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The Jolla phone – first impressions

seravo.fi

31–40 of 103 posts

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#31
post #30
post #16

> At Seravo we hold the belief that in the long term, browser based HTML5 apps will be more important than native apps. What is the "long term"? Has somebody actually managed to build a native HTML5-based UI that isn't a laggy and clumsy piece of shit yet? For example, webOS looked great but even the simplest lists scrolled with less than 30 frames per second. The videos I've seen of FxOS don't show much promise eith…

I'm curious about this POV from folks of getting mobile web apps to look and feel like mobile native apps being a prerequisite for success. I just don't think this is true. After all, desktop web apps look and feel nothing like desktop native apps. I too believe that mobile web will one day overtake mobile native apps for most peoples' daily usage. I just don't think it'll look or act anything like what we're current…

Yes, I agree, I don't think normal people really care about a. native look and feel and b. 60fps animations.

People want apps that are easy to learn and use, have the features they need, and free.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#32
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to be fair its only 399, so they dont seem to target top of the line.

And the Google Nexus 5 is $350, unlocked with no restrictions.

I'd avoid using the nexus devices as a base price, google doesn't need to make profit on them so they can run them low.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#35
post #12
post #2

I can't believe that no pixels can be seen on a 4,5" screen with a resolution of 960x540. That would be a worse density than my > 3 year old HTC desire. A mistake in the article?

I think they wanted to go pretty low-end with their first device and also be forward thinking about it, because that resolution is half of 1080p.

I'd say that it's a forth of 1080p.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#38
post #16

> At Seravo we hold the belief that in the long term, browser based HTML5 apps will be more important than native apps. What is the "long term"? Has somebody actually managed to build a native HTML5-based UI that isn't a laggy and clumsy piece of shit yet? For example, webOS looked great but even the simplest lists scrolled with less than 30 frames per second. The videos I've seen of FxOS don't show much promise eith…

Think long-term. What could you conceivably do on the desktop that you can't do on the browser? Media recording and management? HTML5 is well on the way and someone compiled a functional version of FFMpeg in Javascript just recently. Storage? Security? Dropbox and more of the kind. We already have document management. The only thing I can think of right now is a render farm but we'll do that in the cloud anyway (even if the cloud is a desktop computer right next to you). I scoffed at the idea not too many months ago but I'm starting to see how mobile and desktop are converging, and I think it's going to happen faster than any of us expect due to consumer demand.

Edit: thinking of program like Final Cut: someone will figure out how to do the hardcore processing over-the-wire using Thunderbolt or something. Dumb terminals, welcome back!

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#39
This sounds like one of those "the sky is not falling" reviews of a Maemo phone in 2009, that ignores the (pretty huge) flaws of the platform because the author is a fan.

You can see hints in this review:

It should be is easy to search the web, enter URLs, open new tabs, save bookmarks etc. All of this can be done with the current browser in SailfishOS. The browser seems to work pretty fast and flawlessly. We heard at the launch event that the rendering engine is Gecko (same as in Firefox) so it is likely to have good support for HTML5 features. However in terms of usability, Chrome for Android is still the best mobile browser we’ve used so far. In particular the SailfishOS browser does not seem to have support for landscape mode. Hopefully while SailfishOS matures, the browser will grow to be more polished as well.

So.. the whole point of this phone is HTML5 apps. Yet Chrome is a more usable browser, and the author is hopeful the native browser "will grow to be more polished as well".

Android apps can be run using Alien Dalvik (probably some sort of virtual machine layer). You can either get both free and paid apps from the bundled Yandex store

No mention at all of the huge problems with this approach: this means no Google Play Services, and it removes all motivation for developers to build native apps: they can just point users at the Android version. (Also, Yandex has an Android store?!)

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#40
post #38
post #16

> At Seravo we hold the belief that in the long term, browser based HTML5 apps will be more important than native apps. What is the "long term"? Has somebody actually managed to build a native HTML5-based UI that isn't a laggy and clumsy piece of shit yet? For example, webOS looked great but even the simplest lists scrolled with less than 30 frames per second. The videos I've seen of FxOS don't show much promise eith…

Think long-term. What could you conceivably do on the desktop that you can't do on the browser? Media recording and management? HTML5 is well on the way and someone compiled a functional version of FFMpeg in Javascript just recently. Storage? Security? Dropbox and more of the kind. We already have document management. The only thing I can think of right now is a render farm but we'll do that in the cloud anyway (even…

But why is that better? And won't native apps keep advancing in the meantime?
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