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Application of Betteridge’s law of headlines says no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of

Application of Betteridge’s law of headlines says no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines It's also not the title of the article (“Here comes the first real alternative to iPhone and Android”), but the premise of the article invites a negative response nonetheless. 1. They have no production as of yet. 2. They have no carrier partners as of yet. 3. They have a retail partner who will sell the phones—if the carriers approve them. The claim is that the retail partners control the mobile relationship with the carriers in China, but that would greatly surprise me. It's not impossible, but colour me skeptical. It's also my understanding that Europeans don't necessarily get subsidized phones, either—but they still (nominally) control which phones are allowed on their networks. It gets worse later in the article where it suggests that the carriers and handset manufacturers are going to have even more freedom to modify the base OS than Android manufacturers do. This alone guarantees that Sailfish will not be a viable platform—you will become as locked into a single manufacturer for any app you buy just like you did with "feature" phones that had BREW or JME games & apps. The suggestion that Sailfish avoids patent infringement is also laughable: there's so many patents out there that I suspect that absolutely no one can write software that doesn't infringe on something these days. They think that they've avoided patent infringement (just as Google does with WebM), but until someone decides to sue over an alleged patent infringement, no one knows whether Jolla would win. There's an interesting bit buried in the story, too: they have changed CEOs at least once. The current CEO is Marc Dillon; he attained that post in October when Jussi Hurmola stepped down and became a consultant to the company. Hurmola is supposedly looking after the Sailfish ecosystem. According to what I saw on LinkedIn, Hurmola may have only had the CEO position for as little as eight months, but possibly as much as eighteen (Jolla was founded in March 2011). For a startup with big ambitions, I would want as much stability at the top as possible, personally.

daliusd 14y ago
Where do you collect your facts? I'm not even sure if you don't have bad intentions with your comment. It would be nice from your side to state your relation to Jolla (e.g. competitor) 1. Headline was written by journalist not by Jolla. OK I got it wrong. You are negative to journalist, right? 2. You are most probably right about production but you simply don't know. You are wrong about carrier partners: they have one in Finland (http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/21/jolla-signs-first-carrier-deal-with-finlands-dna-to-carry-upcoming-sailfish-powered-phones/ http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/21/jolla-signs-first-ca...) and one in China. 2. Europeans can get subsidized phones but don't have to. You can use any phone if you manage to get one. I even used one phone that is not for production just fine (N950). 3. I doubt that lock is an issue here. You basically can reflash your phone with pure OS if you want to - like you can reflash your N9 with Mer now. 4. I almost agree with you regarding patents but idea is that Jolla has its own patent portfolio gifted to them by Nokia. 5. Hurmola according to LinkedIn still works for Jolla. As well they are not hiding why CEO was changed - they are quite transparent regarding that. Sorry, but don't find that now. I'm not related to Jolla in any way. I'm (mobile) developer who believes that Jolla will succeed.
- halostatue 14y ago
  I have no relation to Jolla at all—neither competitor or likely customer. At the moment, I'm not doing any direct mobile development (we will be offering something for mobile in the future, but this is not affected by the existence or absence of Jolla). My entire relationship with Jolla is reading this nonsensical article and writing my comment with a bit of simple (short) research. 1. Yes, the journalist (or his editor) is lazy here. However, they probably wouldn't cast the article in such a stark light without prompting from Jolla. 2a. Happy to admit that I was wrong here; the article contained no information about these relationships, and Jolla’s website is essentially content free. 2b. I addressed this (mostly) in a reply to a sibling comment. My point here was that (again) the journalist was lazy-to-irresponsible for pretending that China is different because of the lack of subsidy. 3. Unless Jolla exerts some control over the handset manufacturer and/or the carriers that offer Sailfish phones, which Jolla has explicitly said that they aren't going to do, users will not (necessarily) have the freedom to reflash their phone. This is the problem with Android: there have been both manufacturer locks and carrier locks that prevent timely receipt of updates (including security updates) or OS management of your own phone. You have to root and/or jailbreak your phone to make this happen, and some phones actively fight that (e.g., one of the Motorola phones that I remember a big stink about). 4. Having a nice set of defensive patents gifted by Nokia (hopefully it's done properly so they can use them for defence, rather than merely having a licence to them) is useful, but is not the same as the claim in the article that the are immune to any existing patents. Some of the claims made by Samsung regarding radios clearly indicate that this is not the case. 5. I looked for the CEO change info on Jolla's remarkably content-free website. I couldn't find it. Hurmola's relationship to Jolla (as noted on LinkedIn) is limited to being on the board, as the transition notes that I did find was related to looking after the Sailfish ecosystem. What I found interesting is that it's not clear to me how long Hurmola was CEO—and again, there's remarkably little information. Regardless of why the change was done, I'd be a little skeptical as a partner about the changes at the top with as little transparency as they exhibit. I'm neither positive nor negative toward Jolla itself: I think it will fail, but I don't want them to fail. I'm deeply negative to this horrendously awful uncritical article. It's roughly the equivalent of a news report from Fox News, CNBC, or cnet, or an analysis by Rob Enderle.
unicornporn 14y ago
> It's also my understanding that Europeans don't necessarily get subsidized phones, either—but they still (nominally) control which phones are allowed on their networks. Europe is not a nation. It differs from country to country. Sweden has both subsidized and no contract phones.
- halostatue 14y ago
  Thank you for stating the obvious. This is why I said "…don't necessarily get…". I knew it would vary from country to country and carrier to carrier. The original article suggested that China was different because the phones were bought without subsidy. In reality, it's not that different because a phone subsidy isn't guaranteed in European mobile markets. All I was doing here is calling out the laziness of the so-called journalist.

daliusd 14y ago

Where do you collect your facts? I'm not even sure if you don't have bad intentions with your comment. It would be nice from your side to state your relation to Jolla (e.g. competitor) 1. Headline was written by journalist not by Jolla. OK I got it wrong. You are negative to journalist, right? 2. You are most probably right about production but you simply don't know. You are wrong about carrier partners: they have one in Finland (http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/21/jolla-signs-first-carrier-deal-with-finlands-dna-to-carry-upcoming-sailfish-powered-phones/ http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/21/jolla-signs-first-ca...) and one in China. 2. Europeans can get subsidized phones but don't have to. You can use any phone if you manage to get one. I even used one phone that is not for production just fine (N950). 3. I doubt that lock is an issue here. You basically can reflash your phone with pure OS if you want to - like you can reflash your N9 with Mer now. 4. I almost agree with you regarding patents but idea is that Jolla has its own patent portfolio gifted to them by Nokia. 5. Hurmola according to LinkedIn still works for Jolla. As well they are not hiding why CEO was changed - they are quite transparent regarding that. Sorry, but don't find that now. I'm not related to Jolla in any way. I'm (mobile) developer who believes that Jolla will succeed.

halostatue 14y ago
I have no relation to Jolla at all—neither competitor or likely customer. At the moment, I'm not doing any direct mobile development (we will be offering something for mobile in the future, but this is not affected by the existence or absence of Jolla). My entire relationship with Jolla is reading this nonsensical article and writing my comment with a bit of simple (short) research. 1. Yes, the journalist (or his editor) is lazy here. However, they probably wouldn't cast the article in such a stark light without prompting from Jolla. 2a. Happy to admit that I was wrong here; the article contained no information about these relationships, and Jolla’s website is essentially content free. 2b. I addressed this (mostly) in a reply to a sibling comment. My point here was that (again) the journalist was lazy-to-irresponsible for pretending that China is different because of the lack of subsidy. 3. Unless Jolla exerts some control over the handset manufacturer and/or the carriers that offer Sailfish phones, which Jolla has explicitly said that they aren't going to do, users will not (necessarily) have the freedom to reflash their phone. This is the problem with Android: there have been both manufacturer locks and carrier locks that prevent timely receipt of updates (including security updates) or OS management of your own phone. You have to root and/or jailbreak your phone to make this happen, and some phones actively fight that (e.g., one of the Motorola phones that I remember a big stink about). 4. Having a nice set of defensive patents gifted by Nokia (hopefully it's done properly so they can use them for defence, rather than merely having a licence to them) is useful, but is not the same as the claim in the article that the are immune to any existing patents. Some of the claims made by Samsung regarding radios clearly indicate that this is not the case. 5. I looked for the CEO change info on Jolla's remarkably content-free website. I couldn't find it. Hurmola's relationship to Jolla (as noted on LinkedIn) is limited to being on the board, as the transition notes that I did find was related to looking after the Sailfish ecosystem. What I found interesting is that it's not clear to me how long Hurmola was CEO—and again, there's remarkably little information. Regardless of why the change was done, I'd be a little skeptical as a partner about the changes at the top with as little transparency as they exhibit. I'm neither positive nor negative toward Jolla itself: I think it will fail, but I don't want them to fail. I'm deeply negative to this horrendously awful uncritical article. It's roughly the equivalent of a news report from Fox News, CNBC, or cnet, or an analysis by Rob Enderle.

unicornporn 14y ago

> It's also my understanding that Europeans don't necessarily get subsidized phones, either—but they still (nominally) control which phones are allowed on their networks. Europe is not a nation. It differs from country to country. Sweden has both subsidized and no contract phones.

halostatue 14y ago
Thank you for stating the obvious. This is why I said "…don't necessarily get…". I knew it would vary from country to country and carrier to carrier. The original article suggested that China was different because the phones were bought without subsidy. In reality, it's not that different because a phone subsidy isn't guaranteed in European mobile markets. All I was doing here is calling out the laziness of the so-called journalist.