Have any of you European Brothers tried Jolla's Phone? If so:
1. Do you like it
2. Can it use full RPM packages?
3. Is the other half feature useful?
4. How well will it run Android software?
%. When will us Yanks get a chance to get it?
I had one preordered, so I got it before Christmas, and I love it.
It can't install regular RPM packages, it needs to use it's own repos, and it is Android compatible without any problem whatsoever.
The other half feature is useful, but it's not essential. However, the phone feels really nice in the hand and you can change the back, which has a number of benefits.
The Jolla are pretty much on backorder all the time, so I think the US will have to wait, production is not fast enough to satisfy demand from just the EU for the moment.
I also think that the Phone is not going to be popular with US carriers because it's so free and unlocked. I guess the Asian and African markets will therefore come first.
Sailfish OS is also still in beta, I don't see Jolla expanding their operations before the software is out of beta.
One thing though, it's not a phone for everyone right now. It has a very powerful OS, much more powerful than any other phone OS. It's super easy to use because everything is controlled in the GUI by just swipes, but it also has a complete, fully functional, linux back-end that is easily accessible and usable. With Sailfish OS still being in beta, the GUI is not entirely complete yet for mass-market, and the main benefit of SailfishOS is of course to use it together with linux on a PC. In the US, there aren't that many people that use linux on a PC, so they will probably find SailfishOS a whole lot less interesting than the rest of the world. If you don't have a linux PC or a Mac, you can't even plug the SD-card into your PC, because Windows will not be able to read it directly. For the moment, there is also no full-featured windows software to sync the phone with a windows PC, and because this phone is just like a normal linux PC when connected to a *nix PC, it doesn't need such software, so I'm not sure that Jolla will even go to the trouble of making Windows software. It's much more than an Android phone, it's a new generation of phones. Right now, production is really limited and price is relatively high, but when the Jolla hits real mass-production, prices will drop and the most potent phone will also become one of the cheaper phones. Sailfish OS is much nicer than Android, especially outside of the US, because Android with Google Services is mainly a US thing, the Google Services don't really work outside of North-America, and Android takes a lot of hacking and configuration to get Google Services off the phone and replace them with open source applications that actually work. So people outside of the US are pretty used to alternative app stores, which are also the ones the Jolla phone uses to get Android apps, as Sailfish OS has no access to the Google Play Store because it's Google spyware-free.
Thanks for that information Zoltan. I would like to get my hands on one.
That is a great reply. I might Have to look at ebay.
Have you tried writing any programs in QT for it?