Jolla's First Phone Goes On Sale 307
jones_supa writes "Jolla, the mobile phone company formed by ex-Nokia employees, has officially launched its first phone. It will be initially available in Finland, paired with the local telecom operator DNA. After that, it will be made available in 135 other countries. The Jolla handset runs the Sailfish OS, which is itself based on the former MeeGo platform developed by Nokia and Intel several years ago to produce Linux-based smartphone software. Sailfish can run Android apps and it also integrates Nokia's Here mapping and positioning technology. Looking at the hardware, the device sports a 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor, 1GB memory and 16GB of flash storage, plus a 4.5in 960x540 IPS touchscreen with Gorilla 2 Glass. It has the usual mobile network support, including GSM/3G/4G, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth, 8MP autofocus rear camera and 2MP front camera. SIM-free pricing is expected to be €399."
Paired with.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Paired with here means that the phones are sold by the telecom operator in their stores(first the pre-orders are fullfilled), but there are no requirements for contracts and no sim-locking.
The online shop is Jollas own. I just paid for my pre-order phone through their website.
Re:How about porting it... (Score:5, Insightful)
First things first. Let them get themselves established, away from the history of Nokia's self-dealing CEO, and show that the direction the company was going before he sabotaged it is a viable business model. Then maybe they can consider whether they can afford to attempt to rescue Nokia's current customers.
Re:Why such low specs (Score:2, Insightful)
The crazy thing is, even though you are right that these are low specs by modern standards, these are still basically laptop-level specs. Hell, it would beat a 2006 MacBook *Pro*:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook_pro_1.67.html [everymac.com]
The convergence between phones and computers is nigh. The Ubuntu Edge concept was ahead of its time, but soon enough smartphones will have enough computing power to fill 95% of people's needs. When that happens, who would want to buy a huge, noisy desktop box rather than just plug a screen+keyboard into the phone that you carry with you all the time anyway?
Same thing for laptops. How long will it take before the majority of "laptops" are actually empty shells into which you can just plug your phone?
Re:Why such low specs (Score:5, Insightful)
It would not come close to a 2006 macbook pro.
ARM cpus are not that performant. Ghz is not something you can compare that way.
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's more GNU/Linux in this thing than most if not all Android computers.
Damn, no hardware keyboard! (Score:1, Insightful)
Guess that means I'll just have to keep limping along with my N900 until a decent replacent comes along.
Re:The video... (Score:5, Insightful)
i doubt you'd question this, if you had owned N900 or N9
Re:Paired with.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So how do they make money if they don't sim lock?
This is how you know the providers have won, when consumers wonder why they're NOT being treated like dirt.
Re:Hmm I might get one (Score:3, Insightful)
No. There will be no hardware keyboard "other half." The back of the phone has a camera right in the fucking middle of it. There's no way for a hardware keyboard to fit without doing some shitty folding-butterfly effect to go around the camera.
Jolla intended for this phone to not have hardware keyboards. They want it to be a proprietary, NFC-enabled "flash drive" that they can patent and team up with artists for exclusive albums and movies. It is only intended to be a new type of media storage, but slow because it uses NFC. There *may* be an FM-transmitter "other half" down the line as well as one with a kickstand. Congratulations, it's a phone cover that changes the theme's colors to match.
There was a Kickstarter campaign a few weeks ago to build a hardware keyboard for the other half, and it was abandoned because of the camera.
Re:Why such low specs (Score:5, Insightful)
The specs are "low" because it's what you can get to manufacture and sell for $400 when your order is not in the millions of units. It's already amazing they managed to sell it at less than a $1000 each for such a small order.
Re:The video... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because the moment we decide "we don't need any more OSes" is the moment we decide that "innovation" is done and nothing new is to be had unless it comes from Google, Microsoft, or Apple. And that's a bad, bad state to be in.
Re:Why such low specs (Score:5, Insightful)
The specs are actually quite close to the iPhone 5C (at half the price), and are low only if you compare them to Android phones specs, which are so huge because of two things: 1. Android is a resource hog, 2. due to Google's tight grip over Android, the only way OEMS can differentiate is through specs.
The Jolla folk are actively trying to fight the second point, and the first point is not applicable to them since they use a "standard" Gnu/Linux stack (Systemd, Wayland, dbus, Qt, zypper).
Re:Paired with.... (Score:2, Insightful)
By charging a price that covers their cost; what's so mysterious?
Mysterious? You can't think of anything mysterious? Try this: The average person can't work out that
24 * 100 > 1000
Add that to the fact that the average person pays for roaming rather than just redirecting their phone and buying a local SIM card where they go (that phone you pay an extra 1400 for over two years doesn't work abroad!!). Once you start realising this is mysterious you will be able to find no end of mystery in the world.
In the end, the real mystery is: what will be your next phone bill.
Re:Paired with.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't android, that's the whole point.
Re:Why such low specs (Score:5, Insightful)
many, or most apps on the google store break, even if you try to simply copy them over, as the platform services are not open source.
That's probably the most telling part of the plan, the proprietary Google Play Services gives the opportunity to have 'Google Play Services' applications rather than just 'Android' applications and the more they advance the features of that over the features of Android the more appealing it is to developers and the less appealing non-Google Android devices will be to end users.
Re:xterm? root? (Score:5, Insightful)
As the owner of two Nokia N900s, HTC Desire (Nexus One), HTC Sensation, and LG Nexus 4, as well as a former owner of a Nokia N9, I can say the hardware keyboard on the N900 is highly overrated. Yes, when the N900 came out touchscreen keyboards were garbage, and the small screen and low resolution of the HTC Desire made typing on it an adventure. Same went for the Nokia N9 by the way, I loved the swype interface, hated the lack of keyboard. Fast forward to the HTC Sensation and LG Nexus 4, and I can type MUCH faster than I ever could on the N900.
I can think of a couple of reasons a hardware keyboard may be useful, such as typing in a terminal where sharing half the screen between the keyboard and the command line output IS a pain. And also using the phone in cold weather with gloves is much easier with a hardware keyboard.
But writing off the ONLY new phone running a real Linux distribution, with real native apps, open ecosystem from a company that is not interested in stealing your private data just because it lacks a keyboard just seems like trolling to me.
I personally will buy one as soon as it becomes available in Canada without being on pre-order.