The ui looks terrible. Basically android, with left and right swipe widgets, and this is somehow revolutionary. Yawn
Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
31–40 of 54 posts
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#32Even if someone considers this a 'better' UI than iOS or Android (I personally don't), there's no point in switching because as soon as you do, that $200+ you've spent over the last 4 years on apps is gone forever and you'll only get less quality software as their replacement (if they exist). Apple and Android don't just shoot for a 'sexy' look, they create thousands of docs and demos from their SDK for the developers who then create hundreds of thousands of tutorials to help other developers learn quicker. They then spend millions of dollars and millions of hours creating the next big thing. The successes of iOS and Android are not awarded to a design firm, they are given to us.. the developer ecosystem and for that reason, this will never be a real alternative... at least not for a long time.
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#33No. There's a lot of options on the mobile space already (iOS, Android and WM8) - which, IMHO is enough (not to mention BB, FirefoxOS, WebOS, Maemo/Symbian/Whatever-Nokia)...
I don't think the prize for the 3rd place has been given out yet. Possible contenders are BlackBerry, Bada, and WP. Symbian still sells ok-ish, but is clearly a dead end. And then there are some new players including Tizen, Sailfish, and Firefox OS. Personally, I'd like to see a properly open alternative do well. Firefox OS would be the best for the web, and Sailfish for Linux in general.
> Firefox OS would be the best for the web, and Sailfish for Linux in general.
Agree to this... users do not care about Linux and often has a negative feel among the masses in China; the try to be Windows when you can get the real stuff for 'free'. They care more about access to service and being able to do the same as their friends/colleagues, play games, access to 微信 (weixin, wechat), 微博 (weibo), etc. For this the compatibility layer might come in handy, since without it is hard to find the users.
Note: Blackberry and Bada are not really contenders in China. WP maybe, but purely due to the looks of the phone (eg Lumia), but was faced with no store access in China for a long time.
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#34No way. The UI is a gimmick. Watch the video. Seeing him use it does not lead me to believe this will make my life better at all. There are far too many intricate gestures and complex interactions. This UI does not solve any problems. The interactive tiles that are essentially miniature versions of the full app are just noisy. Part of the beauty of this new mobile experience that recent smartphones have cultivated is…
I haven't used a Sailfish device so I can't say how useful it is or is not. But you are dead wrong about there not being use cases to having information on your homescreen. I'm currently using a WP8 device and "pinning" is very useful there.
Here's an example I used today. I ordered tickets to a movie on Fandango and then pinned the receipt to my homescreen so that when I went I got to the theater I could easily bring up the QR code and print out my tickets.
I also use pinning when I'm traveling and have restaurants, attractions, etc. that I want to check out pinned to the start screen. It's immensely valuable.
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#35No way. The UI is a gimmick. Watch the video. Seeing him use it does not lead me to believe this will make my life better at all. There are far too many intricate gestures and complex interactions. This UI does not solve any problems. The interactive tiles that are essentially miniature versions of the full app are just noisy. Part of the beauty of this new mobile experience that recent smartphones have cultivated is…
As an emacs user, I don't think modal is the one true way. Nothing in emacs is modal (though focus will switch on its own when required, you can move back to where you were if needed).
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#36No way. The UI is a gimmick. Watch the video. Seeing him use it does not lead me to believe this will make my life better at all. There are far too many intricate gestures and complex interactions. This UI does not solve any problems. The interactive tiles that are essentially miniature versions of the full app are just noisy. Part of the beauty of this new mobile experience that recent smartphones have cultivated is…
"Why is everyone so fucking concerned with multitasking?" Some of us can do more than one thing at a time, some things I do require it. Don't be so myopic.
Actually, current scientific evidence says otherwise.
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#37No way. The UI is a gimmick. Watch the video. Seeing him use it does not lead me to believe this will make my life better at all. There are far too many intricate gestures and complex interactions. This UI does not solve any problems. The interactive tiles that are essentially miniature versions of the full app are just noisy. Part of the beauty of this new mobile experience that recent smartphones have cultivated is…
I haven't used a Sailfish device so I can't say how useful it is or is not. But you are dead wrong about there not being use cases to having information on your homescreen. I'm currently using a WP8 device and "pinning" is very useful there. Here's an example I used today. I ordered tickets to a movie on Fandango and then pinned the receipt to my homescreen so that when I went I got to the theater I could easily brin…
I don't doubt you. In fact, I agree with you in the usefulness of having a dynamic home screen. That being said ... I disagree that each of those little things should be interactive to the level that they are on Sailfish. Not only that, but it appears to be one of their main selling points. I'm not sold.
For the record, I like Windows Phone and prefer it to Android.
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#38No way. The UI is a gimmick. Watch the video. Seeing him use it does not lead me to believe this will make my life better at all. There are far too many intricate gestures and complex interactions. This UI does not solve any problems. The interactive tiles that are essentially miniature versions of the full app are just noisy. Part of the beauty of this new mobile experience that recent smartphones have cultivated is…
Actually I'd like it if I could respond to an incoming message over whatever app is running right now, without switching away. This would be useful for videos, games without a proper pause state saving, almost any application really. There's also the problem that comes up every other week for me: the phone number I want to call is in a picture / not selectable / selecting is completely broken due to some onmouseover…
If you are on Android, try Hovernote to address the unselectable phone number case. Type the number into the hovering note, then copy/paste from the note.
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#39Application of Betteridge’s law of headlines says no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines
It's also not the title of the article (“Here comes the first real alternative to iPhone and Android”), but the premise of the article invites a negative response nonetheless.
1. They have no production as of yet. 2. They have no carrier partners as of yet. 3. They have a retail partner who will sell the phones—if the carriers approve them.
The claim is that the retail partners control the mobile relationship with the carriers in China, but that would greatly surprise me. It's not impossible, but colour me skeptical.
It's also my understanding that Europeans don't necessarily get subsidized phones, either—but they still (nominally) control which phones are allowed on their networks.
It gets worse later in the article where it suggests that the carriers and handset manufacturers are going to have even more freedom to modify the base OS than Android manufacturers do. This alone guarantees that Sailfish will not be a viable platform—you will become as locked into a single manufacturer for any app you buy just like you did with "feature" phones that had BREW or JME games & apps.
The suggestion that Sailfish avoids patent infringement is also laughable: there's so many patents out there that I suspect that absolutely no one can write software that doesn't infringe on something these days. They think that they've avoided patent infringement (just as Google does with WebM), but until someone decides to sue over an alleged patent infringement, no one knows whether Jolla would win.
There's an interesting bit buried in the story, too: they have changed CEOs at least once. The current CEO is Marc Dillon; he attained that post in October when Jussi Hurmola stepped down and became a consultant to the company. Hurmola is supposedly looking after the Sailfish ecosystem. According to what I saw on LinkedIn, Hurmola may have only had the CEO position for as little as eight months, but possibly as much as eighteen (Jolla was founded in March 2011). For a startup with big ambitions, I would want as much stability at the top as possible, personally.
Re: Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Maemo/Symbian/Whatever-Nokia" is dead, it was killed by Elop. Sailfish (The software being demo'd) is created by a group of ex "Maemo/Symbian/Whatever-Nokia" devs and is based on that codebase - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS
They're still releasing some Maemo phones, afaik, no? All in all, being a Microsoft hater or not, I believe it was a good move, though. Symbian was an old messy pile, and Maemo was just... bad.
If they are releasing any more Maemo phones (and I'm not sure they are), it's just a few last devices they had in the pipeline. At this point they've already decided that Maemo shall have no future.