No, Nemomobile is 100% open source. The Hardware Adaptations are running full SFOS: the only part not into it is Appsupport
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I wish NemoMobile would move forward, but it feels like it has been stuck in the same beta state for far too long. I’ve lost hope that it will ever come close to reaching the level of Silica—especially considering it only supports two devices.
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For me the biggest problem is that SFOS has low visibility. Few people in the US know about it because of the lack of devices sold there. Having US visibility is important to gain a critical mass of developers. For example, random threads in Hacker News whine about the lack of a Maemo/MeeGo successor, without knowing SFOS exists and is (almost) perfectly usable as a daily driver.
IMHO, the second biggest problem, is that there is too much implicit knowledge on how to daily-drive SFOS. What works? What doesn’t? It’s not very clear. It takes quite a lot of time to figure out the right device you should buy, the browser you should install, etc. Same applies to key components such as offline maps and videochat.
On-boarding people should be much simpler. There’s too much friction. The basics should be worked out really well. I want to know what phone to buy and I want the basics (browsing, chat, videocalls and offline maps) to work without any hassle.
Right now, there is an interesting window of opportunity for SFOS given that Android seems to be getting locked down on several fronts. This also threatens excellent AOSP-based ROMs like GrapheneOS.
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One more thing i forgot to mention that i also believe need to be looked at.
The UI (design and looks) has started to feel dated. While secondary compared to function, beauty attracts people and its kind of easier to fix than ie waiting for banks to port their apps.
And also there are a lot of inconsistencies in the OS (maybe we can classify them as papercuts) that will need to be fixed along the polishing of the looks of the OS.
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I politely but wholeheartedly disagree. The look and feel of SFOS is in view fully superior to all other mobile OS I have used, means any Android flavour, Blackberry OS10 or iOS (which I consider to be the worst, by far.
It is one of the things that drag me back to the OS anytime I was wandering elsewhere.
The UX is by far the most beautiful in my view. SFOS on a big screen phone is always a pleasure to look at.
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Just to be clear.
Its not the feel that will change to what i am suggesting. Some examples. App icons look like they were designed in 2005 and would be nice to get some polish.
Font size in many cases (on the same page) is all over the place (like 3 different sizes on it) and makes it look bad.
And there are minor behavior changes here and there that make it inconsistent.
All in all the whole experience doesn’t change. In many cases it needs to be more visually pleasing or more consistent.
tl;dr I think an important thing to have is some simple landing page that gives a glimpse about the SFOS ecosystem to prospective new users.
Something like Prism Break, that includes a few new or NOS devices that work (including caveats) and app choices for the most important use cases (browsing, calls, chat, and maps).
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I like how the site Prism Break organizes the apps, and I think it’s a great idea. However, I believe the main reason Sailfish—and other Linux distributions—struggle to reach mainstream adoption is hardware. It’s nearly impossible to find a mobile phone that comes with an alternative OS preinstalled, and installing one yourself requires technical skills. The process feels more like a hack, involving steps such as unlocking the bootloader, using Android tools, and so on.
Nothing will really change until we have competitive, modern, Linux-friendly hardware. No matter how good the ideas are, they can’t overcome that fundamental barrier.
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True, but now one can order a C2 straight from Jolla. And some AOSP ROMs have relatively good adoption despite they face similar barriers. Nevertheless, your point is very fair, and that’s why I suggested to also document all hardware available.
As a newbie interested in SFOS, I should be able to go to some site and quickly see what hardware options I have, including stuff that comes with SFOS pre-installed, like the C2, official ports and community ports, including installation instructions and known glitches.
The same should apply to the most important applications in the ecosystem. Right now, it takes a fair amount of research to e.g. figure out what native applications support calling. I know there’s HW Adaptation | Sailfish OS, but it seems out of date. Likewise, the apps section is also a bit incomplete.
See for instance how the Linux-Surface kernel community documents hardware support and glitches. It’s easy for a newcomer to see what works Supported Devices | Linux Surface.
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That site prism break could add sailfish as a platform, maybe someone should let him know sailfish exist. Regarding hardware I guess you are aware of this for community ports: Adaptations/libhybris - Mer Wiki .
This site is not specific for sailfish, but for any linux phone and has an interesting list of apps and games: Apps | LinuxPhoneApps.org
Yes definitely a lot can be done, maybe a list with links to all those sites could be useful even for current sailfish users.
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Yes, I am aware of that site, but AFAIK it’s incomplete?
Absolutely!
For me also the current SFOS icons are perfect, I prefer SFOS icons anytime over iOS or standard Android icons. Probably a question of personal preferences…
With my previous employer I had to use an iOS device. I found operating that OS much more inconsistent than SFOS, even worse than Blackberry Os10. I know many love Apple and praise iOS, for me it was the worst mobile phones OS I ever used., never found a logic, the simplicity of SFOS is unmatched for my taste. And the iOS icons are uninspiring and ugly to me
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One inconsistency I stumble stumble upon is how to change hostname: How to change phone name? - #7 by abranson
this is a rather unconventional way to change hostname I have not seen elsewhere
Edit to go back to the core topic :
I see many positive reactions in my mates when they see SFOS: there appears to be a general interest in alternatives to tge Duopoly, but what keeps them away is
a) technical complexity to maintain the system, not being afraid to reflash and having a proper backup strategy in place for this
b) the felt need to have application XYZ on a smartphone for which there is no native app or platform support.
a) is for me not of concern, I cannot code but maintain my private Linux BSD machines since more than 20 years with the paradigm that machines do what I tell them to do, not the other way around
b) is for me not of concern, I killed platform dependency out of my life as far as possible
But, how many percent of the general population is with a compatible mindset not to be shocked by the fact that you need some level of competence in a) and b)?
Maybe this limits the market share SFOS can currently gain…
What always glues me back to SFOS is the attractive and simple UX which I cannot find elsewhere…
Simplicity of Linux combined with this beautiful Silica UX is top notch for me…
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Absolutley agree. iOS has so many steps for most functions now its really time consuming to use and many are changed at updates without clear notice, so more time wasted searching Help and forums. All part of the controlling strategy to make longer engagement with the phone
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“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
(Hanlon’s razor)
Sadly a system adding functions will get more inconsistent especially if many teams are involved and there isn’t a “dictator“ to check for stuff like that.
SFOS isn’t immune to that. And its smaller than iOS.
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That’s also my experience. I think that iOS has become very convoluted and non so elegant. The same thing can be said about macOS. Android is also clumsy, IMHO.
Personally, my favorite touch UI remains MeeGo on the N9, but SFOS also has lots of interesting design elements that were not present in the N9.
I really loved the simplicity of 4 gestures from screen edges, which also merged so well with the curved hardware. Normal users found this very intuitive and it was usable with one hand.
Current UIs are too flat. MeeGo was still quite skeumorphic, with buttons looking like something you could actually press. The dark theme looked fantastic on AMOLED, and it was very legible.
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my favorite touch UI also remains MeeGo on the N9
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The development for ui should go back to Sailfish 1 … 2. In this versions the ui was most consistent in usability.
Nearly everything was able to do with one hand. Now I need two hands when I want to call somebody of my contacts.
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The UI was changed around that time, if I remember correctly, to accommodate customised screens unfortunately big customers never came. In any case, the small user base is not mainly due to the UI, fonts, or even the Qt issues.
Screens were smaller, isn’t that the solution?