
Jolla Tablet - dezgeg
http://jolla.com/tablet
======
plq
I have a Jolla phone and I love it. I guess I'm among the luckier ones as my
phone doesn't have any of the wiggly sim/battery problems. It's been very
stable for me for the past 8 or so months I had it.

I love the battery life. Perhaps thanks to using Qt/C++ instead of a higher
level language/framework, or perhaps thanks to me being social-medially-
challenged, the standard 2200 mah battery takes me for a good chunk of 48
hours.

Yes, there aren't much apps for it, (there was a time when you could
practically download the entire Jolla store to your phone) but almost all of
the apps are open source. If you're craving for the latest episode of Brain
Crush Saga, you're not in the target audience anyway.

There are also a couple of factors which make it a unique offering:

-It's not from Google, it's not from Apple, so I'm a bit more comfortable privacy-wise.

-The concept of "The Other Half". It's sort of a "hardware app" that you can use as the back cover of your phone. For example, there's a kickstarter for a The Other Half Keyboard running right now: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2028347278/tohkbd-the-o...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2028347278/tohkbd-the-other-half-keyboard-for-your-jolla).

-No front-facing buttons! Huge success design-wise. Not gorgeous like the N9 (reportedly due to some patent issues), but still very eye-pleasing.

All in all, very cute device, but definitely not (yet) for everyone.

As for the tablet, I expect to be a lot more productive with it compared to
the toys on the market now, especially thanks to it being an Intel-based
device with a proper Linux distribution. And at ~200$ for this kind of device,
to me it's a bargain.

The Indie GoGo page is buried far down the page, so here it is for your
convenience: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-
firs...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-
crowdsourced-tablet/contributions/new?perk_amt=204&perk_id=2484192)

Keep up the amazing work, Jolla team, you _are_ making a difference.

Disclaimer: No affiliation, just a happy customer.

~~~
stuaxo
Wish I wasn't having those problems :/

~~~
ganzuul
After taking my battery and SIM card out and putting them back in a few times,
those glitches no longer occur for me.

I get about 48h of light use though. Battery life used to be worse, but I was
able to tell an indexing service to only run after boot and not during use.
Might be updates overwrite user customizations, so I need to do it again.

After that update the phone refused to talk with Debian Wheezy and Windows 7
over USB but Ubuntu 14.4 LTS works just swimmingly now, and it's what I use on
my desktop anyway. That update finally resolved an issue with the screen not
wanting to unlock, and now it's smooth sailing.

I'm actually quite happy with the phone. I expected issues when I bought it
and since I'm proficient with Linux I can solve them from the command line
interface. The phone won't let me copy-paste from the GUI to the CLI; as per a
bug report this functionality is pending robust sanity checking and security.
The keyboard is very sensitive in just the right way and once I got used to
the UI Android started to feel like a bygone era. I'm Finnish, and during the
holidays I'll probably be expected to advise my relatives on whether or not
they can upgrade their tablets to Jolla's new device.

Note that just yesterday Nokia announced a new Android tablet:
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30096603](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30096603)
An odd coincidence?

(p.s. I had only just learned to use QtCreator for Symbian when the Microsoft
deal was announced. Jolla relies on Qt, so getting started with Qt was in fact
not a waste of time. I'm looking forward to learning functional C++14!)

------
FlyingSnake
Ignoring the Generic company marketing video, it looks promising.

Sailfish is an interesting OS, it has RPM package manager and looks like
they've proprietary Android compatibility layer. It also uses Qt/QML for apps
which is interesting.

The specs look good too when compared to the other rivals in the range[1]

[https://images.indiegogo.com/file_attachments/1026232/files/...](https://images.indiegogo.com/file_attachments/1026232/files/20141118091830-comparison-
table.png?1416331110)

Does anyone here use a Jolla device?

~~~
garretraziel
I have Jolla phone and I have mixed feelings about it. Sailfish OS is
interesting - learning how to use it has steep learning curve (but once you
get used to it, it's perhaps faster to do something with it than on any other
phone). It is sometimes unreliable (my Jolla randomly shuts down, sometimes
several times in a row, see [https://together.jolla.com/question/7144/jolla-
randomly-shut...](https://together.jolla.com/question/7144/jolla-randomly-
shuts-down-10819/)). There are other quirks here and there, guys from Jolla
are fixing them one after another, but I would say that Sailfish OS is still
in beta state.

It is really developer friendly device. It has awesome SDK and it isn't trying
to restrict you by any means. But even that, there are not really that many
applications for Sailfish OS and only few of them are good. And there is
literally no official client for anything and that brings problems - for
example, several people were banned from WhatsApp for using Mitakuuluu
(WhatsApp client for Sailfish OS). There isn't full-featured Facebook client,
there isn't client for my bank account or for my operator. App for public
transport for your country? Nope, it isn't there. Sure, you can use Android
apps (not from Google Play though, you have to use Yandex store or Amazon
store), but: 1) There are no Google Play Services - that means no integration
with Google Account, no maps, no that pretty cool Google Inbox app, Google is
moving a lot of things into Google Play Services, 2) there will be problems
with any non-trivial app. Games are OK, but GPS tracking? Didn't work when app
wasn't active (so you have to have screen on). Wanted to try Pressy? Doesn't
work, it wants to access your Google account. Besides, if you are buying this
device convicted that you will use Android apps on it, why not buy Android
phone?

To end this comment with something positive, I could say that this is "OK"
device. It is impressive that they are able to build this device with that
small team. They are listening to community, they are updating their OS
frequently. Besides some quirks, Sailfish OS is as good as any other mobile
phone OS. It runs fast and it is based on Linux, Qt5 and even Wayland
compositor. You can be more confident that you are not being watched (at least
they say). Your inner geek will be pleased. But at the end of the day, you
will look at other people phones, they are playing that new cool game, using
that new cool app you always wanted to try, trying that new HN or Reddit
client, using Google Inbox, using Instagram Hyperlapse, using their expensive
gadgets, fitness trackers, using their phones to find how will they get home
and your phone has just suddenly rebooted again.

~~~
sampo
> _App for public transport for your country? Nope, it isn 't there._

Except, of course, for Finland:
[https://openrepos.net/content/w01w13/reitti](https://openrepos.net/content/w01w13/reitti)

~~~
shaneqful
And for Dublin: [http://www.softwareontheside.info/2014/03/sailbus-
dublin.htm...](http://www.softwareontheside.info/2014/03/sailbus-dublin.html)

One of the city bike apps also supports Dublin along with a lot of other
cities in Europe.

------
tempodox
I think it would be good for all to have something like this. We need an
alternative mobile platform that is not enslaved to one of the giant ecosystem
producers with their respective Reality Distortion Fields.

Personally, I would like an OS that supports compilation to native code
without having to polish every single bit manually (like Android forces you to
do if you dare to use C instead of Java).

What I definitely don't need is Android by another name — for now, I just hope
it will be better.

~~~
pjmlp
As of Android 5 everything is native, including Java.

EDIT:
[http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-5.0-chan...](http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-5.0-changes.html)

------
krcz
I would love to see a low-spec laptop with detachable keyboard with some Linux
desktop environment when the keyboard is connected, switching to Sailfish OS
when used in tablet mode. If it had long battery life and had good support of
additional screens (to avoid disasters when running presentations) it would be
a perfect device for me.

~~~
shaneqful
I plan to use mine with an apple bluetooth keyboard I'd say you'll need some
external device for screens though.

------
Nr7
Here's the link for their Indiegogo page: [http://igg.me/at/jolla-
tablet](http://igg.me/at/jolla-tablet)

------
iamtew
Their crowdsourcing campaign is doing quite good.
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-
firs...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-
crowdsourced-tablet)

Personally though I'm a bit disappointed that they went the crowdfundign way
on this. They didn't have any problems selling their mobile phone, and it's
doing quite good as far as I've seen.

Also I hope they do continue to produce it afterwards, but this item in the
FAQ leaves me wondering:

> Will the tablet be available also for general sale or only through
> Indiegogo?

>If there is demand, we'll consider all options. In any case, the Indiegogo
contributors will get the tablet first and with the lowest price at the time
of delivery.

~~~
pjmlp
I am yet to see any on the wild. Even Windows Phone has better sales.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
I wonder how many of the Windows Phone users are Microsoft employees or
affiliates. After all they're still a big company, with 127K employees around
the world.

~~~
pjmlp
I get to see quite a few devices on the wild in German trains.

In the southern and eastern European countries, where we traditionally only
use pre-paid phones and contracts are out of reach for most pockets, it is
easier to spot Android and Windows Phones than iOS devices.

Are the ones using Windows Phones all Microsoft employees and affiliates then?

------
rehemiau
They need to make a high-end phone, a Z3 Compact competitor with a nice
screen, camera, solid build + their backwards-compatible TOH v2 (faster data
transfer) and then they'd be golden

Moving to a new UI size without resolving all phone-related problems? A bad
idea IMHO

------
INTPenis
I've had a Jolla phone for most of 2014 and I can say I'm not happy with it.

What drew me to it was the open source OS but it's very immature and needs a
lot of work. It also needs a lot of new adopters to improve its ecosystem of
apps.

The android compatibility is shaky at best and ruins the entire user interface
experience of the sailfish OS.

The whole phone does not feel robust, not at all like the OnePlus for example
which is my currently active phone, or the iPhone 4 that I previously used.

All this makes me very reluctant to purchase a Jolla tablet.

~~~
denegen
I'm still using the Jolla phone and I think it's ok and it's getting better.
Compared to Android phones its user interface is cleaner and doesn't come with
preinstalled apps that I don't use.

~~~
ganzuul
Regarding preinstalled apps: My Nexus 7 did a lot of outright bitching when I
first got it. I even had a bit of black tape over the front-facing camera for
a while since Google's Byzantine privacy practices had made me genuinely not
trust the device.

My Jolla is the opposite from this. On my Jolla, I am root.

~~~
gman99
> a bit of black tape over the front-facing camera for a while since Google's
> Byzantine privacy practices had made me genuinely not trust the device.

I genuinely don't get this.

You don't trust the OS not to spy on you, so you covered the camera? Fine. But
if you don't trust the OS, how do you stop it from, say, uploading everything
you type to Google? OK, perhaps you have a highly restrictive firewall, or
only use it offline (reading ebooks?)

But in that case, what's the point of the black tape over the camera? It now
has no way of contacting the mothership; all you've done is restrict your
ability to take pictures.

Surely the better idea would be to compile an AOSP build for the N7 (or maybe
just get CyanogenMod if you're less paranoid?) and you basically have a tablet
which you completely control without buying a Jolla (with an equivalent app
ecosystem and less bugs)?

Note that there are definitely reasons to get a Jolla phone; for example the
fact that AOSP on the N7 is unsupported by google -- just saying I don't fully
understand the tape on the camera when you don't trust the OS.

(maybe it was just a figure of speech; in which case, ignore me -- it didn't
come across that way in your comment)

~~~
ganzuul
It's basic OpSec. You disable the services you don't need. You always build
security in layers.

Some devices, e.g. a Dell All-in-one PC, come with a little latch that you can
pull in front of the forward-facing camera. It's often not just the mothership
that is the target of these measures. It could even be family who misguidedly
install spyware.

~~~
gman99
>It could even be family who misguidedly install spyware. That's an
application installed by the user; But this won't protect you against the core
OS (the Dell's with a camera shutter is not meant to protect you against
Microsoft).

Your original comment seemed to indicate it's was Google's privacy policies
you were protecting yourself against. And Google supplies the OS -- most of
which is open source.

Comparing the open-ness of the SW, both of them are equally open or closed.
The Sailfish UI is closed source (but you get something close using Mer) -- As
for android, just GApps is closed (which, I would argue, is better than the
Sailfish situation)

So, if you are motivated to not use android due to paranoia; my recommendation
is to run a AOSP build with F-Droid as an app store. There are many reasons to
use a Jolla phone. Privacy alone is not a reason to switch ecosystems (as I
said earlier: there are other, more compelling reasons).

And of course, you need the black tape covering your camera on both the
Android and the Jolla (which was your original statement I disagreed with :)

------
ehurrell
Watching Jolla has been interesting, there seems to be a huge amount of
potential in Sailfish, and though I have a friend who owns a Jolla phone and
seems to be frustrated by it often I'm still interested in this.

It sort of reminds me of Android's G1, a phone I had an loved for the fact
that I could make anything on it, even if it was rough around the edges. I
look forward to seeing where they take this and how they smooth out issues.

------
blisterpeanuts
Is there a technical reason why new devices don't support SDXC (high capacity
sd cards)? Is it more expensive to implement, with licensing fees and whatnot?
We have 64 and 128 gb cards nowadays, and 256 and higher are coming. Huge
storage might be a compelling differentiater for a niche product like this
one.

~~~
wvh
My Jolla phone has a Samsung Pro 64GB microSDXC card in it (Btrfs formatted,
"raw" without partitions). It works well.

Samsung seems to call it "64GB microSDHC Pro" in some places though, so the
problem here might be terminology and not actual lack of support.

I can't see any reason why the tablet wouldn't support such a card.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
The specs say "up to 32gb", hence my question. But that's great news that 64gb
works. Would 128 work as well?

------
_pmf_
What an annoying site.

~~~
commentzorro
I agree. Am I getting so old that I just don't get it anymore? (Sigh, I guess
I'll just get it out of the way now. That's not music that's noise. And slow
down, where are you going that you have to get there so fast.)

~~~
_pmf_
> Am I getting so old that I just don't get it anymore?

The blink tag was hip once, too, so I have some hope that these fads will pass
when the so-called "user experience experts" move to greener pastures.

------
vishnugupta
Sigh, no 3G or LTS. This beautiful tablet is useless to me if it works only on
Wifi; it really kills the "mobility" aspect of a tablet. I can't use the
navigation which effectively renders the GPS useless.

Am I missing something here? Because I would love to have this tablet.

~~~
TuringTest
If it's true that it can run Android apps, you can use an offline navigation
application that uses OpenStreetMap data.

For example MapFactor Navigator provides turn-by-turn navigation and works
reasonably well.

~~~
vishnugupta
Thanks for pointing out OSM.

I used navigation as an example. In general though I really don't get the idea
of wifi-only table. I commute regularly and get most of my non-coding work
done during that time; e-mail, responses, catching up on news and a whole
bunch of things. Also when I'm out I carry my tablet around, just in case.

And I have a dumbish phone which I use for making/receiving calls :-)

~~~
pflanze
Instead of upgrading my phone to 4G, I bought a 4G hotspot, and now everything
talking wifi can use it. Count as an advantage that this way no hijackable
baseband processor is running inside your tablet, and as a disadvantage that
now also entities that only track wifi MAC addresses can track your movements.

(Also an advantage over using the phone for data is that by using a data-only
SIM, your ISP won't do some nasty stuff like blocking VoIP. In the end, I may
go back to a dumbphone, too.)

------
hugh4life
Somewhat OT, but in case someone from Jolla or the "Sailfish Alliance" is
reading these comments I just don't think Sailfish can take off with many
developers if the main application development language is C++. Rust will be
hitting 1.0 early next year and it would be nice for the Sailfish, Qt, and
Rust communities to have official, corporate backed rust bindings for Qt and
Sailfish's APIs.

~~~
fit2rule
C++ as the default means that things like MOAI can come onboard as rapidly as
possible. That's a good thing, yo - it means freedom and variety - and also,
very important, compatibility with an existing plethora of libraries and
sources. Ports are a very important aspect of their strategy, I think .. and
C++ opens the door for lot of things, one of which is of course an alternative
language environment, albeit portable. But, then again, things like MOAI mean
that getting the host up and running on Jolla is probably going to be easy,
and then .. suddenly .. there are hundreds of potential apps to be brought to
the platform ..

~~~
hugh4life
You do realize I called for Qt bindings right? C++ is going nowhere... C++
will always be an option that's needed... especially for games. I actually
like C++ but developing in it provides too many unnecessary hassles for many
apps.

------
worldsayshi
All this magical scrolling features is causing my browser to lag. I use chrome
on OS X. Why use such fancy effects if it is ruined by bad performance?

~~~
wodenokoto
I use chrome on osx on a 5 year old macbook pro (bottom of the line at
purchase time) and the site ran perfectly smooth.

------
Zigurd
I currently use Android tablets for taking notes at meetings, Drive document
editing, and access to my calendar and contacts. If I could get that with a OS
(other than Windows) where I could install Eclipse and/or Android Studio and
get HDMI out, I'm in. I wonder if Jolla's (Myriad's?) Android compatibility
works on this?

------
tommy-mato
I've seen Jolla before a couple of times. I know that it says it runs android
apps, but is there an easy/user-friendly way to get _access_ to the android
apps? or is it all just "download the apk from somewhere and install it".

If it can't stand alone it'll fall over in this market.

------
kybernetyk
I probably won't use it (I'm not a tablet person and my iPad hasn't been
touched for months now) yet I pledged for one unit as I think it's important
to support such independent efforts in our "bipolar" mobile world.

------
mercurial
I'd be interested in a Jolla phablet (with stylus), but only as long as it
wasn't made with dubious labour practices using coltan sourced from dodgy
mines.

------
shortavion
I know the Jolla phone isn't available for sale in the US but is there anyone
using a one in the US? And if so what carrier(s)? And any particular issue(s)?

~~~
mbel
I've spent couple of months in southern California and I was using my Jolla
with a sin card, that I bought there (T-Mobile). It worked without any issues,
also I didn't have any problems with roaming using my European sim card.

~~~
johnsimm
Were you able to use 3G data though? Or at least multimedia messages?

~~~
mbel
There were no problems with 3G data, didn't had a chance to check out LTE.
I've successfully received a copule of MMS-es with pictures, I haven't tried
sending any.

~~~
johnsimm
Wow! But I thought t-mobile was 1700MHz / 2100MHz! I don't want to believe
that you're lying to me, but... You've gotten my hopes up that I can use this
on WIND in Canada.

------
Aoyagi
I was interested in Jolla since the start, but the phones hardware was just...
uninteresting. This looks nice though, at least for those with use for a
tablet.

------
jetm9
i'm curious about why did they go to "third"? there is a very big third
Firefox OS not including WP. i can understand an OS based on Android. i can
understand contributing to Firefox even forking. it has some real support from
telecoms, open development process. apart from being a regional product which
can get away with 3rd party app stores i dont get this write-a-mobile-os-from
scratch.

~~~
wmf
It's not quite from scratch; Maemo/MeeGo/Sailfish is older than WP8 and FxOS.

------
bananaoomarang
Seems like this might be really fun to hack with (I would love a more open,
vaguely nice mobile device), but I'm sceptical about the lack of a firm
processor choice at that price... Even i it is an 'early adopter one'.

If I thought they weren't going to reach their goal I'd go for it, but doesn't
look look like they'll have any issues there!

I liked a lot of the Jolla ideas on the phone too, hopefully this'll be great!

------
yitchelle
“Jolla seeks to revive Nokia platform.”

I am confuse. Is this the Nokia N1 in a different guise?

~~~
otuutti
No. Jolla is a bunch on ex- Nokia people who wanted to keep working on their
then-current project.

Nokia allegedly started working on N1 when Microsoft deal went through.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I've heard the N1 is mostly Foxconn with some software (zlauncher) and
industrial design from Nokia.

~~~
mempko
sounds like every apple product.

~~~
dagw
Well no. Foxconn only does manufacturing for Apple. In this case Foxconn also
handles sales and distribution and even much of the actual
electronics/hardware design. Think of it as Nokia is to Foxconn as Nexus is to
Asus/LG/Motorola

------
ulfw
The Nokia N1 tablet running Sailfish OS would have been a nice combination.

------
jbk
So it's very close to the Nokia N1 specs?

------
sgt101
Nice, but LTE would make it a killer

~~~
shmerl
And also would inflate the price. I don't mind WiFi only. And in the worst
case you can make a WiFi hotspot from your handset.

------
shmerl
Are there any details on the GPU?

