Jolla promises to fight low app count with "interesting solution"

This article is based on Finnish magazine IT-Viikko's article on the newly announced Jolla Mobile startup. This article is a "translation" out of request by Tomi Ahonen.

Jolla Mobile is every MeeGo and mobile Linux enthusiast's new best friend, and probably the most interesting startup from Finland in mid-2012. Jolla Mobile promises to "continue" Nokia's MeeGo work with MeeGo powered devices of their own. 

One of the problems facing the start-up is answering the competition over apps. Modern day smartphone platforms thrive on the apps they run, and the competition (Android, iOS, and even Symbian) have appstores filled to the brimm with apps. It is still uncertain, if apps made for Nokia's N9 device can be run on the to-be-announced range of MeeGo devices from Jolla.

According to Finnish magazine IT-Viikko, CEO of Jolla Mobile Jussi Hurmola promises that Jolla has "an interesting answer" to the challenge.
' It is evident that we must face up to this challenge. Our solution is so interesting, though that it is better left for revealing at the same time with our announcements.' Hurmola says cryptically. The CEO is reluctant to address confusion over whether apps from the MeeGo-Harmattan device N9 will work on Jolla's devices.

To add to the secrecy, Hurmola adds that 'we have contemplated a total separation from so called smartphones, although our first product will be a phone.' Jolla Mobile's first device will arrive before year's end. 'New device categories pop up all the time, and they change every year.' he says. 'It will be interesting to see, what kinds of new device categories will emerge.'

Jolla has "open and close" relations to Nokia says Hurmola. Nokia gave Jolla Mobile a share of patents that relate to MeeGo. (This turns out to be incorrect, also IT-Viikko corrected themselves! Thanks for the tip!) Jolla has participated in Nokia's Bridge-programme, where Jolla's business plan was reviewed and accepted by Nokia. Nokia's Bridge-programme attempts to ease the formation of startups of former Nokia employees.

We the pioneers of the touchscreen age: How will our time be remember?

We live in a special time, as our time will be the time remembered as the era when touchscreens became the norm. Touchscreen enabled devices became a commercial success fundamentally changing how we used our devices and what we did on them. The touchscreen is being introduced alongside a host of new technologies, promising an excitement filled future in personal electronis. How exactly will we remember these 'early times' however? Here are my tongue-in-cheek thoughts on the subject.


UPDATE: Here's a link by AAWP titled "Has Apple put mobile innovation back 10 years?" Link -- enjoy!


Operating systems that go boing, blonk, blink in the night




With added intelligence to our devices, they started feeding us a lot of information. Who's online, how's the battery status, what's the weather etc., these were all things we suddenly wanted to know. Our devices began to feed this information to us in a way we humans sometimes force feed our unwilling children. There isn't a single operating system on a mobile device today that doesn't use an intricate notification system consisting of sounds and lights to let us know exactly what is going on. Simply adjusting the volume on some devices produces a monotone sonata of sounds to let you know that 'Hey, you've just adjusted the volume. Good for you, buddy'. Textual pop-ups or 'Toasts' write it out for anyone still unsure of what is going on. After the event, notifications of the event linger all around "status bars" and "notification centres" just in case you missed it.


What's the time, how's the weather, what's the time?




Relating to the information overload we now expected from our devices, it became fashionable to have you reminded of the weather and time 100% of the time you use your device. Desktops and Home screens filled with clock and weather widgets, and user interfaces revolved around elaborate symbolic systems to constantly keep you updated on exactly how the weather and time is. We took being informed about the time and weather to such an extent, that some manufacturers' devices shipped with up to 10 different clocks to place on home screens. In addition to this, we filled our appstores with hundreds more such applications. This keen fascination on the time and weather resulted in a pathological popping down of heads to check our phones, at least twice because we were distracted by the weather widget and forgot to actually see the time. We have never been so informed about what time it is or what we should expect when we step out in to the real world, that you'd think tardiness and dressing too lightly for cold days were mankinds problems solved for good. I think its safe to say, that statistics of every boss everywhere indicate otherwise.




Smaller is better and biggest is best




With the touchscreen becoming the new norm, people began to receive larger devices. Increased screen real estate meant watching video and browsing the web never felt so good. Big bright screens became the ideal, and it wasn't until the reached the 4" mark that got the feeling that we'd had enough. Of course by the time we got here, enter the iPad and tablet computers.




The big screens challenged engineers to come up with ever slimmer devices, as devices were expected to grow in terms of display size, but nobody wanted a chubby buddy in their pocket. Few problems were introduced here, though as huge screens were getting bent in trouser pockets and once a touchscreen broke, the lifeline of the device had practically ended. Warranty policies of manufacturers didn't choose to cover touchpanels shattered after falling from speeding bikes onto the pavement or phones misplaced in blenders. Coincidentally, the warranty policy of the most popular mobile devices decreased from the standard of two years into one year.




The neverending dressup game




As we began to sport this fragile and expensive gear in our pockets, we tried to calm our nerves about the worst-case-scenarios running through our minds. Our outlet was the buying of accessories in attempts to protect our device from its inevitable fate. We bought it silicone covers, hard plastic covers, see-through plastic film to place over the touch panel and placed our device inside a protective bag of some sort. Just in case we paid attention to placing the device in our pocket with the display against our thigh! Never before had manufacturers seen customers invest this much money in products that could be produced from the waste material every manufacturer is going to have anyway. People were willing to pay roughly 10 times the material's worth to buy a product to protect a device with an already remarkable profit margin.


"Third party" manufacturers weren't the only ones to latch on to this trend however, as a notable manufacturers of mobile devices began offering different coloured battery covers with their devices. Smartphone users were partying with changeable covers like it was 1998 again, with the Nokia 5110 and its 'Xpress On Covers'. How advanced our needs had become!




One handed two handers / silence of the lambs




Touch-only devices introduced some limitations in use also, namely hindering getting anything productive done on the device at all. Virtual keyboards were slower and more cumbersome to type on, so many text messages were simply left unsent, I imagine. Or then reduced to platonic confirmations such as "OK", "YES" or "GTFO". Internet browsing was a big part of the smartphone experience, but people who were used to being actively involved in social media were now forced to the spectator seat. No telling in detail what's going on, a simple "Go dolphnns!1!!q" with a check-in to Facebook would have to suffice.


A somewhat ironic debate spurred around the touch user interfaces relating on these devices as well. Some felt that the only good UI is one that you can use one-handed. Some products were put down for requiring two-handed use (such as any device with a physical QWERTY keyboard), but in reality all typing on most touch-screen devices had to be done using two hands by holding the device sideways or in "landscape" position. As no virtual keyboard ever could fully replace a physical one, for a time Westeners fell into a forced silence as suddenly replying to messages was more cumbersome than waiting to get to a place where they could just call back later.


Efforts to alleviate difficulties caused by virtual keyboards did produce some entertaining technologies and subsequently websites, damnyouautocorrect.com being in the forefront in entertainment value.


It's not what you've got, It's what you might get




As smartphone software became more advanced, and competition to get your smartphone device out on the market became tougher, update total overhaul cycles for mobile operating systems were introduced. Manufacturers released half-baked operating systems with limited functionality and were praised for customer loyalty for including features we actually had already had in our phones pre-touch.


Waiting for the next software update became a game as well, as people planned their device purchases on abstract notions over possibilities of updates for their devices. Needless to say, if a manufacturer deemed one of its products as unupgradable, the outrage was incomprehensible - regardless of weather users were satisfied with their device at the moment or not. It became the right of the common man to demand features and functions to his device that were appearing in new models, sometimes even over two years after the purchase of the current one. The need to break restrictions set by the manufacturer created phenomena now commonly referred to as 'gaining root' or 'rooting' and 'jailbreaking'. Once these restrictions were circumvented, users could enjoy community provided enhancements and features to their device, often with the cost of voiding the warranty.


This created some real problems for device manufacturers, as suddenly their newest product lineup had lost its edge in terms of new features and functions, just months after release. Interestingly this produced two reactions: some made it deliberately even easier to circumvent their devices in hopes of hacker appreciation, some decided to tighten the restrictions and many decided to strive for a completely customisable experience known as an Open Source platform.


Ironically, the systems that included all features and functions ever invented for mobile phones lost their fame because of the way in which they handed these features to consumers. Users reported bad experiences with "ugly boxes" and "nonexistent graphical transition effects". The solution for this was to switch to an operating system equally as raw as a green mango.


One device to do it all, just without the tools




Once we were all under the impression that the entire software platform of our device was constantly developing from its already developed state, we started forgetting about our productive capability on our devices. All computers and even mobile phones we had used up until the touch-screen era had supported the running of many applications at once (for example MS Paint and the Calculator, or the music player and text messages), but in the early touch-era we let go of all that. This kind of application use is called multitasking, by the way. As if being hindered by the slowness of virtual keyboards wasn't enough, we didn't mind starting the writing of our e-mail from the beginning if a notification threw us into the alarm clock application, forcing the e-mail application to restart and forgetting all we had typed before. We no longer minded the fact that we'd been stopped from doing what we were doing, and simply decided to 'call back later'.


There was a time when we were used to functional applications or tools on our devices, that could help us in the daily tasks we face. Many smartphones were marketed as being a 'mobile office' with their range of functional manufacturer provided apps, although often displaying anything more complex than a mobile version of a website proved impossible. We however bought into this willingly, and even went about boasting about what our devices could do. Surely there was someone out there who had even worse productivity than us, right?


Upsides to the story


As some might've noticed, this piece has been deeply sarcastic and I hope it hasn't turned off any of you. I do admit, that there are upsides to larger screens and trends relating to them and I'm in no way trying to discredit that. Also, for example perhaps the first time in personal device history, it has been fashionable to be easy to use and manufacturers have figured out ways to actually make devices easy to use. To me this is unprecedented in the history of electronics.

Samsung Galaxy S II: Maybe the Best Android phone in World?

Phones seem to be raining in my lap lately, and this time I caught one in a nice slim form factor. Even its very plasticy all around, its Super AMOLED+ screen fails to leave me wanting more. The Samsung Galaxy S II seems to be aimed at the enthusiasts, while catoring some mass-market dumb-downs in terms of software. Overall I feel it lacks to premium feel a product of this price should have.

Samsung's Galaxy S I sold very well pretty much everywhere it was sold and perhaps launched Samsung into the top three smartphone manufacturers. It certainly crowned Samsung as the biggest Android manufacturer. Samsung is also slowly taking on an innovator's role in innovating new mobile technology. Samsung already marks the manufacturer with the best quality displays in their devices.


Weightless impressions

Samsung's legacy as a manufacturer with the greatest screens holds true when considering the Samsung Galaxy S II. It is equipped with a super AMOLED screen with a little "+" added to the name. I'm sure a Google search can tell you how AMOLED+ differs from just AMOLED, but I can tell you it looks good.

The Galaxy S II is incredibly thin and it sports a huge 4.3" screen. Otherwise this device would feel huge due to its screen, but its thinness of just about 0.9 cm really makes it dissappear into your pocket. At least it did in mine. The thinness is accompanied by an incredible weightlessness, which adds to the potential to losing this device in your pocket. This I believe is a good thing!

The thinness and lightness is probably what most enthusiasts are looking for in a "latest and greatest" smartphone, and here Sammy's GSII scores a perfect A I imagine. However, for me these factors diminshed how precious the device felt. With weight I associate value, and with the SGSII weighing this little, my impression is flimsy at best.

Mesmerised by the AMOle... woooooow

The huge Super AMOLED+ screen gave the device an initial impression of a mini-tablet of some sort. Gazing over it with a slight dribble of drool down the left side of my face I imagined all the things that would fit on the screen. I'm familiar with the DesireZ, where the screen is "only" 3.7" running at a resolution of 480x800. To much of my surprise, the GSII runs at the exact same resolution. With the added screen real-estate this resolution renders much of the operating system a bit funny looking. Huge fonts are found here and there and many colour gradients lose their effect. Samsung's custom UI utilises simplified boxes and fonts, maximizing approachability and clarity. At the same time it makes the interface quite ugly and oversimplified at times. Another oddity was the somewhat random automatic adjustment of the screen brightness.


Software and design

Note: my Sammy GS2 ran Gingerbread. Not unusual to Android, Samsung's device comes preloaded with a lot of bloatware. Especially bloated are the homescreens on first startup. 5 screens are filled to the brim with Samsung's widgets and shortcuts. Expect to spend the first 10mins of using this device just getting rid of everything. Another common thing to the Android experience is the constant overlapping of services and creation of new accounts for ambiguous benefits. I for one signed up for a "Samsung account" when prompted, but failed to find any place in the system where I could benefit from this. I suspect it demanded the creation to check for system updates. How rude.

Learning Android really requires you to understand which apps are part of core Android and which apps are just core apps customised by the manufacturer for hopes of bringing extra value to the device. This might lead to you enabling your Facebook account and contacts for the core Facebook app, your manufacturers Facebook app and a third app you got from the Market. Care to guess how many contact duplicates this creates in your addressbook? This combined with multiple notifications of the same event from many different programs can result in chaos. This issue is a general rant about Android, though, and is in no way only the SGSII's problem.

Not all customisations made by manufacturers are for the worse, however. For example I've always been a fan of Samsung's take on e-mail and the calendar. The e-mail app replaced my need for K9-mail all together. Well done, Sammy! I imagine business users might feel at home here thanks to not only Sammy's apps, but also thanks to the endless supply of apps available from the Android Market. Security might be another thing all together, though.


Creativity

The Galaxy S II's huge screen makes typing on the landscape virtual keyboard almost as efficient as on a physical one. The portrait QWERTY also does the trick. I'm using the Samsung virtual keyboard. My positive experiences with the keyboard begged the question if this device for any good for creativity.

The Galaxy S II comes preinstalled with a full version of Polaris Office. Stylish and functional this program seems to cater to most desires you might have for mobile document creation. Sadly the virtualkeyboard in Android always ends up blocking over half of the screen making it hard to see what you type as well as hiding toolbars of Polar Office. Sigh. Thought I left all this behind when I switched over from Nokia's 5800XM in 2009.

Another odd snigglet on the SGII is the browser. For me the measure of a good smartphone is its browser, so you can imagine my amazement when I found out that the browser only supports mobile pages by default. I read around the web about this issue, and it seems that some versions of the SGSII comes with the option of setting the default view to 'Desktop'. In my SGSII this was nowhere to be found and I had to do a "about:useragent" in the address bar instead. Sadly the browser doesn't want to remember this setting, forcing me to get Dolphin Browser HD. To me this was a slap in the face for a device in this price range.


Conclusions

My understanding of the SGSII was that it was the absolute wet dream of the Android enthusiast, but I think it doesn't really answer that call to the fullest, except perhaps for its slimness and screen size. The physical design and look of the device is somehow deeply old-school of Samsung. I think they manufactured devices that looked like this about 5 yrs. ago. This didn't appeal to me at all and the SGSII is more an ugly slab to me than a premium product or flagship device. The processor power, display and memory might be impressive, but I can't really see it used in the system. Samsung's UI seems more fitting to a phone in a lower price point as it uses straight-forward fonts with no stylizing and no cream. It's really devoid of premium feel, but packed with functionality. Therefore this isn't only a criticism. The weightlessness and plastic feel don't make this device a bad phone, but just one not of this price range I feel.