Monday 23 March 2015

Sailfish OS update 12 - More details

System update for Jolla phone, second info. Sailfish OS 1.1.4.x Äijänpäivänjärvi

Jolla has shared more information about the next Sailfish OS update 12, including one pretty nasty downgrade, not caused by Jolla, but by Facebook!

Sailfish OS system update 12 - More details

This is a follow up post for: Sailfish OS system update 12 - First info


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More details on the next Jolla phone system update, especially on Jolla's currently ongoing iteration, were shared today on Sailfish OS developers mailing list. Here's our picks from several mails, sorted in three categories: (1) What we will experience, (2) what we might experience, and (3) what is planned for later system updates after Sailfish OS 1.1.4.x Äijänpäivänjärvi. Thanks to Soumya Bijjal, Software Program Manager at Jolla, for sharing all this.

But before going into these, this one have been waiting for confirmation. Direct quote:
"Nevertheless, all long the software development for the tablet, we are making sure that the new UI features work on both phone and tablet."

1. What we will experience (additional to our earlier post)


Facebook disables their XMPP chat API used on Jolla, and due to this both FB messaging and FB contact sync will be disabled on Jolla starting from the next system update. NOTE: How I understand what is shared below, is that users who want to use FB instant messaging with the user interface on Sailfish OS until April 30 should not install the next Sailfish OS update before that time. After updating, or after April 30, we are left with Facebook's mobile web access. Quote:

Facebook account has been updated to use API version 2.2, which has unfortunately lead to extreme reduction in functionality, i.e no instant messaging nor contacts sync. Facebook has notified that the XMPP chat API will no longer be available after April 30, 2015
  • We have now moved our codebase to use new API version, thus disabling Facebook instant messaging capability on SailfishOS
  • It also limits the contact synchronization to only provide contact info of people using the same app; in our case this would mean that one could obtain contacts only if his/her Facebook friends are also Jolla phone users. We agreed internally that such a limited contact sync is pretty much useless to our users and hence the contact sync has also be disabled
  • We have initiated talks with Facebook in an attempt to find a way forward
Also adding another important quote, regarding memory handling:
"...memory handling on the OS still needs improvements, we have not put this aside"

2. What we might experience - Jolla's plans, ongoing iteration


NOTE: Part of the features below might get ready for the next release. Quotes:
  • Kernel update to latest linux-stable version 3.4.106 for Jolla Phone
  • Tablet adaptation work
    • recovery mode/factory reset operation
    • device identifiers supporting tablet OS upgrade
  • Preparations for Bluetooth certification qualification
  • Security fixes for gnutls vulnerabilities (CVE-2015-0282, CVE-2015-0294), libgcrypt vulnerabilities CVE-2014-3591, CVE-2015-0837 and openssl vulnerability notified here 
  • Implement parts of voicecall-manager for SIP and other VoIP protocols
  • Finalize the new UI framework features demonstrated during MWC
  • Tablet-optimized apps and landscape layouts
  • Refresh visuals for Sailfish Silica components
  • Virtual/HW keyboard opening policy
  • Email Search
  • Improve folders list in Mail app
  • Continue with the following from last iteration
    • Camera adaptation work on Tablet
    • File system layout  implementation for Tablet
    • Android runtime support Tablet
    • Continue working on landscape modes for apps
    • Settings pane to display disk usage
    • Allow factory reset operation to reset the OS to the latest available public version instead of the age old factory image
    • Upgrade to Pulseaudio 6.0
    • Private browsing
    • SIP integration into accounts. test IM capabilities in messaging
  • The following tasks unfortunately did not progress during the last iteration, we hope to catch up on them now
    • Review certification middleware code
    • USB tethering UI
    • Enable open VPN support on the OS


3. What we might experience later


Features not planned to be released yet on Sailfish OS 1.1.4.x Äijänpäivänjärvi. According to Soumya Bijjal, the development is still in progress for features mentioned below. Bijjal also shared that this new UI framework is intended to be released as a whole, and will take a few more OS upgrades before it is released. Quotes:
  • Lockscreen with time, day and date information
  • Media player controls in lock screen for native Media app
  • Persistent status area in homescreen and lockscreen
  • Richer eventsview with widgets such as
    • displaying weather info (ed.note, already introduced)
    • upcoming calendar events
    • shortcuts to toggle commonly used settings such as bluetooth, airplane mode, wlan and location
    • shortcuts to perform quick actions , e.g search on web, take a picture, make a note etc
    • improved notification handling, grouping, secondary actions
  • Power key menu
  • Carousel transition to access home, open apps and events view
  • New swipe animations and transitions
  • Presence settings moved from events view to settings app
  • Landscape mode and layout updates for apps for tablet:
    • Work in progress for Settings, Startup wizard, Calculator, Media player, Calendar and Gallery apps
  • Drop upower in favour of statefs:
    • Implementation work is now complete, now working towards gracefully handling the removal of obsolete packages. This task depends updating Mer Core OS to use newer version of libsolv, libzypp, zypper libraries
  • GStreamer update to 1.x:
    • More work on cleaning up the code for gst-droid encoders and decoders. The code is now more robust
    • Viewfinder and captured images should have the correct orientation
    • Hunting down issues with writing the correct orientation for the recorded videos
    • Porting the thumbnailer to a more recent libav
    • Making sure qtmultimedia can be used with GStreamer 1.x by building it, rebasing nemo patches on top of it and fixing any issues
    • PHONE ONLY: jolla camera more or less works with some issues remaining. Gallery video playback with some issues remaining
  • Toolchain upgrade to gcc4.8:
    • Moved to a later OS upgrade to give us time to complete the implementation of BTRFS balancing operation before performing OS upgrade

Disclaimer: What you read above, excluding the subtopic 1, are PLANNED features which might or might not make it for the next or following updates. This iteration might reach some of these features finished, some left under work, and some postponed or even dropped. In overall, the next Sailfosh OS release might include more or less new features than mentioned above


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Sources: Developer mail (several posts)
Published: 2015-03-23 16:38 UTC
Updated: 2015-03-23 16:38 UTC

1 comment:



  1. I would not like to have widgets on sailfish, I do not want sailfish go through the same place that android with thousands of widgets and thousands of desktops, I think jolla is failing somewhat in the sense of wanting to take things Interface android, sailfish 1.0 interface is great as long as you keep the version 2.0 changes quite there a point of junction between the two interfaces, so jolla should improve native applications, optimize your system, continue with the interface sailfish and the environment (that is magnificent as everything changes when you select an environment, color keyboard, the volume, the color of multitasking, and other things), must endure audio and video as FLAC, AMR and others to my quite formidable serious again to close an application sliding from top to bottom, leaving the selection of environments at the same point but using two fingers (when this screen multitasking could slide a finger up and down to open environments), Caldav and cardav have to be if or if present in the system, everything you mentioned in point number two need to implement as soon as possible, something good would that create a similar application to bleckberry blend to synchronize things with your computer via wifi, would anything to reply to messages or postings (twitter, facebook, etc) from the screen notifications without opening the application something like the hub of bb.
    Greetings.

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