Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday April 24 2015, @11:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the good-fast-cheap-pick-two dept.

According to the Jolla Blog the ship date for the much anticipated Jolla Tablet has slipped: From June-ish to July-ish. (The original ship date was expected to be May).

Jolla had one of the most successful Crowdfunded projects run by IndieGOGO. It ended up being over funded by 480%, exhibiting strong support for another tablet that isn't IOS, isn't Android, and isn't Windows.

Pre-production versions of the Jolla Tablet were judged Best Tablet of Mobile World Congress 15. (autoplay video on the page).

In fact the MWC event played a part in slowing down the release, as Jolla burned the midnight oil getting demonstrators ready for the show. In spite of a not yet completed Sailfish 2.0 operating system and not yet finalized hardware, Jolla impressed all reviewers.

Along the way, Jolla made significant upgrades to to the tablet's specs, including an upgraded Sailfish 2.0. Also added were larger memory, and a just announced new screen.

Sailfish OS can run android apps. The latest release version is Sailfish Äijänpäivänjärvi. (No, I can't pronounce it either). Its currently running on the Jolla phone, available mostly in Europe.

Since Sailfish is based on Ubuntu and Mer, it is Linux, and as such you can install Linux applications. Because of this, it may provide some competition to the big players in the mobile field.

Jolla (pronounced "yala", means small boat in Finish) is based in Finland (Suomi). The company is composed of ex-Nokia veterans. The Tablet's Main Website is rather script heavy.

Disclaimer: While this may read like a slashvertisment, I have no connection to Jolla, other than as a future customer. I participated in the Crowd-funding, (paid the money) but I haven't seen either the Tablet or the Phone yet. I'm eager to get my hands on it. Delays aren't fun, but I'd rather have it right than have it right away.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday April 24 2015, @12:46PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Friday April 24 2015, @12:46PM (#174617)

    Much anticipated? By who? Does anyone care about an also-ran tablet? If it had not slipped, would anyone care?

    (Using a name that conflicts with La Jolla, California for pronunciation wasn't the best idea, either.)

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   -2  
       Flamebait=2, Disagree=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Flamebait' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   0  
  • (Score: 1) by yarp on Friday April 24 2015, @01:25PM

    by yarp (2665) on Friday April 24 2015, @01:25PM (#174631)

    I would hazard a guess it's anticipated by more than 20,000 people who stumped up over 2.5 million USD in funding. Aside from that it offers a break from the norm in choice of OS and attracted an honour at a recent show, so there's probably some substance to it.

    So how does one pronounce "La Jolla" in California? I'm not sure there will be much confusion.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Friday April 24 2015, @01:41PM

      by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Friday April 24 2015, @01:41PM (#174640) Homepage
      The Californian one, being Spanish, would be pronounced more like "hoya" to an Englishman.

      The Finnish one should in Finnish be pronounced like "yolla", but apparently the top guys didn't want to confuse people with Finnish pronunciation rules so decided that it would instead be pronounced as it reads, with the /dz/ 'j' sound at the start. Very few of the Finns and Finnish residents working for the company got that memo. Which of course means that there's now confusion caused by the attempt to reduce confusion. This is the kind of Nokian decision-making which fucked Maemo/Meego, and really doesn't make me feel confident that Jolla's going to be any better managed.

      Disclaimer: ex-Maemo/Meego dev, know a load of engineers at Jolla.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday April 25 2015, @02:24AM

      by tftp (806) on Saturday April 25 2015, @02:24AM (#174926) Homepage

      I would hazard a guess it's anticipated by more than 20,000 people who stumped up over 2.5 million USD in funding

      That would be one in 300,000 people, assuming that 6 billion live on this Earth. Most cities will not have even one such enthusiast.

      Myself, I wouldn't want to get one. Why to bother? There are many other tablets on the market, today and for less money, and they all will run your software. Who would want to code for a device that only three persons per million have? But even if we ignore this aspect, how would I personally benefit from this device? I checked the Web site, and they don't say much. The only difference I see is that they support resizing of windows. Probably not something that you want to do on a small tablet. But if that's important... why not to hack Android's WM [stackexchange.com]?

  • (Score: 1) by archshade on Friday April 24 2015, @02:11PM

    by archshade (3664) on Friday April 24 2015, @02:11PM (#174659)
    Well I have been looking forward this with a modicum anticipation. I was not one of the (many) IndieGOGO backers, partially because I don't back kickstater like projects and partially because I don't have the disposable income to drop $250+ at the moment to buy a new tablet. I have a perfectly good tablet (N7 2012) and Im not about to buy a replacement until (1) it breaks, (2) Something wears out (battery life runs less than ~16hrs), (3) A new tablet comes out that does something I really want/need that N7 does not do, (4) My dispossable income increases dramatically. When I finally do upgrade my tablet I will be looking for another ~7" (actually 7"-9"). The Jolla tablet will be up there as a consideration. SailfishOS looks nice and I prefer developing with Qt/C++ to Java so personal apps will be easier. One key feature of Sailfish is the ability to run Android apps. A double edged sword as why would anyone develop a native app if they can just ship the android one, but then if market penetration is low (and it will be) why would anyone give a second thought to it. I also understand that its not perfect (think wine), but a good indicator is if the app is written against the standard SDK it will run, if its written using the NDK then it wont. This mainly comes down to games which don't worry me too much. To me the expected market penetration being so low is not a real problem as long as the user base is large enough to sustain itself (this is where Desktop Linux is). I will carry on looking at SailfishOS devices especially as it removes me from the google/apple duopoly in the mobile device world in a pragmatic way (can still run android if I need to). All in all I really hope that SailfishOS is a moderate success (install base greater than 1% of market), even if Jolla goes away and we are left porting (and updating it) to android devices.
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 24 2015, @05:08PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Friday April 24 2015, @05:08PM (#174736) Journal

      If it can run Android apps and enable users to control what spying they can carry out it will be better than original Android environment regardless. I suspect the OS in itself will have less lock-in crap builtin as well.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 24 2015, @08:44PM

        by frojack (1554) on Friday April 24 2015, @08:44PM (#174832) Journal

        I was thinking the same thing.

          Jolla makes a big deal on their pages about protecting user's privacy, but the more you read, the less it seems to say.
        They mostly promise not to sell your info to anyone.

        I'd love to see their android emulation layer have the ability, with fine grained control, to provide true, bogus, or zero data to android applications, as well as user authorization of each url/ip address the the application tries to access.

        Obviously, authorizing every IP a web browser tried to access would be impractical, (you'd need to switch that off), but for some random app from the android market it would be nice to approve or disapprove any attempt (with the system providing you whois info for your decision).

        I suspect you will have to side load all these apps anyway.

        I've been following the forum about Sailfish (as it is used on the phone).

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:47AM

          by kaszz (4211) on Saturday April 25 2015, @12:47AM (#174903) Journal

          If Jolla is for privacy they will:
            * Allow other operating systems to use the same hardware (f*ck signed boot)
            * Allow users to load apps as they see fit
            * Provide fine grained control of app privileges
            * Provide the source code to enable audit and modification
            * Not add any phone-home or backdoor

          And any computing system without a C compiler is made to be user hostile by definition.

          The whole "smartphone" ecosystem is fucked up.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @10:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2015, @10:20PM (#174864)

    It doesn't conflict for procunciation at all. Jolla has a Y-sounding J, and the double-L makes an L sound. La Jolla has an H-sounding J and the double-L makes a Y-sound. Yolla/Hoya - not even remotely homophonous.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2015, @11:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2015, @11:41PM (#175195)

    > Much anticipated? By who?

    by people wanting a smartphone. You know, that mobile + computer combination that basically is unattainable since the nokia n900.