Jolla

by Geee • 13 years ago

734 250 13 years ago

atwebb• 13 years ago

Perhaps I'm not in the know (I'm not) but it took me way too long to figure out it was a phone and not some UI overlay/Android enhancement suite.

sudomal• 13 years ago

It's like a lot of things that appear on HN... strange and unfamiliar words without context. Yep, a smartphone.

missing_cipher• 13 years ago

It's the title's fault, OP made no effort to explain what he was linking. Pretty annoying actually.

amalag• 13 years ago

So this is an Android fork with UI improvements?

lewispollard• 13 years ago

Looks like it isn't a direct Android fork but does use the Android app runtime.

robin_reala• 13 years ago

No, this is the current state of Nokia’s Meego OS.

conexions• 13 years ago

Jolla is based on what was left of Nokia's Maemo/Meego.

LrQSs8Dq• 13 years ago

It's a phone from a small finnish company with a new (as in not MS, Google or Apple) operating system, that happens to have an Android compatibility layer, so you can run native Sailfish apps and Android apps.

If you happen to have heard of the N900, it's the team who made that one. They founded their own company after Nokia sold its soul to MS.

blahbl4hblahtoo4• 13 years ago

Nokia had a soul? It was a corporation.

blahbl4hblahtoo4• 13 years ago

You know, I wasn't trying to be a troll. Nokia is a large business that makes money just like other businesses. I think its strange to generalize them the same way that we do people...

gmuslera• 13 years ago

Is as much android as BB10, in fact have a lot in common with Blackberry 10 like the user interface or being based on QT/QML for native apps.

If you want, is a maemo/meego fork, with a compatibility layer to run Android apps, and won't be surprised if it runs also Firefox OS, Tizen and Ubuntu Touch apps in some moment.

Zigurd5• 13 years ago

No, it is a Mer-derived Linux with Qt as the UI toolkit. The OS is called Sailfish.

The Android app capability comes from an Android runtime. I have not tried it myself but the compatibility layer could come from Myriad's "Turbo Dalvik," which is something I heard rumored some time ago, or Jolla might have done it themselves.

fracchio• 13 years ago

My opinion is: "wat"

easytiger• 13 years ago

Hint: most global mega corps block youtube. Host videos locally for product demos if you can pay for the bandwidth. You will reach a bigger audience.

kfinley• 13 years ago

Is Vimeo a good alternative, or is it also blocked?

hsuresh• 13 years ago

Vimeo is terribly slow, at least from here in India.

speeder2• 13 years ago

I was wondering why a condom site was on HN, then I entered and saw it was the mobile phone one...

Too bad for them their name (at least in Brazil) still sounds like a condom name though. (the most popular condom in Brazil is named "Olla")

More on topic edit:

The original Finnish design, with no front-facing buttons, stands out from the pack.

Only me find this... ironic? I mean, almost all smarphones now come without front-facing buttons (a design I hate by the way, specially when your hands are wet or oiled for whatever reason, or when you sneeze in the screen and it go ballistic).

Sharlin• 13 years ago

Um, iPhones, Androids and Windows Phones all have at least one front-facing button, either physical or virtual.

1rae2• 13 years ago

Blackberry has no front-facing buttons and also uses only a gestures-based interface.

speeder2• 13 years ago

I was referring to physical buttons.

Like I said, if your hands are wet, or you sneeze on the screen, or it is raining, or whatever, virtual buttons fail.

dotBen2• 13 years ago

Similarly, "jolla" is the pronunciation for the Korean word for "erect penis".

networked• 13 years ago

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.

[2] https://sailfishos.org/

denis1• 13 years ago

I think their main focus right now is getting the devices in peoples hands. Do you think compatibility with android would help with this?

untog3• 13 years ago

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.

dserban• 13 years ago

It's different.

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.

salient2• 13 years ago

Canonical refused to offer Android emulation for that reason. They didn't think it would be beneficial for Ubuntu Touch in the long term.

daliusd7• 13 years ago

IMHO that's right decision. BlackBerry offered Android and it is low value.

Zigurd5• 13 years ago

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.

Angostura3• 13 years ago

The problem is you wend up with Jolla simply running a whole load of non-native apps that fail to use the OS to the best of its ability, it can really ruin the perception of an OS if all these swipe gestures etc work in some apps, but not others.

jimbokun• 13 years ago

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".

x3c• 13 years ago

Would Sailfish also run apps that use google play services?

dade_• 13 years ago

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.

shimon_e• 13 years ago

it will be interesting to see how this competes against the Chinese competitors in this arena. Just yesterday Gionee announced the E7 for about the same price. A phone that includes a camera sensor from a point and shoot.

http://www.gsmarena.com/16mp_gionee_elife_e7_claims_to_be_th...

bananacurve• 13 years ago

While trying to open the video to full size, some was cut off, I found Google's 'Stats for Nerds' on right click. Not expecting that, but gave me a chuckle. As for the phone I don't think it is wise to do promotions with no word on availability.

pliny• 13 years ago

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?

untog3• 13 years ago

The benefit may be not being sued for patent infringement. Sadly.

brodney• 13 years ago

Developing the same app for both platforms is a Bad Thing. I want Android apps on Android, iPhone apps on iPhone. Mixing never works out well in the long term.

untog3• 13 years ago

Sure, but realistically not every organisation has the capacity to develop entirely different apps for every platform. And especially not for minority platforms like Jolla.

MehdiEG2• 13 years ago

For those who are wondering why this is up on the front page: Jolla is launching their first handset tonight in Helsinki: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/jolla-sailfish-os-phone-...

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).

lambda4• 13 years ago

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.

jggonz3• 13 years ago

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

I think having other "Android"-compatible phones out there is very interesting. The more options there are for the consumer, the better off we are. Take a look at the iPhone vs Android scene. If it weren't for other options being available, we'd still be living with 3.5" LCDs and a completely closed-source operating system.

Btw, you could call any product vaporware at some point. (take a look at kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites. most of those products are in some form vaporware, yet lots of people now know the Pebble, Oculus Rift... etc...)

Shamanmuni• 13 years ago

Odd, I have a Nokia N9 with Meego in front of me, works perfectly and was cheaper than a similar Android phone. I'm completely aware of this family problems, but you can't say that it hasn't delivered.

The Jolla devs have promised a guide for installing Sailfish OS in this phone, so I will happily make the switch when they publish it.

We are in Hacker News, today you can't find a more hacker-friendly OS for your phone (well, maybe Firefox OS is on par, I haven't used it). I think that's what the parent was talking about.

MehdiEG2• 13 years ago

As far as I can see from a completely outsider perspective, the Maemo / Meego / Jolla team have always been severely under-resourced, have always been the underdog and have always deeply suffered from the political turmoil happening above their head while they were at Nokia.

One thing they have never been however is vaporware. They have always delivered. And what they've delivered, particularly with Meego, was superb. Meego was especially impressive given that in the last few months before its release, they had for all intent and purpose already been fired from Nokia. That they managed to pull together, keep working on it and release something of that caliber when they knew that Meego had no future at Nokia is pretty incredible.

It's obvious that Jolla is extremely unlikely to ever go mainstream. But that's not the point. They're clearly a team of talented, passionate and persistent hackers that can create products that manage to be delightful to use, open source and very hackable. That's why I find the lack of interest from the HN community, which is usually all over these type of projects, to be surprising.

pekk8• 13 years ago

That depends on what people invest in delivering.

The best idea in the world could be sunk by a decision to switch to Windows Phone, and you would judge it as "under-delivery"

shmerl16• 13 years ago

It's not a vaporware (unlike Canonical's Edge). It's an actual product in production which is already being sold! Check your facts.

HunOL• 13 years ago

I think that ubuntu touch, ubuntu edge and etc get more attention than jolla for no reasons.

davidw3• 13 years ago

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.

shooper6• 13 years ago

From the infamous burning platform memo, the rationale for leaving Meego for Windows Phone:

"The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyze or join an ecosystem."

Jolla's move to support Android apps is to try to mitigate the above effect, but it may lead to the Windows vs. OS/2 scenario where OS/2 ran Windows programs too well, so companies never bothered making native OS/2 apps, after all, why waste precious resources on supporting yet another incompatible platform?

On the other side, as I said in another comment, you have huge companies selling smartphones at or below cost using their profits from other lines of business(Nexus 5, Moto G, Lumia 520(a surprisingly good smartphone for $59 off contract?!!)). They're doing this to either gain marketshare for the ecosystem effects(Microsoft) or as a moat, to sell ads, or to commoditize and reduce Apple's smartphone margins(Google)[1].

Jolla has to compete with these and ultracheap Chinese and India OEMs at the low end and the iPhones, high end Galaxies, Lumias with 41MP cameras and 6" screens, HTC, LG phablets at the high end.

I wish them luck, they need it.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/25/search-googles-castle-moat/

shmerl16• 13 years ago

As a hacker I want to work on things which are interesting to me and are in line with my values ;)

shmerl16• 13 years ago

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.

mattholtom• 13 years ago

Does no-one answer phone calls from their Mom anymore? Just me?

jzzskijj• 13 years ago

I was very saddened because of this and called my mom immediately with my Android.

Jolla - For people who don't answer to their mothers.

That's a strategy. Not necessarily the best, but strategy at least. I was a little bit lost because they were boasting so much about "Yoyo get Sailfish and you can run Android apps". Like in Blackberry phones before they realized they have to "reclaim their success".

ye2• 13 years ago

So I watched the video, and I still have no idea what Jolla is.

I was not impressed by anything in the video, but that's besides the point.

If you're a technology company, this hipster crap is ok, but you need to start with explaining what it is and how it's better. Showing a bunch of gestures does nothing - Android can do that.

thomholwerda• 13 years ago

You have to click one link on the front page to a short summary of what Jolla is.

One link.

One.

Of, you can just scroll down.

That's it.

username42• 13 years ago

is it open source ? Is it unblocked by default (root account) ?

Semaphor2• 13 years ago

"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 assume you are talking about this? Because that really told me nothing worthwhile.

I wish these (horribly to use scrolling) sites would just give me link that takes me to a half page description that explains in some detail what the heck they are talking about.

krzyk• 13 years ago

No it doesn't.

Saying that Jolla is powers by Sailfish OS sais nothing, even if it's a mobile operating system. It could be anything from a book reader to a TV.

ye2• 13 years ago

Have you tried doing that yourself?

It still doesn't tell me what Jolla is - is it a phone, a phone extension, a new OS, etc?

shmerl16• 13 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6810555

gesman• 13 years ago

Suggestion: add a text "elevator pitch" on a front page.

Forcing me to watch video is a sure way to Ctrl+F4

xer0x• 13 years ago

Yeah, I didn't realize there was more than the video until I read these comments.

davexunit2• 13 years ago

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.

pekk8• 13 years ago

What is your alternative?

zokier• 13 years ago

Nemo, replicant, webos? All fully free OSs afaik.

daliusd7• 13 years ago

Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch

davexunit2• 13 years ago

Replicant is the only project committed to software freedom that I know of.

buster4• 13 years ago

https://sailfishos.org/about-license.html

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..

shmerl16• 13 years ago

So far there is no detailed information about which packages are free and which aren't. But it should appear fairly soon. I hope community will enumerate non free components.

shmerl16• 13 years ago

UPDATE: See this: http://piratepad.net/JollaSoftwareState

jdalgetty• 13 years ago

Looks cool but I wish it had beefier hardware specs.

koide• 13 years ago

What are you missing concretely and why?

zanny• 13 years ago

Just compare it to the Nexus 5 at the same price point. Half the memory, probably lower res screen, the sd card slot is great but I don't think it justifies a $100+ price premium.

I'd rather see Nexus 5's flashed with Ubuntu Phone / Plasma Active / Tizen / Sailfish than all these companies trying to batch order hardware of their own that never has the economies of scale Google could pull off.

Zigurd5• 13 years ago

It will be interesting to see if customers see Jolla as a continuation of Nokia's handset business. Lots of people liked N9 and Meego, and when that product was killed it was out-selling Nokia's Windows Phone products.

jasonkester2• 13 years ago

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.

jggonz3• 13 years ago

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.

So it is a phone since they call it a phone. :)

millerc• 13 years ago

Beyond that simple statement, I'd agree with Jason. My first impression upon reading their webpage was "why?" Scrolling through I didn't find an answer. No differentiator in apps, function, power, memory or price.

I've often been wrong when I wondered that about a product, for this once I genuinely would like to know if there's an answer to the question. Why a new phone called Jolla?

jasonkester2• 13 years ago

Imagine the difference had they said "Jolla is a smart phone powered by Sailfish OS, a truly open and distinct mobile operating system. Navigate effortlessly with the gesture-based user interface and load it with top Android™ apps." rather than bury the most important point on the whole website as a single word at the end of a long paragraph full of technical jargon.

That would qualify as calling it a phone. Better still would be "Jolla is a smart phone", dispensing with 28 unnecessary words.

Hopefully somebody at their end has the homepage up in an editor and can make the fix.

001sky• 13 years ago

Right now there are 50+ comments that all seem to be some variation of 'WTF'. Whose hardware is up & running sailfish? Or is this more vapourware? The page looks pre-launch still...

We'll notify you when Jolla is available to order... [?]

pseudometa• 13 years ago

I'm confused too. I don't understand if they are a manufacturer selling the phone directly to customers, or if they are an OEM selling to carriers. It looks like it is different than android, but it runs android apps? Is this another skin for android that is tied to the physical device?

Angostura3• 13 years ago

Not all, it is perfectly possible to read this as saying that a phone running Jolla is capable of running Android apps.

It's entirely possible to interpret the blurb as saying that Jolla is some kind of framework running on an OS called Sailfish, which adds Android compatibility and a gesture-based UI.

mortenjorck• 13 years ago

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.

pekk8• 13 years ago

We all know how well N9 did in unseating Apple...

pekk8• 13 years ago

You might as well complain that they are launching in Finland.

You don't seem to understand anything about the context or audience for this phone at the present time.

eric_cc• 13 years ago

You don't seem to understand anything about the context or audience for this phone at the present time.

Neither do I. Since the website didn't, do you care to explain?

Brakenshire6• 13 years ago

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.

Edit: Some more technical details about the OS: https://sailfishos.org/about-technology.html

msvan• 13 years ago

How refreshing it is with a tech product that doesn't launch in the US first! I'm quite happy that there are more non-US non-China competitors popping up in the mobile market.

silverbax88• 13 years ago

Thanks for this, I too am curious as to why this isn't in the sale copy on the page. I actually thought it was a dev framework of some kind.

geuis• 13 years ago

Please forward this paragraph to their web folks. Just put it right at the top as a first-read. Then everything else makes a lot more sense.

salient2• 13 years ago

Didn't N900 run Maemo? Also, I'm not even sure N9 ran Meego. If it did, then it was Meego + Nokia's own UI.

panzi• 13 years ago

Did they make the switch to Qt 5 before the release or will the first version ship with Qt 4?

hvass• 13 years ago

Thank you so much, I couldn't figure out what they were offering exactly. ;-)

shmerl16• 13 years ago

For more references, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6810555

skue• 13 years ago

You mentioned it won't have access to Google Play or Play Services APIs. That will be a serious challenge, and they are bound to end up with a lot of frustrated customers.

I don't see how they can advertise that it runs "top Android apps" & "latest Android apps" without supporting the Play Services APIs.

sbierwagen2• 13 years ago

  or the Play Services APIs

Huh. So I can't use any of the Google apps, like gmail?

muyuu• 13 years ago

Wow.

Suddenly I'm interested.

shmerl16• 13 years ago

It's important because it's a unique OS. Hardware while innovative, isn't radically different from the rest (except for the other half idea).

emilsedgh• 13 years ago

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.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

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.

par• 13 years ago

do you really need it spelled out that it's a phone??

CookWithMe• 13 years ago

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!

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

> "I don't think it's a great idea to reserve the "swipe from side of screen" gesture for the OS."

In iOS 7 a gesture from the left side towards the right navigates back in an app.

buster4• 13 years ago

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.

Good luck, Jolla Team!

purringmeow• 13 years ago

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.

Nevertheless, I too wish them luck :)

616c• 13 years ago

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!

[0] http://gitweb.merproject.org/gitweb

[1] http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/

luxpir2• 13 years ago

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...

Brakenshire6• 13 years ago

As I recall, there is some talk about using the 'other half' feature of this to attach a hardware keyboard. A quick search reveals:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91535

luxpir2• 13 years ago

Ah, I'd misunderstood the 'other half' in that case, thinking it just to be a fancy name for the rear case with a 'colour feature'. There may be hope yet, although nobody seems to know if that command line/root access is possible.

It's entirely possible that the Maemo/Google search queries I've run may be letting me down, it'd be great if the Jolla documentation made some mention of this.

Jhsto• 13 years ago

Jukka Eklund tweeted the following: https://twitter.com/jukkaeklund/status/405766972765642752

Seems like the phone already has the command line implemented. Great for them.

iamtheike• 13 years ago

If you know some finish guy, you will definitely understand that this mobile is going to rock.

itsbits• 13 years ago

When does this mobile technology gonna saturate?

rodolphoarruda• 13 years ago

I wonder how the name is pronounced.

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.

sharpneli3• 13 years ago

"Yol-la" probably confers the intended spelling in English. The word Jolla is Finnish and means a small boat. It's a reference to the famous burning platform memo.

P.S. I was one of the 450 guys who got their phone today. Got it literally 20 minutes ago.

LiamMcCalloway• 13 years ago

Can you confirm it's got LTE _everywhere_? (6 continents)

wildwood• 13 years ago

I suspect that people in southern California would share your confusion about the pronunciation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jolla

paul_f• 13 years ago

I immediately assumed Hoy-ya. As in the San Diego town La Jolla.

chrisarriola• 13 years ago

Do we seriously need another mobile operating system?

SideburnsOfDoom3• 13 years ago

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?

daliusd7• 13 years ago

Linux ? (not just Linux kernel)

SideburnsOfDoom3• 13 years ago

Linux is a good thing, but Linux as a thing in itself delivers a lot of geek cred and is a good platform for other software, but it is not a feature that gives phone users any value. Will the average buyer know or care?

Is it more stable? Cheaper? Android phones are stable and cheap already. Does it run new kinds of apps or run existing apps faster? Make coffee and wash dishes? What does it do for me that my current phone does not?

LeicaLatte• 13 years ago

Liked what i saw. Easily better than any iphone ad of recent times.

dschiptsov• 13 years ago

Weaker than S III hardware to run Android apps for 400 euro? Did I miss something?)

pekk8• 13 years ago

You missed that it is not designed as a lower-cost Android phone?

uxwtf• 13 years ago

A phone for messy people? Why put so much junk in the video to defocus viewer's attention?

shooper6• 13 years ago

Kinda off topic, but as soon as I opened that page in a new background tab, it froze my browser and PC for about a minute with an hourglass before it would respond to my inputs. I thought it crashed the system, but everything is okay now. I did close the tab after giving it a cursory look because it looked too noisy and light on content. Perhaps someone can analyze how much RAM, CPU and bandwidth that page takes up. And I am rocking a quadcore computer with 8 gigs of RAM.

Sigh, the more the hardware giveth, the more the new fangled web pages taketh away.

sampo3• 13 years ago

I have an old laptop with Core 2 Duo and 2 gigs of RAM. Had no problem with the website.

snth• 13 years ago

I really wish we could edit submission titles to be more informative.

ender7• 13 years ago

The UI is pretty, but it's dropping frames like crazy during your demo video. It's super smooth most of the time, but not at the critical times. Horseshoes and hand grenades, etc.

neakor• 13 years ago

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.

7952• 13 years ago

Of course they are not selling open software but a hardware product (which may or may not be locked down).

trekky1700• 13 years ago

Anyone else really distracted by the extremely messy desks. Who honestly leaves a wet, browning apple core just sitting on their desk. That's just going to be a sticky bloody mess later.

brianmcdonough• 13 years ago

That's hilarious. Not to knock the phone, which may or may not be quite good, but I was also more interested in the things on the desk than the phone. Who's the person who said, let's put the apple in there? I'd like to know more about that decision as well.

skc• 13 years ago

Subliminal message perhaps?

Would be chuckle worthy if it was deliberate.

lttlrck• 13 years ago

I thought the desks were a brilliant touch...

pm90• 13 years ago

User-replaceable battery

OH. GOD. YES!

Fauntleroy• 13 years ago

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.

rjohnk• 13 years ago

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.

criswell• 13 years ago

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.

jrockway• 13 years ago

GSM/3G/4G LTE* (Works on 6 continents).

What, no service in Antarctica?

jokoon• 13 years ago

$400 ? nope.

LandoCalrissian• 13 years ago

OK, all the garbage in the video is really, really strange. It completely distracted me and kind of grossed me out. I don't know who thought that was a good idea.

Cyclenerd• 13 years ago

Why should I buy this device now? 400EUR a lot of money and on Twitter they write: Calendar sync is not supported at the moment. MMS is not supported at the moment. We do not have DLNA support at the moment.

johnsea• 13 years ago

You cannot buy it now, thus... If - I'm speculating - we 'normal' people can buy the device in spring it will have more features.

(I'm interested as it's linux based, and a good alternative to the closed apple world and the dominant 'Android-one-Google-data-collecting' universe.)

shmerl16• 13 years ago

I'll be getting it as soon as they'll confirm compatibility with T-Mobile LTE.

shmerl16• 13 years ago

FYI: those who wonder about the technology, check out these sites:

* 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

abjorn• 13 years ago

All I learned from the video is that this is a phone for people with very messy desks.

znowi• 13 years ago

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.

sbierwagen2• 13 years ago

  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."

king-coconut• 13 years ago

I think he ment that if you want to use the phone, you are not forced to use a ecosystem monitored by USA.

scrozier• 13 years ago

"A new beginning." And a web site and video that look exactly like every iOS and Android device ever made. For HN readers, there's some geek cred here, but as a consumer product, they need some marketing help.

SeppoErviala• 13 years ago

This is the new beginning after the burning platform company has finally been sold to Microsoft. Alternatively the new beginning for maemo/moblin/meego/whatever.

okso• 13 years ago

Finally a great Mobile OS for Python ?

namuol• 13 years ago

I like how the video gives us the heads-up about how easy it is to accidentally hang up on your mother.

xmus• 13 years ago

i don't know about you but it TRIES to look like ios7, i say LET IT GO - smart-phone business is OWNED by Apple, the sooner we accept that the sooner we can move on to a TRULY different thing - this includes Android too, just DIE you're NOT "original" - instead of coming up with NEW ideas you try to rip-off one another and it's getting annoying [most of the time the company that started the idea WINS]

in summary: - it's a phone [i think] - looks elegant - looks simple to use - it's smart [i think --- am thinking a lot aren't i :)] - android apps [hope it's better in security than Android] - gesture based [OMG, didn't see that one coming]

sound familiar - well it should - iPhone which STARTED all of THIS!

NOTE: am not even an iPhone user, Blackberry [Loyal to the end :)]

CONCLUSION: BORING!

PLEASE if there's something NEW about the OS and the HARDWARE tell me!

javindo• 13 years ago

That looks cool and all but please get Swype on board. I find it an indispensable part of mobile use nowadays and any US without it is seriously missing out.

grigio• 13 years ago

mhm..

- FirefoxOS is just web

- Ubuntu Phone is cool and gestures

- Windows Phone is pushed by Microsoft's money

- Jolla / Sailfish is ..

Sorry I don't see a killer feature :(

espadrine• 13 years ago

Why couldn't Ubuntu do that?

Is it because device manufacturers won't put trust in anything but the Android brand?

Jolla

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