
Jolla - Geee
http://jolla.com/
======
jasonkester
They seem to put a lot of effort into telling you things other than "what is
this thing?"

It sorta looks like a phone. Is it a phone? "Jolla is powered by Sailfish OS."
Sweet. How is that relevant? It must be important because it spends the rest
of the page telling you about the OS.

I'm back here, with honestly no idea what it is. Probably not the impression
they want to leave on people, assuming (as a guess) that this is a consumer
product of some kind.

It seems they put the engineers in charge of designing the website.

~~~
Brakenshire
For the people who are genuinely confused, Jolla is a company that sells
smartphones, their first smartphone is also called Jolla; it runs Sailfish OS,
which is effectively a fork of the Meego operating system which Nokia used in
its N9/N900 phones, before they switched to Windows Mobile. This is not very
surprising, because Jolla is a Finnish company principally made up of ex-Nokia
engineers, including a lot of the people who created the N9 in the first
place. Sailfish OS stays closer to Linux than Android, using Wayland, Qt/QML,
PulseAudio etc, and adhering to the Linux Standard Base specification. It also
comes packaged with an Android runtime based on Alien Dalvik, so that it can
run Android applications (similar to Blackberry 10), although it won't have
access to Google Play or the Play Services APIs. The phone is being launched
this week in Finland, and there are plans for release in the rest of Europe,
and in China, though not so far in the US.

Edit: Some more technical details about the OS: [https://sailfishos.org/about-
technology.html](https://sailfishos.org/about-technology.html)

~~~
geuis
Please forward this paragraph to their web folks. Just put it right at the top
as a first-read. Then everything else makes a lot more sense.

~~~
daliusd
I'm pretty sure they can't use "Nokia" in their advertisements.

~~~
zobzu
I'm pretty sure they can say jolla is the phone, sailfish the os, and that it
comes from meego tho. and everything else without mentioning even Nokia. heh.

~~~
daliusd
I just did experiment and asked my wife what OS is running on her phone. She
has no idea. She owns N9.

~~~
vidarh
I'm a software developer with 20 years of professional experience, 18 of them
on Linux, and 33 years of time spend immersed in technology every day, and I
didn't know the N9 ran Meego until I read the paragraph above. I was somewhat
aware of Jolla and Sailfish, and vaguely aware it had Linux somewhere there,
but only barely.

They probably should not mention the OS very much, and focus on getting people
to recognize the brand and reasons why they should want the phones, and only
mention "Linux" and "Meego" far down the list.

~~~
shmerl
Stock N9 doesn't even run Meego (proper). It runs Harmattan, a transitional
system which is more Maemo than Meego underneath. Nokia planned to evolve it
into Meego proper, but never did since it soon sunk into the oblivion of WP.
Some parts of Meego (not Harmattan) were forked by the community as Mer, and
some other parts (namely Meego Handset) as Nemo. Sailfish is built on Mer and
parts of Nemo, adding its own UI on top. All this (including historic
evolution of Moblin and Maemo to Meego) can be pretty confusing for those who
didn't follow these developments. See also this chart:
[https://github.com/kumadasu/tizen-history](https://github.com/kumadasu/tizen-
history)

------
MehdiEG
For those who are wondering why this is up on the front page: Jolla is
launching their first handset tonight in Helsinki:
[http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/jolla-sailfish-os-
phone-...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/jolla-sailfish-os-phone-
november-27-release/)

I always wondered why Jolla is getting so little love from HN. To me and from
a geek / hacker point of view, Jolla is an awful lot more interesting than
Android.

Anyone who's had the chance to own a Meego device knows how incredibly
talented and passionate the team behind Jolla is. I'm really looking forward
to see how the OS and apps feel on Jolla. The OS also appears to be a lot more
open and hackable than Android (although the proof will be in the pudding so
we'll see how it all pans out).

~~~
lambda
Probably hasn't been getting much attention because so far it is vaporware
(until you can actually buy a device, it's not all that interesting), and it's
a member of the complicated Maemo/Moblin/Meego/Tizen/Mer/Sailfish family that
keeps on promising great things but seems to be reinvented every year and
never actually delivers a working or supported ecosystem. Yes, a few devices
have been released in that family, but have been immediately EOLed (the N900,
DOA as it was released just as Nokia decided to go Windows only) or sold only
as specialized developer previews or whatnot.

This whole family has been promising lots of things for a long time, but never
seems to actually deliver, while you can get an Android phone in any corner
store.

I might get interested once I can actually buy a device and write an
application for it. Until then, I'm going to be extremely skeptical of this
whole family of devices since they seem to consistently over-promise and
under-deliver.

~~~
MehdiEG
As far as I can see from a completely outsider perspective, the Maemo / Meego
/ Jolla team have always been severely under-resourced, have always been the
underdog and have always deeply suffered from the political turmoil happening
above their head while they were at Nokia.

One thing they have never been however is vaporware. They have always
delivered. And what they've delivered, particularly with Meego, was superb.
Meego was especially impressive given that in the last few months before its
release, they had for all intent and purpose already been fired from Nokia.
That they managed to pull together, keep working on it and release something
of that caliber when they knew that Meego had no future at Nokia is pretty
incredible.

It's obvious that Jolla is extremely unlikely to ever go mainstream. But
that's not the point. They're clearly a team of talented, passionate and
persistent hackers that can create products that manage to be delightful to
use, open source and very hackable. That's why I find the lack of interest
from the HN community, which is usually all over these type of projects, to be
surprising.

~~~
lambda
So, you're right, it hasn't been entirely vaporware. The N800, N900 and N9 did
ship, and were pretty impressive.

But when the N900 shipped with Maemo, they then announced that they were
changing a large portion of the stack, from GTK to Qt, from dpkg to rpm, from
Maemo to MeeGo. So the software stack was pretty much obsolete as soon as it
shipped. Then the N9 was released after Nokia had cancelled development on
MeeGo, so it was pretty unclear if the platform had any future at all.

Now it's been two more years, and I've heard a lot about Tizen and Mer and
Sailfish and Plasma Active and so on, but I haven't actually seen any hardware
running them that's generally available.

So yeah, it's pretty impressive what they've done with the resources they
have, but I really don't want to invest time and money into a platform that's
going to disappear or be reinvented in another year.

~~~
dandrews
The Maemo-MeeGo transition didn't simply replace technical innards; it
completely disrupted the Maemo user community, which relationship was
negligently bungled by Nokia management. (Although it may also have been due
to Intel's influence via the Moblin contingent.) Weep for maemo.org, which
once upon a time was the best friend Nokia ever had.

------
networked
>Jolla brings you the best of both worlds – super intuitive Sailfish OS apps
and the latest Android™ apps.

The recent article on OS/2 [1] makes me wonder whether such compatibility
(which, as I understand, is full and not selective) is actually good for them.
Either way, tough, I wish Jolla success; I'd like to see Sailfish OS [2] on an
actual device.

[1] See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6792010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6792010).
The short of it is that the Ars Technica article claims OS/2's compatibility
with Windows made developers less inclined to write native applications for
OS/2\. Some discussion on whether that was the case can be found in the
comments to this response to the article:
[http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=2144](http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=2144).

[2] [https://sailfishos.org/](https://sailfishos.org/)

~~~
jimbokun
As long as their business is based on selling hardware, it might not be a
problem. Then they are not competing with Google in mobile OS development, but
with Samsung etc.

Sailfish OS could then allow them to differentiate from other handset makers,
without advertising it as such. In other words, market the capabilities, not
the Sailfish "brand".

~~~
x3c
Would Sailfish also run apps that use google play services?

~~~
shawn-butler
No, not as far I know.

Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki went on record last month stating that devices will
ship with its own app store partner, Yandex
[http://store.yandex.com](http://store.yandex.com) I believe, not Google Play.

So apps consuming Play Services might work if a user was able to install the
play services .apk, but I guess this would not be in a supported fashion.

Seems all very murky. Jolla claims full Android compatibility but I don't
believe it has Android(™) compatibility. Would be a good developer FAQ.

------
znowi
One of their implicit pitch is that Jolla is "surveillance free". And it can
run Android apps. I think these two features are good enough to spark an
interest. The spec looks also impressive. But freedom doesn't come cheap at
almost $550. Nonetheless, a very exciting development.

I'm also waiting for Firefox OS to mature and produce more devices.

I can't wait to drop Android. Each release takes more freedom away from the
user and gets increasingly integrated with whatever social, cloud, data
milking services they have at their disposal.

Funny how _freedom_ becomes a competitive advantage for startups against the
big and evil Internet giants.

~~~
sbierwagen

      One of their implicit pitch is that Jolla is "surveillance free".
    

Bullshit. Unless the phone can lie to the phone company about which cell tower
its connected to, or some magic like that, it's not going to be anything like
"surveillance free."

~~~
king-coconut
I think he ment that if you want to use the phone, you are not forced to use a
ecosystem monitored by USA.

------
shmerl
FYI: those who wonder about the technology, check out these sites:

* [https://sailfishos.org](https://sailfishos.org)

* [http://merproject.org](http://merproject.org)

* [https://wiki.merproject.org](https://wiki.merproject.org)

* [http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2013/04/wayland-utilizing-an...](http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2013/04/wayland-utilizing-android-gpu-drivers.html)

* [http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2013/05/wayland-utilizing-an...](http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2013/05/wayland-utilizing-android-gpu-drivers.html)

Jolla.com is more consumer oriented, so that can puzzle some who look for
technical details. It's probably good to provide some links to the above from
the Jolla.com. You can give them feedback, they are even present on Diaspora*:
[https://joindiaspora.com/u/jolla](https://joindiaspora.com/u/jolla)

------
atwebb
Perhaps I'm not in the know (I'm not) but it took me way too long to figure
out it was a phone and not some UI overlay/Android enhancement suite.

~~~
sudomal
It's like a lot of things that appear on HN... strange and unfamiliar words
without context. Yep, a smartphone.

~~~
missing_cipher
It's the title's fault, OP made no effort to explain what he was linking.
Pretty annoying actually.

~~~
nicholassmith
That'd be editorialising the title which is expressly discouraged by the site
moderators.

------
buster
It would be awesome if Jolla would become a successful company after Nokia
sold out to MS (because it seems like Jolla is a continuation of what would
have been Nokias route without MS). Also i only heard good things about the
N900, i love linux, i hope the handset/os is "free"... and 399€ doesn't seem
to be too expensive. Also it looks well designed.

Good luck, Jolla Team!

~~~
purringmeow
I think 400 euro is a lot for a device with these specs though. They are
letting a huge number of devices "fly under them"(be cheaper) and the average
consumer doesn't give a damn if the phone runs Sailfish OS or Android.

Nevertheless, I too wish them luck :)

------
Fauntleroy
It really bothers me that they didn't do something about the flickering
infrared light in the video. I know it's not going to show up in real life,
but that's going to confuse some people who aren't aware of the fact cameras
can see some things we don't.

------
easytiger
Hint: most global mega corps block youtube. Host videos locally for product
demos if you can pay for the bandwidth. You will reach a bigger audience.

~~~
kfinley
Is Vimeo a good alternative, or is it also blocked?

~~~
hsuresh
Vimeo is terribly slow, at least from here in India.

------
616c
What is interesting is that anyone that comes here, likes it (I do from what I
see) and goes to check on the Mer Project where this work stems from will see
their git repos have been largely untouched for two years. [0] I find that
strange because I had to search a few pages into their wiki to even find that
URL.

I wish people who liked Meego would support the latest update to the truly
free OpenMoko project. [1] You can build your own upgrade or buy the whole
thing in an old GA02 case (the second revision OpenMoko phone).

I am waiting out for pocket change to buy one of those. Buy a real open
handset and fight the power guys!

[0] [http://gitweb.merproject.org/gitweb](http://gitweb.merproject.org/gitweb)

[1]
[http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/](http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/)

------
CookWithMe
> To get back to Home from any app, swipe from either side of the screen.

I don't think it's a great idea to reserve the "swipe from side of screen"
gesture for the OS. Especially the left-swipe is used in many apps to reveal a
menu, which is a UI-pattern I like a lot.

Anyway, looks interesting, would love to try one out!

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "I don't think it's a great idea to reserve the "swipe from side of screen"
gesture for the OS."

In iOS 7 a gesture from the left side towards the right navigates back in an
app.

------
davexunit
Can anyone comment on how free this device will be? From what I recall,
Sailfish is partially free software, but contains proprietary software as well
which is a real shame.

~~~
pekk
What is your alternative?

~~~
daliusd
Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch

~~~
fulafel
The Firefox OS phone (Zte Open) has proprietary stuff.

~~~
rhelmer
Are there any phones that do not require proprietary drivers? I am not aware
of any.

~~~
fulafel
Yes. The most free one is OpenMoko, even the baseband firmware:
[http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2012-July/0672...](http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2012-July/067276.html)

(runnig non-certified baseband firmware is illegal in many places however,
from spectrum use regulations)

------
SideburnsOfDoom
I value my smartphone a lot, but I find it hard to get excited about this
smart phone vs that smartphone. Android, Samsung android fork, iPhone,
WinPhone, whatever. They're all good, they all roll out a faster better
version every year. They all have twitter, facebook, email, maps, search, a
camera, app store. etc. Oh yeah, and SMS and voice calls too.

So why should we get excited about this flavour of hand-held connected
computer? What's the USP?

~~~
daliusd
Linux ? (not just Linux kernel)

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Linux is a good thing, but Linux as a thing in itself delivers a lot of geek
cred and is a good platform for other software, but it is not a feature that
gives phone users any value. Will the average buyer know or care?

Is it more stable? Cheaper? Android phones are stable and cheap already. Does
it run new kinds of apps or run existing apps faster? Make coffee and wash
dishes? What does it do for me that my current phone does not?

~~~
daliusd
I absolutely agree with you. Still you have asked personal question "So why
should __we__ get excited" and I made assumption that __we__ as hackers. If
__we__ as people - IMHO nothing interesting about this phone from average user
perspective. N950 and N9 were interesting phones for me as geek (because of
QtQuick) but QtQuick performance gain is not that important/significant if
compared to HTML(5).

The only reason why I love different brands than Android is to play with
something interesting and different. That's why Firefox OS looks particularly
interesting for me currently with my simple needs and low dependence on
Google.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Good answer, thanks. "real linux" is a feature for a certain group of people.
... as is "low dependence on Google"

------
gesman
Suggestion: add a text "elevator pitch" on a front page.

Forcing me to watch video is a sure way to Ctrl+F4

~~~
xer0x
Yeah, I didn't realize there was more than the video until I read these
comments.

------
mattholtom
Does no-one answer phone calls from their Mom anymore? Just me?

~~~
jzzskijj
I was very saddened because of this and called my mom immediately with my
Android.

Jolla - For people who don't answer to their mothers.

That's a strategy. Not necessarily the best, but strategy at least. I was a
little bit lost because they were boasting so much about "Yoyo get Sailfish
and you can run Android apps". Like in Blackberry phones before they realized
they have to "reclaim their success".

------
pliny
The Peek and Pull features exists on the iPhone - but the directions are
reversed.

Changing the directions means that app developers cannot develop the same app
for both iOS and Sailfish since they have to place important information that
shouldn't be covered up by notifications, or shouldn't be interacted with in a
way that could activate the notifications menu, on the bottom in iOS and on
the top on Sailfish.

Is there any benefit to changing the directions notifications come from?

~~~
brodney
Developing the same app for both platforms is a Bad Thing. I want Android apps
on Android, iPhone apps on iPhone. Mixing never works out well in the long
term.

~~~
untog
Sure, but realistically not every organisation has the capacity to develop
entirely different apps for every platform. And especially not for minority
platforms like Jolla.

------
luxpir
As a (still happy) n900 user looking for an upgrade path to a decent open
phone with modern hardware, I'm hoping that Sailfish gives you command
line/root access.

Realistically that probably won't happen in this first iteration, but I've
held out for long enough now to be able to wait another 6 months to see what
happens. A hardware keyboard would also be nice, the bigger the better, but
you can't have it all...

~~~
Brakenshire
As I recall, there is some talk about using the 'other half' feature of this
to attach a hardware keyboard. A quick search reveals:

[http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91535](http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91535)

~~~
luxpir
Ah, I'd misunderstood the 'other half' in that case, thinking it just to be a
fancy name for the rear case with a 'colour feature'. There may be hope yet,
although nobody seems to know if that command line/root access is possible.

It's entirely possible that the Maemo/Google search queries I've run may be
letting me down, it'd be great if the Jolla documentation made some mention of
this.

------
rjohnk
I have no idea what the web design of the type Jolla has, but it's getting old
really fast. Yes, it looks neat at first, but then it's confusing. Crashplan
recently did their update with the same style.

I'll shut up now if I'm the only one bothered by this trend.

~~~
criswell
I think it's mostly just weird because the fixed header doesn't have a border
or anything along the bottom to let you know where it ends and the content
begins. I see no reason for it to be fixed at all to be honest, the content
isn't extremely useful. I also wish more sites would do min-height media
queries before fixing elements to my screen. The header and footer here are
pretty greedy with the spacing on this site.

------
neakor
Am I supposed to be impressed by this? "truly open and gesture based OS". I
thought the open card has been played and dead already. And don't iOS and
Android both have plenty of gestures? I didn't see anything new at all.

~~~
7952
Of course they are not selling open software but a hardware product (which may
or may not be locked down).

------
rodolphoarruda
I wonder how the name is pronounced.

My first language is Brazilian Portuguese, but I tend to read it in Spanish
because of the double "L". But that in turn would make it sound like the
Portuguese version of "cork", like a bottle cork.

~~~
sharpneli
"Yol-la" probably confers the intended spelling in English. The word Jolla is
Finnish and means a small boat. It's a reference to the famous burning
platform memo.

P.S. I was one of the 450 guys who got their phone today. Got it literally 20
minutes ago.

~~~
LiamMcCalloway
Can you confirm it's got LTE _everywhere_? (6 continents)

~~~
sharpneli
I cannot. They didn't really speak about it.

However my first impressions as a developer:

It is a breath of fresh air that instead of fiddling with AndroidSDK and
having to deploy an apk my first test of their toolchain was simple
compilation -> scp the binary into the phone and run it in dev mode terminal
(or via ssh from a desktop).

They naturally have a full fledged packaging system like apk but the point is
that it's not forced upon us. My phone is now basically (just like N900 was)
just a Linux running on arm platform, with fancy UI for consumer usage on top.

~~~
voltagex_
How restricted are you? Can you get root on it?

~~~
sharpneli
There are practically no restrictions whatsoever. You have root as soon as you
enable the developer mode from options. You can even flash your own images to
the device.

------
Zigurd
It will be interesting to see if customers see Jolla as a continuation of
Nokia's handset business. Lots of people liked N9 and Meego, and when that
product was killed it was out-selling Nokia's Windows Phone products.

------
dschiptsov
Weaker than S III hardware to run Android apps for 400 euro? Did I miss
something?)

~~~
pekk
You missed that it is not designed as a lower-cost Android phone?

------
Cyclenerd
Why should I buy this device now? 400EUR a lot of money and on Twitter they
write: Calendar sync is not supported at the moment. MMS is not supported at
the moment. We do not have DLNA support at the moment.

~~~
chappi42
You cannot buy it now, thus... If - I'm speculating - we 'normal' people can
buy the device in spring it will have more features.

(I'm interested as it's linux based, and a good alternative to the closed
apple world and the dominant 'Android-one-Google-data-collecting' universe.)

------
ender7
The UI is pretty, but it's dropping frames like crazy during your demo video.
It's super smooth _most_ of the time, but not at the critical times.
Horseshoes and hand grenades, etc.

------
trekky1700
Anyone else really distracted by the extremely messy desks. Who honestly
leaves a wet, browning apple core just sitting on their desk. That's just
going to be a sticky bloody mess later.

~~~
brianmcdonough
That's hilarious. Not to knock the phone, which may or may not be quite good,
but I was also more interested in the things on the desk than the phone. Who's
the person who said, let's put the apple in there? I'd like to know more about
that decision as well.

------
pm90
_> User-replaceable battery_

OH. GOD. YES!

------
namuol
I like how the video gives us the heads-up about how easy it is to
accidentally hang up on your mother.

------
bananacurve
While trying to open the video to full size, some was cut off, I found
Google's 'Stats for Nerds' on right click. Not expecting that, but gave me a
chuckle. As for the phone I don't think it is wise to do promotions with no
word on availability.

------
abjorn
All I learned from the video is that this is a phone for people with very
messy desks.

------
scrozier
"A new beginning." And a web site and video that look exactly like every iOS
and Android device ever made. For HN readers, there's some geek cred here, but
as a consumer product, they need some marketing help.

~~~
SeppoErviala
This is the new beginning after the burning platform company has finally been
sold to Microsoft. Alternatively the new beginning for
maemo/moblin/meego/whatever.

------
LeicaLatte
Liked what i saw. Easily better than any iphone ad of recent times.

------
LandoCalrissian
OK, all the garbage in the video is really, really strange. It completely
distracted me and kind of grossed me out. I don't know who thought that was a
good idea.

------
javindo
That looks cool and all but please get Swype on board. I find it an
indispensable part of mobile use nowadays and any US without it is seriously
missing out.

------
shimon_e
it will be interesting to see how this competes against the Chinese
competitors in this arena. Just yesterday Gionee announced the E7 for about
the same price. A phone that includes a camera sensor from a point and shoot.

[http://www.gsmarena.com/16mp_gionee_elife_e7_claims_to_be_th...](http://www.gsmarena.com/16mp_gionee_elife_e7_claims_to_be_the_best_android_cameraphone-
news-7262.php)

------
jdalgetty
Looks cool but I wish it had beefier hardware specs.

~~~
koide
What are you missing concretely and why?

~~~
zanny
Just compare it to the Nexus 5 at the same price point. Half the memory,
probably lower res screen, the sd card slot is great but I don't think it
justifies a $100+ price premium.

I'd rather see Nexus 5's flashed with Ubuntu Phone / Plasma Active / Tizen /
Sailfish than all these companies trying to batch order hardware of their own
that never has the economies of scale Google could pull off.

~~~
pekk
You aren't comparing apples to apples. It's pretty clear that Jolla was never
intended to _launch_ as a lower-cost competitor to Nexus 5. That makes it a
bit silly to criticize it for not being one, particularly at launch. How long
has the Android platform had to bring costs down? A long time.

------
espadrine
Why couldn't Ubuntu do that?

Is it because device manufacturers won't put trust in anything but the Android
brand?

------
okso
Finally a great Mobile OS for Python ?

------
uxwtf
A phone for messy people? Why put so much junk in the video to defocus
viewer's attention?

------
iamtheike
If you know some finish guy, you will definitely understand that this mobile
is going to rock.

------
shmerl
I'll be getting it as soon as they'll confirm compatibility with T-Mobile LTE.

------
snth
I really wish we could edit submission titles to be more informative.

------
jrockway
> GSM/3G/4G LTE* (Works on 6 continents).

What, no service in Antarctica?

------
chrisarriola
Do we seriously need another mobile operating system?

------
itsbits
When does this mobile technology gonna saturate?

------
grigio
mhm..

\- FirefoxOS is just web

\- Ubuntu Phone is cool and gestures

\- Windows Phone is pushed by Microsoft's money

\- Jolla / Sailfish is ..

Sorry I don't see a killer feature :(

------
jokoon
$400 ? nope.

------
ye
So I watched the video, and I still have no idea what Jolla is.

I was not impressed by anything in the video, but that's besides the point.

If you're a technology company, this hipster crap is ok, but you need to start
with explaining what it is and how it's better. Showing a bunch of gestures
does nothing - Android can do that.

~~~
thomholwerda
You have to click one link on the front page to a short summary of what Jolla
is.

One link.

One.

Of, you can just scroll down.

That's it.

~~~
Semaphor
"Jolla is powered by Sailfish OS, a truly open and distinct mobile operating
system. Navigate effortlessly with the gesture-based user interface and load
the phone with top Android™ apps."

I assume you are talking about this? Because that really told me nothing
worthwhile.

I wish these (horribly to use scrolling) sites would just give me link that
takes me to a half page description that explains in some detail what the heck
they are talking about.

~~~
CatMtKing
What do you mean nothing worthwhile? Isn't that exactly what it is? A _phone_
with an OS that isn't Android/iOS/Windows/Ubuntu/Firefox? What other
description are you expecting?

~~~
Semaphor
> Navigate effortlessly with the gesture-based user interface

What's that? I can turn my Android into a "gesture-based UI".

> load the phone with top Android™ apps

Performance of non-native apps? Emulation layer or what is happening?

> truly open

Every bit is OSS? Hardware specification completely available? What is "truly
open".

The phone is supposed to appeal to geeks/hackers (I think?), so why does the
whole website seem to be something that Apple could have done?

------
shooper
Kinda off topic, but as soon as I opened that page in a new background tab, it
froze my browser and PC for about a minute with an hourglass before it would
respond to my inputs. I thought it crashed the system, but everything is okay
now. I did close the tab after giving it a cursory look because it looked too
noisy and light on content. Perhaps someone can analyze how much RAM, CPU and
bandwidth that page takes up. And I am rocking a quadcore computer with 8 gigs
of RAM.

Sigh, the more the hardware giveth, the more the new fangled web pages taketh
away.

~~~
sampo
I have an old laptop with Core 2 Duo and 2 gigs of RAM. Had no problem with
the website.

------
xmus
i don't know about you but it TRIES to look like ios7, i say LET IT GO -
smart-phone business is OWNED by Apple, the sooner we accept that the sooner
we can move on to a TRULY different thing - this includes Android too, just
DIE you're NOT "original" \- instead of coming up with NEW ideas you try to
rip-off one another and it's getting annoying [most of the time the company
that started the idea WINS]

in summary: \- it's a phone [i think] \- looks elegant \- looks simple to use
\- it's smart [i think --- am thinking a lot aren't i :)] \- android apps
[hope it's better in security than Android] \- gesture based [OMG, didn't see
that one coming]

sound familiar - well it should - iPhone which STARTED all of THIS!

NOTE: am not even an iPhone user, Blackberry [Loyal to the end :)]

CONCLUSION: BORING!

PLEASE if there's something NEW about the OS and the HARDWARE tell me!

------
amalag
So this is an Android fork with UI improvements?

~~~
LrQSs8Dq
It's a phone from a small finnish company with a new (as in not MS, Google or
Apple) operating system, that happens to have an Android compatibility layer,
so you can run native Sailfish apps and Android apps.

If you happen to have heard of the N900, it's the team who made that one. They
founded their own company after Nokia sold its soul to MS.

~~~
blahbl4hblahtoo
Nokia had a soul? It was a corporation.

~~~
agilebyte
Corporate social responsibility could be thought of as (a part of) a soul of a
company.

[http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/people-and-
planet/st...](http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/people-and-
planet/strategy/reports/sustainability-reports/)

~~~
blahbl4hblahtoo
It's not a person. Microsoft has statements like that. Why don't they have a
soul? I'm actually not trying to be flippant. I think that people need to
question their assumptions about "companies as people"...Nokia didn't "have a
soul". It was a business. The fact that people think it did reflects more on
their marketing than anything else.

~~~
agilebyte
Have you seen Hank Poulsen's documentary about precious materials that make it
into mobiles? He referred to Nokia as a company that does not do bad and is
responsible.

If only to force/guilt-trip companies to do better and be responsible to their
workforce, customers, supply chain, country etc., I am going to talk about
companies and their _soul_.

[http://bloodinthemobile.org/](http://bloodinthemobile.org/)

~~~
blahbl4hblahtoo
OK. Fair enough. That doesn't not make Nokia a sentient entity with "a soul".

It's a business that has a fair degree of social responsibility in its
business plans.

My point with this isn't to be pedantic...I'm trying to say that referring to
them in this way plays into the larger picture where it is in all businesses
interest to have us refer to them as a person. They aren't.

------
fracchio
My opinion is: "wat"

------
speeder
I was wondering why a condom site was on HN, then I entered and saw it was the
mobile phone one...

Too bad for them their name (at least in Brazil) still sounds like a condom
name though. (the most popular condom in Brazil is named "Olla")

More on topic edit:

> The original Finnish design, with no front-facing buttons, stands out from
> the pack.

Only me find this... ironic? I mean, almost all smarphones now come without
front-facing buttons (a design I hate by the way, specially when your hands
are wet or oiled for whatever reason, or when you sneeze in the screen and it
go ballistic).

~~~
Sharlin
Um, iPhones, Androids and Windows Phones all have at least one front-facing
button, either physical or virtual.

~~~
1rae
Blackberry has no front-facing buttons and also uses only a gestures-based
interface.

~~~
Pxtl
And I think that was a strategically terrible move. They're trying to come
from behind and they launched with a non-intuitive interface that makes the
phone unusable in a demo.

You put a Z10 in a user's hands without the tutorial enabled and they're just
helpless.

~~~
1rae
For new users perhaps it is a bit of a leap for them to take, but don't you
think they can overlook this fact because they know they are working with a
new operating system? Once you understand how the BB10 OS works its nice to
use. The same thing happened recently with Windows 8 when everyone had to
learn how to use the gestures for tables. The main point however is that jolla
doesn't stand out from the pack just because they have no front-facing
buttons...

