#nokian9 — Public Fediverse posts

@Martina Neumayer

This is supposed to be a phone that women will also use

You honestly think that every smartphone out there has the same target audience as the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy?

This is supposed to be a phone that geeks will use first and foremost. The most hardcore of them. The direct opposite of “tech-illiterate”.

In case you didn't know: The new Jolla Phone is From The Makers Of™ the first Jolla Phone. And the Nokia N9. They were all targetted at the same audience who actually bought the direct predecessor of the N9, the Nokia N900.

I mean, look at the N900. Now, look at the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4 which came out before and after the N900. Notice how thick and clunky the N900 is in comparison especially with the iPhone 4? Why would someone buy that?

Because it ran Maemo. And because it had a slide-out hardware QWERTY keyboard.

Why would someone want that operating system if there were thousands of times more apps available for iOS?

Because Maemo is a fork of Debian GNU/Linux and still largely works and handles like Debian GNU/Linux. All the way to the “app store” being nothing but a pretty frontend for the apt package manager.

People who bought the Nokia N900 also bought second-hand IBM ThinkPad T43 or T60 business laptops with no operating system on them, just to install some Linux distro. No matter how much better a MacBook Air looked. No matter if almost everyone else was gushing over Windows 7 back then.

They also bought Linksys WRT54GL routers with the very intent to replace the stock firmware with OpenWrt, a firmware that offers professional industry-grade features, but that doesn't even have a Web interface. If you take your phone to ssh into your router and configure or upgrade it or check the logs, a hardware keyboard is much more convenient than a sleek design.

They also bought tickets to the annual Chaos Communication Congress.

Many of them bought the first Jolla Phone, hoping that they could acquire a TOHKBD, a slide-out hardware QWERTY keyboard that could be attached to the bottom of the phone instead of its own stock bottom, The Other Half. They were disappointed that the Nokia N950 didn't go into mass-production.

Some of those who missed both the first Jolla phone and the community-issued Jolla C opted for a grey-import Intex Aqua Fish, made in India for India, because it was basically a Jolla C without The Other Half that didn't even know it was actually a Jolla C. Not few of them hacked their Aqua Fish so it thought it's a Jolla C, and so they'd get system upgrades earlier.

The new Jolla Phone is an up-to-date take on the same principle as the old Jolla Phone. All the way up to The Other Half. Like, it's one of its key features that the bottom can be removed without exposing any circuitry, and that a third-party replacement with extra features can be attached, e.g. an additional battery or a more high-end camera or a slide-out hardware keyboard.

However, this requires the bottom half of the phone to be easily removeable. With an iPhone-like case, this isn't possible. Also, this requires the bottom half of the phone to have a rather simple shape so that any third-party Other Half matches the top in shape, and so that it's easy to manufacture. Other Halves are usually made by people in their spare time in small batches and never by big corporations.

By the way: If you expect the Jolla Phone to have anywhere close to as many apps, especially commercial apps, as the iPhone or a typical Android phone, you'll be disappointed, too. Literally all third-party apps available for Sailfish OS are free-as-in-freedom and open-source. And there's no Google Play Store.

Bottom line: Don't expect a MacBook Air from Tuxedo Computers. And don't expect Arch Linux to be every bit as “user-friendly” as Windows 10 or iOS.

@jolla

#Jolla #Jolla Phone #Jolla C #Nokia N900 #Nokia N9 #Intex Aqua Fish #Linux #GNU/Linux #Maemo #Sailfish OS