Next gen Jolla Phone

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If I were Jolla, I’d concentrate on:

  • make a polished product - think of iPhone. It’s not about the latest greatest specs, but things just work (hint: software)
  • Don’t make just another “phone”. Make a phone that is unique, maybe even “nerdy” for “hackers”, but one that really works (Sailfish is damn good IMHO)
  • Make a phone that concentrates on Sailfish, not Android. Yes, Android apps are a must these days, banking apps, railway apps, e.g. These should run - but no need for super high performance games.
  • Be clear about which users you want to adress. You want a phone for everybody? But not everybody wants to run Sailfish or cares about privacy.
  • Commit to one product and one product idea. And perfect it over the years. Less is more. I personally just want a phone that works.
  • Have a clear vision.
  • The Other Half concept was genius. That was a unique concept. Why not revive it. Improve on it and commit to it?
  • Make a phone that is usable out of the box - including “Android”.
  • Documentation is important, that is easy to find. How do I set up Android on Jolla properly. How do I install software that are not in the official store?
  • Up-to-date software
  • App store: Apply some quality control. Not all apps actually work
  • Spend more time on “communication” / PR. Make videos on how to use Sailfish for this and that.

Hardware-wise, I’d prefer low specs. The things that I need the phone regularly for should work flawless:

  • Taking pictures - I’d like to have a dedicated button and decent image quality. And good camera software.
  • Web Browsing - that’s damn slow on my Xperia II compared to Android. And for many pages it’s barely usable - the built in browser is just too old.
  • App loading time. I can count the seconds when loading apps. Maybe I should keep them open?

As a developer, who does not run Linux but some BSD, I’d like to be able to develop software for Sailfish easily. Why not make it easy to build apps by everyone? Maybe even on the phone? Put all the dev tools on the phone and connect to the phone by a webbrowser (for bigger display and keyboard). Or via vnc. If you make the whole app development cycle (including publishing the app) easy and easy for almost everyone, that’d be great!

That’s my 5 cents :slight_smile:

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324

Already so many good choices in the 6" market. Whereas for 5" there’s basically none.

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I already put my wishes for the h/w in the poll. Generally I’d go for a phone that is not too big, and not too high-end, let’s say something like an updated version of a XA2.

But I would add one comment: I’m willing to trade all my h/w wishes for a s/w that is 100% working in ALL its basic functionalities, so my suggestion for Jolla is to choose only a chipset that they have high confidence in supporting successfully.

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Not sure if it works the same way as unified RAM does on Apple Silicon, but if it does, then I think the cost/benefit for additional RAM would be fantastic for many users (imagine being able to run AI locally on your phone)

Personally for me, the highest priority is water resistance, although I’d imagine it would hinder repairability?

Followed by that is OLED.

In terms of repairability, as long as the battery can be replaced without compromising the water seal, and the battery can be sourced 3-4 years forward, then I’m satisfied.

I also vouch for sub 6in, something in the 5in region would be ideal

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327

Port SFOS to cheap and easy to get standard phones like Xiaomi. I’m sick of hunting for outdated and hard to get special phones. Period.

edit:
rant on
and give Fingerterm a kick and return to a standard bash.
rant off

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If I have to pick one, will be this - GitHub - MiCode/Xiaomi_Kernel_OpenSource at flame-u-oss with these two versions 128GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 8GB RAM!Nothing fancy,super super cheap,huge battery.I prefer something like this with huge effort into the OS than fancy hardware with OS in alpha state!Thats my dream…to see Sailfish OS working out of the box with pleasent expirience.

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Thanks a lot, but it does not work for me :frowning: I tried as simple user or in root. Before to plug the DAC or after :- Nothing in my ears.
If i “reboot” in Utilities the sub audio system i have an output “21”. But always no sound. Or the other answer is “Failure during module initialisation”.
See : Xperia 10 III can't use Type-C headphones and Audio during call not routed to USB DAC headset (tracked).
So i’m waiting the 5.1 of Sailfish OS :wink:

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Can this help?

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Here is a small list for Jolla what NOT to do with the Jolla C3:
(can I call it C3 already? :kissing_heart:)

  • do not place the microphone in the corner of the phone → little finger keeps going on it all the time while holding the telephone for a call

  • make back cover so that it does not resonate/vibrate with sounds (for example when call voice coming via speaker)

  • do not make very hard edges so that it feels ok to hold the phone for longer periods

Yes, this list is coming from “somewhere”. It’s my experiences with a new Fairphone 6 and these three things are my definite “non-favorites”.
Otherwise I really like the FP6, it has great size - same length as X10III but a bit wider. And I also like the looks (although maybe a bit beefy which makes the hard edges a bit … well … edgy).

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Add a loop hole into the phone! Every camera today has a tiny loop-hole where you can add a wrist strap. If this comes out of the box, there is no need to buy an extra case.

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It’ll probably be named JP2601. …at least, that’s my guess…

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Same as my guess, except I had a dash in it: JP-2601 (just like the original Jolla Phone is JP-1301, released in 2013, and Jolla Tabler is JT-1501, released in 2015).

Also I visited an electronics store this week and it was sad to see no small smart phones other than the most entry level iPhone (didn’t check if it was the newest year model or something older). So please Jolla, really consider going for the smaller phones. That might really attract few random new users to the ecosystem.

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Yes, forgot the hyphen. …and the new phone might even be called JP-2501, If Jolla works fast.

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Small and light would be great! Apart from 2nd-hand iPhone Mini phones and some extremely small phones with 3 inch or even less there isn’t any somewhat recent small and light phone available on the market. My preferred phone would be a bit smaller and lighter than the iPhone Mini. A 5 inch phone with compact casing could achieve that.

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337

Obviously you have not tried that, because that is the status quo AFAICS: Can you name a “dev tool” you deem to be missing from Jolla’s SailfishOS RPM repository?

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The device should pack about just the features that Jolla can realistically support according to their manpower, skills, etc . Not much more - unless interfaces are documented enough so that skilled community members can pull something out of that.

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Have you tried to run it on FreeBSD? Last time I tried (a few years ago), it turned out to be “challenging”. First I tried to run a VM with Linux and inside the VM the whole Qt toolchain… but that failed because the toolchain exectutes certain tasks inside a VM itself, and running a VM inside a VM caused issues. Running docker wasn’t possible either. It just didn’t like to run within a VM at that time (running qemu without kvm should actually work…). I gave up on this idea and tried to run the Linux toolchain using FreeBSD’s Linux emulation. After patching some scripts here and there (/bin/sh is not bash in BSD) I gave up. IIRC, it even started qemu… With some work, it should be technically possible. Maybe today it’s much easier than it was 3 years ago. Also note that docker is not readily available on all BSDs.

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I went back to using a Lumia 950 for a few reasons after I used SFOS on a xperia 10 iii for a year.

On the O2 network in the UK, calls weren’t reliable.
You would constantly miss voicemails because the voicemail indicator was always on: even when all voicemails had been played.
Incoming calls wouldn’t be received by it.
Often it would stop making outbound calls and would need to be rebooted.
Often it would connect to another mobile and the line would be silent. You couldn’t hear it ringing or going to voicemail etc.
I take this to be down the radio drivers from Sony but who knows.

By contrast, the Lumia has visual voicemail, where you can slide the recording back and pause and play it, which is really great and that’s a 10-year-old phone.

The camera was terrible. Even when it finally took a photo, if you could persuade it to do so, the images were really lacklustre compared to the old Lumia 950.

The lack of bluetooth in android apps was about the last straw for me.
About the only bluetooth app I need is one to control the lighting on our aquarium.
It’s the only way to program its timings and it talks to the light unit over bluetooth and when I found that it couldn’t do that, for me, the whole App Support thing had no usage case.

For me, a phone doesn’t absolutely have to excel in one particular area. It just has to work.

Even with Windows Mobile, at least the weather app still works, which was a feature that died in SFOS not long after I started using it.

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Im on the same boat.We need working OS,not new phones.To compare abandoned OS from 2017 with latest security patch from 2020 …its a shame.

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What would be ideal for me would be something just like an XA2 but with a newer CPU, much more RAM, and a brighter display. Any bigger than that, and it starts to fail as a portable device. (The J1 form factor was also nice.)

Second best would be something like an Xperia 10 III or IV with more RAM, a properly working camera, and audio that doesn’t fail (i.e. the hardware is not reliant on Sony AOSP binaries). The screen on the Xperia 10 is already slightly larger than I’d like, but the tall aspect ratio means that it’s still just about small enough to be pocketable. I did not buy a C2 only because it’s far too big. I strongly dislike notches and would rather have a bezel (which handily provides somewhere to put a notification LED…)

As several others have said, the absolute top priority requirement is that the basic phone functionality works reliably. In most countries, that means stable working VoLTE, and if possible, stable working VoWiFi.

Lack of an audio jack would be a dealbreaker for me. I use that jack all the time. A dongle isn’t a workable substitute - I don’t want to have to carry one of those around all the time in case I need to plug an audio device in, and I often need audio and power connected at the same time. I did try bluetooth audio but I regularly found myself in flat battery hell, and I don’t want to go back there.

Lack of SD storage would also be a dealbreaker. The best scenario would be more than one SD slot. For example one that could be used as fixed memory for data and overspill apps, and one that’s easily removable, for other things like backups or giant swapfiles or data exchange or AI models or many other uses. Good SD storage options would mean that a big internal eMMC is not needed, which is why I voted for only 128Gb of internal flash. If I can put a terabyte of SD storage in, why would I need a huge eMMC? Larger RAM is more important because it can’t be upgraded later.

The notification LED is not quite a dealbreaker, but I do like it and use it regularly, and leaving it off wouldn’t save more than a cent or two on the BOM. Better still, put it on the side where a flip case doesn’t block my view of it.

Second SIM slot is nice to have, but useless if shared with the SD card slot.

Things I don’t personally care about: fingerprint reader (never use it), front camera (very rarely use it), rear secondary camera (one good camera is much better than two poor ones), latest WiFi standards (WiFi 5 is plenty).

Things I miss from previous smartphones but can live without: physical keyboard (not getting that back I guess, but I can dream…), physical mute switch, interchangeable battery (I used to take advantage of that a lot when on a long trip), IR output.

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