This is the third phone on the HN main page. I’m happy to see this flurry of work at real competition in the market, but I hope the companies can survive and respond to CSVEs.
Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
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Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#52What does full-stack mean here? Phone is fully produced in Europe? Software and online storage fully provided by European company? edit: I want this phone, I have reserved a slot in the coming batch. Just posing as an average Joe here, someone who does not host their own storage, calendar, contacts, phone tracking, remote wipe, the "free" features Google and Apple are known for on their phones.
Usually 'full stack' just means software. Here it means a true Linux phone (Sailfish OS) plus Android compatibility with sandboxing. The C2 model is made in Turkey from Asian parts. The new phone is manufactured in Asia, but the final assembly, QA, and software flashing are done in Finland. This isn't for people with a consumer mindset. It’s for people who want a Linux computer in their pocket, more privacy, and stil…
But even the full software stack isn't European as it runs on a Mediatek platform (ie. all the cellular stack and platform software is from Mediatek, which is from Taiwan). It's the apps software stack on top of the Linux kernel that is potentially "European".
There are no longer any cellular chipset vendors based in Europe, afaik, so there's really no alternative. It's also hard to see how they will ever again be one.
Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're probably responding because of the Jolla tablet :) To be fair, the Jolla tablet was in 2015, more than 10 years ago. Most probably, many of the people working at Jolla are not the same as then. Also, if you read carefully all the announcements and communication from Jolla, you can easily see they have learned from that crowdfunding affair. This is not the same offer, not in a long mile.
That and the russian ties, the partially closed source OS, the locked bootloader, the $50 device reset fee, the cheap underpowered chinese chipset. The company was sold more than once between investment firms. Yet it presents itself like a happy independent open source collective.
The firm with partly russian ownership went bankrupt a couple of years ago. The russian fork of the software lives on as AuroraOS in their local market but the current Jolla has no ties to russia.
Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#54I heard and read negative things about them, do they actually ship?
Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#55This looks interesting. https://e.foundation/e-os/
Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#56That definitely seems to be the better alternative amongst all others. While I appreciate all the energy put into graphene or lineage it appears to me like way too much energy for Half baked solutions. Depending on google good will in the future too. I can understand them as hack, not that much as industrial proposals.
Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#57This project has been going for years. Good to see it lives on. IMO there's a paradox with these privacy-focused mobile solutions. Just as with the expensive flagship corporate devices, the massive price tags suggest an assumption that we are doing all our computing on mobile. That's now the case for most normies. But for anyone who really cares about their privacy (not to mention sanity), there's a better solution a…
'Approve this transaction in your smartphone app'. That is the killer.
Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#58The most important question missing from the FAQ is whether bank apps, government ID apps, etc. will work with this phone.
Everything hinges on app support. Smartphone apps have unfortunately become a hard requirement for basic day-to-day activities. Most companies offer them only for iOS and Android. If your smartphone can't run the vast majority of apps, it is basically dead on arrival. Nobody is going to buy it when they need to carry another phone anyways. The only way around this is either emulation (which Google is trying very hard…
They don’t need to specifically support “niche platforms,” which will never happen anyway. They just need to support the one, universal platform every device (be it phone, laptop or desktop) can always access, the web.
Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#59Will it have USB C with DisplayPort alt mode?
I think they're working on it, but it isn't sure yet.
Re: Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
#60What does full-stack mean here? Phone is fully produced in Europe? Software and online storage fully provided by European company? edit: I want this phone, I have reserved a slot in the coming batch. Just posing as an average Joe here, someone who does not host their own storage, calendar, contacts, phone tracking, remote wipe, the "free" features Google and Apple are known for on their phones.
Usually 'full stack' just means software. Here it means a true Linux phone (Sailfish OS) plus Android compatibility with sandboxing. The C2 model is made in Turkey from Asian parts. The new phone is manufactured in Asia, but the final assembly, QA, and software flashing are done in Finland. This isn't for people with a consumer mindset. It’s for people who want a Linux computer in their pocket, more privacy, and stil…
There are phones that can run "true Linux" out there, and there even are ports of Sailfish OS for some of them, but Jolla phones were never part of those and rely on Android drivers instead.