11 ms·

Jolla Tablet

243 points by dezgeg 12y ago

Nr7 12y ago
Here's the link for their Indiegogo page: http://igg.me/at/jolla-tablet http://igg.me/at/jolla-tablet
iamtew 12y ago
Their crowdsourcing campaign is doing quite good. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-crowdsourced-tablet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-firs... 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.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Is the phone really doing that well? It's not even available in the US and China.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  I am yet to see any on the wild. Even Windows Phone has better sales.
  - maheart 12y ago
    Windows Phone is backed by a $500B company. Jolla is a company started with ~$250M in funding.
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      Which only increases the issues of the company to stay afloat. They need to manage a steady income of money for their product, which also includes captivating developers to target their platform. This means adding developer evangelism to their costs, on top of the usual consumer oriented costs. Alongside battling against Blackberry and FirefoxOS for that fourth place. Not impossible, but very very hard with their budget.
      - chappi42 12y ago
        One step after another. Sailfish is not yet fully matured, better sail slowly. I think there are/will be enough people who are looking to an alternative to the apple-android-(wp)-mainstream, jolla will do well imho.
  - blisterpeanuts 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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?
tommy-mato 12y ago
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.
FlyingSnake 12y ago
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/20141118091830-comparison-table.png?1416331110 https://images.indiegogo.com/file_attachments/1026232/files/... Does anyone here use a Jolla device?
- claudius 12y ago
  > Does anyone here use a Jolla device? I’m still waiting for a high-end second generation version. From the various forums, there are/have been some minor bugs and I’m somewhat annoyed that they went for RPM instead of sticking to dpkg from the N9, but otherwise it seems a sensible approach to a mobile phone without the usual issues with Google/Apple.
  - szatkus 12y ago
    Still have some minor bugs. My Jolla just showed me the gesture tutorial o_O
  - toyg 12y ago
    AFAIK, the switch to RPM happened when Nokia was still in the game, as part of their joint agreement with Intel that transformed Maemo into Meego (which is now Jolla). Intel's own "linux for phones" project was based on RPM; the idea was that Intel would have brought better OS internals, and Nokia would have provided a better UI, playing to the strengths of both projects. By then the development of N9 was already at an advanced status, so it didn't switch to Intel-provided internals; the N9 is basically the last Maemo device, and everything Jolla did afterwards is the Meego we would have seen if not for Elop's self-sabotage.
- iamtew 12y ago
  I've had mine now for a few months. Everything works great with it. The UI is smooth and the touch-only navigation feels very natural once you get in to it. One downside is there is no way to monetize your apps from the Jolla appstore, I think this might be holding back a few people from making apps. I'm also very happy on how easy it is to connect to the computer. Plug in the USB, and I can have it show up as an MTP device, or RNDIS. Using it as RNDIS I can just login to it via ssh and run any commands like any other linux.
worldsayshi 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
vishnugupta 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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.)
    - bduerst 12y ago
      Get an ultrabook like the X1 carbon (v1) or Macbook air, not a tablet. I use the carbon to code on my commutes (and stream music) and it's perfect.
  - 12y ago
jbk 12y ago
So it's very close to the Nokia N1 specs?
bananaoomarang 12y ago
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!
krcz 12y ago
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 12y ago
  I plan to use mine with an apple bluetooth keyboard I'd say you'll need some external device for screens though.
sgt101 12y ago
Nice, but LTE would make it a killer
- shmerl 12y ago
  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.
yitchelle 12y ago
“Jolla seeks to revive Nokia platform.” I am confuse. Is this the Nokia N1 in a different guise?
- otuutti 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    I've heard the N1 is mostly Foxconn with some software (zlauncher) and industrial design from Nokia.
    - mempko 12y ago
      sounds like every apple product.
      - dagw 12y ago
        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
- experimental- 12y ago
  The Nokia platform would be that which we used to call Maemo in the past (currently Mer, behind Sailfish OS). Nokia no longer uses it.
- ganzuul 12y ago
  This is likely referring to Qt. They use Wayland too, and these platform-ish things appear to be paving the way for Linux on the desktop.
Aoyagi 12y ago
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.
mercurial 12y ago
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.
INTPenis 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      > 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)
rehemiau 12y ago
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
_pmf_ 12y ago
What an annoying site.
- T-zex 12y ago
  Yes, I've immediately lost interest in product.
- commentzorro 12y ago
  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_ 12y ago
    > 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.
ehurrell 12y ago
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.
plq 12y ago
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-other-half-keyboard-for-your-jolla https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2028347278/tohkbd-the-o.... -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-first-crowdsourced-tablet/contributions/new?perk_amt=204&perk_id=2484192 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-firs... Keep up the amazing work, Jolla team, you are making a difference. Disclaimer: No affiliation, just a happy customer.
- stuaxo 12y ago
  Wish I wasn't having those problems :/
  - ganzuul 12y ago
    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!)
tempodox 12y ago
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 12y ago
  As of Android 5 everything is native, including Java. EDIT: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-5.0-changes.html http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-5.0-chan...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
blisterpeanuts 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    The specs say "up to 32gb", hence my question. But that's great news that 64gb works. Would 128 work as well?
- caseydurfee 12y ago
  The operating system has to support the exFAT file system. I imagine that's the main barrier -- you have to license the exFAT technology from Microsoft. You can take an SDXC card and format it as FAT32 and it'll work -- of course you'll still face the limitations of FAT32 as far as file size, etc.
kybernetyk 12y ago
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.
ulfw 12y ago
The Nokia N1 tablet running Sailfish OS would have been a nice combination.
hugh4life 12y ago
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.
- jerf 12y ago
  It's difficult for an already-niche product to go chasing a niche language. Niche × niche is pretty small....
  - hugh4life 12y ago
    QML/Javascript and C++ options would not be going away. They kind of already rely on a niche language with QML. I do most of my programming in Javascript, yet I doubt I'd use my time learning that environment unless there was a lower language option that I found attractive. I don't trust QML/Javascript to provide what I would need to develop mobile apps like I would trust Swift or Java.
- blub 12y ago
  I could understand proposing a language like Python or JS, which are different enough and have big communities, but Rust makes absolutely no sense compared to C++ which anyway has a much bigger community. I just did a quick search and it looks like python can be used.
  - hugh4life 12y ago
    Python(and to a lesser extent JS) are too slow... and C++ and JS are already options. Sailfish does not have an applications language option that provides the features and performance that Swift and Java provide and with Rust Sailfish can go beyond Swift and Java(in at least performance).
- mbel 12y ago
  Actually JavaScript seems to be used more commonly for Sailfish apps. It is supported out of the box as Qt/QML allows you to use either C++ or JavaScript. Here is a simple sailfish app built with JS (not my project): https://github.com/Simoma/tinytodo https://github.com/Simoma/tinytodo
Zigurd 12y ago
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?
shmerl 12y ago
Are there any details on the GPU?
shortavion 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    Were you able to use 3G data though? Or at least multimedia messages?
    - mbel 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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.
      - shortavion 12y ago
        Did you try any other providers or only T-Mobile?
  - shortavion 12y ago
    Thanks for the info. I might have a chance to pick one up and wondered how well it would work in the US.
jetm9 12y ago
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 12y ago
  It's not quite from scratch; Maemo/MeeGo/Sailfish is older than WP8 and FxOS.

243 points by dezgeg 12y ago

Nr7 12y ago

Here's the link for their Indiegogo page: http://igg.me/at/jolla-tablet http://igg.me/at/jolla-tablet

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

tormeh 12y ago
Is the phone really doing that well? It's not even available in the US and China.
pjmlp 12y ago
I am yet to see any on the wild. Even Windows Phone has better sales.
- maheart 12y ago
  Windows Phone is backed by a $500B company. Jolla is a company started with ~$250M in funding.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Which only increases the issues of the company to stay afloat. They need to manage a steady income of money for their product, which also includes captivating developers to target their platform. This means adding developer evangelism to their costs, on top of the usual consumer oriented costs. Alongside battling against Blackberry and FirefoxOS for that fourth place. Not impossible, but very very hard with their budget.
    - chappi42 12y ago
      One step after another. Sailfish is not yet fully matured, better sail slowly. I think there are/will be enough people who are looking to an alternative to the apple-android-(wp)-mainstream, jolla will do well imho.
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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?

tommy-mato 12y ago

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.

FlyingSnake 12y ago

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/20141118091830-comparison-table.png?1416331110 https://images.indiegogo.com/file_attachments/1026232/files/... Does anyone here use a Jolla device?

claudius 12y ago
> Does anyone here use a Jolla device? I’m still waiting for a high-end second generation version. From the various forums, there are/have been some minor bugs and I’m somewhat annoyed that they went for RPM instead of sticking to dpkg from the N9, but otherwise it seems a sensible approach to a mobile phone without the usual issues with Google/Apple.
- szatkus 12y ago
  Still have some minor bugs. My Jolla just showed me the gesture tutorial o_O
- toyg 12y ago
  AFAIK, the switch to RPM happened when Nokia was still in the game, as part of their joint agreement with Intel that transformed Maemo into Meego (which is now Jolla). Intel's own "linux for phones" project was based on RPM; the idea was that Intel would have brought better OS internals, and Nokia would have provided a better UI, playing to the strengths of both projects. By then the development of N9 was already at an advanced status, so it didn't switch to Intel-provided internals; the N9 is basically the last Maemo device, and everything Jolla did afterwards is the Meego we would have seen if not for Elop's self-sabotage.
iamtew 12y ago
I've had mine now for a few months. Everything works great with it. The UI is smooth and the touch-only navigation feels very natural once you get in to it. One downside is there is no way to monetize your apps from the Jolla appstore, I think this might be holding back a few people from making apps. I'm also very happy on how easy it is to connect to the computer. Plug in the USB, and I can have it show up as an MTP device, or RNDIS. Using it as RNDIS I can just login to it via ssh and run any commands like any other linux.

worldsayshi 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.

vishnugupta 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.)
  - bduerst 12y ago
    Get an ultrabook like the X1 carbon (v1) or Macbook air, not a tablet. I use the carbon to code on my commutes (and stream music) and it's perfect.
- 12y ago

jbk 12y ago

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

bananaoomarang 12y ago

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!

krcz 12y ago

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 12y ago
I plan to use mine with an apple bluetooth keyboard I'd say you'll need some external device for screens though.

sgt101 12y ago

Nice, but LTE would make it a killer

shmerl 12y ago
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.

yitchelle 12y ago

“Jolla seeks to revive Nokia platform.” I am confuse. Is this the Nokia N1 in a different guise?

otuutti 12y ago
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 12y ago
  I've heard the N1 is mostly Foxconn with some software (zlauncher) and industrial design from Nokia.
  - mempko 12y ago
    sounds like every apple product.
    - dagw 12y ago
      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
experimental- 12y ago
The Nokia platform would be that which we used to call Maemo in the past (currently Mer, behind Sailfish OS). Nokia no longer uses it.
ganzuul 12y ago
This is likely referring to Qt. They use Wayland too, and these platform-ish things appear to be paving the way for Linux on the desktop.

Aoyagi 12y ago

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.

mercurial 12y ago

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.

INTPenis 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    > 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)

rehemiau 12y ago

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

_pmf_ 12y ago

What an annoying site.

T-zex 12y ago
Yes, I've immediately lost interest in product.
commentzorro 12y ago
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_ 12y ago
  > 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.

ehurrell 12y ago

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.

plq 12y ago

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-other-half-keyboard-for-your-jolla https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2028347278/tohkbd-the-o.... -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-first-crowdsourced-tablet/contributions/new?perk_amt=204&perk_id=2484192 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-firs... Keep up the amazing work, Jolla team, you are making a difference. Disclaimer: No affiliation, just a happy customer.

stuaxo 12y ago
Wish I wasn't having those problems :/
- ganzuul 12y ago
  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!)

tempodox 12y ago

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 12y ago
As of Android 5 everything is native, including Java. EDIT: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-5.0-changes.html http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-5.0-chan...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

blisterpeanuts 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  The specs say "up to 32gb", hence my question. But that's great news that 64gb works. Would 128 work as well?
caseydurfee 12y ago
The operating system has to support the exFAT file system. I imagine that's the main barrier -- you have to license the exFAT technology from Microsoft. You can take an SDXC card and format it as FAT32 and it'll work -- of course you'll still face the limitations of FAT32 as far as file size, etc.

kybernetyk 12y ago

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.

ulfw 12y ago

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

hugh4life 12y ago

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.

jerf 12y ago
It's difficult for an already-niche product to go chasing a niche language. Niche × niche is pretty small....
- hugh4life 12y ago
  QML/Javascript and C++ options would not be going away. They kind of already rely on a niche language with QML. I do most of my programming in Javascript, yet I doubt I'd use my time learning that environment unless there was a lower language option that I found attractive. I don't trust QML/Javascript to provide what I would need to develop mobile apps like I would trust Swift or Java.
blub 12y ago
I could understand proposing a language like Python or JS, which are different enough and have big communities, but Rust makes absolutely no sense compared to C++ which anyway has a much bigger community. I just did a quick search and it looks like python can be used.
- hugh4life 12y ago
  Python(and to a lesser extent JS) are too slow... and C++ and JS are already options. Sailfish does not have an applications language option that provides the features and performance that Swift and Java provide and with Rust Sailfish can go beyond Swift and Java(in at least performance).
mbel 12y ago
Actually JavaScript seems to be used more commonly for Sailfish apps. It is supported out of the box as Qt/QML allows you to use either C++ or JavaScript. Here is a simple sailfish app built with JS (not my project): https://github.com/Simoma/tinytodo https://github.com/Simoma/tinytodo

Zigurd 12y ago

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?

shmerl 12y ago

Are there any details on the GPU?

shortavion 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  Were you able to use 3G data though? Or at least multimedia messages?
  - mbel 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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.
    - shortavion 12y ago
      Did you try any other providers or only T-Mobile?
- shortavion 12y ago
  Thanks for the info. I might have a chance to pick one up and wondered how well it would work in the US.

jetm9 12y ago

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 12y ago
It's not quite from scratch; Maemo/MeeGo/Sailfish is older than WP8 and FxOS.