Jolla Smartphone with Sailfish OS Review: A Taste of What Might Have Been
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By Jamshed Avari | Updated: 1 October 2014 17:49 IST
Nokia's
rise and fall has been well documented by now, with the story
punctuated by multiple missed opportunities and poor decisions. The
unfortunate company, once a dominant force in the technology world and
now owned by Microsoft, never managed to bring out a modern
touch-friendly smartphone platform of its own and suffered as
competition from Apple and Android manufacturers decimated it.
There
was hope, for a brief while, in the form of Maemo, a new Linux-based
platform which later became MeeGo. Nokia pulled the plug on it after
just a few devices were released, most notably the innovative N9. While
the company placed its next bet on Microsoft's Windows Phone platform,
the team responsible for MeeGo left and started their own company in
order to continue their work. The result is Jolla, and its first
commercial smartphone of the same name, running the totally new Sailfish
OS.
This is a unique phone, and has been designed as such.
There really is no mistaking it for any other device. We're curious to
see whether this works in its favour or against it, and whether we have a
new viable alternative to Android in the mass-market space.
Look and feel This
is definitely one of the strangest-looking phones we've seen in a long
time. It looks like a biscuit sandwich, with two distinct plastic halves
laid up against each other. As part of the quirky design, the front
half has rounded sides and is flat on the top and bottom, while the
"other half" is the opposite. This creates a few uncomfortable corners
which you'll feel when trying to stretch your thumb across the screen.
The
front face is totally blank. There's a lot of plastic surrounding the
screen despite the fact that there are no navigation buttons on the
front. A notification LED is cleverly disguised on the lower front;
you'll only see it when it lights up. The physical buttons and ports are
all in predictable places on the top and right, but all software
interaction happens using gestures.
This is definitely not the
slimmest or lightest phone around, at 9.9mm and 141g, and you'll feel
the difference if you're coming from anything relatively modern. As it
turns out, the "other half" on the rear is a convex shell covering the
front half's bulge; the whole thing doesn't split apart into two pieces.
The shells aren't just there for colour; they have a purpose. Each one
has an embedded NFC tag which is recognised by the Jolla when the shell
is snapped on. You'll see a message on screen asking you if you want to
act on it - initial shells will offer "ambiences", or themes comprising
of a wallpaper, highlight colour and sound profile. Future versions
might include Web links, bundled content, or anything an accessory maker
can imagine.
Beneath the very plain-looking shell, you'll find a
microSD card slot, a Micro-SIM slot (with a unique rubber flap to hold
the card in place) and the battery. Jolla definitely wants users to have
control over their devices, in the spirit of early Nokia smartphones.
It looks like this phone will be easy to take apart and repair, which
might appeal to some buyers more than slimness does.
Software The
former Nokia team might have had some robust open-source software at
their disposal, but all the user-facing interface elements of MeeGo are
still owned by Nokia and so the team had to come up with a whole new
look and model for interaction. The results are fairly unique - little
bits seem borrowed from here and there - but the overall effect is
completely fresh. Those familiar with iOS and Android will find
themselves struggling a little, but we eventually felt we could get used
to the Sailfish way of doing things.
The lock screen looks fairly
conventional - more like that of Windows Phone than any other OS.
There's a large clock on the bottom and space on top for notifications.
You'll see icons for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if they're on, but for some
reason the battery level and signal strength indicators are hidden. You
unlock the phone by sliding upwards, at which point you see those two
important indicators slide into view as if they were right below the
fold.
The first homescreen looks very much like what we've seen on
new BlackBerry devices running the BB 10 OS. There are tiles for up to
nine running apps: most native apps use their space to display small
snippets of information, but Android apps can only display thumbnails.
You can of course tap any of them to jump to an app, but in an
interesting twist, you can also swipe left or right to execute quick
commands. For example, swipe to the right on the phone dialler's tile to
go directly to the keypad, or swipe left to go to your contacts list.
The Settings app's tile shows icons for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular data
and airplane mode.
There is space for four icons at the bottom of
the first homescreen - swipe upwards to scroll to subsequent pages,
which are ordinary-looking icon grids. Android and native apps are mixed
together and you can drag and drop to rearrange icons with the usual
long-tap gesture.
Since there's no Home button, you'll have to
learn a lot of gestures, shortcuts and cues. First of all, glowing bars
at the top or bottom of the screen indicate that you can swipe up or
down to reveal menus. These are called pulley menus, which means that as
you pull them open, you'll drag each option past a highlight bar. If
you release the drag gesture while an option is highlighted, it will
immediately be selected. In this way, you can execute commands with one
fluid swipe, rather than opening the menu, scrolling around and then
selecting what you want. It takes a little while to get used to the
motions, but once you do, pulley menus will feel like an idea that
someone really should have had years ago.
If you're in an app and
move from page to page, you'll see a series of dots in the upper left
corner. This means you can swipe to go back to where you were (but you
can't swipe in the opposite direction to go forward again, which is
often disconcerting). You can swipe inwards from either side of the
screen while within an app to reveal the first homescreen - release
before a point to cancel the gesture, or follow through to minimise your
app to the homescreen. This lets you quickly check information that
might be displayed in an app's tile without disturbing whatever you're
doing.
Swiping downwards from the top of the screen will quit the
current app (you can disable this behaviour) or lock the screen if
you're on any homescreen. Swiping upwards will bring up the Events view
no matter where you are, even the lockscreen - this is equivalent to the
notifications shade on other platforms.
All apps run fullscreen -
there isn't a status bar or any on-screen controls. Only Android apps
force a black band to accommodate a Back button, which can't always be
replicated with gestures. The interface works pretty well, but it's
often frustrating because so much of it goes against the conventions
that other mobile OS platforms have tacitly standardised.
There is
so much to discover, and as you go along you'll find a lot of things
which make so much sense that you'll wonder why no one has thought of
them before, but also a surprising number of things which don't make any
sense at all. Pulley menus are absolutely fantastic, but are
implemented inconsistently. There are no quick shortcuts for important
settings such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but you have neat ways to set
alarms and full control over what gets backed up, where and when.
You
can't simply change wallpapers; you have to create "ambiences"
consisting of a wallpaper, accent colour and sound profile - this is the
same package each "other half" shell can store and transmit in order to
change your phone's appearance and behaviour.
Most of the
built-in apps are very well designed, both in terms of appearance and
usability. However, you'll always have to use neutral wallpaper images
so that the pervasive transparency doesn't become irritating. The native
keyboard is transparent and uses very thin key labels, so it's easy to
lose them against busy wallpapers.
The browser is sparse - the
address bar is hidden on the tab selection page, and the large toolbar
disappears when you scroll around, leaving you with nothing but page
content. The Media app can only handle music - you'll need to download
an app for videos - and similarly, the Documents app seems to only be
able to handle text. The People app has a neat sorting mechanism, and
the calendar, notes and other built-in apps are also well designed.
The
camera app is rather sparse - there are settings for the flash,
on-screen grid, white balance, ISO, AF and timer. You have to dip into
the menu overlay to switch to video recording or use the front camera,
which seems unnecessary. To change the photo resolution, you have to go
through the main Settings app.
Hardware The physical
aspects of the Jolla phone are considerably less exciting. There's a
1.4GHz dual-core Snapdragon 400 SoC, which is fairly commonplace, but
the 4.5-inch 540x960-pixel screen is a disappointment. It's noticeably
grainy and really doesn't offer the best quality. Other phones in this
price range definitely feel a lot more appealing when you use them.
You
get 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space which of course is expandable
thanks to the microSD card slot. The rear camera is an 8-megapixel unit
and the front one takes 2-megapixel images. There's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth,
plus NFC. You get 3G connectivity but no LTE.
Usage and performance We
took a while to become accustomed to Sailfish OS's quirks, and getting
around wasn't always intuitive. Over the course of a few days, we became
more familiar with it but there were still plenty of times that we
wished for a simple Home button. The live apps view is handy, but
doesn't adequately replace an app switcher - and it really only works
well with native apps, of which there aren't that many.
The Jolla
store seems well populated, but not all the apps are useful. There are a
few simple games and utilities. We found most of what we needed using
third-party Android stores such as Apotide, which worked flawlessly.
Android pps do have some limitations though - any data they need will
have to be stored in a specific Android folder on the phone; they won't
be able to see photos, music or other files you have in the general
storage pool. Services that rely on Google APIs are also not guaranteed
to work - this will be a familiar problem for BlackBerry users.
The
Sailfish UI was fairly responsive during our test period. Some apps
took a long while to load - there is an animation of the app jumping
into place as a live tile on the first homescreen before it then fills
the whole screen, which is extremely annoying. The Sailfish keyboard is
laid out well and has a scrolling row of suggested words, though
autocorrect accuracy is not at par with iOS or Android.
Interestingly,
you can delete most of the built-in apps including the calculator,
email client, clock and media player - this is in stark contrast to
manufacturers who insist on preloading dozens of apps which waste space.
Battery
life was quite good - in informal testing, the Jolla device lasted
through a full day with heavy use of Wi-Fi and constantly jumping
between apps. Our formal battery test uses an Android app to loop video -
the Jolla lasted 5 hours, 33 minutes which might not be entirely
indicative of its potential performance using an optimised native app.
The same holds true for benchmark tests. The browser-based SunSpider and
Kraken tests should hold up though, and we got scores of 1517.1 and
14320.3ms respectively. These are just about average, and you can get
better raw performance from other devices in this price class.
Only
one of the grilles on the device's bottom is a speaker, and we found
that sound was just about adequate - not especially loud or rich, but at
least it didn't distort. The screen suffered a bit in sunlight, and
viewing angles were not all that impressive either.
The camera
surprised us with its quality. We were happy with the images we were
able to take both outdoors and indoors. Colours, textures and details
were accurate for the most part. The autofocus took time and sometimes
failed, and there was just a little shutter lag. Low-light performance
was not that good, and the camera was nearly useless unless there was at
least some light falling directly on our subjects. Videos also came out
well.
Verdict It takes a lot of guts to go up against
dozens of major international and local Android manufacturers with
something brand new and unfamiliar. We think Jolla's biggest challenge
will be educating customers. As others have proved before (we're looking
at the Nokia X platform in particular), it's very easy to go wrong.
Buyers who like what they see at first but aren't necessarily familiar
with smartphone terminology or features, will be extremely upset if they
find they can't do simple things that everyone else can.
We
always like having competition, but there might not be room in the
Indian market (or any other market in the world) for an Android
alternative right now. The Jolla device is different and fresh, but
ultimately doesn't deliver the experience that Android has made possible
at this price level. The hardware is quirky at best and awkward all
around, while the software is often frustrating.
With an
online-only sales route and a price of Rs. 16,499, it's likely that Jolla will only find customers
who are explicitly searching for it, and that's a good thing. Gadget
enthusiasts (or Maemo fans) who want to give the Jolla phone a try will
probably enjoy using it for a while. As a primary device for everyday
users, however, this might not be the best choice.
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