[Strategies] Bringing more sailors to SFOS

General
#81

It all comes down to USP (unique selling point). I don’t think security/privacy is enough of one, as I’m not sure that’s really a weak point in some of the other options. That’s why earlier here I started listed things that are unique to Sailfish that people would find cool. Are there more things Jolla could do that would add to extra coolness? How and who do you position Jolla to?

On a personal level, if the basics work (and I don’t know if they do since I haven’t actively used SF in a while), enough of a USP is great design and UX. I find Android, like most things Google does, to be fundamentally awkward and nasty to use, despite trying many times. It’s just not in Google’s blood, not something they really push with.

I could see myself positioning SF as a kind of cool, design-oriented platform for those with taste. Simple, clever, yet powerful solutions (the calculator embodies that). Obviously the basics still have to work then.

#82

Navigation/Maps = Puremaps
And for the life of me i am sure i saw an untappd unofficial client somewhere but cant remember the name or find it.

#83

For a regular user the solution has to be something from the official store, or preinstalled. But Android is also OK, and there was support for Here and Waze there. So maybe that is something. And Jolla Maps was somewhat usable for local map searching, as I recall.

#84

If you are refering to PureMaps the apis needed were added in the last release i think. What the dev will do and if he wants to bring it to the official store i don’t know. I hope he does.

#85

I for my part don’t want android apps anywhere near my handset.

If it wasn’t for the obvious aesthetic and functional advantages of SFOS, I’d got with kde plasma and co. But at the moment, any android-less option is good.

To prove my intent, I’ve taken on a bunch of app maintenance. We can do what we can do, but giving you anroid apps is not a prio.

1 Like
#86

Agreed, USP is the key…but Sailfish doesn’t really have one. Security, yes, but IOS and Android have this these days (I take the point about ‘spyware’ but the vast majority of mobile phone users accept this as the price of having a modern mobile with usable apps, etc). Nice UI, yes, but having a nice UI without the apps is like having a beautiful metal tool box with lots of compartments, shiny paint, etc - … but no tools inside to use. Open source, yes, but there are other phone OS’s that are open source as well. As to positioning Jolla have clearly positioned Sailfish as a business to business offering to mainly one large Russian telco, not as a consumer OS - and they’re probably right to do so at this stage. No ‘everyday’ consumer would be bothered to obtain sailfish, buying one of a few available phones to run it, unlock the bootloader of that phone, flash Sailfish using arcane non-user-friendly commands, and then use it as their only phone without accepting severe limitations. They’re just going to buy an iPhone or Android phone off Amazon or whatever…

#87

SFOS is:

  1. Much nicer to look at than any Mobile os. Including apple.
  2. Has global guidelines that even devs like me (opinionated) will subordinate themselves to to keep the look/feel/usablility
  3. Unlike other entities (ubuntu touch, I’m talking about you) has a company behind it that still cares.

What you guys can do is participate in finding bugs and animating devs to pick up projects that are falling through the cracks. There are some people out here willing to take on the work.

6 Likes
#88

Apps are needed, no doubt about it. Even a Russian telco case that is there for political reasons is not a viable long-term solution for business. My point was really that the number of apps to satisfy basic use is actually not that great (we analysed this with users back when we were building our own OS). iOS actually does a pretty good job of dealing with spyware and the like. You can keep it really tight and closed if you want.

However you do need something to spark and find interest. Great design and UX is not an awful way. As mentioned, it would be enough to get me from Android over (iOS’s is OK, but the phones are less interesting than in the Android world). @poetaster seems to be agreeing.

I think there’s a lot Jolla could do to narrow down on their USP, but that’s maybe a separate topic. What are other things you love about SF and would show off?

#89

I too like the UI and think it is much better than the mainstream alternatives. I used to love my Nokia N9 and loved the ‘home’ screen with its weather, rss news feed, calendar items, etc. That was my go-to ‘here’s your day Steve’ inbox. I sorely missed that when Nokia abandoned Meego and went over to their (short lived) Windows OS on the Lumia range. Was really pleased when Sailfish picked this up and I got my ‘here’s your day Steve’ inbox back with all of the notifications there as well (albeit I would like an RSS news feed on it - I have to make do with BBC Breaking News on the twitter feed at the moment). The IOS and Android widget solutions for this screen are nowhere near as good and much less usable.

Its a great feature, but sadly not enough as a ‘major decider’ in which OS or phone to buy for an ‘only phone’.

2 Likes
#90

Interesting news item in The Times Newspaper today (30th March 2021) about Android and IOS ‘calling home’ to send data back to Apple and Google. Note the bit about then knowing your phone’s location, and those of others around you, even if you have disabled location services!

Phone Data Article - The Times newspaper 30-03-2021

2 Likes
#91

Ditto. I loved my N9. Everything else has paled (well SFOS get’s pretty close :wink:

1 Like
#92

It would be nice to have a GUI for it, but it’s not that complicated. You have to set up a couple of things the first time (some of which are unavoidable, such as having to enable developer mode, OEM unlocking and USB debugging, and getting the unlock key from Sony), but installing it is as simple as entering the command to unlock the bootloader, and running flash.sh.

You could probably make a tool that downloads all of the required files and retrieves the unlock key from Sony for you, but you’ll always have to jump through a couple of initial hoops first.

Otherwise, what do you suggest?

#93

I can just see myself explaining all this to my 25 year old daughter … “Ok, so you have to buy a specific Sony phone, then you need to unlock the bootloader, so you’ll need the IMEI number; then use the Emma tool on a separate computer to get the right v17 binaries … then you need to download the right USB drivers … then you need to connect the phone in fast boot mode having downloaded the Linux or Windows fastboot scripts - but make sure its USB 2 and not USB 3 (maybe need to force this in the PC’s BIOS) then you need to download the SF image and flash the phone …”

I’d be about 10% the way through this before realising that I was talking to myself and she’d left the room about 10 minutes ago!

Consumers want to buy a phone … that just works. They will not be bothered to do all of the above. There is a reason Amazon is so popular for buying things … its easy, its quick, its reliable and it works. You cannot expect everyday mobile phone consumer users to go through all the above - they just won’t … ever.

If Sailfish is ever to be a viable consumer proposition then it needs to come pre-installed on a phone. How to do this? Maybe make a deal with Sony as part of their open partner programme or whatever. The Xperia range, in my view, are good mid range phones. Sony should add £50 to the normal sale price or whatever and pre-image phones in the Xperia range with Sailfish and a locked bootloader (for security) to cover the cost of the imaging work. I’d be happy to pay to avoid all of the above effort. I’m sure there are other solutions as well though…

10 Likes
#94

It already happens, all the time even, 99% of use cases come from a device with preinstalled aurora, now the question is how does that impact sfos development and growth and popularity

#95

There is a russian Office, that may work locally or is just an interface to 365 is unknown as it’s only been seen in yt videos and a few screens, might be 365-russian-deployed

1 Like
#96

Surely you don’t think Jolla wants people to have to jump through hoops to use the OS they’ve been working on for a decade? Of course having devices with Sailfish preinstalled would be great, but it’s not like they haven’t tried:

  • Jolla 1 (success)
  • Jolla Tablet (screwed over by the hardware manufacturer)
  • Jolla C (not commercially released)
  • Intex Aqua Fish (flop)
  • Accione Jala (never actually released)
  • collaboration with telecom companies in Africa (no results)

Building their own hardware in addition to the software turned out to be unsustainable, the Intex partnership flopped, the Accione partnership flopped, the African partnership(s) flopped. Only the Russian partnership has produced results, but you can’t buy the devices with Aurora OS commercially. If you can’t buy an Xperia with Sailfish preinstalled (officially), I’m sure it’s not for want of trying.

1 Like
#97

there is faifphone, and collaboration with them can easily resolve all these hw issues
in terms of sw, Qt upgrade is necessary, and probably organise the community to improve existing apps, not easy task.

#98

@Steve_Everett your message is very interesting, indeed BlackBerry had official apps in it’s systems but just like BB admitted, the problem is that they tried too long to keep with the physical keyboard. There is this very famous saying from (I think) the BB CEO at the time saying that “touch screens wont work for professionals” or something like that, in a way, yes, the lack of technology slows the adoption of other OSes (for BB the touch screen, for SFOS the reasons that were mentioned here)

But talking about SFOS bugs or Jolla strategies isn’t the point of this topic. Yes again, I agree with you and previous messages, there are important bugs in Sailfish, yes Jolla can do this and that but also yes there are plenty of bug reports and topics about it. We could wait for Jolla to fix all the bugs but this will take forever and only then, we would start trying to bring companies to port their apps on Sailfish.

Or, we keep making bug reports, talking (in the proper topics/IRC) about what Jolla could or shouldn’t do but also, keep finding a way to convince companies to port their apps to Sailfish.

And I find the example of your daughter a perfect one, right now and unless Kim Kardashian talks about it, no non tech savvy user will come to Sailfish. It has too many steps for an user so adopt Sailfish. And as @nthn said, Jolla is not remotely close to release a new hardware (yes they can also make a partnership with Fairphone but that’s not the point).
The point is : if it’s too costly to bring users/consumers here, we can still bring companies (and more precisely their developers). And this is what I wanted to talk about with you all on this topic : bringing companies (next time I’ll be more careful about the title).

I know that you are going to say “yes but the Qt version is too old” or “the browser suchs”, true, but no company cares about that. I’ve worked/am working for (big) companies that used python 2.6, that’s way older than our version of Qt. If a company wants to port it’s app to Sailfish the age of the technology is the clearly not in their mind. Only the cost/profit ratio is.

The other thing some might say is “okay but we have no massive user base” and I agree with you. And this is why the word “strategy” is between brackets in the title. Because I wanted to exchange with you all about how can we make companies either think/believe SF has many users OR other reasons for them to come, such as better publicity “look i ported my app to a data respectful OS” or (and this works perfectly in Europe right now) “look I ported my app to a sovereign European OS”.

And there is also the argument of “monetizing” which also has a very vast number of topics and comments about it. I’ve being aiming very big companies (banks) and public administrations (transportation) for now so monetizing the app is clearly not something they care about.

@duleman in the very beginning of this topic suggested to create a Telegram group which may be a better way to structure ourselfs about contacted companies, their answers and how to improve our approach. If you share this idea like this comment and if it motivated enough people I will create it (no need to reply to this comment just for that).

3 Likes
#99

OK, OK. Let me describe my problems with SFOS better.

The user interface and security (I’m satisfied with that) are not in my focus now and if someone wants 100% Android compatibility, they have to buy an Android phone. I don’t expect to run Apple apps on a Windows Phone. I only see my native basic functions.

My main applications are: Phone, SMS, Email, Calendar (Cal- / CardDav), Browser, Messenger (xmpp), Navigation. These are all delivered components of SFOS.

Phone = OK
SMS = OK
Email = (partially OK) but inconvenient, handling of attachments poor, sometimes not usable for months after updates
Calendar = (partially OK), but confusing, inconvenient, Cal- / CardDav sometimes not usable for months after updates
Browser = not OK
Support xmpp = not OK, poorly implemented, rudimentary, no MUC, no omemo
Navigation = Pure Maps (I love it), GPS lock with XA2 ~ 10-20 minutes, not OK

My personal summary:

Phone = native
SMS = native
Email = Android app
Calendar = Android app
Browser = Android app
Messenger = Android app
Navigation = native, but spontaneously unusable

The native parts of SFOS have clear flaws and I have to use alternative Android apps. Does it have to be like that? Sure, I’m not a representative, but this is about my requirements.

4 Likes
#100

I wonder how may people would jump to an alternative to iOS or Android if this does not come at too high a price.

Many replies in this thread address the burden of switching to SFOS. If this burden was low enough, those being curious and willing to discover new stuff might try SFOS as an alternative. Of course, blackberry comes to my mind as well but Blackberry was not “new” even though BB10 was totally new. Maybe Nokia had a similar problem with Meamo/Meego. So neither Blackberry nor Nokia could create the appeal of a challenger that is worthwhile to beat the big old boys.

The original idea of Jolla to simply provide an “alternative” may still be attractive to many - if the price isn’t too high.

I am using SFOS for years now as my primary phone. I also have an iPhone (from my office) that I charge every 3 months and that make me desperate whenever I try do do something productive with it. From my perspective the email client is even worse than that of SFOS and managing files is simply impossible. Android give you a better choice of apps but both, Android and iOS lack with respect to the user interface - from my perspective, because I am used to SFOS and feel a burden when using iOS or Android. Therefore I understand that for someone used to Android or iOS switching to SFOS is a burden you only would accept if there is something more attractive as a reward - be it just being “different” or “special” (or why do people care so much about individualizing the phones?).

BTW. I am happy that SFOS provides Android support although I hardly need it. But some native support for producing/amending odt/odp/ods/odg or docx/pptx … documents would be great.

1 Like