The market is small, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a significant overlap between those who want a keyboard and the target audience of the Jolla phone.
Don't forget that SailfishOS is ultimately Linux (and not like Android) - it even comes with the zypper package manager that lets you install apps and update the OS using the terminal. Part of the fun of using SailfishOS is doing familiar Linux systems managements and general operations the terminal, which any Linux nerd would love. And Linux nerds make up a huge userbase of this OS.
I mean, look at the link OP pasted, they're straight up calling it a "Linux phone", it's clear who their audience is. And don't tell me majority of Linux users would NOT prefer to have a keyboard.
They're probably not interested in the Linux power user. They're interested in making their phone viable for everyone else, since that's a much bigger market, and for that customer base, a keyboard is very much going to be a negative and not a positive. The Linux part of their Linux phone also has the same problem, but they apparently have faith in that part.
If they're not interested in that market, they're not doing a good job in showing it. They mentioned "Linux" *five* times on that page, but don't explain what it is.
Normal folks don't even know what Linux is, let alone know what the difference between a Linux-based OS like SailfishOS and Android, that would entice them to buy this phone.
It's clear that "Linux" is a big selling factor for this given that they mentioned it so many times, but they do little to elaborate on it.
No, you're right. SailfishOS inherits the core of the OS from the old Maemo of Nokia N900 fame (though the UI was built from scratch I believe). I tried it back in the day on my Nexus 4 and it was buttery smooth, even with all its fancy animations and gesture-based navigation, which was way ahead of Android at the time.
I always thought SailfishOS would really take off by now, given how advanced and polished it already was at the time, but Jolla's mismanagement nearly jeopardised the whole thing (they filed for bankruptcy last year).
The platform always suffered from two big architectural missteps.
1 - the native browser being an old firefox/gecko fork embedded into their own UI framework, giving a poor performance and dated compatibility quirks
2 - the android emulating runtime meant that you get again, dated , poorly performing android apps, that you're driven towards because the browser engine was so poor.
these two mean you basically end up with a sub-standard android handset/UI, and a tiny market for native app development (because everyone made do with android), its a real chicken/egg.
In fairness I've not used it since the sony XPeria days, but it was my daily phone for 3-4 years since the Jolla 1. It was cool being able to emacs and irc natively on the phone, but that was limited in use cases tbh.
Same experience here, though from Sailfish OS run on their first Jolla phone.
Also permission model on Sailfish was much worse than on Android. I didn't use Android apps on Sailfish, though.
I really liked Silica UI, but available apps had much less functionality than their counterparts on Android and iOS. I think that open sourcing Sailfish and Silica would end up better for them.
Nevertheless, I kinda liked the phone, but ultimately went back to Android.
The Firefox engine legacy goes back to the Maemo times - its not ideal, but what else would you use ? The web engine situation is quite bleak even on desktop Linux distros and its even worse on mobile Linux.
They filled for bankruptcy again last year (first was the Tablet debacle in I think 2015) but have since managed to survive it again, so all is well. :)
That shouldn't be a problem as long as you can still download apps from the Play Store itself (not the official app). Basically, take a look at how proxy stores like Aurora work, they connect to the Play Store servers and allow you to download apps directly from Google, without needing the Play Store app.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the downloaded app will work on such a device (if it doesn't have Google Play Services), but at least it lets you download the app, which isn't much different from downloading it from say, APK Mirror. And as long as you can extract the apps from either the Play Store or Android devices itself (via adb/root etc), I'm assuming sites like APK Mirror will continue to exist.
Except there's still Paramount, Disney and Hulu, and even if you get them all, there's no guarantee you can stream what you want to watch due to some bullshit regional distribution rights restrictions, which makes no sense in the digital era...
HBO is destination television - it's the taste that Netflix lacks and so desperately needs.
WB and HBO together have the franchises that Netflix has been trying to build. DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings (film + game rights - tv rights), West World, The Matrix, Mad Max, King Kong, all of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.
What does Paramount or Hulu have? It's a lot of fluff on the same or even lower caliber than Netflix.
Amazon gives some good stuff away for "free". Apple has good shows, too.
Disney? Meh - they've got Andor and that's really it.
If whomever buys HBO also also buys A24, it's over. That's all I need.
Westworld... the show you can't watch on HBO anymore. Taste? Like what they just did to one of the best shows ever, Mad Men? HBO today (Or Max, or HBO Max, or whatever their branding of the day is) is not the HBO it was before David Zaslav got his hands on it.
ESPN comes with your Disney+ which also gives you Hulu
Peacock says they have sports, but then doesn't actually show all of the matches and instead tries to prop up USA and Telemundo numbers. Many times I have to watch a match in a language I'm not fluent even though I'm paying for Peacock specifically as they have the rights. Can't watch USA as I cut the cord years ago, so I'm left with hoping I can find the right spot for my OTA antenna to be able to tune in.
Sheridan is staying with Paramount until 2029, and the shows he made for them will remain theirs. So, Sheridan will be still be elevating paramount subscriptions long into the future.
Netflix could have built many franchises by now but instead burns them all in season 1 or season 2 and makes slop on purpose (i.e. explain what you are doing while you are doing it for the people not watching directly, etc). They also just had the most successful franchise launch of all time -- Kpop demon hunters. The brand is apparently worth about 10 billion right now, and they bought the film and the rights from Sony for <20 million.
If they purchase HBO, I assume HBO will regress to the baseline that is Netflix content, not the other way around.
> Disney? Meh - they've got Andor and that's really it.
I like this post about how The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Mad Max and Harry Potter are all valuable IP written by somebody that appears to have never heard of Marvel comics, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Simpsons, any Pixar film, Avatar, The X-Files, or The Bachelor.
> And Netflix has 13,000 employees, while Disney has 233,000.
And Disney is significantly more than just a single streaming service struggling to get content.
Their Direct-to-Consumer business (aka Netflix equivalent) posted a net profit increase 9.5x year on year (from 143 million to 1.3 billion) and has more than half the number of Netflix subscribers (196 million vs. 300+ million) in significantly shorter time than Netflix. https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/the-walt-disney-company-rep...
Operating profit, not net profit. Net income (or profit or earnings) can only be calculated for the whole business.
> has more than half the number of Netflix subscribers (196 million vs. 300+ million) in significantly shorter time than Netflix.
I don’t find this impressive. Streaming has been the future for over a decade, and Disney has long had more, and more popular content than Netflix. So why is it taking them so long to catch up to Netflix? They should have surpassed Netflix a long time ago.
> Streaming has been the future for over a decade, and Disney has long had more, and more popular content than Netflix. So why is it taking them so long to catch up to Netflix?
Netflix started streaming 18 years ago. Disney+ appeared 6 years ago, and Disney didn't acquire Hulu (as part of 20th Century Fox) until 2019. Also, Disney+ appeared in the era of multiple streaming services, and IIRC didn't pull their content from Netflix until sometime after they launched Disney+. Netflix also didn't lose content from other big content distributors like WB until later.
To compare: in near-absence of any competition it took Netflix until 2021 (10 years) to reach 200 million subscribers. There's Hulu that was launched in 2007, but they were nearly absent outside of the US.
So Disney has streaming competition on all fronts, has gone through price increases etc., and still grows their streaming service.
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Netflix buying WB is not really a desperation move, but it is a question of survival. Netflix has very little content of its own, and has trouble licensing relevant content from studios that are now its direct rivals: Disney, WB, Paramount etc.
They were all happily presented on Netflix, and then pulled nearly all their content to launch their own streaming platforms.
Netflix has survived by dumping enormous amounts of money into producing their own content, and licensing foreign content. But that is clearly not enough to maintain momentum, or to keep subscribers interested in the service. With WB they get their hands on a lot of IP that they can inject back into the service.
Can we also talk about increasing lack of physical controls, like for adjusting the aircon etc? Surely it's not legal in most places to fiddle with a touchscreen when you're driving? And if the legal answer is to pull over every time you want to change the controls, what if you're on a long drive on the freeway or a congested road, and there's no room to pull over?
If you're considering getting an alternative handheld, a better OS would be either Bazzite or CachyOS Handheld edition. SteamOS is not bad, but it uses an older kernel+graphics stack which doesn't make it very ideal for running on recent hardware. Plus, dedicated gaming distros like Bazzite have additional hardware support (like thirdparty game controllers) which may not be supported in SteamOS.
Currently, AMD Strix Halo based handhelds are the most powerful portable gaming devices out there, with the top three being the GPD Win 5, the OneXPlayer OneXfly Apex, and the AYANEO Next 2. Of these three, the GPD Win 5 has already started shipping. Problem is they're stupid expensive.
Personally, I will wait until I can run FSR4 natively on these portables, because FSR makes a pretty significant QoL improvement on these handhelds.
FWIW it's fairly straightforward to set up FSR4 with Proton-GE nowadays, assuming you're comfortable with editing one config file or manually specifying an env var for the game[1]. I'm not sure if using an alternate version of Proton would be considered "native" though, or if you mean for the default version of proton (or for Linux builds of games specifically), but setting it up is a fairly straightforward process even for people who might prefer not to use the terminal if you use something like ProtonUp to manage the installation for you. I imagine that the process for using a custom Proton isn't much different on Bazzite and CachyOS, although I'm not sure whether it would be something commonly done on CachyOS given that they have their own Proton distribution.
Marvel Rivals, Age of Empires 2 DE, Path of Exile 1/2, Last Epoch, Fall Guys are other such examples. In fact, Marvel Rivals even explicitly mentioned Bazzite in one of their changelogs! I can't recall an instance when a major game name-dropped a (relatively) minor Linux distro like that.
If its for your parents, then why not switch them to OnlyOffice? Its UI is very similar to MSO and it has excellent compatibility with the 2007+ file formats (much better than LibreOffice).
There's an alternative project that runs Windows apps in a VM but integrates them fully and transparently into your Linux desktop, with MS Office particularly tended to. The apps run as if they're native to Linux. It was discussed here just this past week.
I wouldn't hold my breath. I've been trying to get them to switch for the better part of a year, and even Windows Update completely bricking my mom's computer [1] (look at my post history if you want more details on that) wasn't enough to convince them. I'm not sure what else could happen outside of Bill Gates personally leaving a flaming bag of dog manure on their porch.
[1] I'll say it again; if anyone here works on Windows Update, please consider getting out of the software game and maybe consider a job in the exciting world of janitorial or food service, because you are exceedingly bad at the whole "software thing" and you should be ashamed of yourself and how much damage you have cost the entire world with your utterly incompetent software.
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