[idea] Ambiance concept - is this the right way?
asked 2015-05-07 12:55:02 +0200
This is more like a conceptual question, not a feature request or bug ticket. I would like to share my thoughts on the ambiance concept. You can downvote this post if you disagree or upvote if you agree, I am really curious about your opinion on this topic. I am not a rebel, I just love my Jolla and see a feature which does not fit in the whole Jolla philosophy in my opinion.
In my point of view ambiances is nothing more than an "UNLIKE" concept. Apart from its novelty it does not bring any usable features. Who wants to change the theme of their phones according to their mood or the plastic cover of their phones? How many of us even have more than one colour other halves? Who wants to change their ringtones (not the volume but the tune itself) anyway? I will not recognise that my phone rings because it had another melody last time.
The only thing which is useful is to change the ringing volume of the phone in certain situations. Related to this, I have to mention that the separation of the default volume and the ambiance volume is a mess. There is a post on this topic here.
Instead of having a toy to change colours and ringtones of the phone a featureful profile management system would be much more welcome. There are many good ideas and requests here on TJC for location-based, music-based, accessory-based, even weather-based etc. ambiances which gets closer to my point but it seems that Sailfish OS is far from them all.
Situations app got mature by now for changing services of the phone automatically based on different conditions. This covers pretty much every situations one can imagine for phone-behavior changes and above all, does it automatically. I use this app and forget all about ambiances.
OK, ambiances do not disturb me, I simply don't use them. Although I am afraid that Sailfish OS 2.0 would strengthen this concept by placing the ambiance switcher to a main gesture available from everywhere (i.e. the downwards gesture where the app close and phone lock are in 1.x OS). I hope that Jolla will not sacrifice essentially functional gestures for giving us an ambiance switcher. You can read more on this here.
In my opinion ambiances need to be extended to be a sophisticated built-in profile manager (i.e. toggle features like internet connection, flight mode, power saving mode, chat availability, etc., setting volume, brightness or even opening apps or running custom scripts when an abmiance is selected), and optionally switch profiles automatically based on different conditions. Until then ambiances are pretty useless for me.
I agree somewhat here, I kind of like the idea of ambiences and I did actually use them, it is not nor should be a 'main feature' of the phone or its raison d'être........ it is a novelty feature and that's about it, more annoyingly it's broke anyway -
you sit there changing 10 ambiences like I did, only to find out all the settings don't save anyway and they all revert back to defaults, thereby rendering the concept completely useless, and it seems a fix for this very basic - 'essential/unlike/feature' - they banged on about - is not being taken or viewed as something 'urgent' even though apparently it's been broke since day 1, poor Jolla, poor, by any standards. The only thing it's unlike, is a feature that works.
davekelly ( 2015-05-07 13:10:10 +0200 )editRegarding your second paragraph: It's useless to ask such questions, because nobody knows the answer. Even if you don't like it someone else probably does. Still, I think you're right to question the feature, because then Jolla can question & rethink the situation. However, it is also novel and incomplete feature. Why be so quick to shoot everything new down? I don't see why everyone is in such hurry. Let the concept grow for a while (a year or two more, maybe? They don't have thousands of employees). It is a feature that the Jolla guys clearly believe that will be useful and cool. While they're not always right, I'm sure they're clever enough to notice if it's useless and do necessary research to find out whether people like it or not. If it sucks in the end, I'm sure they will remove it. If not, they'll keep it.
Acce ( 2015-05-07 19:06:59 +0200 )editI have 5 TOHs, I use ambiences as exactly ambiences atm, with added toggles like wlan/bt/accounts I will also use it to its full potential. My work ambience is high contrast low-light friendly with a ringtone that isn't much disturbing at a fitting volume...and so on... use what is there and if you want to have all the same ringtone, where is the deal to setup 5 ambiences with the same set of ringtones?
chemist ( 2015-05-08 12:51:41 +0200 )edit