Posts
I have been following Jolla for quite some times. It became my daily ritual to check up on Jolla's Twitter and Facebook to see what they have been up to and what the other say about the development of Jolla.
To be honest, I am quite impressed by how actively Jolla is engaging to the community. Unfortunately, there are certain questions that they just can't give us the answer we want , even if they really want to (or not).
I feel sort of bad for the PR guys at Jolla that they have to answer the same set of questions again and again, even though those questions have been addressed appropriately ( Not satisfyingly, but we can't always please everybody). If I were them, I would probably gone mad for keeping answering the same questions.
Here I listed the three most popular questions from Jolla's Twitter that I would find them annoying if asked over and over again. However, if I ran into anyone from Jolla, I would not hesitate to ask the same questions myself. ( I just can't help it.)
#1- Support for existing devices
Will Jolla Support N9?
Answer: Nope, at least not officially. Here is one of the most recent official responses
@bonchehopp We cannot support Nokia products with official releases. Most likely there will be unofficial ports to eg. N9.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) February 8, 2013
If you are like me that got nothing to do but to spend hours on internet, you will notice it is almost the same response we got from them on November last year.
@lonely_cent We cannot support Nokia's product officially. Technically there is nothing preventing for porting to eg. N9.If you keep digging, you will find the message has been pretty consistent since the beginning. This is earliest official response I can find.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) November 22, 2012
On Nokia #N950, we love it and use in development. Nokia #N9 is in our heritage, but we cannot provide support since it's Nokia's product.I guess we should take that as a hint that they are not going to change their mind for awhile .Even if you don't keep track of Jolla's tweets, there are plenty of Jolla's fan websites/Facebook/Twitter/Blogs to say the same things; even Engadget wrote up an article to report that.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) July 7, 2012
As a proud owner of n9, I understand how bad we all want Sailfish OS running on our phone. Obviously, we are not getting any further news from Jolla, especially not from their official Twitter account, unless we are willing to pay for the huge lawsuits. As they already made it clear, the porting process has to be community-driven and off-the-record. There is really no need to ask the same question on every other days. If Nokia and Jolla make some kind of deals in the future, I am pretty sure they will let us know.
#2 Product's availability
Will the Jolla phone be available to my country?
Answer: It depends, but they can't tell you the details just yet.
@umanghome Product availability will be announced later, thanks!If you live in China or Finland, the answer is most certainly yes, but ,for the rest of us, we just have to wait. The reasoning is simple: if the deals didn't go thur, it would just let down a lot of people which is worst than being just unavailable. It is best for us to wait and let them work behind the scene.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) July 21, 2012
#3 The technical specification of the product ( both hardware and software)
Does the phone have this and that? Does the OS have such and such?
Answer: Well, you can use the phone to make a phone call for sure. Beyond that,we just have to sit tight and wait, but they do closely listen to what we want .( Hopefully, we can know more about the phone on MWC 13)
@jollaes 1st product will be revealed within this quarter of the year.To sum up, It is fun to speculate and discuss about rumors. It is just a part of the game and Jolla is more than happy to play along with it. At the same time, Jolla can only answer your questions to a certain point. Asking the same questions is not going to help and probably take up their time to address to more pressing/interesting matters. If you are a fan of Jolla, you should do your homework before asking any questions.
— Jolla (@JollaMobile) January 2, 2013
** I changed one of tweets as I posted the wrong one ( I blame it on the Firefox, as it somehow disable the JavaScript)
** And Thanks for reading it and feel free to check out my other biogs :)
You're totally right :)
ReplyDeleteI refused to buy an N9 because Nokia pre-EOLed it (though it was a beautiful successor to my N900). Now I have an embarrassment of riches in Linux-based phones (beyond Android) to be released this year. Sailfish is nestled next to Ubuntu at the top of my list. Looking forward to their product announcement next month!
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to hear that, but N9 is a good phone. It is also a shame that I myself never had a chance to buy the N900, as the price was way too high for me to afford one. By the time the price dropped to the point that I can afford one, the N9 was already announced. That brings up to the problem I am having with the phones nowadays is that the life span is only expected for one to two years for $500+ (unlocked phone). I don't think it is a good trend at all. Maybe I should write more about it in other time...
DeleteAgree the N9 was great, and was ready to buy one except for Nokia's foolish (IMHO) decision to abandon MeeGo - especially in light of the N9's rave reviews here in the USA. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as it were. Hoping Sailfish continues to clear the high bar set by the N9!
DeleteI have both N9 (work phone) & N900 (private phone) and love them both. They are different and earnestly I see no need to flash N9 with Sailfish even if I could. On N900, I tried Nemo OS which is part of Mer- core and similar to Sailfish OS. Nevertheless, I still like Maemo a lot and even though N900 is very old hardware. If speculations are right Jolla's hardware will be amazing...have a look at ST-Ericsson's website. So please leave your N9(00) untouched as pieces of history and thanks for this article! Let's enjoy the change of mobile first with Jolla and later with Ubuntu for phones :-)
ReplyDeleteComing back to question #1, the problem is not that the answer is not the one I would like to ear. I can admit that N9 won't get Sailfish, even from an unoffical source, not at all. It's fine, and Harmattan does the job very well. The problem is that they don't give the reasoning behind them being unable / unwilling to port to N9. What is the point : a specific agreement they, as former Nokia employees, have not to do such things, a more general legal reasoning (I would be very interested to understand that), or even a marketing decision from them (which I would respect), anything else ? Even a "there are secret specific legal tying we have that prevent us from doing so, but we can't tell anything about them as we are tied by a NDA" would be perfect. But "we cannot" is not enough.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you, but as I said it, we can't always get what we want(even a good answer). There is really no point to argue with them, as they already made an "official" announcement and they are well aware on how we feel about that.
DeleteSometimes, we forget that they don't own us any explanations, as they are privately-held company that are separate from Nokia. It is Jolla, not I-need-to-take-care-every-mess-Nokia-left-behind-and-answer-to-their-costumers. The fact that they are willing to reach out to us is admirable(Not all companies are willing to do that). It is better to think of it as a goodwill of gesture rather than an obligation.
FYI, if you read in between the lines, they didn't say no. They said they can't do it officially.In other word, it is totally possible for couple Jolla employees to develop a way to port the sailfish into N9 for research purpose and accidentally leak on the Internet or invite couple developers to "discuss" about Sailfish Compatibility. As for why they can't do it, I am not a lawyer but one thing I can think of is liability. Who is responsible If the phone is blown up? Ofc, those are my pure speculations. However, I hope you get my point that some things are best to leave it vague for flexibility.
Well, I get your point. I also think N9 is well with Harmattan, and Nokia Maps is great (I downloaded the relevant maps for Europe, and I have working GPS for "free").
DeleteJust, the primary N9 users (at least in the countries the device was not officially launched), that are mostly interested in Jolla future products, and that might well be some of the potential apps writers, won't buy vague marketing or corporate statements: aren't we mostly anarchist slashdoters using free software (as in speech) :-) ?
There's a range of factors, but the single-most significant is that they have limited resources, so they need to focus on getting it working flawlessly on their own hw loooong before any port to the N9.
DeleteThey've already outlined HEAPS of stuff they'll do to help "facilitate" the community eventually doing a port, but there'll always be some limitations, it'll never be a flawless/smooth/slick experience.
Then there's the fact that there's bottom lvl sw* that's closed, which they'd need to lease/license again, which wouldn't be cheap, & furthermore much of it may still be exclusive to Nokia.
*associated with the OMAP3630 & other distinct but collaborative silicon
Quote Franck Routier;
Delete"I can admit that N9 won't get Sailfish, even from an unoffical source, not at all"
Hi Franck, I'm not sure where you are getting your information, but I'm quite certain there will be Sailfish OS for the N9, it will be community driven and as you know, not supported by Jolla because the rights to the N9 still belong to Nokia.
I am following a few forums and waiting patiently for first sight of Sailfish OS, I am also following Jolla's facebook page and they are most certainly NOT denying that Sailfish won't be available for N9 users, just not officially. As for the reasoning behind it?, it's business and business is money!, who cares, the communities will bring us Sailfish OS for N9, I feel very sure of this, but cannot offer any real evidence other than my gut feeling!
don't forget, and you probably know this, but, the ex Nokia team, now Jolla, are using the Nokia N950 to develop Sailfish, the N9 and N950 share many similarities, but the hardware in the N9 is better than the N950's hardware, but both run MeeGo Harmattan of and PR version.
Lets wait and see I guess!, I'm enthusiastic about it, not that I'm a developer, but I love to tinker and am a dab hand at reflashing firmwares to many phones, using winflash and phoenix.
Regards
Mark
^
Deletehttp://findtechnewsfrompac.blogspot.com/2013/02/top-three-questions-jolla-cant-give-you.html?showComment=1360905539415#c2588795511496754386