My take on Jolla after two months

2months.rst

My take on Jolla after two months of use

Before purchasing Jolla I gave some reasons why I am purchasing a new phone and an explanation what I expect from it.

Because I have an Android tablet, I did not need an Android phone and I was OK to experiment. Many of the typical phone features like maps, twitter, offline wikipedia are on tablet which I always have with me; therefore phone does not have that many requirements.

Here is a summary on what was important for a phone and what I got:

1. Calls, sms. Check.
2. Basic browser for emergencies. Check. It's more than basic, it's an open-source recent and decent Firefox fork.

2. Decent bluetooth and wifi tethering. Almost check. Wifi tethering works perfectly, but Bluetooth always takes a minute when I want to connect my tablet.
3. Easy way to transfer files from computer to phone and back.. Double check. This is awesome. On wireless (wifi tethering) with rsync I get 2.5MB/s. python3 -m http.server also works (Terminal application is built-in). With USB wire phone configures itself as a USB network card; that gives me 10-11MB/s bandwidth over USB TCP/IP network with rsync. Compared to Android, with ADB I get around 2MB/s and no easy way wirelessly.
4. Flashlight. Check.
5. Battery: 2 days of battery life normal usage, 4-5 days low usage. Double check. 2 days of battery normal usage, 7+ days(!) low usage. I actually managed to get 10 days on a single charge writing a few texts per day and calling for 5-10 minutes/day.
6. Camera. Check. I am not an expert, but quality looks very good. In a recent release you can also configure ISO, which is quite unusual for a phone camera.
7. Python shell. Check.

Sailfish has Android compatibility mode, but I deliberately did not install it.

Bad surprises

1. No Lithuanian keyboard layout.
2. No "USB stick" mode. I still have to carry a real USB stick.
3. Landscape mode is an afterthought. Too many applications do not support it (though it's getting better with every update).
4. Contacts management UI is quite bad. It is usable, but could be much better.
5. Maps are quite bad. Offline maps on Android save the day.
6. Bluetooth tethering is not as good as it should be. It is one of the three most important use cases: calls, SMS, tethering. These three should be perfect.
7. In 'recent calls' there is no easy way to figure out the number of the caller/callee. If I want to call back from the office phone, which number should I dial?
8. Impossible to turn off autocomplete. Seriously?
9. Could not make 3G work in the USA (T-Mobile, San Francisco area). 2G only.

Good surprises

1. It is a proper Linux distribution. That is, it has package manager (PackageKit), uses RPMs (rpm -qa, rpm -ql all work). I installed clang, rsync, full Vim, python3, htop. I can configure iptables from the terminal
2. Community. In FOSDEM2014 I met some of the people from Jolla and they are amazing. Very helpful, open and active. Me and my wife spent some great time with them. We also got free Jolla hats!
3. Adding an application is a matter of making it work on Open Build Service. All backend stuff is out there in the open. I can easily add other applications (got quite far with Erlang, though didn't really finish).
4. SDK is amazingly intuitive. Creating and running "hello world" took 10 minutes.
5. Google Calendar and Google Contacts integration. I guess it's a matter of a working CalDav/WebDav client plus UI, but still it's a nice surprise comparing to the calendar "integration" I have with my desktop Linux email client.
6. Form factor. While reading early reviews I thought it is going to be clunky. But it is very comfortable and slimmer than looks in the pictures. Feels like high quality manufacturing.
7. Killer feature: Terminal is a built-in application.

To sum up

This is a great phone for (control) geeks. Most of the control is as easy as in any Linux distribution and you don't have to re-learn the APIs.

What strikes me most that they actually thought a lot not to reinvent. Wayland, systemd, BTRFS, bash, QT/QML do not come from mobile. They are adopted to an other form factor.

Users who just need a working phone with Facebook and Google Maps are not going to benefit much. Yes, UI is different, maybe more comfortable, but not reason enough to lose Play Store. Maybe battery life could be a selling point; however, it all boils down how you use it.

Because of the control and battery life I am completely sold on this OS and highly recommend it.

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