Hardware Cooperation idea

General
#1

This is actually something else than what’s in the topic made by @pherjung but it’s kind of similar but on the different level.

The only catch here is that this must be done by Jolla itself.

Here are my thoughts.

The big problem we can see often is the adaptation of new HW. Every time new phone shows that Jolla want to support, a lot of effort must be put to have this working and the outcome is often mixed for quite a while. I’m not saying Jolla is not making the job, I would say that it’s probably quite the opposite, yet their hands are often tied.

What’s the solution? Actually it’s what has been done in the past, an own phone. I know - been there, done that, lot’s of money etc.
Yeah true, but how many companies there was like Jolla back then? Right now we have:
Jolla, Volla, Librem.
I think right now some of you are catching up.
Now the problem is that these companies has their phones but from my point of view it’s kind of utopia. Marginal user base and so. Yet they somehow made it but the status is low. Lack of know how that Jolla has? No idea, maybe or maybe not.
There are still more other players like: LineageOS, /e/, postmarketOS… etc etc etc.
All them together, well there are a lot of developers that constantly… duplicate the same work of each other! It’s pointless and resource waste which is a problem when there are so few resources.

The problem in the end they are trying to solve is always the same - get rid of google spy, give some alternative etc etc etc.

So I think a debate should be done between all these project owners. And the idea to make a new phone for everybody should be started but I’ll say this again, not a frying pan. It must be small!

Yes I’m always voting for this, yet I have strong arguments behind this. First, the target won’t be only users of these projects, you want to target higher!

We know that when apple is kiling small phones because they see no benefits from it, but the numbers are not bad:https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/342128-apple-continues-to-abandon-small-phones-reportedly-cancels-2024-iphone-se
not bad for projects were talking about. The SE was cut off and production limited to 20mln of products! If a fraction of that would buy this phone, that would be great and would give some fuel for the projects.
say even 100k of users that’s still a lot. On kickstarter, the projects for phones are getting much less.
But of course these are just words and we need someone with accounting knowledge to calculate the costs of manufacturing “small” phone, and releasing it to the market to some shops or even if not shops, at least make some good noise in the stream but I think we could at least help with this.

Anyway the phone should be small enough so it would attract those people that doesn’t want big phone. There’s plenty of them and they’re not not technical enough to install soft on their own.
So the software must be preinstalled but no, not Sailfish, not /e/, not librem, etc… Pure Android even with google crap. It must be Something users knows, and won’t throw away.
It must have decent camera - it’s important now, good battery which shouldn’t be a big prob with smaller screen. Be dual-sim - yes that’s right!.
And generally this is all for the mass market but for the others there’s a cherry on the topping.
It will be created by the cooperation of the projects so they will have all the documents or one of them because probably some NDA will be needed to properly integrate with HW. On top of that abstraction must be created so all other projects can benefit from it. Actually from what I understand, there’s already something like this so it needs polishing.

I know, saying this is easy. Trust me, to sum this up, wasn’t as easy as just saying it.
I’d like to open discussion and this time, input from Jolla is more than needed. What’s more I’d like others to help me reach other projects general members to come here and say what they think. For now we want to talk because it always start from conversation.

Of course if such trials has been made in the past and I’m just not aware of this, please let me know and just remove this waterfall of words.

@flypig I’d like to ask you officially to help me with this to reach to proper peoples :slight_smile:

Where to go after Sailfish?
#2

I understand your thoughts but see the priority rather elsewhere. SailfishOS lacks resources, not competence, as you can see from the fixed problems or further developments. In my opinion, Jolla is very skilled at porting Sony hardware and should keep it that way. As smartphones and thus Android are developed out, Sailfish can catch up more and more. I see the problem more in the apps. Native apps would be best, but we can forget that. Thus, we are always dependent on Android and thus the arguments for the OS fly.

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#3

Since Jolla is venturing into automotive the idea of a HW module (a pcb more or less) that can be adapted in a phone or a car infotainment system -in my mind- doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

Having your own HW comes with all the benefits of controlling the SW without needing android at any level -outside app support which can sit on top as far as i understand.

But TBH i don’t expect anything like that to happen unless someone inject a lot of money into Jolla.

1 Like
#4

Maybe my post wasn’t clear enough. In the end I was writing it late night. I never ever thought about this and what’s more explicitly I said that others may lack knowledge that Jolla has.

but we clearly see it’s not enough. There are constant problems with Sony devices, unfixed issues etc. And it seems most of these is related to Sony binaries. So again I’m not blaming Jolla.

Please let’s make this clear. This post is not a rant nobody here is blaming no one. I’m just trying to drop idea of making something with the resources that are spread between projects.

Just try to look at this perspective. For the beginning if there would be one HW that would be controlled fully by community then many problems that are here wouldn’t exists at all. This has been true for the Jolla Smartphone.

well Librem did that, they used kickstarter for this. Here similar thing could be done. But to gather bigger audience, something for the average Joe has to be offered. And the average won’t take something he doesn’t know, something he will need to learn from scratch. That’s why basic Android with all the Google Services must be offered. But for others, it would be easy to just replace the system as it would be controller by the community. Of course still there must be one company/foundation that stands behind this. To control access, to talk with the vendors to finally keep their hand on the unification layer. So everybody can benefit from this.

#5

Probably the only way to achieve something like this would be to establish e.g. postmarketOS as a commen base for all distributions.
However, there are only a few distributins relying on PostmarketOS and to my knowledge there is no SfOS release available as yet.

#6

maybe, I don’t know all details. This is just idea. I think the maintainers of the projects should make a meeting, and they can do something together cause they know the internals.

#7

I was going to critique this more in-depth, but seeing as it has so far gathered exactly zero likes, you get the short version instead:

  • Custom phones with the notable exception of PinePhone and Librem are still “Android-only” hardware with all or at least most the same problems as with the Sony phones.
  • Custom hardware gives you new problems, that are only yours.
  • Maybe it is because i live in Jante land, but your arguments are weak and not researched.
  • I.e. no, it is not productive to be the “ideas person” for obvious ideas. Bring something to the table.
  • Be very careful about inserting your own wishes into a project when you know they are not mainstream.
  • Apple is not stupid. Lack of small phones is not a conspiracy by “big cellular”.
  • You can’t seriously be suggesting Jolla produces an Android phone, and maintain that too.
  • Just get a PinePhone.

And i say this as someone that would be the first investor.
Even regardless of the above, but hopefully in a project that is framed in a way so that it is actually helpful.

7 Likes
#8

well, thank you for you input but I think you missed this point:

Of course if such trials has been made in the past and I’m just not aware of this, please let me know and just remove this waterfall of words.

So I dropped what was going onto my mind. It’s better to say something just keep this for yourself. You don’t know what will happen from this.

Apple is not stupid. Lack of small phones is not a conspiracy by “big cellular”.

Did I say they were stupid? It’s just marketing. They calculated that it’s ok to kill it because they don’t want to waste resources that bring so low income. It’s always the same pareto principle. But in economy it’s we do as low as possible to get as big income as we can. So it was just optimization. They calculated and they did cut that leftover 20%.
But what for Apple is only 20% for others, small ones are like 80%.

why I’d want to buy a limited phone that’s the same as others and still hard to use and very cumbersome, hard to hold, etc etc? TBH why others would like to buy it?

I think this is where we’re missing each other. Just try to think the other way. If you follow the mainstream you won’t win in their game. You’re the last for the cake and you can take only crumbs. Instead you need to go the other way around. Of course it’s always bumpy road and never easy.

#9

At the current state disagree. But i guess that is just the Nordic mentality in me acting up.

You imply it. If it was as high 20% they lost they would never have done it.
Granted, 5% of Apple is still gigantic, but that does not mean they would come here. They would just be a couple of times more likely than everyone is as a baseline. You might even have a net loss by alienating fans of big phones. Who knows. (Not you. Not me. This precisely is my point. Burden of evidence, however, falls on you.)

Any here you are, asking Jolla to produce an Android phone?

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#10

The idea is good, but unfortunately at the Jolla community this is a veeeeery sensitive subject after what happened with the Tablet crowdfunding.

#11

Kickstarter projects imply a risk, at least from Jolla I have not lost money. The issue with manufacturing is different, unless you are a big player the chances to manufacture something decent are non existent, and that h/w will still will have android drivers only. A realistic chance will be support for existing devices, e.g. fairphone with a long life cycle models.

#12

well if I remember. Jolla smarphone was quite ok. But IMHO as I mentioned. You can’t just make the same as everybody cause it will drown in the crowd. You must make something different.

yeah and this is perfect example why I see no reason for that phone. It’s the same as other phones. So in the end, even Sony is better cause at least their phones are slim.Which gives better handling.

#13

There are chipsets like the QC 845 that are mainline (or close at least) ready and most likely will give you less problems. Custom HW doesn’t necessarily mean making your own chips like Apple does.

#14

Probably a bit… but surely that’s just the CPU side of things and not the modem?
And i’m not so sure you could make things with 5 year old SoCs. Edit: that means buy it in quantities.

#15

Depends on what you mean with make things. The CPU on itself is pretty fast still. On the what you can integrate it with when it comes to newer modem stuff i don’t know.

#16

But your idea is actually already existing. Project Halium, which has been abandoned by a few projects and that is not supported by SFOS. What i don’t really get is the principle to always bring new ports, that apparently are also based on a different base. For sure, Jolla wants to sell licenses, so buying a license once, and then get a lifetime updates wouldn’t really be commercial. But what about standardize the base that much, that it would run on all of the available devices, or at least a standardized Android Layer, that whatever which Android base the device has, would offer the newest Android support. As it is a seperate container these days, it should be runnable beneath the installed SFOS. This would at least be a try to bring all the available devices to one OS level, Android layer. It would save a lot of programming time, to always adapt the Android and in the same time have to support old and branched ports. This would also bring a bigger user base which would benefit both Jolla and the users…

#17

I’m a little annoyed at how several full-fledged real GNU/Linux phones are being compared to various more-or-less “alternative” AOSP-based (i.e. Android) projects.

And of those proper Linux phones SFOS is arguably the oldest, because it’s based or rather developed from Nokia’s pre-Android Linux phones.

Anything that leads away from being realGNU/Linux, I’m against.

Then again, yes, concentrating often fractioned efforts would be nice but be very careful how you do it lest you end up here.

And then again, look around, maybe these efforts already exist(ed).

#18

What Jolla need is a better partner than Sony** is today. I am sure they know this, and would be delighted to find one.

Here’s where Sony falls well short of the mark:

  • Make a properly debugged open version of the phone, and do fixes to bring it up to the standard of the proprietary Android one. (Power drain,GPS etc working properly)
  • Keep a phone model in production long enough that it can still be purchased for 1 year after SF hw adaption is completed to a workable state.
  • Make a dual boot phone with commercial Android and easily loaded SFOS secondary OS. (Loading the secondary OS should not destroy the working OS it shipped with, and should not be a convoluted and difficult process.)
  • Make the proprietary Android apps and licenses purchasers paid for (i.e. camera, codecs) available to SF users (as Android versions since SF can use them)
  • Work with Jolla to sign images for the bootloader.
  • Do not get cute with making phones that don’t work properly in various countries. (4G configuration issues)

I think the best chance of this is an EU company with some specific EU sovereignty subsidy incentive to make it happen.

** Or Sony could rise to the challenge

#19

the idea here is to actually have still all the different option but have one layer. If I understand libhybris is something like that but I’m not sure how many projects are working on it right now. And how is this cooperated. Well still the efforts are spread among multiple devices and this is where the problem is.
I think once at least one phone would be stable, then more could be added but not in the first place. Still as we can see on this forum, people constantly want new phones and on the other side, they want to get them stable. With current workforce it’s really problematic to happen.

your idea is nice but there’s one cave at with that approach. For now, Android means - get data from the users and sell it or whatever. That means extra money. What’s worse we all know that Sony official Android image is full of bloatware that you can’t just easily remove or you can’t remove at all.
But yeah, maybe paying extra for the “closed parts” would be some option?
Tbh I proposed something similar in the past. For example the BlackBerry picture password could be relicensed that way. As part of paid option.