I don’t think a repeat of the situation like it happened when Intex Aquafish was first released to unsuspecting customers in India would be beneficial.
The comments sections of totally unrelated apps in the Jolla store were flooded for months with comments written in poor grammar by people demanding VoLTE.
And I can’t really blame them.
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Having used Android on many occasions as a travel phone (my main phone is an iPhone), I have to agree. Android is more difficult to use (than the iPhone or Sailfish). You have apps coming from the side, home screen, app screen. Settings are in at least two or three different places. Language settings also are not unified etc.
So this would be one thing to showcase about Sailfish: ease of use.
Also I remember from my Jolla 1 that one-handed use was a lot more feasible than on Android in particular. Not sure if that’s still the case (I’m waiting to be able to play around with SF on an Xperia 10ii 
).
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If a phone doesn’t get the “job” done is useless. What the “job” is differs depending who you ask so you have to target the correct people.
At the moment SFOS is useless for a huge amount of people and for sure these people wont stick around because of the nice UI and ease of use.
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Funny thing is that Sony actually added a feature to their Android spin on the Xperia 10 II and their other new models (all long phones) for ‘one handed mode’, which shrinks the UI so you have black bars on top and to the left (or right). At some point you wonder if no one thought that if they have to add a feature like that, perhaps they should just make a smaller device.
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And it will continue to be useless to a huge number of people who just want a phone that works will all the wonderful, free (spyware-)apps they seem not to be able to live without.
People who value privacy will always be a minority. I just hope it will be enough to keep open alternatives alive.
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Yeah the iPhone has something similar. The Android version is really still quite awkward and not a natural feature of the UI at all, just scaling things down to small size. More of a hack rather than a real feature of the UI.
On Sailfish the UI is/was actually designed to work better one-handed, with the pull-down menus and gestures. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, and there are some areas that could do with improvements there (the app area) but it was definitely positive to see someone aiming for that from day 1.
I’ll be honest: I don’t think privacy features are themselves enough. There are multiple examples of that, and I’m not even that convinced that SF is that much better than iOS in that respect (Apple has made it one key theme for them). After all, Jolla is working closely with some Russian entities, which don’t exactly have a great reputation in that regard. Privacy is a good bonus, but interesting features, a good design and UI, some new ideas and of course basic app support is what bring people.
You’ll find people can give up some minor things, if the major bits are done really well and create a pleasurable experience.
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Its not only a matter of cool new spyware. We are also lacking productivity tools, banking apps (unless you are Russian) etc. Thats why i said we exclude a big amount of users who might value privacy and openness but above all they want to get the job done on the go. For example even our email app is a bit meh.
We are getting better for sure but it will be a long way.
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Well, I guess I may not be as sophisticated because email works quite well for me. Web browser is a completely different matter, though.
Also, as someone owning multiple bank accounts, I can’t remember a single instance when I missed not having a banking app
In Poland in many banks you have to use mobile bank app at least one time per month to not pay for account.
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@orangecat I mailed my bank on this topic but maybe you’re right and we should focus more on bringing banking aggregators to SFOS instead, and there are plenty of them ! On the security issues side I would say that banks tend to develop apps for old Android’s that are not even supported anymore so if they can see some financial gain in it it’s not an issue anymore (and from the replies I got when asking for porting an app, security was never the issue since people think open source=secure)
@ApB true Sailfish is useless for a huge amount of people but that’s almost normal since Jolla doesn’t aim consumers but companies…that’s why I keep saying we, sailors, need to focus more on bringing more apps to Sailfish, making the company more “famous” so it can lead to more users (hoping that before this last step Jolla has enough money to invest in a more stable OS).
@Setok I agree with you that privacy is definitely not the best argument to bring people/companies to SFOS, there are other privacy focused OS on Android and past companies that focused on that failed (BlackBerry, Mozilla Foundation). I also faced this issue with a friend when I told him Sailfish was amazing, he replied “it’s a Russian operating system so it’s spying on us” , I wonder if people say the same about Nginx 
. But indeed some very few people that know Sailfish OS, because of some news articles associate it with Russia.
@atlochowski is it possible thanks to the contract to tell the bank that because they did not release an app for sailfish they can’t tax/fine you ?
So to come back again to one of the main goals of this topic : How to influence companies to port apps for Sailfish. There are two future technologies/apps that will be released very soon that might impact Jolla’s user base even in it’s companies professional phone market :
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The IATA Travel Pass, is an app developed by the International Air Transport Association for global citizens to travel. If this is adopted by some airlines (and it’s already the case) it will become one of the most downloaded apps ever. Now if I work for Russtelecom and I need to travel to Singapore for example, with Singapore Airlines, the airline will request my travel pass, that is not available for my phone… There are many ways to contacting them and after this post I will call them.
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The Android SE Alliance, this isn’t an app for now but a technology that may be used in the future to create tamper-proof virtual ID cards/identification. Currently there are no phones supporting it yet, but the manufacturers of those secure chips are all European and counties like Estonia or Monaco announced wanting to create digital identities. On my opinion it will be important to check when phones will be released with this technology (which is supposed to be open-source) if Sailfish is compatible.
Are they getting kickbacks from Google or why would a bank treat customers like that?
I know a lot of people who are still using flip phones
Company needs aren’t exactly perpendicular to the needs of a user (excluding the spyware apps). Ie both companies and individuals need a quality browser, a kick ass email client, calendar support, communication apps, snappy cameras, etc etc.
BTW we have a travel pass app but no idea if it fits your needs.
(I don’t need it it was just an example), I have a covid-19 app for my country too but it’s not the “official IATA app” that will be required by the airlines.
And yes it’s true that the needs are not perpendicular but since Jolla target market is companies the chances of having X or Y technology for us is very thin. We can take for example the VoLTE compatibility, asked by american sailors. Since current clients don’t require VoLTE support, it’s development is far from being a priority.
Saying something is ‘useless’ is quite a strong term. I’d say for many people the basic requirement is: email, web, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, ringing, SMS, weather, alarm, calendar, camera, navigation & maps, possibly Twitter, possibly Snapchat. Even amongst those personally I don’t actively use 2–3, and the spouse would be the same. There are a couple extras that are quite essential for me personally but probably not so many others (Tesla app, VW ‘We Connect’ app, VW Maps+More app, Untappd, ParkMan, EV charging apps, maybe Uber). Probably most of my friends would be the same. Perhaps 20 essential apps.
How many of those are covered with native or Android apps at the moment (honest question)?
Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, ringing, SMS, weather, alarm, calendar, camera
Those are covered
navigation & maps, possibly Snapchat
Those aren’t
Twitter has an unofficial SFOS app
Tesla app, VW ‘We Connect’ app, VW Maps+More app, Untappd, ParkMan, EV charging apps
I don’t know for those
Uber
Not covered, but it’s a nice idea to mail Uber and say something like “I use my professional phone all the time and whenever I have to take a ride somewhere because you guys are not on Sailfish I have to use the cab app, can you come to Sailfish plz”
Yes, we should still contact banks, maybe one day that’ll have an impact. Another option is for Jolla to provide a better up-to-date browser, because mobile banking web apps are good enough for most operations (and banks tend to lower costs by having a single code base for android/ios/web).
For the aggregators, personally I am not a big fan and never used them, as it requires giving a 3rd party access to your bank account and your financial private data.
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I think navigation is covered by Waze on Android. At least that used to work for me. How about Uber and the others?
Note I don’t think everything needs to be native (though it’s of course better that way). That’s why we have Android backwards compatibility.
Backwards compatibility is maybe one of the only aspects that differentiate SFOS from other alt os, if we couldn’t install android apps the OS would be a failure no matter what. Amazon had it’s own OS and the fact that you could not install most of the apps you can find on the play store lead to a commercial failure.
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This is an interesting discussion and there is a lot of posts in it about the lack of apps, etc being a barrier to gaining greater market share. This was the same problem that affected Blackberry 10 - and that had a brilliant and reliable email client, a fully working web browser (at the time - its now way out of date and unusable for a lot of things), excellent security and aliendalvik android support (4.3 at the time but now similarly out of date). BB10 originally had native facebook, linkedin, whatsapp, etc but as those companies saw Blackberry’s market share decline they dropped support for BB10 and those apps disappeared. Similarly ‘business support’ app companies withdrew support for Onedrive, Dropbox, etc as did others. That was the beginning of the end and, by 2016, a mere three years after BB10 had been introduced it was effectively EOL with no further OS updates or releases - not even security patches.
So Sailfish has done well to last for over seven years with much less resources. But the basic problem remains - after seven years Sailfish is still not mature and capable enough as a core offering to attract a wider market share. There are still far too many unresolved key issues and bugs that remain years after originally being reported and far too long a time lag in keeping up with changes in technology (e.g. VoLTE).
Before we can no anything realistic in growing the client base Jolla needs to help us to help them. They need to fix all of the problems and functionality deficiencies with the core apps (email, browser, contacts, calendar, messages, phone, etc) and make it far easier for people to get Sailfish on their phones than the hugely complicated command-line process we have to go through at the moment. Once that’s done and there is an easily accessible and reliable basic product for people to access and build on then the game has changed. A decent web browser that supports site notifications (and that doesn’t give you a blank white screen for more complicated sites) can go a long way to make up for a lack of apps. For example, Facebook, Instagram, etc and a lot of banking sites work perfectly adequately on a decent mobile web browser. And for those others, android support can make up the gap if the user wants. When all his is sorted then community development and support of, possibly paid for, apps which can reach a wider audience can happen alongside.
But the current status of new releases with lots of regression bugs, core functionality issues remaining unfixed for years, flaky core apps, the tortuous command line process of getting Sailfish on a phone in the first place, the slow pace in keeping Sailfish up with modern protocols, APIs and technologies, and an official app store where probably only half the apps even work any more (someone, I think, called it a cemetery) realistically means that Sailfish, for most, will remain a hobby OS for the technically savvy for the foreseeable future.
Now please don’t think I am anti-Sailfish - I’m not - I’ve been using it for the last 5 years on my second phone. The problem is, that until the above is fixed, I cannot rely on Sailfish for my only phone. That’s just being realistic. If Jolla wants to continue down that path because they have other fish to fry that best safeguards their existence and future, then fine. That is something that hobby sailors will just have to accept but, returning to my original point, such a strategy will not help us to help them.
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