Sailfish OS future outlook
asked 2019-11-02 23:10:38 +0200
Ahoy Jolla, I am quite concerned about happening around sailfish OS, I am quite worrying about future. I see some major problems and I hope to see some feedback from you.
I want you to know that I am a big fan of you and Sailfish OS and I don´t want you to understand this "letter" as some nagging or complaining, I am writing this as some constructive critics to help you see your system like little customer sees it.
Where did I started? Maybe 2,5 years ago I had Nexus 4 with ported 2.0.5.6. but no updates for a veeeeery long time (it was community port, so I understand). I decided I want officially supported phone by Jolla, so I had to buy Xperia X. Now, maybe 1,5 year later I see some things, which quite bothers me.
1) only very limited selection of officially supported models - honestly, Xperia X is good phone, but nowadays it slowly becomes quite obsolete and Xperia XA2 is not brand new either. When I was reading some future outlook in the past, there was written you are working on better compatibility with more devices on Sailfish 3. So I have to ask - where is that? I still see no progress on it.
2) concerning point 1 - it looks "weird" when I visit your website, reading about your great system, but there is no option to buy a phone with it from you. Only some overview of some obsolete phones with obsolete release dates can be seen. I contacted your helpdesk asking where to get Sailfish OS phone. Reply arrived - but there only was info that they cant help me with this.So just compare these 2 situations:
a) this is my personal experience - potential customer finds somewhere that there exists some Sailfish OS system. He will propably google it. He decides to get it, he finds your website and wants it, but there is no option to get phone on your website. So, he has to get the phone on its own and then maybe will buy your system (I think this is the point, where every user gives it up because big lack of any info - I almost gave it up too). When he buys it, there is 2paged guide (not too clearly written) how to install it on the phone. Basic user totally burns here like a paper, it has to be at least the power user, otherwise he has no chance to finish it. And the last thing - if there happens a miracle and user will install it, after restart there is that annoying message "your device has been unlocked and can´t be trusted". This really doesn´t look good.
b) this is how I personnaly imagine ideal situation - customer finds that there exists some Sailfish os system. He will propably google it. He discovers Jolla pages. He will check available phones, which Jolla has in stock. He chooses some model and order it. Jolla will buy that model from his money or pick it up in its own warehouse and installs Sailfish on it - never mind customer will wait maybe a month to arrive, because he read on the web how long will it take. When it arrives, customer turns on the phone (maybe jolla in the meantime solved how to make dissapear that annoying "unlock blah blah" message) and can use it just from the box. And we see happy customer :)
Now Jolla, tell me, what´s better in your eyes :)
3) your company needs customers, because your system has real minority on the market. Were you thinking about offering Huawei your system? That could solve the problem of limited models selection. I have read that their own system needs many time to finish it.
4)obsoleteness of Jolla store. I didn´t noticed any new applications for very long time and if there wasn´t openrepos with Storeman, system has almost no apps. With this comes second problem - aliendalvik android compatibility layer. Will it someday be updated on Xperia X? Or you rely on that users will buy nowadays almost obsolete XA2 with uncomplete Android 8 support? Just by the way, most recent version of Android is 10, so if user will buy XA2, after a moment there will be same problem with XA2. So, wouldn't it be better to concentrate your developers to make some majorly used apps (like instagram, youtube, facebook etc...) and some other important apps natively for Sailfish in RPM? If it is done, you and all your users will be completely independent on Android and you won´t have to develop some Aliendalvik thing which (as I see) takes a years to make it working properly. I am sure your developers will spend time better if they write native apps for SFOS than wasting their time to make some useless android emulator, which will ever be obsolete, because android makes updates almost every hour :D
5) I know, that most of your paychecks comes from your bigger clients like Russian government (I read that you won a tender) so it is completely okay you are doing like customer wants. But are you interested in your other users like me? Am I important to you as a single customer? It is a pity that some great and original features which made Sailfish OS unique are now slowly getting lost just because some rich customer said so and still more and more it becomes to look like some another "consumer" system like Android is. You are unique, you are not an Android, so stop pretending you are. That uniqueness made your system something special and brought you many customers like me, so don´t ruin it just because some paying monkey says that is wrong. Maybe we can´t earn you billions like governments, but when is your system good, me and other community users surely recommend it and bring you more users, so who knows, maybe one day your system will have major share of the market. You have huge potential, because I know many people who don´t want android or apple. Don´t act like Windows Phone which died because lack of apps.
Last point - make better your attitude to small customers like me,don´t ignore us, inform us what is happening right now. Personally, I would welcome some mail newsletter (once a week maybe? :) ) , whats new in SFOS development and what are your points of interest nowadays, communicate with us, we are YOUR community :)
No. Sailfish OS once had integrated functionality for social media that the media companies broke.
vattuvarg ( 2019-11-03 08:07:54 +0200 )editThe Sailfish "Store" is a slightly odd name for a software repository.
My suggestion would be to unify software repositories (both native and android) under one umbrella app. The user could then choose which repositories to activate. There could even be specific repositories for regional apps.
vattuvarg ( 2019-11-03 08:23:57 +0200 )edit@vattuvarg Noted this now. Yes, Jolla go on!!!
N9Sailfish ( 2019-11-03 08:50:20 +0200 )editVattuvarg: so, in the early beginning Jolla implemented functionality for social media and companies broke it?so Jolla relies it will be the same forever and nothing will ever change? Time goes on, everything moves forward, so this attitude is at least.....weird. Sorry, but this argument is not relevant.
Malakay ( 2019-11-03 14:34:25 +0200 )editI still think that apps should be developed with priority, because if it is enough apps natively, there will not be necessary to maintain Aliendalvik. There are lots of users who use sailfish because they don´t want android. But jolla forces them this way to use android apps with doubtful performance. Sailfish apps are lightweight, faster, with much better performance and system integration.
Malakay ( 2019-11-03 14:37:29 +0200 )edit