Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Jolla phone – first impressions

seravo.fi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 103 posts

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#71

Post by bostik »

azakai wrote: post #42
bostik wrote: post #28

As someone who spent quite a lot of time getting QtWebKit built and kept up-to-date on Mer, both for Qt 4.8 and 5.x, I'm somewhat torn to see this: > We heard at the launch event that the rendering engine is Gecko On one hand, I feel a little sad. On the other hand, I can appreciate the idea of going with a browser engine that isn't as big a political playing field as WebKit. (Or its Google-fork: Blink.) The reasons…

Interesting. I remember that Meego went back and forth between WebKit and Gecko, but that was a long time ago, I would also be interested to hear how things ended up that way.

> I remember that Meego went back and forth between WebKit and Gecko

I know at least one very good reason, from personal pain.

Meego preceded Qt 5.0. QtWebKit was not part of official Qt releases until 5.1, and in 4.x the situation was even worse. Back then QtWebKit was always a second-class citizen. The browser engine was a separate "Qt component". This meant that all releases were done individually, outside and out of pace with the Qt proper. Any release lagged behind the Qt releases, taking anywhere from weeks to months to catch up and work with the most recent Qt release. I got the idea that the webkit team was severely undermanned and overworked.

This meant that for any product that wanted to use QtWebKit, the product manager had to make an early decision to lock the version of used Qt just to ensure that QtWebKit was available. (Customers demanded a working browser engine with bells and whistles.) So from a purely practical point of view it made sense to decouple the browser engine and Qt release at architectural level.

No wonder Meego hovered between the two options. They had the choice of not using the latest Qt releases but having a more finely integrated browser engine - or they could go with the latest Qt, a decoupled browser engine and doing a horrible amount of additional integration work to keep Qt and Gecko in sync.

As one can imagine, neither of those options is particularly appealing.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#72

Post by valvoja »

Meh. I'd wait for the first few objective reviews.

I lost interest when they said things like "there is one hardware feature that is unique to Jolla: The Other Half [...] a concept of user-changeable smart back cover."

Surely replaceable plastic covers have been around for decades and they are mostly associated with low-end feature phones... or really old Nokias.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#73

Post by anoncowherd »

smcl wrote: post #3

Minor nitpick: I don't know how to say "Jolla". I mean I know that "Jolla" is pronounced "Hoya" in European Spanish ("Hosha" in Argentinian), but in most European languages it'd be "Yolla" with a soft "j" and the naive English pronunciation would be "Djolla". I don't know which was the intended one. Not that it really matters I suppose, but why go to all that trouble building an apparently lovely device and giving it…

Finn here. If you consider the Finnish way the correct one, then it's "yolla" (or "yoh-lla"). To be clear, the "o" is short, and doesn't bend towards "u" like it would in "yo mama so fat".

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#74

Post by buster »

manmal wrote: 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?

To be honest i believe that all this retina bullshit that was started by apple is too much. Really, i am wondering how good the battery life of my phone would be without a fullhd display.. on a tiny size... that's just stupid, most people just wouldn't notice a lower resolution in everyday use but they would notice improved battery life.

To me the resolution battle is the same BS that the megapixel count on photo sensors is. It's mainly marketing talk to sell devices.

So please, i don't care if the phone doesn't have fullhd, and i also don't need 5" displays.. or a 40 MP camera, i dont need octacore cpus or opengl XYZ capability. I want battery life, please work on the f*cking battery life!!

p.s.: my "rant" doesn't mean that the jolla has a good battery life, of course i wouldn't know about that. Just addressing my main problem with smartpones.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#75

Post by alextingle »

daliusd wrote: post #67
nl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's probably a fair point. It wasn't clear until I looked at the architecture diagram, though. Native Sailfish apps are Qt based; with android apps as a secondary thing, presumably to kick-start the platform while they try to build an ecosystem. (Which makes sense, developers won't come unless people are using it but people won't use it if there are no apps.) I'm guessing that was Blackberry's strategy too.…

I have different question. Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view. Bazillion megapixels, bazillion megaherz, bazillion cores and etc. - nobody cares about that. It takes decent pictures - good enough. It is not camera with lens replacement anyway. It works reasonably fast - good enough, I take it. Replaceable parts(1) - meh I don't care unless I can attach lens b…

Totally disagree with you on hardware:

> Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view.

Just because vendors are falling over themselves to makes Iphone clones, doesn't mean there's no other way.

Personally, the whole current smartphone scene leaves me cold, because no-one is making hardware for me. I want a small, robust phone I can put in my pocket and forget about. Something with a big fragile screen is completely useless to me. I don't really care what software it's running - if I have to leave it at home because I'm afraid of breaking the screen, then the software is irrelevant.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#76

Post by alextingle »

veeti wrote: post #14
manmal wrote: 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?

This entire piece sounds overly positive about the thing. We get it, it's a real Linux phone, but the hardware is lackluster for 2013. That shitty screen resolution sounds like the final nail in the coffin for me.

Screen resolution is literally the last thing I care about. Give me an extra hour of battery life & I'll take a lower rs display. Give me an extra day of battery life & I'm in heaven.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#77

Post by RyanZAG »

alextingle wrote: post #75
daliusd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have different question. Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view. Bazillion megapixels, bazillion megaherz, bazillion cores and etc. - nobody cares about that. It takes decent pictures - good enough. It is not camera with lens replacement anyway. It works reasonably fast - good enough, I take it. Replaceable parts(1) - meh I don't care unless I can attach lens b…

Totally disagree with you on hardware: > Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view. Just because vendors are falling over themselves to makes Iphone clones, doesn't mean there's no other way. Personally, the whole current smartphone scene leaves me cold, because no-one is making hardware for me. I want a small, robust phone I can put in my pocket and forget about. S…

Huh? There are thousands and thousands of devices just like that. They don't make the news though because they're boring and cheap. Head past your nearest phone shop and you can find a huge variety of those kind of phones at incredibly low prices ($20 prepaid kind of prices).

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#78

Post by daliusd »

alextingle wrote: post #75
daliusd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have different question. Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view. Bazillion megapixels, bazillion megaherz, bazillion cores and etc. - nobody cares about that. It takes decent pictures - good enough. It is not camera with lens replacement anyway. It works reasonably fast - good enough, I take it. Replaceable parts(1) - meh I don't care unless I can attach lens b…

Totally disagree with you on hardware: > Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view. Just because vendors are falling over themselves to makes Iphone clones, doesn't mean there's no other way. Personally, the whole current smartphone scene leaves me cold, because no-one is making hardware for me. I want a small, robust phone I can put in my pocket and forget about. S…

Nokia 515 is waiting for you. Really. Check out it.

Still there is nothing exceptional about this hardware IMHO.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#79

Post by jonpacker »

valvoja wrote: post #72

Meh. I'd wait for the first few objective reviews. I lost interest when they said things like "there is one hardware feature that is unique to Jolla: The Other Half [...] a concept of user-changeable smart back cover." Surely replaceable plastic covers have been around for decades and they are mostly associated with low-end feature phones... or really old Nokias.

"The Other Half" on Jolla has a serial port which makes it possible for it to be a keyboard or a battery or an external device.

Re: The Jolla phone – first impressions

#80

Post by pessimizer »

nl wrote: post #50
girvo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's your own "bias" that seems to show through here...

Actually, it's your own "bias" that seems to show through here I'm intrigued! Which bias do you think I'm showing? It's true I'm doubtful about the prospects of Jolla - but I'm not sure I'd characterise that as a bias exactly. It's true that I remember Maemo (and more broadly, Nokia). I think there are lessons there, but I'm not sure that is a bias either.

Some people probably think you're biased because your comment promised a reveal of "(pretty huge) flaws" like the N900 (or rather, a Maemo phone in 2009) had.

1. I'm not aware of any especially terrible flaws in N900s, so I already don't know what you're talking about. The mention of the "flaws of the platform" makes me think you're just stealing the language from Elop that he used to describe Symbian.

2. The browser is not as good as Chrome on Android, and lacks landscape mode at release. This is a (pretty huge) flaw? I see it as a pretty minor (and likely temporary) flaw, which could be alleviated by using Chrome for Android on the device. You see it as a major flaw, because the "whole point of this phone is HTML5 apps." What?

3. The other flaw is that it is not an Android phone, and isn't tied into Google Play services. Is that a flaw on the iPhone, or just on the Jolla?

There was a promise in your comment that was not delivered on. In the end it was weird, like when somebody tells you how their ex-wife has been mounting a campaign of harassment against them for years - then as they describe the individual incidents in this campaign, you feel sorrier for the ex-wife by the minute.

Maybe explaining a couple of the "(pretty huge) flaws" of the N900 might help?

Post reply on HN