Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Sailfish UI 2.0 is so good that it made me truly feel delighted and trying out multitasking like it was 2009 and small things could handle big tasks.

Then ... my 3 tab Firefox for Android got closed (greyed out minimized version restarts)

So I stubbornly decided to log in to my webmail saying: don't you dare close this https authenticated session on me or I will get pissed.

And that single action actually closed my music that was playing through Quasar MX.


It closes audio. Why would one need audio playing in the back ground anyway? Do you think we are stupid and will not notice this fake multitasking?

Enough said! Fix this, Jolla.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

By not having Android support for a start, which chews up insane amounts of RAM ;)

On top of that, significant amounts of hard work, and some interesting smoke and mirrors tricks. I don't remember everything clearly so much later but here's some (from the application side, which is where I was focused):

• Dropping OpenGL contexts and using software rendering of applications when they moved to the background (something which SFOS adopted sometime during 2014 to some extent, windows drop contexts when they move to the background)
• Dropping caches in applications when they move to the background on a similar basis
• Low memory notification (this is something that the upstream Linux kernel itself *still* lacks, Android has this capability to some extent) to drop caches/etc

Ironically enough, RAM was (in my opinion) a very big problem there, even if you don't think so. Some parts of the software were rather huge in complexity/requirements, and slimming it down was never really a possibility due to the need to push the thing out the door (and then, well, keep it going out the door as much as possible).

This showed as particularly painful in application startup time, and this is why most of the software on the N9 (that is built in) is pre-started, and just shown when the icon is clicked. Mercifully, this was avoided for most of the UI on SFOS with the exception of Phone (which, for responsiveness reasons, it does make some sense to keep running) and Messages (which was kept running due to architectural reasons; maybe some day that'll be fixed if it hasn't been already).

I would have to say that the biggest problem SFOS faces in this regard is resourcing. Nokia had significant engineering resources to throw at this (and many other problems), Jolla not so much. For instance, significant performance improvements have been made to QML's JavaScript engine since its introduction in Qt 5.2, but taking that into use is a very large work project, so I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

I still remember Harmattan with the lag when RAM gets filled up. Sailfish is better in this regard, but killing applications is not how this should be fixed. :)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Despite the resources, Nokia had this "you will make it run with 256MB RAM" mentality opposing the Maemo efforts. Maybe that was for once a good thing and it has demanded certain creativity ?

The N9 seemed to me the first Nokia device that had Android style RAM dimensions.. (4 times the amount of its predecessor the N900 which could not do exactly what the N9 could do?)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Just got my Sailfish seriously lagging -> granted I was opening a ridiculous amount of applications just to see when it would decide to interrupt my music.

I came to the conclusion that it would quit QuasarMX much more eagerly than it would quit the stock media player. (same music files)

It even let the stock media player lag the sound.

But finally even the stock media player needed to make space for new applications being started and got interrupted as in halted.

If only we could choose which applications should never by killed even if SFOS was crawling on hands and knees.. :rolleyes:

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Yeah, yeah, still working on it!! :P

(currently rewriting modRanas map data handling backend so that it can handle vector data in the future)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Now that 1.1.9.28 is available through the normal GUI route, I have given it a spin too. I must say, my initial impressions are very positive. The UI feels much more intuitive. It also looks like someone has finally sat down and actually designed it, rather than just randomly bashed something together just to be different, which was mostly the impression of the previous version.

Yet there are a few things I would consider a regression. Two steps forward, one step back, as is often the case. Still, better than moving from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 or from Windows 7 to Windows 8 - both cases were definitely one step forward and a few thousand back ;)

Here are a few observations in detail.
First, things that I see as an improvement:

• The status bar thingy on the home screen. A HUGE plus! Yey! Finally! Three cheers! Hip hip hurray! I would love to have an option to see it always, including in apps, but this is much better that what we had before. I take back everything I said here. Now we get all the crucial info neatly in one place, only a single half-swipe away at any time. No more swiping to home screen, then to lock screen, then back... a HUGE usability improvement! Thank you, Jolla!
• Swiping left/right to the notifications is more intuitive and less error prone than the previous swipe from the bottom. It has one drawback though: it now takes two actions to get to the notifications if you are inside a running application. You need to edge-swipe back to home screen and then swipe left or right to the notifications. Still, I need the notifications much less often than I need to check the time or the signal strength, so a tradeof of two swipes here for a sigle half-swipe to see the home screen status bar feels like a huge win.
• Accessing the apps launcher is also more intuitive than before. It is also made clearer that home screen and apps launcher are two different things. Previously there was no clear distinction, one seemelessly morphed into another. This way is much better.
• I fully appreciate that this is an eye candy only but the transitions and animations are generally also smoother and more pleasing to the eye ;) The only one I am not 100% sure about is the pulley menu animations. I think I preferred the old ones but I am happy with the new ones as well.
• I know some people here raise a lot of uproar about the buttons for cover actions instead of swipes. I will put a flame jacket on and bravely proclaim that I prefer it this way. It is more intuitive, without having to think, "wait, do I swipe left or right to do this action?" It is because of that lack of intuitiveness that I avoided using the cover actions before. I am much less reluctant now.

Now for the things I believe could have been done better or left untouched:

• OMG, the lock screen! It was always useless but now it stands in the way more than ever. Unlocking the phone is now a major operation. It takes so long that I can almost make myself a coffee. I would do away with it completely if I could, it serves no purpose whatsoever other than slowing you down.
• The only thing for which the lock screen may be useful is the customisable pulley menu. I used to have the most common operations there, of which the absolutely most common was "Connet to internet". It was absolutely crucial because my Jolla keeps losing connection all the time and reconnecting was something I had to do very often. The lock screen pulley menu was therefore the obvious place.
  But now it is nearly impossible to get to it. The only way that I have found is to lock the phone, wait a bit, then unlock it again. That is a long way to get to something I need almost constantly.
  The best way forward IMO would be to get rid of the lock screen completely and move the pulley menu to the home screen.
• Another lock screen issue - the mobile operator's name is not shown anywhere else. Granted, it is not something I need frequently so perhaps not such a big deal.
• As others have already mentioned, locking the device has now an additional step. I do not see it as a big deal either except it is too easy to change the ambience by mistake. Luckily there is a patch for that (that I have yet to try out ;)).
• I preferred the old style remorse timer. Again, there is a patch for that.
• I am ambivalent about the new button style. Sure, the old one was not ideal but this new style is even worse. I would prefer something that actually looks like a button and has some consistency to it, not something that looks like highlighted text. I only figured those were buttons because they were in the places I remember having seen buttons before. The fact that several buttons stacked one above another do not line up if the labels have different lengths does not help either. It looks messy and confusing. Either make them the same length and make them look like real buttons or bring the old style back (again, there is a patch for that too, thanks Ancelad!).
• I have 5 email accounts set up. Previously, when I received notifications for multiple email accounts, it just said, "5 emails". Tapping on that opened Email. I did not have to read the emails, just opening Email was enough to clear the notifications.
  Now, if I get new emails for two different accounts, I get two notifications. And I have to actually read the emails or at least open each account in turn to clear them. This is a major hassle.
• Last but not least, all the changes are only in the main UI. This is all nice and groovy but there were a LOT of missing features and bugs crying for attention in various applications and none of those have been fixed. Where is text select in the browser? Where is global copy and paste? Where is easy navigation in a long list? And lots more... These are all absolutely basic features that I would expect a version 2.0 of an OS to finally provide.

Conclusion: better but still not good enough.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Settings -> System -> Gestures -> Quick Events access

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Just finished a phone conversation of +/- 1hr.. during which I did some surfing and some flappy bird.

It could be a possible placebo effect at work but I'm under the impression that the sound quality over the bottom loudspeaker had improved and that it cost me less effort to understand my correspondent than I was used to.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Android support isn't the reason. People without it active or running still have the issues, and Tizen on a 768MB RAM device doesn't suffer these issues and it has Android support baked in. BBOS10 never had such severe issues either.