video is a sure way to Ctrl+F4
[+] [-] xer0x|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattholtom|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pliny|12 years ago|reply
Changing the directions means that app developers cannot develop the same app for both iOS and Sailfish since they have to place important information that shouldn't be covered up by notifications, or shouldn't be interacted with in a way that could activate the notifications menu, on the bottom in iOS and on the top on Sailfish.
Is there any benefit to changing the directions notifications come from?
[+] [-] luxpir|12 years ago|reply
Realistically that probably won't happen in this first iteration, but I've held out for long enough now to be able to wait another 6 months to see what happens. A hardware keyboard would also be nice, the bigger the better, but you can't have it all...
[+] [-] Jhsto|12 years ago|reply
Seems like the phone already has the command line implemented. Great for them.
[+] [-] Brakenshire|12 years ago|reply
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91535
[+] [-] rjohnk|12 years ago|reply
I'll shut up now if I'm the only one bothered by this trend.
[+] [-] criswell|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neakor|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodolphoarruda|12 years ago|reply
My first language is Brazilian Portuguese, but I tend to read it in Spanish because of the double "L". But that in turn would make it sound like the Portuguese version of "cork", like a bottle cork.