Article in Aamulehti about Jolla (finnish only)

General
#21

Accidentally removed :smiley:

#22

Well i saw the statement more like “people won’t buy a phone with an os is not android”

Well apart from a few enthusiasts that of course would be a very small niche

#23

One could counter-argument that with “well how comes people buy iOS devices then” :slight_smile:

1 Like
#24

because it just works i would say,

i mean, just look at every other contender that is not iOS, even blackberry and windows phone failed, and they had loads of money to invest, why should jolla succed? (even if i would really love them to)

Oh and of course, no advertising and phone you can buy in mediaworld/mediamarkt/amazon/unieuro and so on…

2 Likes
#25

Yes we are going somewhere, finally!
Indeed iOS has a very solid ecosystem. So even though its very expensive, people “just buy it”.
Its also fair to say that most of the people use happily cheap mediaworld/-markt/amazon/unieuro android phones; and only a “subset” (still a relevant one) uses iOS.

Ive always wondered what was about blackberry that didnt work. I recall the first versions of Blackberry 10 didnt convince; the android emulation layer was crap; there was no play store access if I recall; and the QML was heavily customized, which made it difficult to port apps.

However;
Lumia “just worked” and “was cheap” as well.
And still, as you mentioned, the result was not sufficient to guarantee survival.
So perhaps its not about “how much money you invest”, or “how well you market it”, or the “just works”;
but rather something less obvious.

#26

I don’t know what happened to blackberry, maybe the price?

But, i can tell you one thing

I had a windows phone 7, it was lighting fast even with 256 mb of ram

Then windows phone 8 was out, and as wp7 it was damn fast and stable

Then they released windows phone 10, and reading comments on blogs it was a disaster, meaning that apps were crashing more and more and the system wasn’t as stable as 7 or 8, and that seemed to be the demise of windows phone, because with a limited apps quantity they were it’s uniques selling points…

3 Likes
#27

Good recap, yes I recall now too, Win Phone 10 (which was supposed to be a huge step forward with Cortana etc) was in fact a disappointment; the lower-end lumias didnt even get the update, if I recall.

So then this again enforces the “make it work before make it pretty”.

1 Like
#28

and sailfish is already pretty, problem is they lack manpower to fix everything

and anyway, the usual problem (or circle) : no apps no users, no users no apps, althought in this case the fact that no trackers are allowed may stop the big players already (like fb, wa and so on)

2 Likes
#29

It is something very simple actually.
First and most important, APPS.
Then stability, ease of use, features, good hardware, good camera, marketing.
People that buy cheaper devices they expect decent battery life, access to the same plethora of apps everyone else has and most of the features available for the price point.

1 Like
#30

Well apps on SFOS, the main problem I see is the support for developers / the income (not saying a store is the solution yet). For developers in particular, I dont think Jolla has taken a stance against -strictly speaking!- advertisement; not that there would be much money in there anyways, but it seems to me there is not much in place to guard against it either?

Stability → alot of things on SFOS are “flaky”; are they “flaky” because of the floor moving constantly (=drivers binary blobs maybe updating themselves & in need of reverse engineering) or because its just too many bugs to fix? Take for example the Weather app; from out of the blue, now there is a spinner only, and nothing works anymore. My battery life has gone down probably 60% lifetime (yes, 60%).
Im not counting Weather as an “app” here as it does not come from an independent developer.

#31

Android binaries is not the reason SFOS ended up like this (sales-wise). The first and second device failed, that’s why they had to jump on the Sony ship or sink.

As for developers and apps, I think it’s way too late for that. I work for a company that makes apps for example and I can guarantee you that you can’t spend millions to rewrite your apps for a market that has probably a few hundred people at best to buy them.

1 Like
#32

woohoo push the brakes dude; you went straight at the crossroad (the intended road was left :slight_smile: )
the point here was still about own platform vs android. See the post above. The “First devices” were not the original platform, the original platform was the defunct “Nova Thor”. The question is, is the fact that they had to switch to a backup solution (=piggybacked on android) the reason why they failed?
This is challenging because if so, it might imply Android is the difficult choice (as a “substrate”, if you pass me the word).

#33

I very much doubt it. While they could have hit the market a bit earlier, and spent some more development efforts elsewhere, i don’t think that would have changed anything. Better to have taken that hit while there was still venture capital to pay for it most likely. It’s not like they could have carried ST-Ericsson single-handedly.

2 Likes
#34

Considering however the Narikkatori event was a Beta release; how would they have been able to hit the market even earlier, with a decent product?

I can buy the fact that the development was not complete, mind me. But what I am after, is the juicy parts / detail dust lost in the folded places; it must rather have been an efficiency issue, which is perhaps understandable with a product of this magnitude…

#35

You said it yourself; switching platforms caused a delay. I’m saying those 6 months or so wouldn’t have mattered. And quality wasn’t worse than anything else either.

1 Like
#36

So yes, again we fall on to the platform “support” going MIA. Perhaps the main problem is, in fact, the lack of a reliable hardware platform. Android is not good “enough” to diversify. Others there is not.
Meaning, it’s a bigger picture / landslide towards android.

#37

Not sure what you are getting at now then. How would another platform have changed anything at the time? The J1 was just fine quality-wise, especially for the era.

I was working at a consultant firm where parts of ST-E got divested to back then. Fun fact, the same one that another branch was doing the original maps application IIRC. (None of which i had anything to do with). But there is nothing more to the story really. Nobody was buying; the last half-relevant platform that was crazy to do a pure Linux BSP died.

2 Likes
#38

Thanks for your honesty - I was not there and am only looking at the pieces on the ground
I apologize, these can be difficult memories and I appreciate your time. :slight_smile:
What do you think about the emerging RISC-V BSP’s? They seem to be incomplete still at the moment, but gaining momentum…

1 Like
#39

Fairly irrelevant. Cool, but irrelevant. So you’ll be able to do a Pinephone type thing (entirely separate modem - can’t really call it a “platform”) with Risc-V in a year or three. I don’t see that changing anything.

1 Like
#40

Yes, its very early days. Also, nothing states RISC-V could not run android. If you dont mind, is there any other difference between android and linux, at platform level, than just price?