Sailfish OS 3.3 "Rokua" Released With Many Improvements For This Mobile Linux OS

[Shtirlic]

Sami Pienimäki? Thoughts? Ideally a few more devs would join GrapheneOS and expand its hardware support to a couple more devices.

"Russian Rostelecom, one of the largest government-owned companies, recently acquired 75% of the open mobile platform on which the Jolla’s Sailfish OS was developed. They announced that the Sailfish Mobile OS RUS will be further developed and rebranded as Aurora OS. "
https://nokiamob.net/2019/02/09/sail...-os-in-russia/

[Vistaus]

Reading that it sounds an awful lot like they've still got plenty of technical debt to take care of with in future updates and try to remember that the last update was also one of those technical debt repayment updates.

An not just technical debt: me and quite a few others are still waiting on their promised tablet refund...

[Redfoxmoon]

"Russian Rostelecom, one of the largest government-owned companies, recently acquired 75% of the open mobile platform on which the Jolla’s Sailfish OS was developed. They announced that the Sailfish Mobile OS RUS will be further developed and rebranded as Aurora OS. "
https://nokiamob.net/2019/02/09/sail...-os-in-russia/

At least it's not owned by google. :^) I still very much like my xperia sailfish phone. :^)

[L_A_G]

An not just technical debt: me and quite a few others are still waiting on their promised tablet refund...

Considering it's taken this long I wouldn't count on ever getting it.

Oh and before you call it a scam there's a big difference between an actual scam, which requires intention, and the downright cursed development tail-end for the tablet. First the intended display panel went out of production necessitating some major re-engineering as nothing that would serve as a drop-in replacement was available. After that Chinese new year took place just as it was going into production and all the factories shut down as the migrant workers left for their home towns. While they were out a funding round got delayed so when the workers returned back to work Jolla couldn't pay the assemblers, who preceded to take a large number of the devices, install Android on them, and then sell them before Jolla could get the money together to pay them.

The really big issue with the assemblers taking their devices as payment was that during the development Intel had left the mobile SoC market so the main SoC was no longer available as they went into production. What Jolla had as they went into production was all they were ever going to be able to get. Completely re-engineering the board as an ARM-based device wasn't an option either as the tablet was mostly a bought-in design from another Finnish company called Aava Mobile as they stopped designing devices in-house.

As for why they haven't fully refunded everyone yet, it's simply that they just don't have the money to do it. But they are refunding people as they have money available for it.

[wizard69]

Jolla kinda makes you wish that somebody with more money than they can possibly use would buy the outfit. It is pretty obvious that the concept could go farther than it has with good management and a larger technical team. That requires somebody that can throw money at it and not expect a return for 5 years.

I actually had high hopes for Jolla in the tablet space as that is where they really have the potential t compete. The only real challenger in tablet space is Apple and as a result a far more open tablet OS has a fighting chance. Android simply isn't the answer in the world of Tablets where you really want a more open platform.

[edwaleni]

Jolla kinda makes you wish that somebody with more money than they can possibly use would buy the outfit. It is pretty obvious that the concept could go farther than it has with good management and a larger technical team. That requires somebody that can throw money at it and not expect a return for 5 years.

I actually had high hopes for Jolla in the tablet space as that is where they really have the potential t compete. The only real challenger in tablet space is Apple and as a result a far more open tablet OS has a fighting chance. Android simply isn't the answer in the world of Tablets where you really want a more open platform.

I believe overall iPad sales are declining as are most tablets. As each generation of phones get larger screens it cuts into recurring tablet sales.

There is some large corporate use of iPads for POS, (like ChikFilA uses them for drive throughs) but as a general purpose tablet it is losing share. Specialists still buy them because they have a very narrow use case (like for live music or for recording and mix). The shift from overall consumer use to corporate use has been masking the reduction of sales at the retail level.

Custom ROM's for android tabs are now a pretty slim market. Most are stuck at tabs from 4 or 5 years ago. Many of the devs are saying there is just no demand for it.

[Almindor]

Jolla kinda makes you wish that somebody with more money than they can possibly use would buy the outfit. It is pretty obvious that the concept could go farther than it has with good management and a larger technical team. That requires somebody that can throw money at it and not expect a return for 5 years.

I actually had high hopes for Jolla in the tablet space as that is where they really have the potential t compete. The only real challenger in tablet space is Apple and as a result a far more open tablet OS has a fighting chance. Android simply isn't the answer in the world of Tablets where you really want a more open platform.

It'd help if they followed up on their false promises and finally open sourced the damn thing. I know I know a lot of it IS open, but a lot isn't. There are many very good programmers in the Jolla community (or there were) but a lot of them refuse to invest too much into fixing things for free for someone who is consistently lying about everything (that includes me).

I've used a SailfishOS phone as my daily driver since Jolla 1 (pre-order) and generally I'm "ok" with it and how it went. But the fact that they lied, failed multiple times on various projects, got bought by Russians or who knows who and are still years behind on libs/tools updates make it a monumental "missed my own boat" failure.

The only good decision this company ever made was to stop trying to make their own hardware, everything else was a flop.

[andrewlinux]

As very long time Sailfish OS user I think it a usable everyday mobile OS, and when the QT stack and Webkit update will finally come, it is gonna be great, because you will finally be able to use native browser for all websites and it will make porting new QT apps a lot more easier.
What buggs me the most about how the whole project is managed is how rarely some things get updated. Only now we got GCC update, QT version is crazy old (and they can't even tell yet to which version will they update it), gecko in native browser is 4 years old, kernels are crazy old and so on.
But even as the UI concept is very similar to MeeGo, it still is so much better to use than new Android and its clunky gestures.

I love the idea and have read about several times over the last few years but those old packages do sound annoying. How did they get to version 3.3 without a decent browser? People just avoid the native browser? What do you use?

[JacekJagosz]

I love the idea and have read about several times over the last few years but those old packages do sound annoying. How did they get to version 3.3 without a decent browser? People just avoid the native browser? What do you use?

The situation is a weird one. The system browser uses last version of Gecko (Firefox engine) that didn't have any Rust code, so it is quite old (I think that was because of old GCC). It works for a lot of websites and is really light, but can't cope with many others. And every single other native browser and app with webview (like Facebook) uses QTWebkit, which is also old because QT stack is old. The Webpirate and Webpirate browsers are awesome, but they have also struggle with some websites.
So you choose a favourite browser out of native ones, some websites that don't work with one work with other, and for select few websites you have your favourite Android browser. Really not ideal, but usable.
I think this is the only major hurdle user experience wise, because all other things just work.

[Morty]

I believe overall iPad sales are declining as are most tablets.

According to various sources and numbers found on the net, I think you are correct.

As each generation of phones get larger screens it cuts into recurring tablet sales.

...but as a general purpose tablet it is losing share.

This I don't think is correct. Both based on observation and from a technical perspective.

First, I don't think the tablet market is losing share, even it clearly shows decline in sales.
(Due to the Corona situation and mandatory home schooling, I think we will see a short increase in sales for February/April.)

It basically boils down to that nothing new and interesting is happening in the tablet space, people keep their devices far longer than their cell phones. There is nothing to justify changing the device every 1 to 2 years. A 5 year old tablet is still quite usable. People spend the money upgrading their phones, but continue to use the old tablet as it works ok. The market is more or less saturated, the ones with need of a tablet, already have one.