Great new Jolla phone and new users - no go!

They advertise this phone to consumers, it should be held to the standard of other consumer devices.

You are free to do so but you’ll be likely disappointed then, with the first batch of a small batch custom development, not merely a white label re-badging, as you often see elsewhere.

You sound like an informed persons, you surely had a look at the forum to get an idea about Sailfish OS before spending that kind of money on a phone. Have you? If you have, you should have had a fairly good idea what kind of product to expect and make your decision accordingly.

If that charging bug is a no-go for you, even though any old charger should work flawless, that is a valid view, but then the question is, if this product is the right for you.

4 Likes

Please note how you picked the main opinion-part to reply to (only!) and not the facts - and stopped responding to genuine questions about apparent confusion about on-app and from-edge gestures.

If you cherry-pick the friction, it will feel like attacks.

Of course not!
But unconstructively saying that it is bad because it isn’t Android, or blaming Jolla for things that are clearly out of their control (certain apps deep integration with google for example), however is bad.

Clarification: i’m not saying you are unconstructive - this is about “new people” (plural).

8 Likes

Yes I think this is an important point.

Maybe for future devices, Jolla specifically label the first 100/200 devices as beta or developer builds that should only be bought by people accepting that fact.

An earlier slightly wider release might see some of these issues (dust/charging) picked up sooner, whilst also allowing developers to better prepare their apps for launch.

As an example this was how Pebble did this last year

2 Likes

Reading those kind of messages make me smile considering i’ve used a sailfish device for the last 8 years as a daily driver

On the contrary i used android for two years and never really got used to it…

5 Likes

I actually wasnt aiming that comment specifically at you. More the “well just sell it the” style.comments. I didn’t respond to everything, but that wasnt intended maliciously. If the YouTube flow worked for you that is good. For me it made.the device.very laggy. I sometimes multitask whike watching Youtube.

As for the android stuff - I went in and modified things to my liking. Other than saying my password manager didn’t work cross platform (a thing I flagged, not strixtly criticised) I dont think I have done that. I definitely did not say it is bad bexause its not.android. I dont use android devices in my daily life. I have a hard time understanding where you got that from.

I think android apps running bad to tge point of unusability is bad and this keyboard IS driving me insane though.

Edit(sort of): I just saw your edit so maybe thag wasnt meant for me

1 Like

I did as with all other phones before. You don’t like that thing and your use case is perfectly covered by android and ios. Jolla just did not understand your desires when building and maintainimg SFOS for all those years. No you have found out and maybe there will be a product somewhere that covers your needs.

For now we all want to see that smile back on your face. It should be fairly easy to sell your phone.

1 Like

My point is that it has worked well for me coming up on 13 years now. This makes experience tell me the fullscreen lag (which i have not noticed extends out of the browser - but i don’t multitask as much) will be solved in fairly short order and things go back to normal.

The comment about complaining was about you seemingly taking all new users in defense without conditions, so i wanted to add nuance to what is rightfully criticized.

I’m still genuinely curious what from-edge swipes do in Android apps that the back button wouldn’t - i.e. what we are missing apart from a more ergonomic back button. This is adjacent to “bad because not being Android”, but i withhold judgement until i know what you actually mean.

Of course - but conditions apply. Some APIs are missing, deliberately or out of technical necessity. And it is not reasonable to expect SFOS AAS to be better than AOSP - but many people still do.
I the remaining apps running bad get reported and fixed - it is none of what i use, so i can’t contribute to that happening.

I have never known anything else really - and, sure, everything can be improved. The little experience i do have (mainly looking at iOS here) the second-guessing everything you type is what gets a phone meeting a wall in short order. If i mistype, i only have myself to blame. I don’t think a 10:1 helpful-unhelpful ratio would even cut it for me, it needs to be even better than that, and other than Is and apostrophes, i have just not seen it done.

3 Likes

About typing on telephones…
I have also iOS phone as my work phone (from my company, dont get to choose the phone).
Anyway, with my Jolla I get my text in general easier written than on the iPhone. Ok, maybe there is some fine tuning still needed, because I feel that Sailfish was even snappier to write with on Sony X10III.

The iPhone drives me nuts when needing to place cursor in the text somewhere. With Jolla the cursor goes exactly where I want it - with iPhone the cursor goes anywhere else than I want.

About UX/UI design. It is the other way around. Jolla introduced their swipeable OS with Nokia heritage. It is those swipe gestures that A and I has slowly copied to their phones. So, they have done a lot of study here - from Sailfish OS.

9 Likes

Driving through Sweden from Germany to Turku we saw several signs of McDonalds and KFC in the woods. Our reaction was surprise. Are these mulitinationals here too? Now I am surprised that companies like
Mcfatburger want to hook people with apps. What do they do with the data they collect?
There are far too many useless, commercial apps.
However, complaints of new users should be taken serious because Sailfish is different indeed. It takes time and users will have to sacrifice some apps (like giving up that McDonalds app) in order to be free from surveillance. The OS is elegant, the UI is easy and being free from surveillance is a huge advantage.
The other side is that there need to be developed more native Sailfish apps ( e.g. for banking).
I wish everyone patience and endurance.
Search for ‘Operation Thin Thread vs. Operation Trailblazer’ and perhaps you will find out when and where it all went wrong with tech.

5 Likes

I used an iPhone for two weeks due to an experiment with my wife. Moreover, I (must) have an iPad for some work activities. I still do not get how it properly works.

For me, iOS is a pretty dumb designed system (and I known I am openiong pandora’s box with this assertion).

And guess what, on the first start of both iOS devices, I did not get an import wizard for importing from SFOS.

12 Likes

I made a similar experience. My writing appears to have improved on SailfishOS. Especially placing the cursor also drives me nuts there.

To be fair though, the copy paste mechanism on Sailfish OS is rather confusing and hit and miss for me.

1 Like

PolatBirdal

You think it is ok that a health insurance company forced US teachers to wear a fitbit tracker so they could be tracked and sanctioned (e.g. a higher payment) ?
Michael Moore showed how the teachers union protested against this.
‘Surveillance capitalism’, the system behind the big US tech companies, is based on damaging our privacy for profit. This makes us vulnerable.

4 Likes

Why is that? Well, you shouldn’t, because it’s gooble, but that is another topic, so again, why can’t you watch utube? I know I can!

2 Likes

Troll? I’m sorry, but I really think that is massively uncalled for.

I had a problem with some of the UX, and went out of my way to try and fix it for myself: Jolla Phone : First Experiences, Pros and Cons - #787 by Podginator .

The idea that I have bought this device to come and sow negativity is ludicrous. Surely, the kind of user that would go in, try to understand how things work, and then share how they’ve done that with the community, are broadly technical are the exact kind of user that you would want.

I described in this thread my problem with YouTube. The android app lags to the point of being unusable, and anything about a low resolution on the browser does the same. This extends to Netflix and Disney+. I am not the only person having these problems, either.

This is the kind of toxic stuff I really cannot stand. Please explain what you think is “Trolling” about any of my comments? I have commented in earnest.

4 Likes

I checked on my Android device (Galaxy Tab S9 FE 5G), it also does not. At least not by default, as I did not change the configuration. Your phone changes your text without asking?
I noticed just now on the Samsung phone I you can ask it to download a model for the language, and it makes suggestions… therefore becoming feature-par with the default configuration of SFOS.

Yes. It generally works very well. It is also a toggleable option in the keyboard. You are able to turn it off if you don’t like it. It does quite well with small typos, and also adding the correct grammar (im → I’m dont → don’t etc.)

You did add some details only in that post you deliberately wrote pretty illegibly. From what can be deciphered, your initial claim was rather misleading as it is not that youtube streaming doesn’t work but rather that it doesn’t work well in multitasking when you do other stuff on top of the streaming.

Except that you can actually, not with the native browser alone, as you can’t run it twice and if you have it as a background tab, it will stop playing. However if you launch youtube streaming on the native browser and then launch Angelfish, you can browse pretty much as well as if nothing were streaming in the background. But then, when you surf, you can obviously not watch a video and if you want to just listen to stuff (podcasts or music) other platforms are better to begin with.

PS: Mind you, that is what I understood from your letter mess before to which you refused to further elaborate. So maybe I understood you wrong.

My claim is that Youtube at any reasonable resolution slows things down to the point that it is unpleasant to use or watch (Both natively, and on android). I have used the Youtube example, because that is generally what I watch the most. But the same is true of other media streaming apps, including Jellyfin, Netflix, Disney+ etc.

The workaround that you’ve listed … I don’t know if it works well (I haven’t tested it). For me, the main problem wasn’t the video stopping, but the rate of slowdown. But you must understand how it is not exactly intuitive to have to open multiple browser instances in order to do something as trivial as that? And how I as a user can’t really be blamed for claiming that it doesn’t work (well) if the solution is a multi-step process where I have to find an alternative app store, download an alternative browser, and run that in the background? The device listed android support and has middle of the road specs, I expected those applications to work out of the box.

Again, I’m not trying to be controversial here. I genuinely wanted to see something like this succeed, and I do think that providing this type of feedback is essential to that. I don’t expect people to agree with me on everything, but I also don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that I am being malicious in my comments. I’m not.

I actually really want a device like this. I also owned a N900 when I was much younger, and I loved tinkering around with it. I want to see European tech do well. As I’ve claimed elsewhere, I bought this device even as I knew it would reduce my convenience wrt to NFC payments. I think the android apps being slow and laggy will get patched at some point.

But some other elements give me pause. It is jarring going from a device with good typing ergonomics to one without. That problem doesn’t feel like teething pains if the software has been out for over a decade. When typing before on these forums, the slow down on the browser was bad. To the point where the letters I were typing were coming up 2-3 seconds after I’ve clicked them, and all I was running was a podcast app and the browser.

This device is being advertised to people, I don’t know which profile they’re targeting, but I have seen the ad multiple time. That means that if that goes well you’re going to have an influx of new users.

I’m not saying every complaint those users will have are valid, I’m not saying the UI should radically shift to adjust to them, but there should be an evaluation of what they’re saying. And they should not be met with cold hostility and snark. It’s a really good way to alienate people away from your brand.

I am the kind of person who would take a risk on something like this. I have colleagues who share similar ideas to me around Apple and Android, people who are sick of the companies, not necessarily the products. I would love to be able to say - oh well I have this Jolla Phone and I found it works well out of the box with Android apps, maybe you can look at that. Right now? I wouldn’t say that.

5 Likes

Well, there arent that many McDonalds anymore majority is local Hesburger and Burger King also and few Taco Bells and I do believe Helsinki-Vantaan Airport has starbucks.