Rogue Nokia splinter cell drops its Jolla phone A-BOMB Smartphone upstart Jolla - founded by a bunch of ex-Nokia engineers - has finally unveiled a device. The gadget's technical details are few and far between at this moment. The handset itself won't be available until the end of the year, but anyone willing to plonk down €100 can get get in line early for the €399 phone and bag …
Well that sounds like the most stupid idea of all time. Pay for proprietary memory cards and need a bag to carry 'em in? Yeah.......right.
Don't think the back panel is just a "memory card" (after all there is a comment that the phone has a microSD slot). Sounds like its more of a mechanism to "upgrade" the phone. I..e you buy the 16GB model and after a bit decide you really need more storage (and microSD won't do for this) then at the moment you'd have to buy an entire new phone - with this you might be able to just buy a 32GB back plate. Similarily someone else has commented that back plates with better quality cameras might be an option. Sounds like a good idea in theory but whether it will ever work in practice is another question (operators won't like it as its a way of delaying switching to a new phone/contract) ... after all, haven't people been talking about having upgradable laptops for years (e.g. swicthable graphics modules) and that hasn't exactly taken off.
Upgradeable phones - I would love this to happen; I don't know if we'll ever get to the stage where it's as easy to customise as ATX, but we can hope.
I have actually seen easily upgradeable laptops - when I did some work experience at IBM in 1997 (I think) they were all over the place - release and flip up the keyboard, pull out hard drive (no screws or catches there, the keyboard held everything down), slot a new one in. It was easier than changing a phone SD card now and it applied to more components than the hard drive; can't remember what though.
The idea is sound.
Plenty of people bought new covers for their old Nokia phones - customising the outside of the phone for themselves. Indeed Sendo made quite a business out of having a stock phone with covers they supplied to allow them to sell phones to clubs like ManU. This is a clip on cover that goes a bit further. So now not only do you have a cover with your favourite football teams colours, but maybe a 'favourite' plugged into their website, maybe even a password to access games or live feeds.... all sorts of possibilities are bought forward.
Yes, you could do it another way, but this way is a brilliant idea as not everyones granny is tech literate.
It always amazes me how these small start ups can do a decent industrial design, producing a nice looking phone. Yet the likes of Samsung and HTC can't, probably because they use a "design committee" where everyone throws in their idea on what they want changing, instead of trusting the designer.
Jolla have hinted that hardware such as better camera flashes could be included in the "other half" case so - user upgradeable phones? A case with a nice, powerful Xenon camera flash rather than the puny LED built-in? Maybe a hardware keyboard? Imagination is the only limit. Sounds very interesting to me.
Imagination and profitability..
I've seen some amazing ideas for interfaces on computers, giving rise to all sorts of expansion ideas. None of which came to pass because the interface was proprietary and the host platform was not profitable. The problem with relying on proprietary interfaces like that is if you buy a device that does, and the company manufacturing it stops (for whatever reason), then you are usually screwed as far as further expansion goes.
Open standards, such as USB, Bluetooth and SD cards (Micro, Mini or whatever) have their faults, but you can guarantee that even if the manufacturer of your phone goes tits up, someone will still be manufacturing peripherals you can use with them.
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If the phone comes in two halves, you could end up with a rolling upgrade "programme" whereby the front and backs are upgreadeable independently, so if you splash for the uber spec camera, you can upgrade the front processing unit & screen as and when you can afford it.
Interesting concepts.
N900 - had one of those - great computer, great screen, great apps, too bulky, shite battery life - went back to my 5800 - still amazing after all these years
Oh to get back to a phone you own rather than one you share with the OS provider; my €100 is creeping towards the website
Maybe these guys are developing a version of their OS that WILL work on Nokia phones. They already know the hardware, so it won't be that difficult.
They could offer an "UPDATE" to the silly WP8 Nokia thing that Microsoft likes to have battles in weddings about.
Maybe this IS Nokia's "Plan B". You never know.
The problem I see with this device is that it's basically the same spec as the Blackberry Z10, right down to being able to run Android applications. The add on back is the novelty but nobody knows if that will be popular or not. Will it get so much geek love that it becomes a big success, or will it fade away as another good idea without enough cold hard cash behind it?
I always admire people who manage to achieve something like this, and I hope it eats into Android market share. But not Windows or BB10, because we've seen duoculture in the desktop market and it wasn't pretty. A variety of platforms with application interchangeability would keep the whole thing interesting and mean that the corporate drones can't so easily do backroom deals to ensure that progress happens at a carefully managed rate.
The risk for Jolla, though, is surely that Microsoft will extort - sorry, politely request - a licensing fee in case someone has infringed a patent that they can't quite remember just at the moment but are sure is in there somewhere. Perhaps the one on rectangles on a computer screen that act as a kind of "window" showing the running state of a program?
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