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Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

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Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#101

Post by JepZ »

dingo_bat wrote: post #53

Instead of an alternative OS, we need a company that will make good hardware (comparable to Samsung) and not lock down their android system and provide open source drivers. That will satisfy most tinkerers, since they can modify anything they want and even load their own images since the drivers are open source. Android as an OS is good enough. Just that every single manufacturer has opted to lock it down.

Completely agree.

Recently I have been in contact with the topic of eMMC deaths [1] in Samsung S3 phones and I have to say I am very pissed of by the arrogance of large corporations like Samsung (I have no evidence, but I am confident that Samsung is not the only player doing shit out there):

They sell you a device with a firmware which will probably kill your memory chip within weeks. To fix it, they patch their firmware to let the memory chip freeze as soon as the firmware would kill it. So instead of the firmware killing the integrity of the memory, they risk the integrity of the filesystem and let the user experience freezes and reboots for the rest of the phones life (until the filesystem can't recover).

To sum it up:

- they sell you a fast breaking device

- they patch it to make the phones deaths less likely, but without fixing the real issue

and that all within software.

Sounds to me as if someone wants to make sure the market will not be saturated. I am no lawyer but to me this sounds illegal, but as it is kinda hard to find out that shit (the S3 was over 5 years old when the linked talk was given), it is very unlikely anybody will engage in a lawsuit.

Currently, I am under the impression that the only solution to that kind of a problem would be, to force all manufacturers to open source all their software which is required to use their devices (firmware, drivers, etc. license doesn't even matter). It would be one hell of a change for device manufacturers, but as we can see, otherwise we have no idea what kind of hidden 'features' the devices we buy (our devices?) have.

[1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8784-emmc_hacking_or_how_i_fixed...

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#102

Post by dexen »

zepearl wrote: post #2

I'm using Sailfish OS on an Xperia X since when it became available. My main reason to migrate from Android was "battery life" which was confirmed (battery now lasts ~5 days instead of the usual 2-3), but the OS has a lot of small and bigger bugs (e.g. carrier selection, 2G/3G/4G priority, stuck data comm for Android apps) and missing features (notoriously: tethering/wlan access point, bluetooth) that do not currentl…

A happy Xperia X + Sailfish OS user here (v 2.1.4.14). I believe the points below apply well before 2.1.4. My only gripe is old browser engine; for now I end up opening some apps via Android Firefox (59), with decent performance.

>tethering USB tethering requires manual installation of a Sailfish package via CLI >wlanaccess point works out of the box >bluetooth works out of the box: A2DP, file & contact transfer, perhaps more I haven't tested yet. Works just fine old Nokia headphones, and with Roidmi via the Android app.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#103

Post by gehsty »

I think we've passed the point where there will be a 3rd smartphone operating system. You need $$$ in order to build develop and maintain, serious hardware partnerships in order to get your OS onto phones people actually want to buy, and serious serious negotiating power or leverage in order to get your OS + phone onto the carriers people use.

In all honesty I think it is irresponsible of these companies to take huge kickstarter payouts to develop hardware or operating systems that are doomed before they have begun.

I think that Google or Samsung cannot make a good android tablet shows how hard this is.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#104

Post by catwell »

I have never really liked any of the major players. I used to run WebOS on a Pre3 for a long time. Now I have a Jolla C, but it isn't my main phone because of its poor battery life, so I also use an Android phone.

The saddest thing here is those alternative OSs innovate a lot. WebOS in particular was years ahead of both iOS and Android in terms of UX (after all they had Matías Duarte on board... [1]). Sailfish is more interesting technically, in that it was probably the fastest OS to do "zero to non-trivial native mobile app" on thanks to its development tools (the Qt environment, with QML, a standard build VM...).

I backed the tablet as well, but I don't hold a grudge. What they are trying to do is incredibly hard, failures have to be expected.

If you want to meet the developers from Jolla, I think they have a BoF room at FOSDEM every year. I sat in to listen for a while in 2017, it was pretty interesting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matías_Duarte

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#105

Post by claudius »

petecox wrote: post #56
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having tried it twice, the gestures are completely alien to a new user. When you buy a Jolla device, you are taken through a tutorial. The gestures aren’t that difficult to get used to. To me personally, they seem a lot more straightforward and intuitive than my wife’s Android phone. Incidentally, this winter I traveled in a couple of developing countries and bought local SIM cards from an office of the main teleco…

There's a, not insurmountable, learning curve for both Sailfish and Ubuntu Touch. Quirky isn't necessarily better if you're trying to woo users who just want a familiar experience without learning new paradigms. The lack of a back button in Firefox OS annoyed me! Instead of pressing a section at the bottom right of the screen with one's thumb, one had to 'click' on a web toolbar button all the way near the top left o…

I got a LineageOS/OnePlus 3T a couple months while having a Jolla before and I still miss the possibility to go from a full-screen app to a closed app. It appears the only option is to go the the drawer/recent app things and then swipe right there whereas before I could simply swipe from the top and immediately close it.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#106

Post by realusername »

simonh wrote: post #95
realusername wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android is Open Sourced Only partially, the ASOP does not run on anything because of the vast amount of blobs and basic drivers missing and people are maintaining open-source reimplementation of the gapps to make even the most basic apps working.

True of course, but: 1) Any other open source OS would have exactly the same problems. And 2) They wouldn’t be any easier for them to solve, so why not concentrate efforts an solving it on AOSP which already has an ecosystem? Yours is an argument why all struggling OSS mobile OSes are struggling, not particularly why AOSP has problems. Surely if even AOSP is struggling to solve these issues, what chance do the others…

> Any other open source OS would have exactly the same problems

Not to the same degree, Linux still has some blobs to run on modern computers but nowhere near as much as Android. Android needs blobs for absolutely anything. And you don't need an equivalent of the Gapps on Linux, it would be like something as common as systemd would be proprietary.

> Yours is an argument why all struggling OSS mobile OSes are struggling, not particularly why AOSP has problems. Surely if even AOSP is struggling to solve these issues, what chance do the others have?

Google does not care any more about open-source on Android, the current open-source bits are just there because of legacy history, they close all the open-source parts step by step. The Gapps used to be open-source at the beginning. AOSP isn't struggling, it's just there's no open-source movement.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#107

Post by BubuIIC »

realusername wrote: post #87
rqs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about another angle: Android is Open Sourced and much powerful than SailfishOS. It's much easier for their target audiences to targeting Android than their OS.

> Android is Open Sourced Only partially, the ASOP does not run on anything because of the vast amount of blobs and basic drivers missing and people are maintaining open-source reimplementation of the gapps to make even the most basic apps working.

https://f-droid.org/ has a catalouge of ~1500 apps which have absolutely no dependencies on the proprietary google play services.

Those few proprietary apps for which there are no free alternatives (spotify, duolingo) seemed to work fine without the play services.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#109

Post by diminish »

catwell wrote: post #104

I have never really liked any of the major players. I used to run WebOS on a Pre3 for a long time. Now I have a Jolla C, but it isn't my main phone because of its poor battery life, so I also use an Android phone. The saddest thing here is those alternative OSs innovate a lot. WebOS in particular was years ahead of both iOS and Android in terms of UX (after all they had Matías Duarte on board... [1]). Sailfish is mor…

Would you say that latest WebOS has still features which are years ahead of for both current IOS/Android. I mean are there features which aren't implemented in some form in by those two mobile OSes?

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#110

Post by catwell »

diminish wrote: post #109
catwell wrote: post #104

I have never really liked any of the major players. I used to run WebOS on a Pre3 for a long time. Now I have a Jolla C, but it isn't my main phone because of its poor battery life, so I also use an Android phone. The saddest thing here is those alternative OSs innovate a lot. WebOS in particular was years ahead of both iOS and Android in terms of UX (after all they had Matías Duarte on board... [1]). Sailfish is mor…

Would you say that latest WebOS has still features which are years ahead of for both current IOS/Android. I mean are there features which aren't implemented in some form in by those two mobile OSes?

I don't use WebOS anymore so I don't know its current state, but I doubt it because it's not the same team working on it anymore.

Back in the early '10s however it had things like usable widgets on the home screen, application cards, gestures instead of buttons... which all landed in the two major OSs years later.

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