Jolla Experiments With A Sailfish OS Watch

[juno]

FUCK JOLLA WITH A RUSTY CHAINSAW!
[...] thieves [...] scum [...] bitch [...] shit [...]

LOL
Crowdfunding is obviously nothing for you, rage kid. Are you similarly butthurt when you lose money in the stock market?

[L_A_G]

LOL
Crowdfunding is obviously nothing for you, rage kid. Are you similarly butthurt when you lose money in the stock market?

There's really no point in trying to talk sense into people like this... If they were capable of understanding that they made a bet and lost rather than buying a finished ready-for-sale product they wouldn't be raging about the whole thing.

For those who don't know what happened with the tablet, it's essentially a complete clusterfuck of bad luck. First things that happened was that the display they were going to use unexpectedly went out of production and there wasn't any replacement that would have been compatible with their design ether without some re-engineering or being considerably worse, so they had to delay the production as they did some re-engineering to fit a new better display. After that they were finally able to get into producing the things, but Chinese new year (a massive holiday over there when work, specially in manufacturing, grinds to a complete halt) struck right as they were about start production. Then before they were finally able to finish production proper a funding round fell trough and they couldn't pay their manufacturing partner, who ended up taking a good chunk of the already finished devices as payment and selling them loaded with Android (even thou they still had the Jolla logo on them). After this they were finally completely screwed because they couldn't get any more of the needed SoCs from Intel and their manufacturing partner had taken over half of the ones they had and sold off the devices they had made with them.

The end result of this was that some people got their Jolla tablets, while others didn't and Jolla simply didn't have the money to refund those who didn't get their tablets. In reality they're under no requirement to refund anyone anything, but still they've refunded half the money to those who didn't get their tablet and hope that they're going to have the money to refund the rest at some point next year.

Jolla really is a company of constant bad luck. They almost went under in the early days when they had to almost completely re-engineer the original Jolla phone after Texas Instruments decided to pull out of the mobile chip market after Nokia stopped using their SoCs (as they switched to Windows Phone, which only supported Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs) and they weren't able to get anyone else to buy them in similar volumes.

[starshipeleven]

The future? Smartwatches seem so useless... I can understand a fitness tracker is useful, but a Smartwatch is nothing more than a geek/applefan toy.

He means Smartwatches will become self-sufficient devices (and finally make sense) eventually, but not in the near future.

(btw why Smart? it is just stupid led screen pushed by blutooth)

Yeah, because SmartTVs are smart too, right?
Anyway, here is why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_device

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/31463/smart-device

Although usually small in size, smart devices typically have the computing power of a few gigabytes.
The above sentence is comedic gold, but helps convey the target of such "smart" devices.

[starshipeleven]

Jolla is closed source scamware based on unethical CLA-ware.

In one word: it isn't using GNOME.

[mcirsta]

For people wanting a GNU Linux open source OS on their watches there's Asteroid OS : https://asteroidos.org/ and I highly recommend you give it a try if your watch is supported ( or you can try porting to yours ).

As for Jolla I'm very disappointed with them. No, it's not bad luck it's just bad decisions in my opinion. They could have just open sourced the OS and tried to make money from the app store like Google does. OK it might not have gone great at first but how are you going to compete against a free and open source OS which anyone can just modify as they please with one that needs to be licensed and it's closed source. Microsoft tried the same thing and even they with all their might and Windows failed, it's silly of Jolla to thing they can succeed in this way.

In my opinion the biggest mistake Jolla made was doing their own hardware which wasn't anything special ... it took a long time to develop and was in the low-end by the time it came out ( if it ever came out ). It would have been simpler to just do what Ubuntu did and put the OS on an existing Android phone.

[DrYak]

When we can barely get 1 day out of our smartphones, how does anyone think a smartwatch is something viable?

Pebble have been thinging that smartwatches are viable, and have repeatedly been proven right.

The trick is, unlike every single other manufacturer that tried to jump on the fad, they are not selling over-priced power-hungry useless gadgets packed with way too many gizmos/bells-and-whistles features that only serves to dramatically kill battery life.

They really went the "stupid e-ink screen and bluetooth" way, giving their product actual useful batterylife and much affordable price.

When everybody else is trying to cram a full blown iPhone inside a iPod Nano 6 chassis (tick as much features on the list), Pebble is releasing a glorified "fitness tracker" that is also open and hackable and holds battery for at least a week.
Instead of ticking "3G/4G" box like others, they provide a separate small clip-on Android device (Pebble Core) if you want to go smartphone-less (e.g.: while jogging).

Pardon my language, but fuck Jolla Smartwatch.

Care to read Micheal summary ? Jolla aren't designing releasing a smartwatch, they've just taken time to show proof of concept that :
- libhybris can bring sailfish os to smartwatch just as easily as to any of the hundreds of other community ports.
- check that their *gesture*-based interface (full screen gestures like pulley menus, backward swipes) is much more adapted to the form factor than most of the competitors.

They're not diverting huge R&D ressource into yet another non-phone project, just a quick proof-of-concept to try to attract potential investors.

FUCK JOLLA WITH A RUSTY CHAINSAW!

It's been more than 2 years now since I paid those thieves for a Tablet

Anways, fsck Jolla! I nearly bought a Tablet from them

Apparently some people still don't get the way crowdfunding works...

Jolla is closed source scamware

...but given that this scamware is mostly written on QML and javascript (and the code of the remaining C/C++ parts is available), the end-result isn't closed.
It's just "not copyleft". But you're still free to write your own patches against these and publish them on warehouse/openrepos (and some of these are really awesome and useful).

The rest underneath is a standard GNU/Linux distro, albeit a modern one (Wayland, systemd, etc.)

[Almindor]

I'm a Jolla app dev (Lighthouse app) and long time Jolla user. I'm still loving the phone even in Canada with 2G only I have to use just wifi to get internet on it. I still prefer it to android or iPhone.

With that said this company has no direction. They literally missed their own boat at least three times in a row now. I don't mean their bad manufacturer luck, I mean basic things like making the phones have worldwide bands or now their latest f-up of not concentrating on making the OS itself good and portable and instead going into another failed hardware venture.

It really makes me sad because the OS itself is really nice and apart from a few issues is the best mobile OS out there right now, at least for enthusiasts who want to have a bit more control.

Having android itself "sandboxed" is also a big + because I can safely use the security wreck OS and it's malware ridden apps while blocking access to any real world things on my actual phone like my actual contacts or position.

[starshipeleven]

...but given that this scamware is mostly written on QML and javascript (and the code of the remaining C/C++ parts is available), the end-result isn't closed. It's just "not copyleft".

Wrong, open source is about license AND code, not just "I can see the code and patch it in devices shipped with it".

Please note, I can patch closed source blobs too, in games it is called "modding", for ROMs or disk images it's also doable to some extent (not talking of Android builds from source, of course). Not the same thing as open source.

[juno]

I'm a Jolla app dev (Lighthouse app) and long time Jolla user. I'm still loving the phone even in Canada with 2G only I have to use just wifi to get internet on it. I still prefer it to android or iPhone.

With that said this company has no direction.

I fully agree with you. I had the Jolla Phone right after launch but sold it soon after that. I also loved the N9, btw.

I'd love a mobile gnu/linux system next to Android, but they went into the completely wrong direction, imho.

BTW: In case anyone missed, they recently landed a deal with Russia: http://jolla.com/wp-content/uploads/...e_FINAL_79.pdf
So that should ensure liquidity, after all.

[GreatEmerald]

Last I recall, Jolla split into a software and a hardware division. So to people saying "they should focus on the hardware": the software division has nothing to do with it. To those saying "they should focus on the software": that's exactly what the software division is doing.

And I'm still very happy with my Jolla phone. My phone needs are small, and as long as it's GNU/Linux I'm happy. It's quite amazing that they continue releasing updates to this day, too.