Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

this is something that Jolla should help you with. I get that they want to make money from OS since that's all they have. But since your project is basically something private and it won't be dirty cheap HW like all other partners used, success of this can help them as much as you. And you are investing a lot more.

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

Also take into account the Android people already have the chance to buy the Moto Z mod or a Droid 4.
A new Android device will vanish within the masses, people do not trust a new brand as much as established ones.
I personally would not buy it.

I want to trust my daily OS, don't want to be forced to Googles services, want to use the command line and maybe even to use X11-Forwarding to administer our companys pcs and severs from abroad. I want to be able to compile Linux software, maybe even start an x86 virtual machine.

In case the phone ships only with Android,
I will wait till other options seem to be reliable.
If it ships with Sailfish or Maemo/Meego/Debian+Phone stuff...
I will probably buy it right away.


I agree with wicket on the importance of the SoC.
But I do not have enough knowledge of the area to give an informed opinion.

However i vote against Intel, even though they are well supported by Linux in general and I could effortlessly run a VM on them or use my favorite programming language (no ARM compiler), they just use to much power. And the main purpose of a phone should be mobility. Bad battery runtime means bad mobility.

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

Don't forget I'm not a millionaire. To get the physical device out is already very difficult and I put a lot of front investment.

I cannot afford developing another OS other than I can use quite easily. And I also need to consider how many I can sell to maintain future development.

You either get a device with some unique functions, or talk about a complete unique product on every aspect that never come out.

And I said a lot times no one has forced you to use Android - I'm more concerned how to make developers easy to port other OSes.

And I don't agree with your opinion for Moto Z and Droid 4. Moto Z + Mod is very thick and Droid 4 is stuck on Android 4.

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

In my opinion, Moto Z seems to be more like a phablet and Motorola Droid 4 doesn't support LTE everywhere beside North America so the device might find its niche with for example 4,5"-5,3" display and better than Droid 4 LTE support.

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

Unlockable Bootloader and publicly available kernel source within days of release are the least you would need to do.

Could you get the body of the Xperia Pro, or the Desire Z, and build off that, or is that going to cause legal issues?

Also, have you finalised the specific SoC?, and screen specifications, and by screen specifications I mean not just AMOLED vs LCD and size, but IGZO, Panel Self Refresh, IPS, Quantum dot, that kind of detail.

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

IMO, AOSP should be the OS of choice to ship the device with but are there really enough people wanting a HW keyboard for such a project to be feasible? Also what use does a HW keyboard have on Android?

Virtual keyboards coupled with slim devices mean HW keyboard devices have very little in upside vs the downside of no predictive text, thicker and heavier device etc.

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

Dual Sim will be there. Camera will be modern dual-rear camera system, some of the best ones on the market.

I love communicator very much. But a secondary screen isn't something that can achieve easily. But who knows ;)

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

Chen, how far have you come with plans related to the hwside of things. I dont want to rain on your parade here but thin phone, duel CAMs, duel sim, to found an existing design or everything from scratch? I support you, I do. But have you done any estimation of cost? To me this Sounds like a really expensive undertaking.

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

This. Jolla is definitely not in a position to take risks at the moment, but is there a way we can assess the risks after you selected the SoC and all hardware that could compromise porting Sailfish? If the way you select the final hardware takes into account the ease of porting Sailfish, then maybe there wouldn't be as much work as there is for Xperia X for instance, and maybe the OS could just be almost natively supported from the beginning?

I know nothing about that, just wondering if the amount of work can be dramatically reduced by the choice of hardware. If that's the case, then maybe Jolla wouldn't consider it a risk, but a major opportunity to have a unique device with absolutely no competition released with their OS. It does not mean that licensing cost would be reduced (could be estimated and included in the final cost anyway), but feasibility of the port would. The device would still be kind of niche, but this is the way Jolla has been working until now (except for the Xperia X project, but since Xperia X are now discontinued, the project will likely get lower interest from the crowd than initially planned).

If Jolla can have a brand (owned by a long-term TMO insider, they might be sensitive to that as well, who knows) shipping with their OS as default for a small amount of work on their side and still get money from the licensing, and if this device is unique in other ways than just the OS, this may be something big even for them. Heck they even were thrilled about the Turing partnership, and you already showed how to be more realistic than Turing when designing a device.

Re: The choice of OS of the new QWERTY device project
 

Thanks for all your efforts! I can appreciate the fact that to maintain future development you need to consider numbers of sold devices. As I do not know the business end of this can you provide rough numbers on the costs based on the number of devices manufactured. Say you got 500 buyers, what would the charge be to the buyer. How does this scale? For example if you had 2000 buyers or 10000 buyers. Of course price depends on quality, features and such so perhaps give a range from low to highend.

The other thing is, and maybe I'm wrong, but judging by several of the posts here it looks like this project may be heading towards something like a Oneplus with a HWKB.