Thread: Sailfish (Jolla), Tizen and Ubuntu for Phones: Differences?
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Bernard is offline Bernard
2013-01-07 , 12:42
Posts: 468 | Thanked: 610 times | Joined on Jun 2006
#45
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
I find you remarks about the UI very interesting. While I prefer Sailfish (for other reasons), I think Ubuntu did a much better job on the UI. Sailfish ist just too restricted and simple for me. Interesting to read other opinions.
In Ubuntu I think I can really see the strings that hold up the UI. They really are squeezing a desktop UI in a phone. The notification area seems to be the Unity application indicators, the Home application seems to be the Unity Dash and the pop-up menu seems to be the global menu. For applications the Ubuntu Software center is used etc. etc.
Currently Unity has performance issues on low-end desktop hardware (netbooks), and the demo on the Nexus phone seems laggy. This all reminds me very much of Maemo, that also tried to squeeze a desktop distro and UI in a mobile device. I personally don't dislike the concept, but on Maemo it did result in performance and User Experience problems.
MeeGo-Harmattan has a lot of parts that are specifically designed for a phone, and I think that improves the general experience (if limiting the features slightly).
Sailfish seems to want to continue the MeeGo-Harmattan concept of specifically designing for mobile, while Ubuntu seems to want to use the Maemo concept. Maybe because Canonical realizes that they don't have the resources to support a second set of applications specifically designed for mobile.
I do understand most of this is speculation, and the difference between designing specifically for mobile and adapting a desktop application is in reality not that clear.

It should be very interesting to see how unified applications for tablet/phone and desktop compare to specifically tailored versions with regard to ease of use and feature sets (not just in Ubuntu, but comparing with Windows 8, iOS and Android also).

The coming hardware advances will also be very interesting. Will the faster SoC coming in 2013 offset overhead from the Desktop legacy?

I found that for me, the userbase (or community-support) that Nokias Maemo products enjoyed were just enough. It shouldn't be less, but it was OK.
Totally agree with this.

"write once, run on both"
I'm very skeptical about any cross-platform promises. With Qt for Maemo/MeeGo/Symbian is wasn't really the case imho. While most of the stuff did work, and a lot of changes are minor to get stuff to work, it often did involve detailed knowledge about the other system to understand the "minor" changes.
I don't know how good the promise is with Windows 8 in crossplatform support for phone, RT and desktop. But even with those I have my doubts.
Ubuntu, Sailfish and BB10 may all share the ability to support Qt and QML, but will all Qt (mobile) components be properly supported? Even than you will probably need to make changes to make an application integrate well in a specific platform.
 

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