Here comes one instance which could be fruitful.
They actually have kind of a responsibility to produce a SFOS native app of their app:
Emergency Response Center / Hätäkeskuslaitos / Nödcentralverket 112
They have had an SFOS app, emergency calling app, back in the days… 2015?
They should make it again, they have Android, iOS and even Harmony version. So, SFOS too!
Sailfish users in Finland, request that 112 app should be available to SFOS by writing to this address:
While i’m all for more apps, especially public ones - apps should be absolutely nowhere in emergency services. These must be open to everyone regardless of OS and smartness of phone or nationality. Sooner or later some zoomer executive will have moved critical parts over to the app because “everyone has it” - if it hasn’t already happened.
For residents in Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania and Italy
This parking aid app company takes a lot of pride being Finnish atleast in marketing inside Finland and should be listening atleast. If their listening translates to action is another topic of course.
They are open and don’t need app. What the app does is to provide accurate location for emergency services automatically. As these days a lot of people are clueless where they actually locate in map, in sparsely populated countries it is quite crucial for emergency services. So no worries here
Indeed - and as such should not be left to some best-effort, platform-dependent, app that only natives would know about.
If “everyone” has the app, sooner or later investment in standard technologies will stop.
Imagine calling emergency services and they ask you to install an app before they serve you.
I thought about that, but I have this far written in my own personal way that wouldn’t suite so that everybody would send them as “their own”. Have to take that into consideration on next ones…
…said everyone about every service that went that way before.
Leave it to a bad training manual and a new employee - it will happen, if it hasn’t already.
The specific case, perhaps not.
But the general issue of being accessible to non-mainstream platforms should first and foremost be solved by standards. Way too many things have apps for no reason. The first ask should really be to not need an app - and only where absolutely necessary to add one.
Of course - we are not arguing here. But we still live in an app world. And this thread is not about to make that go away - even if I would also want to see it like you do.
Everyone can freely formulate what they ask to whatever service or app makers. I am not here to dictate anything.
All i’m here to ask is that you, and others, make a conscious choice about whether asking for an app is the right way to go - and not just follow the thread title blindly. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.
The authorities also use this app to send general danger alert notifications based on your location. At least until a separate app is released for this purpose, as the current one is said to be working poorly (not everyone gets the warnings in time or something).
The authorities have also been trying since 2005 to get mass text message alerts (messages sent in bulk to all devices connected to the base station) to work, but without success.
Again - wrong solution.
And in case it not obvious to everyone - this likely means sharing your rough location with some entity that is not your operator - and in many countries not the government either (whether that is better or worse i guess depends on country).
I sincerely hope not.
Not surprised.
Literal mass SMS probably already would work fine - but actual PWS notifications are a bit of a beast, yes.
But my point is to make these work - not give up and go for some shoddy app.
I contacted Olvid so that they are atleast aware that Jolla and Sailfish OS exists
One can contact them via this webpage:
EDIT: I received a very thorough reply from Olvid:
(I’d think that the right thing to do is to not to flood them with more mails )
”Right now, our development team is pretty small, and our roadmap is already quite packed, so we try to focus on important features or bringing our app to a wider audience. From what I see, Sailfish OS already supports running Android apps. So, correct me if I’m wrong, the benefit of writing a native app would mostly be a performance improvement. I haven’t looked into the details of how native Sailfish OS apps are written, but considering the amount of work needed to rewrite a new version of the app, I don’t think this is a path we went to venture into. We already have 3 implementations to maintain (Java/Kotlin version for Android, Swift version for iOS/macOS, and JavaFX version for Windows/Linux), And we’d rather keep it like this for now.
Well, I don’t use this app. But it seems to be crucial for almost everybody - therefore making it important for the new Jolla Phone too. And I get it, it runs nicely on Android App Support…but native is just always better.
I did give them a phony phone number because it was mandatory.
EDIT: Reply from Whatsapp:
”Thank you for reaching out to us about your interest in a native WhatsApp app for Sailfish OS. I’m here to help you. However, I don’t have any information about plans for a native WhatsApp app on Sailfish OS. WhatsApp regularly reviews how the app is being used, including its growing set of features that advance global private calling and messaging. For now, I can provide you with information on supported operating systems, which can be found here: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1150261202542208.”
I guess these guys will need a lot of bombardment before they will start to think of making a native SFOS app…
