So I did something I wouldn’t usually do. I bought an expensive smartphone – which I supposed would be quite unfinished and might even remain as marginal toy without ever gaining actual user-base or larger software support… I must be out of my mind? See Jolla official site for what it is!
The why part is simple. I’ve used IOS on Ipad for long time and I like it for that. Still with the polished user experience and very good selection of applications, I’m not sure I’d need it on my phone. There just is nothing in there that says I must have it with me everywhere. It’s well optimized and it has all the apps one can need (and more) – but still… Then there’s Android, I’ve used Sony Xperia Active for a year now – without rooting it – and outcome is that it was most likely the first and last Android phone for me. Mainly because of the bugs in the OS that no one will ever address and fix. Also with non-rooted phone, I’ve run low on ”system” flash, so I cannot update my apps anymore and also cannot move most of them (bundled software) to external SD card or even remove the parts I don’t need to make more room… Rooting would be the key and I guess I’ll try it now as I have new phone for everyday use.
Last option was a Windows phone. I’ve tried WP7 and Wp7.5 and even WP8 at the local shop, initially it seemed ok, but after trying it for longer term, it became clear that I don’t want that either.
So to get something that could offer something new (even new bugs!) I pre-ordered Jolla last spring. I got it a bit over two weeks ago, so I’ts been on daily use since then and I’ve discovered some bugs and annoyances, enough to judge that I can use this.
First up, everything just worked from the box. Jolla store seemed busy and some apps didn’t install on the first try, but eventually I got all the offered software pieces in place. It was more finished product than what I had hoped for, so this was very positive experience. OS is very smooth to use with the swipe gestures – I like it a lot and have already been trying to use my other devices with the gestures… Add a voice control and this will be perfect!
For Andoid software support they have chosen a very buggy store (Yandex), so getting that up and running required PC (phone browser most likely would’ve worked just fine too) to set up the account. Not big deal, took a while to figure out the reason why captchas won’t work in the account creation. Based on comments I’ve seen it is because the store application has trouble detecting connections. Jollas framework seems to work in that sense, so any other android app that required internet connection seemed to work. Luckily there are other markets that you can use, even google play can be hacked to work. I’ve settled now with 1 Mobile Market, which fulfills my app needs nicely.
Basic set of apps are available from Jolla, rest of the needed ones can be downloaded from Android market. The framework is a bit buggy, I’ve managed to crash it couple of times and it seems it’s not clearly repeatable. But mainly it works. If I’d need constantly some andoid apps this would perhaps annoy me more, now it just means that some software doesn’t always load. I’ve so far used Skype, Facebook, Opera browsers, Spotify and Endomondo from andoid apps. Also some other, but those are the ones I’ve used and need most frequently. Endomondo was the most critical for me as it’s my cyclometer nowadays.
Camera is very basic 8MP mobile kit. The camera software will need some care and optics seem to be perhaps cheaper than usual. In use this seems like the early generation digital cameras, white balance handling is very poor and lights blind the camera easily. But I didn’t buy this for camera. It’s ok for occasional shots and documentation – which covers my needs from cellphone camera. Tried shooting some live performance and audio doesn’t convince either. There is way too much of audible compression artifacts in the recording – sounded pretty much same than my android phone, but this can withstand higher SPL without distorting.
I made a sample gallery to my Picasa albums, see for yourself. It’s decent mobile camera at best. They claimed that on last software update there was some updates to camera software on low light conditions, I haven’t tried it yet to see if there is any difference.
There are some annoyances also. Clipboard doesn’t work from the browser and I think this is major – I cannot select text from the web page to use it elsewhere (say phone number from web page or text paste from browser to SMS) and that is very silly. I really hope they’ll address this soon. Android apps have working clipboard, but that is not shared with Jolla native apps. There were some other issues – including exchange sync with non-trusted certificate – but most of them seem to be solved with the two software updates they’ve rolled out this year.
There’s also been some news about the battery performance it seems that in airplane mode the phone drains battery very fast compared to another phones on the market. I haven’t tried it yet but in a daily use, it’s about the same level than what I got from my android phone. Proven this has much better and larger display I think it’s on very acceptable level. In heavy use it will be charge daily, but on weekend I can go two days on a charge.
Other half concept is very interesting. At the moment the customization options seem a bit limited, but once the OS framework is more complete (more options to tune) and as there is also electrical bus (I2C) available to back cover so all kinds of functionality can be implemented in it… When I just have more free time!
Overall this is a now a working smartphone with most needed features in place (browser, email, sms, and a phone!). It does not give you a perfect user experience (yet, I doubt any of the platforms do) app support is a bit limited but with help of the android framework, I think most required apps can be installed. And there are and will be some bugs and non-working software pieces at the moment. So if you want everything working right now, do not buy your Jolla yet [and for that matter, I could suggest staying away from any smartphone!]. Anyway even with the small flaws this shows a great potential. With some small feature implementations and bug fixes (which both seem to arrive at very quick pace!) and more added native software, this could be a great challenger in the market. I hope the company, phone and the OS will survive as there is a real need for good alternative mobile OS, this could very well be it.
Some Jolla specific links:
Official site
Collaboration platform
Sailfish OS
Jolla tides
Jolla users
Native software for Sailfish:
Jollasuomi – Finnish forum
WLAN Hotspot UI for Jolla – Much requested UI for wifi hotspot. Very nice work!
WLAN Hotspot UI for Jolla #2 – Another one with perhaps more complete feature set by . Perfect!
Cutespotify – Native spotify client for SailfishOS and Ubuntu touch. Good stuff keeps on coming!
 
Updated for software links…