Jolla boat and the sailfishes - part 2

Stories behind the names

...As two loves have I

Yacht or Dinghy for Purpose,
insignificant given the ocean's vastness
sending my consciousness swimming with
dolphins, as they will tell the secrets as to which it should be for a life vest of purpose

Part of "Yacht or Dinghy for Purpose"
by Vivian L Dawson

Jolla boat and the sailfishes - part 1

Stories behind the names

And this is the moral of all that is,
And it’s only known to two
Put out in your dinghy with confidence,
To show what a man can do.

"To Show What a Man Can Do" by Henry Lawson

Jolla phone specs - detailed hardware specs

Full hardware specs of Jolla phone

1. Key factors against competitors. How does Jolla differentiate?
2. Jolla Hardware specs with extended details + user comments
3. [videos] The Other Half including hardware - community projects
4. Reviews elsewhere

Updated August 10, 2014

Jolla phone news: MWC2014 Overview

Jolla at Mobile World Congress 2014 - Short overview

Jolla Oy is a finnish mobile phone manufacturer. They introduced smartphone Jolla at Helsinki, Finland at November 27. 2013. Jolla is powered by new operating system Sailfish OS, also developed by Jolla Oy. This operating system is based on Meego, seen on Nokia's phone model N9.

Jolla Oy was present at Mobile World Congress 2014 with a 100 square meters booth at hall 1. Event took place at Barcelona, Spain at February 23. - 27. 2014.

Speeches and interviews

Marc Dillon, Co- founder and Head of Software at Jolla gave speeches and interviews during all 4 days of the event. Antti Saarnio, Chairman of the Jolla Board, was not seen at the booth but he was also interviewed and shared interesting news about Jolla's future. What we learned from these two:

• Jolla has sold their first production batch almost in total (rumoured to be 50 000 phones)
• Jolla is currently available for purchace at EU, Norway and Switzerland. Jolla is expanding theirs sales to India by September and Russia before that. Also China is planned for this year
• The company was surprised by the interest towards Jolla brand. In advance they expected the Sailfish brand to have a bigger share at the event
• Sailfish OS has reached a commercial stage. Beta sign is dropped in the beginning of March with the next Software update. New updates are still delivered to customers monthly
• New phone model is planned to 2015
• In overall, the company was very satisfied to the huge amount of interest towards their booth

Stefano Mosconi, CTO of Jolla, was also present and gave an interesting interview to telefonino.net. You can find this interview (n italian) here. An interview with Carol Chen, community chief at Jolla, can be found here. This one is in english, shared by Jolla Es.

New partnerships

• Rovio, a finnish software company, presented a 3rd party The Other Half for Jolla with their Angry Birds content. The final product is excpected to be seen by the end of June.
• Makia, a finnish clothing company, presented a 3rd party The Other Half for Jolla with their Makia content. The final product is excpected to be seen by the end of June.
• F-Secure, a finnish security software company, offers their Younited security cloud service to Jolla phone. Customers will enjoy gigabytes of free secure cloud storage integrated with their Jolla device
• Jolla co-operates with Tieto in sharing the Sailfish OS to other phone manufacturers. Jolla is interested to offer Sailfish OS as an option to all phone manufacturers developing phones with different platforms

Sailfish OS to Android devices

• By June 2014 Jolla is introducing a launcer app for Android users, enabling Sailfish user experience for some Android devices. Which devices are supported remains yet unknown. As Sailfish OS is an OpenSource platform, the full operating system is excpected to be shared also, enabling installing it to other devices instead of their current OS. Jolla community has already begun with this, and Jolla OY introduced their operating system running on several devices during the event. At Jolla booth, Sailfish OS was seen on
• Nexus 4
• Galaxy S3 (i9305)
• Xiaomi Mi2
• Mediatek ZTE X950 (introduced on the 4th day)
  
  Sailfish OS has been seen earlier on:
• Nexus 7
• Acer Iconia W500
• Nokia N9
• Nokia N950
• Sony Xperia
• HP Mini
• O2 Joggler
• PackardBell Butterfly Touch

Jolla Labs

Additional to Android devices, there were some very interesting 3rd party products introduced at Jolla Labs table:

• Kimmo Lindholm's TOHOLED, representing an extra OLED screen on the back of Jolla, showing the time and notifications
• Harware keyboard QWERTY TOH, representing The Other Half with a keyboard coming out of the phone.
• RGB LED TOH by iProtoXi, representing a LED equipped back cover which changes the color of the LEDS by orientation of the phone, or by additional proximity sensor on the back cover

Jollagirls

The interesting products and software would not have gathered their well earned crowd without the great work by Jollagirls on the booth. Sailor outfits were visible, girls were beautiful and they were smiling all the four event days. Additional to that, they expanded the interest outside the event by sharing a lot of photos and videos via their instagram channel. Great work!

Jolla communities

This very important 3rd party, sharing information and marketing the new company, was well present at the event and shared knowledge of Jolla to the world. Review Jolla Blog wasn't on site, but several articles and photo & video galleries from each day have been popular. On site reporting has been shared at least by Jolla Users, Jolla Es & AllBoutN9 Thanks for your great work!

What to learn

Jolla is a new company sailing towards bigger harbours with a rather small boat. There could have been even more shouting on Twitter, blogs and forums to wake the interest of the popular newspapers and mobile phone sites. There could have been more official press releases and community informing during the event. Jolla could also have encouraged their supporters for even more sharing with some campaigns. The event itsels was organized almost perfectly, but as the company strategy seems to be marketing mostly via communities, workers and individual happy customers, Jolla can never thank these parties too much for what they are doing.

Mobile World Congress 2015

Are we seeing Jolla again? They were present 2013 with a congress room, 2014 with a bigger booth, and looking at the feedback, I'm pretty sure we will. The event will again take place at Fira Barcelona at Friday 27 February to Sunday 01 March 2015 (yet to be confirmed).

Is this the confirmation (see the hashtag used by Marc):

After #mwc15 V2 pic.twitter.com/a6L3XLx4j4
— Marc Dillon (@MarcDillonDotFi) February 27, 2014

Read more: All articles about MWC2014 

Special thanks to Jolla Es for great On Site Reporting, keep it up!
[Un agradecimiento especial a Jolla Es de gran Sobre la Información del sitio, sigan así!]

Jolla phone's Android support stands in unique position

Image: Jolla Boat's Sailor girls getting ready at MWC2014. Photo by Marc Dillon

Jolla phone stays unique with its Android Support

We are seeing a lot of new mobile phones introduced at Mobile World Congress 2014, but there's still no other phone model capable of running Android apps on top of another OS. Jolla is powered by Sailfish OS, and Android support can be installed on top of it as a virtual platform.

After the support is installed, any Android app store can be installed on Jolla, and any Android apps can then be downloaded and installed. However, Jolla takes care of the user privacy and security on this - Android apps have no access to the contacts saved in Sailfish, nor can it make phone calls or send SMS. Google has no change for phishing important data here.

Android apps have a limited access including e.g. photos and videos and phone sensors, but they can't change any phone settings or access the hardware buttons.

Jolla's virtual Android platform is developed by Myriad. It's an Android Open Source Project called Alien-Dalvik. It doesn't include Google Play services, so apps depending on those are not running out of the box. Users are able to install Play Services for even better support for more apps, but most of them have kept their phones clean of these services.

While more and more native Sailfish apps are being developed, some users have already removed the whole Android Support from their Jolla's. Meanwhile, Jolla is developing their Sailfish OS further to release it for Android devices

Read more:

• Sailfish OS for Android devices
• Sailfish apps developed at Jolla Hack Day
• Sailfish OS running on Nexus 4 (video) 
• Meet Jolla at MWC2014 

Jolla Hack Day at Devaamo (Tampere, Finland)

Reportage: Jolla Hardware and Sailsfish OS software development at Jolla Hack Day

February 22, 2014 at Devaamo (Tampere, Finland)

Devaamo, Tieto and Jolla organised a hack day for Sailfish OS app developers February-22-2014. Event started with introduction to app development by Artem Marchenko (above, right), followed by deeper insgight by Jaakko Roppola (below) from Jolla. Participants had their own laptops equipped with Sailsfish OS SDK, and coding took place both in small groups and individually after the two presentations.

Part of the guests were in a separate room reserved for hardware hacking. Interesting projects going on there:

The last image above shows a circuit designed by Kimmo Lindholm on the left, and 100 of these same circuits for extra screen development ordered by Devaamo and Jolla, shared for free for HW hackers. Kimmo's OLED The Other Half will also be seen at MWC2014 - he has loaned one TOH for Jolla to be introduced there.

I had a small interview with Thomas B Rücker, Open Source Evangelist at Tieto corporation.

Tieto corporation is cooperating with Jolla both in software development (telephone, audio) and in enabling OEM manufacturing for other device manufacturers.

Tieto will also be present at MWC2014, they are not demoing Sailfish device manufacturing this time but manufacturers are welcome to contact them about that.

Thomas also told that their software development for Jolla is almost fully OpenSource, and is available at Nemo project.

Back in the app development room, a lot of code was produced during 8 hours. Apps under development were e.g. a nice Together portal client by Samuli Silvius (above, left) There were about 20 new apps under work during the Hack Day, and most of them are hopefully arriving soon to Jolla Store.

Seravo thanked all participants with good pizza and enough of drinks. Jolla gave everybody a familiar looking stocking cap with Jolla MAKIA logo (image above).

The next hacking day takes place already at March-29-2014. REGISTERATION is already opened - Jolla, Devaamo and Tieto welcomes all new software and hardware hackers along.

Some bad quality videos from the event can be found below, including Kimmo's OLED TOH and Artem's introduction to app development on Sailsfish OS. DIAS of Artem's introduction to Sailfish OS app development are available at: http://www.codingsubmarine.com

Image courtesy: reviewjolla.blogspot.com / licence by CC2.0 (share for free, mention the source)

Jolla News: Market share Q4/2013 and a view to the future of Jolla phone

Top Five Worldwide Smartphone Vendors, Shipments Q4/2013

• Samsung 28,8%
• Apple 17,9%
• Huawei 5,8%
• Lenovo 4,9%
• LG 4,6%
• Others 37,9%

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, January 27, 2014

• As part of the "Others" above, Jolla has 0,005%

Top Five Worldwide Smartphone Platforms, Shipments Q4/2012 & Q4/2013

AOSP (Android Open Source Project) with 25% at Q4/2013 has a huge gain compared to year back. These phones (forked Android) are mostly sold in China, India and other parts of Asian markets. A great deal of these phones have Android versions which are still using Google services, but back in October 2013 Google locked their Google Play service from forked Android phones (e.g. Kindle). Apps developed on Google API and dependent of Play services are not working in these phones any more.

Sailfish OS and Android support

Android support on Jolla is independent of Google Play services, but more and more apps developed on Google API are dependent on these. Due to this, Jolla owners might face a problem in close future - future Android apps developed on Google API will not run properly, and users are forced to hunt older, working versions of their desired apps. I might have encountered this already while updating Navfree - last working version seems to be 2.1.14

It's obvious that it's not in Google's interest to enable their apps to run on any other platforms but unforked Android, and the 4% loss in their market share of native Android can already be heard as a sound of alarm for them. It's possible, even probable, that the support outside Google's Android is  getting even worse in a long run.

While all this we should be extremely happy and excited about each new native Sailfish OS app reaching Jolla Store. The phone is the cake, but it's not much without great apps decorating it. On behalf of our community I want to show some respect for every single app developed:

Review Jolla's thanks to Sailfish app developers

Starting soon, this blog will review as much Sailfish apps as possible. My first app review was IRC for Sailfish, but let that be just a beginning. As the amount of apps is growing, I also wish to welcome app reviews written by others to be shared here, please contribute for this common purpose and shere your respect with nice, yet honest, reviews.

Also, you will not find any more Android app reviews on this blog. Those already written (Go Launcher EX, Navfree, Plex, Flash player) may stay, as well as the App report tool where you can still share your experience from both Sailfish and Android apps (see Community DIT). In overall, this blog takes a turn towards Sailfish.

Conclusion

Sailfish OS will surely gain its independent market share in time, and while Google reduces their support outside native Android, Jolla has no idea to advance with its Android support in a long run. While the amount of native Sailfish apps is small, Android support remains as an important part of Jolla - especially in entering markets in Asia.

I wish that both Jolla and our great community will give their full support, in many different ways, to all Sailfish app developers - this has a first-rate importance.

Jolla News: Letter from Jolla, Open Source Sailfish browser

Sailfish OS is an Open Source project (sailfishos.org). On top of it, Jolla currently has a closed source user interface, but that's not the whole picture - according to Jolla, this situation is due to change in time.

With the latest update, Sailfish OS 1.0.3.8. Naamankajärvi, Jolla already introduced a new recovery menu which enables unlocking Jolla's bootloader. This was a step towards Open Source  - and today the story goes on. Letter from Vesa-Matti Hartikainen, Jolla Oy:

We finally got all the preparations done and today is the day. Sailfish Browser is Jolla's first fully open source application! The public repository is here: https://github.com/sailfishos/sailfish-browser We intend to work as open as possible and hope to gain contributors and a better chance of getting our embedding accepted to Mozilla upstream. Future contributions, both internal and external should go to the public repository. I hope that we will get a public bugzilla for this project at some point, but at the moment externally we will use Github's issue tracker. A more in depth description of the technology powering the browser can be found at http://blog.idempotent.info/posts/whats-behind-sailfish-browser.html. On behalf of Jolla's browser team I thank you all for being an awesome community and we are very much looking forward to building a great browser together! -- Vesa-Matti Hartikainen Jolla Oy

Open Source licence is added to the code already two weeks ago, but the letter above was published today. By this letter it's obvious that Jolla wishes to welcome more developers to contribute to the browser code, aiming to make it a full member of the Mozilla browsers main upstream. This would be a win win situation to both Jolla, their customers and mozilla.org.

Open Sourcing Sailfish browser was also expected because of the existing Gecko licence - Jolla's Sailfish browser uses Mozilla’s Gecko engine, and it's embedded with EmbedLite API.

News about Open Source Sailfish Browser has been welcome. Information was first published at Maemo developer forum, since then it's already reached at least:

• GIGAOM
• The Next Web
• CNN Money
• Several Jolla community sites, blogs and forums

Grants, by the licence of Sailfish Browser

Each Contributor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license:

1. under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by such Contributor to use, reproduce, make available, modify, display, perform, distribute, and otherwise exploit its Contributions, either on an unmodified basis, with Modifications, or as part of a Larger Work; and
2. under Patent Claims of such Contributor to make, use, sell, offer for sale, have made, import, and otherwise transfer either its Contributions or its Contributor Version.

(note: for conditions, read the full licence http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/)

LTE 4G seen on Jolla smartphone UPDATED

This image was shared in Twitter

Update: LTE was officially enabled in Sailfish OS 1.0.7

See the latest post with interactive map and list of operators 

Image: Zooming in a bit we see a nice detail: 4G LTE in use on the screen of Jolla smartphone

Security update: Online with Sailfish, Android browsers and apps

Just a few common Android Browsers. Famous Firefox missing

Google DNS usage located on Jolla

It's been found out that Myriad Alien Dalvik, service on which all Android applications run on Jolla, sets Jolla to use Google's DNS server 8.8.8.8 in Android environment. This DNS is in use for all Android applications connecting to the internet, including Browsers, SoMe Apps (fb, twitter, whatsapp etc...) and any other applications. This means that every URL you send via an Android app is first sent to Google. This doesn't happen only on Alien Dalvik - It's normal in all Android environments. Android is Google's property.

A lot of Jolla users have installed Android support (myself included) without knowing this - but here we have another great example of the OpenSource ideology: This was discovered, and now the info is spreading fast through the community.

Those who don't want to send their every "net step" via Google have exactly two options: Use Sailfish Browser (in a network not using Google's DNS) or hack the Alien Dalvik (to use a different DNS, in a network likewise). Personally I'm using a lot of Google's services, knowing that they are profiling me all the time to show me the most attractive commercials. The world is full of people like me - 81% of all the smartphones in the world are Androids. Among Jolla owners, however, the percentage might be a lot smaller. Some people care. Knowledge is Power, and we can only hope for Google to use their huge "property" wisely.

DNS - Short basics

DNS server is always the first place connected when enterin the net. It offers the directions to the required content. A simple example:

• You enter http://together.jolla.com into your browser
• that text is sent to the DNS server, normally one defined by your network provided
• DNS server returns a numeric address where the named site locates (54.194.54.215, Ireland)
• Your phone builds a connection to that server (via several servers on the way)
• Content is transferred to your phone

Sailfish Browser

The biggest reason for people using Android browsers on their Jolla is that Sailfish browser looks like an alpha version so far. It has 5 virtual buttons (back/forward/refresh/favourite/tabs) and 3 more pulley menu items behind tabs (new tab, close all tabs, share). Sharing opens a simple link share with adding your own writing - nothing more. The browser also include a few bugs, crashing sometimes with no explanations. However, there's someting good: Gecko based user agent is modern, and scores very well in for example html5 test (You can try by opening html5test.com with your Jolla browser)

Updates wanted and expected

Users have been patient while waiting for new features to be released, but this finding in Alien Dalvik could cause some wishes for faster browser app updates - remains to be seen. New features are promised during Q1/2014, but nobody knows what they are. Other important updates are 4G/LTE support, NFC bug fix (should be available in couple of weeks) and Store related bugs (downloading / connection problems), just to name a few. So far, Jolla has released two larger updates (1st for bug fixes, 2nd for some features and more bugfixes) with unexpected speed. Jolla has managed to keep their community quite happy, considering the amount of things needed to be done. Most whining has been seen in Jolla's policy in informing their customers and a slow care response in common.

Closed - Jolla missing OpenSource policy

 Edit 31-Jan-2014: Thanks Jolla, on behalf of the whole community! With Sailfish OS update 1.0.3.8 Naamankajärvi, Jolla has delivered the solution. It's now possible to remove the OEM lock  via updated recovery menu. OpenSource policy is coming back :)

A pick from the changelog:

• Improved recovery mode functionality introducing new features such as bootloader unlocking, shell and filesystem recovery options

Earlier Marc Dillon already tweeded this promise, now (only a month later) carried out:

@JollaUSA @JollaHQ It was a temporary patch by an engineer followed by a massive overreaction, It will be reversed when better fix is made.
— Marc Dillon (@MarcDillonDotFi) December 31, 2013

Original article 29-Dec-2013:

Due to an unexpected turn that Jolla has locked their phone from OpenSource developers without warning them or discussing with them in advance, I'm stopping my contributing to the community. My contributing was done without benefits in a believe for having the most OpenSource favoured phone in the market.

Besides that this is the last article I write, I'm pulling out of my ongoing bug tracking projects: One conserning location services, 2 conserning memory handling, one possibly related to i2c/NFC (the project wasn't started yet).

My phone went OEM locked after Sailfish update (version 1.0.2.5) was installed. I'm ready to join the community again only after OpenSource policy is back, and I see a decent explanation of why the act was done the way it was (sudden, silent way and not e.g. offering a separate, OpenSource solution for those who would have liked it at the same time).

For information:

• OEM lock enables the manufacturer and 3rd parties to enter hidden code into system. For example in China, where the government has a strict policy to the community, phones sold there are usually OEM locked.
• No phone in the market is true OpenSource, and I didn't expect Jolla to be one either. There's always some closed, copyrighted code included, especially from the hardware part manufacturers, and this is somewhat acceptable. So far, Jolla was doing a great job having as much OpenSource code in their phone as possible.
• Sailfish OS itself remains as OpenSource - Jolla has included some of their own, copyrighted code into the phone, so the phone's operating system is partially OpenSource, partially closed.

Thank's to all my readers, thanks to all Jolla owners contributing with me, and thanks for sharing the information (iltalehti.fi, talouselama.fi, mpc.fi, jollatides.com, jollasuomi.fi, taskumuro.com  and all the other great forums). In my opinion, the best way to return the company to the desired level of OpenSource policy is to pause until it's seen again. Hope to see you soon.

YIS

Simo Ruoho

Edit 29-Dec at 20:35 UTC: Workaround was not only published quick by @bencord0, but it was also shared quickly by Harri Hakulinen, chief engineer at Jolla. Jolla's phone stays OEM locked until the official solution for developers is presented, but booting the phone with your own images is possible again Not tested, so please confirm by comment when you've tried. In conclusion, I hope this brings some talented brains back to #jolla2gether. I'm not counting myself to this group, but I'll contribute again - mostly thanks to Jolla's fast reaction.

@SimoRuoho Wellcome back ;) RT @bencord0 http://t.co/wHLU8kacuZ … Tinkerability: On recent the #Jolla Update #Maadajävri
— Harri Hakulinen (@HarriHakulinen) December 29, 2013

Could Jolla drop Beta sign with Sailfish Maadajavri

Sailfish Maadâjävri 1.0.2.5 - picks from the changelog

HowTo: Settings --> About product --> pulley menu, check for updates. WLAN recommended.

In short: This is the second larger update for Sailfish, enabling better hardware support for Android Apps (e.g. Skype video calls, both cameras), one direction synching with Google calendar and better certification support for MS Exhange. What we're still missing after this update are a fix to the NFC bug, turn-by turn navigation for native Here maps, and landscape mode in several apps. Camera does support all 4 orientations now.

Picks from the changelog (full)

• Camera: Improvements in exposure time and auto focus in low light conditions, improved switching from rear to front camera. Skype video calls are tested to work with both cameras.
• Twitter: Better support for high flow of tweets
• Messages: Multiple recipients can now be picked from favorites
• Clock now shows the correct time in alarm list and cover for all timezones
• Bluetooth: OBEX push requests from trusted devices are now automatically accepted, a more informative progress bar is shown during BT discovery
• Mail: multiple bug fixes
• Documents from transfer UI can now be opened with Office app

Known bugs not yet fixed in this release

• NFC battery bug fix (coming soon)
• 4G/LTE connection. Official statement: LTE supporten countries and operators will be published later. Some speculation at Jolla Detailed Hardware Specs
• Camera support for more Android apps (still not working in Facebook, Twitter)
• Landscape mode for several sailfish apps. No news about development
• Navigation feature for Jolla's HERE Maps. No news about development. Several Android navigation apps are reported to work, some better, some worse.
• Shared calendar synch missing both in Google calendar and MS exchange. No news about development.

Upcoming Sailfish update releases

•  2nd week of Janyary, 2014 (estimated):
  Hotfix for NFC battery life bug
• Q1/2014: New features promised

Sailfish Maadâjävri ?

Maadâjarvi, photo by Pekka Manninen (Picasa album)

Another update named by a lake, this time in same (language spoken in Lapland). The lake is located at Inari, Finland, and the name translates as "Southern lake" or "Base lake". Jolla has stated that they are using lakes of Finland in naming updates of Sailfish OS. There are 187 888 lakes in Finland, including the small ones, so we might have more than few updates coming. Looking at the size of Maadâjarvi, we could speculate that this is a bigger update than the previous one - but I'm still holding my breath for Sailfish Saimaa! Map below shows the finnish name, "Tyvijärvi". Oh, and just for note: There are no real sailfishes in any lakes in Finland.

Näytä suurempi kartta

Jolla HowTo: Make your own ambience with greyscale images

 The hedgehogs here are not the same

Move your mouse on top of the images to find out the invisible difference. In each of these greyscale images one pixel is colored. Jolla's automatic ambience creator finds the one, and makes it the text color instead of the (ugly) brown. Brown is used by Jolla when no colors are found, or color tone differences are too low.

How to make your own ambience with desired color?

1. Open an image with any good image manipulation program. Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop are great.
2. Reduce the saturation. Make it either a full greyscale image, or leave only some color left (max difference from greyscale is about 20 in RGB256 palette)
3. Crop / resize the image to FullHD portrait (1080 x 1920 px)
4. Zoom in to max zoom. Find this pixel close the center of the image: (539,962)
5. Color this pixel to your desired text color with at least 60 steps tone difference in RGB256 scale (for example: Grey 128,128,128 turns to red with values 188,128,128)
6. Connect your phone with PC connection
7. Save the image to the picture folder of Jolla
   (Sailfish -> Phone memory -> Pictures -> Camera/Jolla)
8. Open the image in the Jolla Gallery
9. Click the image to open the info view
10. Pull down (Pulley menu) and create an ambience

To find it in your quick ambience menu (swipe left/right)

1. Go back in the gallery and select ambiences
2. Click your new ambience and make it your favourite (activate the star)
3. Change any other properties, like ring tone etc. as you wish.
4. Save (swipe left). It should be there now.

Or pick a Jolla Hedgehog Ambience with your color

1. Click any small image above.
2. Right click to save the full size image to your computer
3. Advance from step 6 above

Pixel level zoom from one of the images above ->

Flash player for Jolla smartphone

Notes (IMPORTANT)

• Jolla's own Sailfish Browser does not support flash content, and there is no official support coming afaik.
• Adobe flash player installed by instruction here must be updated manually.
• Using an old version of Adobe Flash player might cause security issues. When writing this guide, latest official Android version is 11.1. For other operating systems, like Linux, version 11.2 is already published.
• Jolla does not officially support 3rd party stores, like Aptoide which is mentioned in this guide. Use 3rd party stores with your own risk.

How to Install Adobe Flash player for Jolla Smartphone (unofficial, read Notes)

1. If not already done, install Android support from Jolla store. For this you need to be logged in with your Jolla account (Settings -> Accounts -> Jolla, white spot active)
2. Long web address to write: Use your phone internet browser (any), and go to http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/installers/archive/android/11.1.115.69/install_flash_player_ics.apk
3. The install packet: Flash player for Android* is downloaded to your phone. Close the browser
4. Go to Settings -> Transfers and click the downloaded packet. It should install to your phone. 

 * Legal note: Distributing Adobe Flash player is prohibited elsewhere but in Adobe's own sites macromedia.com, adobe.com or via their official partners. For your own security, make sure you download the install packet fromtheir own web site (like the link above, including text http...macromedia.com/) in the very beginning of the address. If you find a similar apk from 3rd parties, please report it to Adobe.

How to use flash content on Jolla

• You need an Android web browser, as Adobe doesn't offer support for Sailfish. Any browser should do, but this is tested to work at least with Firefox. Simply start your Android browser and go to site including flash content.

How to Install an Android web browser to Jolla

• A lot of Android browsers are available in a lot of different app stores. To keep the guide here simple, I use only one example: Installing Firefox from Aptoide store

1. Open your phone browser, go to address m.aptoide.com/installer. Install Aptoide store (close browser)
2. Open Aptoide store and search Firefox. Install the application (close the store)
3. Close the store - Your browser is now ready for use in the Launcer view (applications screen)
   
   If you want, you can move the icon up to the home screen quick menu (first four applications of your launcher view are shown on the home screen)

Next guide coming up at reviewjolla:  

How to Install GO Launcher EX on Jolla, enabling better view on installed Android applications.

User Report Tool: Jolla smartphone Apps

Reports so far (filtered)

This result table is filtered to show only app name, rating and comments shared to users. For more detailed results, or sharing the report tool, please contact (see DIT)

Android and Sailfish Apps running on Jolla

Jolla smart phone, powered by Sailfish OS, aims to be fully compatible with Android Apps. However, Sailfish OS is still in Beta stage and some Android Apps doesn't run properly.

Here you can find a User Report Tool, updated by Jolla owners. If you have a Jolla already, please join us and report any Apps you've tested, or the ones you haven't seen available for Jolla but you'd like to see.

Above you can see a simple preview of already reported Applications. As there are plenty of Android Apps available, and the number of Jolla owners grows too, this preview is kept in a simple table form for faster page load. This preview shows all the rows, but not all the columns. Latest user reports are added to the last row.

Bloggers, contributors, forum moderators and software reviewers:

List above comes from a feed, which is free to use. List could be easily sorted and filtered for multiple purposes, and for example average rating for a single app is easily calculated. Make use of the feed! I have no intention to be selfish with the tool or the user reports - I'd love to see both in use in several countries, serving several Jolla users, just like any open community project. Please contact me for the embedding code of the tool and the feed in desired format, and please feel free to copy the link of App listing above.

The purpose of this is to serve Jolla users, not to advertise or otherwise try to make money with the idea. I hope you share this ideology if you want to embed the tool to your own environment. However, if you happen to use e.g. blog advertisement already, let's not make that a barrier - reaching as many Jolla users as possible, working with a common list, is the essential goal.

Jolla towards new markets: Portugal

Jolla Oy, smart phone designer and manufacturer & Sailfish OS owner and developer, is opening sails in their home harbour Finland and is about to start selling their Jolla phone in Portugal. A long sailing from ice covered lakes to deep seas and sunshine.

Pre-order campaign is starting, and distributor Smarteki9 (which has obvioysly herited some web style from jolla.com) has stated that Jolla phones will be available during the 1st quarter of 2014. Smarteki9 is a new company founded just 3 weeks ago, possibly by Jolla itself (not confirmed).They are located in Lissabon (Lisboa) in a nice looking office building Latino Coelho. Among Jolla, smarteki9 is cooperating with at least Booxmedia.

And why Portugal? Not just for the weather. Here's five facts from the local mobile market there
(Source: ACEPI, IDC)

• Between April and June 2013 more than half a million (570.000) smartphones were sold, a growth of 25% compared to the same period of 2012
• In total 1.44 million mobile phones were sold in Portugal, a decrease of 3% compared to the same period in 2012
• Nokia has taken the lead again in the segment of traditional phones
• Android continues to dominate consumer preferences of the Portuguese, having achieved the highest market share ever, representing 82% of total sales of smartphones
• Three operator giants in Portugal have all invested heavily on LTE network. Pt covered 90% of population already in the end of 2012. The giants are:
• Pt (Portugal Telecom) and its mobile device unit TMN
• Vodafone (doesn't currently sell phones)
• Zopt (Zon Optimus) with its mobile device unti Optimus

We can see a pattern here: Traditional Nokia's are soon to be changed to Smart Phones. Nokia has changed to MS Software. A company from Finland (Jolla) might be a perfect choise for a company from Finland (Nokia). Newcomer will support LTE networks, and even the market share of Android could be seen quite full. Operators can be seen competing in the LTE environment, surely welcoming new devices with ability to make use for it.

However, entering the markets could become an issue. Cultural aspects can be handled, and Jolla might know how Nokia did it there earlier, but the competition will be tought - Finland, with a lot of home team supporters, were sheeps compared to what's coming up. It's like leaving clear, cool winter weather of Finland and entering, barefoot, the sun heated sands. Android has builded castles to these beaches some time, Microsoft eagers to have previous, traditional Nokia users to go on with the Brand, and Apple - well, it's Apple. Those fruits just love sun.

If Jolla repeats the tactic they used in Finland, they have an agreement with just one of the three big operators. I'm not speculating too much which one, Jolla has kept this information well hidden. I  make only a tentative guess that it's Pt, with the largest LTE network and some agreement history between TMN and Nokia back from 2005, when they chose Nokia's video sharing services to their 3G network. Vodafone is currently not selling phones.

Jolla, as a Startup company, will not hit the portuguese market with huge or expensive campaigns. Advertisement is probably left totally to the operator, and Jolla will just try to make a difference with what they have, advancing step by step with their ability to react faster to the market happenings. Pricing is a tough question at the Portugals current situation, considering both economics and competing offers between the three giants. For example, TMN (Pt) currently offers Nokia Lumia 625 for 189,90€. I suppose this is one of the cheapest 4G/LTE phones available there. Also Nokia Lumia 920 has a lower price tag than what Jolla had in Finland.

What is interesting, is that Jolla is entering the market pretty soon, but I couldn't find information about Jolla in any of the operators sites. In Finland, DNA published a press release over five months before the sales of the first Jolla phones. This might mean that hasn't agreement with any of the giants, taking just small step to the portuguese market, handling everything just via the distributor. Interesting to see how it'll be, at least Jolla has a lot of plans about the distributor to find partners for branding The Other Half. This coiuld mean e.g. football teams who have strong support among citizens.

"Essa do Suporte de aplicações android…..hmmmm vai dar que falar" (David Ferreira, forum post)

After Portugal:
Jolla's fleet is advancing to other parts of  Europe (early 2014), followed by China (no estimates on when).
More to come, see you.

 by Simo

Jolla - Developers Dream Phone

 

 

 

 

Jolla - Developers Dream Phone

After three days of the first Jolla Smart Phone sold in Finland, experienced and Linux oriented customers are already sailing in deep seas with their Jolla's. In the net we can already find instructions about how to install Google Play into this phone, and a video showing how nicely GTA3 is running on Jolla Sailfish OS.

So modifying the Jolla's OpenSource Sailfish OS is possible, and Jolla has made it easy too - In the phone settings you can change the phone to Developer Mode (caution on this, this is really ment for experienced users). No other mobile OS offer a developer mode, but in other systems like Android this can be done a bit trickier, via rooting the phone.

 

It's obvious that Jolla hasn't offered this option without purpose. As they aim to wide use of their gesture based operating system worldwide, there are few benefits for themselves offering this option.

Some possible benefits to Jolla for offering customers a Developer Mode:

• Jolla is looking for the best individual developers to hire them
• Jolla gives part of their own work to the community, and via that offering better updates faster to all their customers (this kind of community work is common in Linux based, OpenSource enviroments)
• Jolla is hoping for users to develope some of The Other Halfs
• Jolla needs native Sailfish Apps fast, and this is one way to offer complete test devices for all interested in developing
• Jolla's Sailfish starts to spread around the world directly via the community
• Jolla gains the votes from experienced mobile enthustiastics, and gains some marketing value via them

I see Jolla's phones as a huge marketing fleet for the Salefish Operating System, which seems to be the main product of the company. In future we might see Jolla running campaigns where they award their customers for their work to develope and spread Sailfish all around the world.

Jolla's strategy by Stefano Mosconi:
 "Our plan is a three-phase one: first, we’ll do phones that are Jolla-branded. Then we’ll do co-branded phones – “Sailfish by Jolla.” And then the third wave will be to license the OS to third parties so that they can build on top of the existing open-source project -which we plan to keep open-source- and then we’ll differentiate with the UI."

"Give a million ships to free, open minded sailors and follow them visiting all the harbours of the world, equipping their ships even better and showing their nice ships to their friends, inviting them to sailing with them"

to JollaTides by Simo Ruoho
soon to be Jolla sailor 

Jolla from different points of view

How do we see Jolla depends on where we stand looking at it. In this article you find points of view from Jolla's operator partner, Sailfish app developers, Jolla's The Other Half hardware developers and, most importantly, the potential customers. Each point of view includes some pros and cons. 

1st point of view: App developers

Marketing a modern phone via community, like Jolla has been doing so far, is very much app dependent and the apps play a big role in the user experience. In general, app developers are not too satisfied with Jolla's app policy so far - Jolla offers their users a way to install Android Apps, both free and paid, via their russian partner Yandex's app store which is rumoured to be preinstalled to the phone (Yandex press release 13.11.2013). Developers doesn't see much income for themselves after this. The income for developers comes from two sources: From users who pay for their apps, and from advertisement included into their apps. After what's heard so far, there could be a lack for both income channels. However, Jolla is working on this via their harbour, as can be read from here (Jolla press release 13.11.2013)

Pros and Cons

• Sailfish OS uses similar methods as Android OS -> porting existing apps isn't too difficult
• The idea of a functional Other Half and multitasking with active covers is offering something new to work with
• Jolla seems to be ready for open discussion with their App developers
• The documentation of Qt5, Sailfish OS and porting isn't done the best way
• Jolla is feared not to offer paid Sailfish apps in their own app store
• Jolla markets Android apps for customers, leaving less demand for new sailfish apps

2nd point of view: Hardware developers

Jolla has split their phone in two, offering ”The Jolla Half” with the 4.5" touch screen, Sailfish operating system and common connectivity ports extended with two nice ports capable to handle new harware. The Other Half can be connected to the phone via these ports, and the phone's functionality can be changed totally via different halfs. In general, hardware developers are very interested about this kind of consept. Manufacturing functional Other Halfs has a potential market for both new and existing Jolla's customers, but first, of cource, the manufacturers need to see some customers. 

Pros and Cons

• Jolla's phone is equipped with NFC and I2C, giving developers multiple possibilities
• The idea of a functional other half could have a strong potential new market
• Jolla seems to be ready for open discussion with their hardware developers
• No customers yet, a lot of phone's to be sold before first Other Halfs are available
• Startup company with limited budget can't invest too much for hardware development
• Proper documentation about hardware drivers is lacking, or is hard to find

3rd point of view: Customers

In general, customers are excited for a new company entering a big market. Most of them are looking forward to see and feel the phone in their own hands before decision to buy it or not. Some Linux lovers or finnish fans (Jolla is a company in Finland, and the original Linux was also built by a finn). Jolla's open source policy plays a role having these fans on their side, and the fans are hoping that Jolla's policy won't change in this matter.

Pros and Cons 

• Jolla, as a finnish company, is lucky (or wise) introducing a new phone to the market when previous finnish giant Nokia sold it's mobile phone business to Microsoft.
• The idea of a functional other half is bringing something new – maybe not when the phone is introduced, but surely later, when enough phones are sold.
• The Other Half can potentially keep the phone up to date longer than what we are used to seen in mobile market. Customers doesn't need to change their whole phone – just a half might be enough.
• The first customers are not totally satisfied with the informing policy of Jolla. A lot of questions about what they are about to get are still in the air, and Jolla is asking their first customers to pay the full price before answering all these questions
• No Other Halfs yet – a lot of phone's to be sold before first Other Halfs are available
• Jolla is a new, small company. Some customers wonder how will it unlike in the market ruled by pretty big shoes (Apple, Samsung, Google and future newcomers like Opera, Mozilla). Jolla will need some finnish strenght of will here

4th point of view: Operators and other marketing partners

In the day of introducing the phone Jolla has only one visible partnership in operators field, finnish operator DNA. Jolla is looking forward for partners in several countries, hoping them to market their new phone. Operators are generally open for new models fitting their ideology and brand. Most of them want to offer their customers a vary of choises, and Jolla as a brand is seen as a welcome newcomer. Partenrships with other marketers are agreed worlwide, one of the biggest beeing chinese D.Phone (partner of China Mobile, China Telecom and ChinaUnicom).

Pros and Cons

• New phone might bring in new customers
• By the experience from DNA, according to them, Jolla seem's like a nice partner for an operator (DNA press release 22.11.2013)
• Jolla is equipped with LTE network (called also 4G in some countries), and operators who have builded it up are willing to sell phones using it. Among other LTE capable phones, Jolla's price tag seems reasonable
• Partners not totally satisfied with Jolla's informing policy. Until the day of introducing the phone (27.11.2013) Jolla has given more speculation than absolute facts about what and when the shops are about to sell
• No Other Halfs yet – for an operator it would be nice to offer Jolla phones to their customers with its full potential in use, but a lot of phone's are to be sold before first Other Half's are available.
• Jolla is a new, small company. Some operators want to see some more development before they make decision about partnership

5th point of view: My personal opinions

I can see Jolla as a welcome new company with a lot of potential. The market they are entering seems quite full and ruled at first glance, but looking a bit furher we can see a huge and still growing market with plenty of room, especially in big countries like India and China.

To enter this market it requires a phone with something new. Unfortunately today, when the first phones are sold and the phone is widely introduced to the world, Jolla's first phone has only a new, gesture based operating system. Well, there is a big promise of something new along – in a form they call ”The Other Half”. In my opinion, they should have introduced a variety of different, functional Other Halfs in this first day, as this day has an essential value when hitting this big market.

Marketing in general has been quiet, propably for financial reasons. It might also be a chosen policy that all the marketing is left to Jolla's partners – focusing Jolla's own resources and knowhow to develop a phone as good as possible.

In the end all this closes to simple questions:

Do I need a new phone? Is it Jolla? For me: Propably yes (two times).

Another, new and unlike point of view from Jolla's CEO Pienimäki

Great news for Open Source fans: "According to Pienimäki, Jolla is also planning to let individual users to download Sailfish operating system into their Android-devices." (Read the whole interview from source Taloussanomat, a finnish business magazine. The interview was published 2013-11-27 at 18:30.

UPDATE 2013-11-27 18:30
- Jolla has just revealed a user guide for the phone.