Productive work on Sailfish OS

asked 2019-07-16 11:31:27 +0300

ds1979
1911 ●52 ●78 ●88

Hello,

in this post, I would like to discuss productive work on Sailfish OS 3. I have a Jolla 1, so please don't critisize me, if I make mistakes in terms of Android apps, because Alien Dalvik is in version 4.1 instead of 8.1 for Sailfish X. Most of those ideas are old and I am sure that they are mentioned somewhere, but they are OLD and it it still NOT RESOLVED!

I have been using iPhones (4S, 5S), Android phones (Samsung S5, Nokia 5), Blackberry Q10 and Passport and the Jolla 1. This way, I can compare those systems and productive work. And I mean work, not jumping around some games and stuff. I want Sailfish OS not only to feel nice, but to be better in all ways! I want it to be less energy consuming, safer and easier to use and - this is one of the biggies here! - less frustrating to use! I want to express my thoughts fast and easy and not be slowed down by the apps.

During daily work, I need the calendar, e-mail, contacts, phone and the notes app, to be able to follow up my to do's. Well, in comparison to all the other systems mentioned above, I have some things that don't work as good as the others. Or in other words: They slow me down a lot!

The keyboard and word prediction are not good enough. The old prediction of BB OS10 has been great, Google Keyboard is now reaching this potential slowly. The BB OS10 keyboard memorizes one's writing style and then uses this so that I often don't need to type many words. SFOS gives me the same words every time and I am fed of it. No fast way to get stuff done... The BB keyboard makes a fusion of up to three languages, so that I don't even have to switch keyboards. It's prediction is so good, that it recognizes, what I do, and if I write "Nis", it will recognize it as the serbian town "Niš" and correct it by itself after the next space, without me choosing the word. This makes stuff much easier! More than that, switching to other languages and keyboard styles is not nice. I have trouble switching languages and then all the letters are mixed up, because english does not have ÄÖÜ or ČŠŽ on the right side. I always end up with typos. Give me the choice, if I want this language keyboard with or without those additional letters! I want to choose! This is not iOS and even they give you this choice, although it is one of the rigid OS's on smartphones!

And then many languages have no word prediction at all. What takes so long? This is not a luxury, this is a necessity in comparison to Android and iOS, to make it work for the user! Where is the russian transliteration? Even the old Blackberry OS has it, why not get in touch with them and take pieces of the work? If there is no prediction, why not start dummy files and let the device "learn" the words? This way, my phone will fill up with my usage and help me instead of slowing me down in my thoughts! I work in five languages every day. German, english, french, serbo-croatian and russian are my everyday work. I need a transliteration for russian to work fast, because I have never learned the russian keyboard. I need word prediction in all languages, to stop typing and start writing my thoughts fast and not loosing something. Otherwise, writing snail mail is faster than messaging and e-mail!

The PIM apps are weak, but one can get it working.
What I miss is inviting contacts to an appointment, and using invitations of others. The calendar can't jump to a specific date in the future, the calendar only shows me IF I have an appointment on one day, but not if it is a.m., p.m. or in the evening (which would be a quick glance in the month view instead of opening and closing the day). There are many little features, that one could copy from the others, to make it easier to ose. The notes app is a nice little tool, but why can't I rearrange them at will? I can just put one on the top, why can't I mix it up?

E-Mail has to get better a lot! First: Reading and writing text-only should be available in times, when HTML is fucking up the reading part. Second: I want to be able to copy and paste information in an e-mail. No forwarding workarounds! I want to specify one archives folder and have a function to "archive" my e-mails and not move them manually every single time.

Interaction with computers should become a central part of Sailfish OS. The KDE Connect project is a first step and should be looked into very much.

Fast typing with bluetooth keyboards is another one. How can I switch the language in a fast fashion, if I use a BT keyboard? Someone, who thinks that he does not need to travel with a laptop, but likes to work on e-mails, can use this! The key "Pos1" leads me to the home screen. WHY?! I can not use Pos1, End, PgUp, PgDown for quick text edition, and I am frustrated, that I can not use Alt-Tab to quickly copy and paste text between apps or use Alt-Shift to switch to another language for the hardware keyboard. Then I want to put the phone in landscape mode behind the keyboard. Why do I have such trouble with the basic screens to get this working?
Basic keyboard functions that work in Android don't work. Display brightness, home button, Back-button, mute button, play, pause, forward, backward don't work, too. Sailfish OS could do better and make up shortcuts like the old BlackBerry OS to start up apps or have Copy and Paste functions and other. This is very interesting for the Gemini PDA. And one of the reasons that I have not bought it, because it would disappoint me.

The "dynamic" orientation does not work. When I use the browser and turn around in bed, it works. As soon as I open a new tab, it turns around. I hate this!

Now to the browser... Sharing is very limited! Research with the browser is useless. If I want to copy and paste the url, I have to do this manually. I can only share it with e-mail. no other app - even sailfish apps! - is available! Try to log into github.com. I can't. The browser must be reworked, because in daily work, one needs to find information and use it on the run. Why should my Jolla phone limit me more than an Safari on iPhone or Firefox on Android? Even Lightning on Android works much better than the native browser.

In the top menu, please move the "lock button" in between the others for Wifi and stuff, and let me turn it off, because I know how to double tap on the hardware power button to lock it. I want to have screen estate for swith buttons, not for stuff that I know how to handle with the button EVERY phone has!

Many Android apps of today require version 5. This should be the minimum even for Jolla 1. I believe that this is possible. I would like to use "SSB Best Preis" for my travel around Stuttgart, Netflix or Amazon Prime on longer journeys.

All in all, the SFOS is not made for fast productive work and many (easy but helping!) topics are not being worked at, although they are documented on TJC. Please correct me, if you think that I am wrong! I use my Jolla phone since 2015, and it didn't become better in everyday life in the topics above. There is ONE App that really is making much of this up: HabitSailor. But here, SFOS is the topic! Anyone who wants to work and not fiddle around against NSA and the Star Alliance, wants to have an efficient way of searching, using and storing information for daily usage. In any of these topics, SFOS is less usable than BB OS 10, iOS and Android. THIS MAKES ME VERY SAD AND ANGRY, because I have such big hopes and because my trust and faith in Sailfish OS has not become reality, yet.

Sailfish OS may be secure, but not usable. Usability is the key to more users, because people want to use, not to fiddle around. Security is an argument, if usability is the same.

Work on usability with the tiny stuff, people will thank you and your numbers will rise by themselves! MAKE US PROUD!

I wish you best of luck and am here to answer your questions, to help! I am an experienced user, but no programmer.

Cheers, Dejan.