Use cases of smartphone changed since 2011 considerably, that is probably the reason that the industry moved along.
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I speak about the changes which the guisfrom Rostelecom made.
Nearly everthing was changed a little bit fom consitent pulleye menus to touch buttons.
They have broken the whole usability of SF from my point of view.
The marketing guys from Jolla prayed it as big improvement.
When you compare the first marketing video of Jolla phone 1 with actual SF 5.0.68 you can see the big steps backward.
Nearly every new functions which were add later crashed the very constistent and oustanding ui.
If you wont believe then check the ‘improvements’ of caller app and the mail app.
The former very consistant and outstanding ui was the most unique thing of Sailfish compared with Apple or Android.
Jolla should make as a first step of deshitification process a consequent review of the whole ui and ther own apss. Polish out every bug and inconsistency before they try to invent new things with there limited resources.
For me it looks like if they have finished it properly.
Sorry for the hard but true words from me as a SF user from beginning on.
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Sorry for the hard but true words from me as a SF user from beginning on.
You don’t need to be worried! It’s exactly what we need: some constructive opinions with examples. Exactly what you do.
Unfortunately, I’ve never used the Jolla Phone as a daily driver so it’s quite hard to compare it with the current Sailfish version. I’ve read here and there that the Call app was changed due to some UX issues (like decline a call instead of pick it up). Related the mail app, I don’t know why it was changed. Was it due to UX issues or Rostelcom’s influence? No clue.
Perhaps should we open a new topic to discuss about UI/UX changes?
I did my best to promote SFOS at FSF40 yesterday - let’s see, whats coming of it.
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Replying a call was swiping down the screen, rejecting it was swiping up
Three errors and you’d get a visual hint
In my opinion was seriously handy but it was different from other systems so in like sf 3.something they changed it probably thinking newcomers would have found this too different from what they were used to
And i suppose the rest of the changes also came to not look too alien to people coming from android
Sigh, i really miss sf1 ui/ux
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I disagree with both points you expressed about the user interface.
Overall, the Russians made the user interface better (sadly, they made it uglier).
They even kept the one-handed usability that pulley menus provide, while improving the multitasking flow (i.e. they made it easier to identify and switch between apps, especially recent apps).
The current Jolla UI is definitely not worse compared to the old UI, and, even more, it is constrained in what it can do by the antiquated gesture paradigm from 12 years ago that Jolla pioneered at the time, in a world of tiny phones with tiny displays.
Back then nobody else truly had gestures.
But now everyone else does have gestures, and the most important ones, the multitasking gestures, allow the user to quickly multitask with one hand.
Jolla does not have such multitasking-friendly gestures at all.
While the pulley menus are cool in theory and even at first glance, the paradigm is very restrictive to much more useful modern gestures (e.g. reachability gesture, refresh gesture).
Jolla should definitely overhaul the entire user interface paradigm to bring it into the present day, but that would take large amounts of money that Jolla just does not have.
This is why tick-tock release cycles are such a good idea in engineering. On every other major release, you should focus on fixing errors, rather than adding new features.
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Some bikeshedding, huh?
FWIW, the fediverse is also abuzz with mentions of SailfishOS. Well, that might be an exaggeration. I just opened a separate topic, but rn people are willing to listen to all the good things (most importantly that it works as a daily driver) you have to say about SFOS:
https://feddit.org/search?q=Sailfish&type=Posts&listingType=All&page=1&sort=New
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This is great. What SFOS needs is entering a virtuous cycle where people come, spread the word and develop apps, and this brings more people in.
The Linux mobile space is too fragmented and has too many non-viable options. SFOS and Mer Mobile are IMHO the most polished ones, almost ready for mainstream use.
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I also liked it but the new one was better as I remember hanging up a bit after the other party and accidentally calling them again.