Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 9,153
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The best Smartphone You've Never Heard of...
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Android is out. This Linux-based smartphone runs Jolla’s own Sailfish OS – a gesture-based beta with a debt to Nokia’s (and Intel’s) doomed MeeGo OS. Not surprising considering Jolla was created by ex-Nokia employees – a big chunk of the internet thinks the Jolla is an unofficial Nokia N9 resurrection.
Sailfish isn’t an OS that you’ll lust after having spent five minutes with – coming from Android or iPhone, the swipes and shortcuts feel unintuitive and it’s easy to get lost. There are no physical or capacitive buttons on the front of the Jolla, either.
But spend a week with it and it’s easy to come around to Sailfish. It’s far from perfect but the simple idea of letting your fingers and thumb stay on the touchscreen the whole time (rather than moving to press buttons) makes for a speedy, non-stop experience.
A basic notifications list is a swipe up from the bottom of the screen: fairly standard. But swiping left from the right of the screen minimises the app you’re in and takes you to a homescreen of open apps, like BB10’s Active Frames. Only nine are shown on the one ‘home view’ screen, but as you hold down and delete, other open apps take their place.
Pulling the screen down in most Jolla apps brings up a list of options for things such as changing settings, sharing, search and sending messages or emails – this is the ‘getting things done’ gesture. And finally glowing dots in the top left hand corner show you which page you’re on like tech Tinkerbells guiding the way. Swipe left or right for forwards and backwards. For exampls, when viewing a photo you can swipe right once to return to Photos and right again to the main Gallery menu.
Learning the system is an investment, but use the Jolla for three to four days and your thumb will take on a life of its own, racing around Sailfish with fluid efficiency. And it’s a very well presented, pretty UI with glowing sliders and toggles, grids of letters and teardrop-shaped icons. There are design flourishes everywhere – we set the time more than once because we enjoyed it so much.
Still, niggles abound. The browser needs more work as navigating is a bit of a chore, and while most apps are see-through (iOS 7-style) to show your ‘Ambience’ (i.e. homescreen background) some, such as Email, switch to a boring (but more readable) monochrome design in-app. It’s just not consistent yet.
Sailfish does have the basics covered – easy-to-use People, Messaging, Email and Media (music) apps, plus HERE Maps, which (like Calculator, Notes and other essentials) has to be downloaded from the Jolla Store. Nothing is pushed on users, which is largely great, but apps are also a bit of a mess overall.
Remember we said Android‘s a no-show? That’s doesn’t quite tell the whole story…
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You can read more about it here:
http://stuffmideast.com/2014/04/20/1...ever-heard-of/
If you like the look of the OS, you can install it on Nexus, Galaxy etc. phones 
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