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back to article Jolla's first Sailfish phone preorders 'fully booked'

Jolla, the Finnish smartphone startup founded by former Nokia staffers, has announced that the first production batch of mobiles based on its incipient Sailfish OS have been "fully booked," and that it expects to begin shipments by the end of the year. Sailfish, you may recall, is Jolla's commercial variant of the Linux-based …

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  1. Barbarian At the Gates

    I wish them luck and good sales

    Tough world, the mobile market is. There's room for a market leader, a worthy competitor, and a plucky underdog. I'd say the first two categories are currently taken, hope you Finnish lads and ladies have a good run at the "plucky underdog".

    But wouldn't hurt to have the CV in order just in case it all goes pear shaped.

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    1. John Hughes
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      Re: I wish them luck and good sales

      "There's room for a market leader, a worthy competitor, and a plucky underdog."

      Doesn't actualy fit the real situation.

      Look at the graph in this article:

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/20/this-chart-shows-how-far-behind-apple-is-in-the-global-phone-market/

      33% of phones are made by "other", around the same as the market leader, Samsung, more than twice the "worthy competitor" Apple (13%).

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      1. D@v3
        Reply Icon

        Re: I wish them luck and good sales

        but when you take into account how many (current) phones apple have on the market compared to how many samsung have (iPhone 5 vs s4, note2, mega, and i'm sure many others that i cant name) you get a different picture.

        The may be selling 'more than twice' as many, but they also have many more than twice as many to choose from.

        That is however, far from the point of the article, and i would also like to wish Jolla the best of luck

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I wish them luck and good sales

      More Linux based fragmentation.

      Presumably this will only add to the 17,000 new types of Android Malware found in the last quarter alone....

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      1. N13L5
        Reply Icon

        Re: More Linux based fragmentation.

        And you are... an anonymous shill for locked down operating systems that allow no variation?

        Nobody ever bitched about the fragmentation of windows. That's not because nobody noticed, but because its simply not a problem.

        But with phone operating systems, all sorts of people with an axe to grind come out of the woodworks bemoaning fragmentation.

        In reality, they are either trying to malign something that's a thorn in their own cash flow, or they are simply against variety altogether, wanting to make everything identical, like communists are always accused of.

        .

        .

        Really, beautiful mountain villages in Switzerland are also fragmented... the houses are all different shapes built at different times, and still it works just fine and looks beautiful too.

        You could get rid of fragmentation by building a huge prison instead with one giant kitchen, one kind of food and cells that all have identical shapes.

        .

        .

        So go cry some more about fragmentation, Darth Vader, NSA, Microcruft, Crapple

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  2. jdieter

    Woot! any day now boyzzzz

    When I have an open source phone where I can decide every BIT (pun intended) of software on it, I will cry with joy. Linux phone = heaven!

    2 1
    1. Shonko Kid
      Reply Icon
      Linux

      Re: Woot! any day now boyzzzz

      Perhaps you missed the Neo 1973 and FreeRunner projects then.

      They even have an open source HW platform and GSM baseband. That's about as open as you'll see in the mobile space. Ever.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Woot! any day now boyzzzz

        Shame the hardware was terrible and buggy (it was a left over from a product that was never commissioned).

        Parts of the implementation are not allowed to be open source under the FCC rules.

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  3. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I still haven't finished disabling all the T-Mobile, Sony, and Google shoveware that came on my phone. There's even shovelware to help you maintain a phone that's overloaded with shovelware (for a small monthly fee, of course). A clean phone could cost a lot more and be worth every bit of it from the time and sanity saved.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      That's mostly why I moved to Windows Phone, no crapware, - as well as being faster, smoother and nicer to use.

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      1. Manu T
        Reply Icon

        "That's mostly why I moved to Windows Phone, no crapware, - as well as being faster, smoother and nicer to use."

        If only some basic telephony features would work. Things like full 2-way call recording. Which allows me to properly use my smartphone when driving. Using a BT headset and automatic call recording my cellphone is basically my personal sercretary (sans the netstockings and miniskirt). Which becomes more and more important at a time when more and more countries prohibit the use of cellphones while driving.

        Not to mention the ability to sync locally with Microsoft's OWN PIM would seriously help when the sky is cloudy (pun intended). This would cater for the people whom held contact/client-confidentiality very high like me or who use their phones in the real world without 4G/HSDPA-towers planted on every tree. Because cloud-necessity is absurd in WP. It's a bloody miracle that you can recharge the damn things without a connection to Live!

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  4. Anomalous Cowshed

    Antti Saarnio

    Good luck to them, may they prosper and give the big boys a real run for their money!

    But - as a completely irrelevant aside - I could not help but notice the name of Jolla's CEO.

    Antti Saarnio: Is that a real name, or a clever, covert plug for a healthy diet?

    Sorry for bringing this up but I could not resist!

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    1. cambsukguy
      Reply Icon

      Re: Antti Saarnio

      Almost all Finnish names bring a smile to ones face, as my facebooky feedy thing reminds me. Working there (yes, for Nokia, on Meego - with a beautiful N9 for a, sadly, very short time), I was constantly amused by the names.

      Fine people, most survived the purge and prospered, joining outfits like the Jolla one (or Suunto, Salomon, Fiskars, Rovio (Angry Birds), accenture and Tata) . Don't feel worried for them, they live in one the of the best countries in the world for education as well as many other good-life metrics.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Antti Saarnio

        "Don't feel worried for them..."

        I'm more worried for me!

        - I'm worried that soon I can't find a phone with proper automatic call recording capabilities.

        - I'm worried that soon I can't find a phone which I can put in my pants without slicing of my nuts.

        - I'm worried that soon I can't find a phone that is... well... a PHONE!

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    2. Andus McCoatover
      Reply Icon
      Windows

      Re: Antti Saarnio

      Yeah, my (ex) girlfriend wanted to call our newborn son by a traditional Finnish name.

      I objected.

      We eventually settled for something slightly international - Benjamin Johannes - after I rejected her choice of "Pekka".

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  5. gerryg
    Happy

    Got my free T-shirt ...

    ..last week. Having bunged my €100 earlier this year.

    Looking forward to getting the phone.

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    1. djack
      Reply Icon

      Re: Got my free T-shirt ...

      Yeah, went there, got the t-shirt :)

      Is there any news on what the exclusive 'other half' will be yet?

      In my dreams it would be a physical keyboard, but no real chance of that I suppose.

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  6. thomas k.

    hmm, stereo speakers ...

    Perhaps they could add side-facing stereo speakers to the ends of the clip-on back or maybe extend the back 1/2" on both ends and make them front-facing, that'd be worth spending a little dosh on, myself.

    Yes, still looking to upgrade my N900, thought the HTC One would be it but it's really expensive so now looking at the new Nexus 7 (once they determine if the GPS problem is software or hardware related.)

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      What?

      so now looking at the new Nexus 7 (once they determine if the GPS problem is software or hardware related.)

      This can't be true. Only Crapple have problems with their phones. Androids can do no wrong ever. The users must have been 'holding it wrong' while looking for rounded corners.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: hmm, stereo speakers ...

      My HTC One has such speakers, any the sound quality is pretty good.

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  7. Shagbag

    Watch out Microsoft

    With Firefox OS and soon Jolla, and the innevitable booting-out of Elop (and subsequent diversification of Nokia offering) the battle for #3 is going to be interesting.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Watch out Microsoft

      "the innevitable booting-out of Elop "

      Why would that happen? Nokia are heading back into profit, Lumia market share is growing at over 30% a quarter, and he pulled off a stunningly cheap deal to by out the rest of NSN....

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      1. Manu T
        Reply Icon

        Re: Watch out Microsoft

        "Why would that happen? Nokia are heading back into profit, Lumia market share is growing at over 30% a quarter, and he pulled off a stunningly cheap deal to by out the rest of NSN...."

        I reckon you too believe in Santa...

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  8. Thomas 4
    Thumb Up

    Innovation

    The clip on backing idea sounds really neat, especially if they did one with a keyboard on it. It's really cool to see some some genuinely new ideas at last.

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  9. Sebastian Brosig

    Nokia submarines

    I keep on hoping that some old mates of the Jolla team have not Elop'd from Nokia and can leak the odd private key and hardware secret so that Sailfish can run on Nokia's rather neat phones! Of course that may incur flying chairs from Redmond.

    Would punters break any laws if they bought a Windows phone just to root out Windows and run other software on it?

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    1. Justin Stringfellow
      Reply Icon
      Megaphone

      Re: Nokia submarines

      > Would punters break any laws if they bought a Windows phone just to root out Windows and run other software on it?

      No laws worth the paper they're written on. If I buy a piece of hardware, I'll run what the hell I like on it.

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      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Nokia submarines

        If there is a hardware bootlock then removing it is illegal in many countries. Another thing we have to thank the DMCA for.

        OTOH who's likely to find out? Unless you send it back for repair? Where they're just likely to tell you the guarantee is void.

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        1. Anonymous Dutch Coward
          Reply Icon

          Illegal versus DMCA

          Are you sure? Interoperability was IIRC one of the few loopholes DMCA allows... Can't be bothered to verify though.

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      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nokia submarines

        Good luck doing that on a Windows Phone. It has a (to date) uncracked secure boot chain....

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    2. cambsukguy
      Reply Icon

      Re: Nokia submarines

      Given that 90% of the non-fanbois/fandroid (ie remotely reasonable) complaints about WinPhone is the lack of apps (or, for some reason the lack of Instagram), then I suspect that Jolla and any other ecosystem will suffer.

      I switched from an N900 to WP so I could keep using Nokia because the hardware and call quality was much more important to me than slavishly using a particular OS. The N900 had/has severe call limitations (caused by Linux/dbus ultimately) despite being an amazing phone is many other respects.

      Like IE/Chrome and (probably) Safari, browsers do what almost everyone needs. Most phone OS's do everything almost everyone needs if they have a reasonable app store.

      However, just using a Nokia 925 or 920 with a the Nokia Pro Camera App tells you all you need to know about how superior Nokia is in the camera department - not to mention the incredible 1020. This app will not be available on a Jolla phone, you will get a passable snapper at best. Having seen the useless pictures an iPhone 4 produces recently, I am staggered people can stand to have one - I would be so embarrassed to show the pics to people.

      Since I have also noticed how superior the actual phone call performance is compared to an S2 of an acquaintance as well as the very noticeable robustness and better looks (at least to me), Nokia is where I start, features/capabilities first - OS comes second.

      Having said that, WP is brilliant, the Nokia additions are superb and the OS is fluid, slick, stable, battery sipping and completely up-to-par for me, the need to have a bash prompt and X-server is just not high enough for me to use the N900.

      And, when I travel abroad next week, I will have full mapping and driving directions, almost exactly like at home but without the need for online data access - how anyone can stand to have a phone that basically doesn't have maps anywhere but in their home region amazes me, not to mention the continuous waiting for the damn things to load up and de-pixelate whenever the signal is a bit dodgy, pathetic.

      1 2
      1. hplasm
        Reply Icon
        Gimp

        Re: Nokia submarines

        You forgot your icon...

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      2. gerryg
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        so much text so little fact checking

        "Given that 90% of the non-fanbois/fandroid (ie remotely reasonable) complaints about WinPhone is the lack of apps (or, for some reason the lack of Instagram), then I suspect that Jolla and any other ecosystem will suffer."

        So LMGTFY

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      3. Manu T
        Reply Icon

        Re: Nokia submarines

        "Given that 90% of the non-fanbois/fandroid (ie remotely reasonable) complaints about WinPhone is the lack of apps"

        No I complained about the lack of FEATURES! I couldn't care less about apps. A good webbrowser is more important.

        "However, just using a Nokia 925 or 920 with a the Nokia Pro Camera App tells you all you need to know about how superior Nokia is in the camera department ...."

        I use a Nokia 808PV excactly because of it's quality as a comms-device. It is very loud so i definitely don;t ever miss a call. It has amazing call-recording quality loud and clear literally. A much better maps app which accept input from both calender and contacts. And the best screen ever (unfortunately with a fairly low resolution compared to newer flagship phones). Plus physical call/end-call keys are required on a PHONE! Especially with all the bloody callcenters these days.

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