the thing i realised today :

you can't beat Harmattan's swipe UI.

They have double tap to unlock

Looks really really good.

Does anyone know if the OS is fully opensource (GPL'd) ?

rgds

not sure abt that, i just stated what ivw seen on the live stream...

but that presentation is actually far more better than lumia 920 presentation or the 808 pureview ( product was great presentation were mehh !! especially Jo harlow )

Anybody else feeling a little underwhelmed?

Just feel that after so long, it really didn't match my expectations, but i guess either way, the HW is what'll make me buy, not the OS.

(here's hoping USB-OTG is stock!)

that's something. thankfully.

but the rest... the OS looks like it's trying too much.
the simplicity of use (along with swipe) made Harmattan so awesome.

and that genious simplicity is lost.

* doesn't mean I hate it. i will support them. i'll buy their phone (given that Greece won't go bunkrupt anytime soon)

** i also hope that the device is gonna be beautifull.

but you can improve it (it's the best i've seen, but it's also not perfect). I wonder if they even tried to get the license for it. After all it would have been fair to at least get it licensed for free or cheap from nokia, after what nokia did..

i really hope they have a harmattan-style event feed up their sleeves (or maybe in the next version)...

maybe swipe left or right from lockscreen and see everything in one place. and i want to see everything that has to do with one person at any place (in contacts, social media, shared calender events, tagged photos, shared evernote notes, etc.) and vice versa (click on friends twitter update - click his name/picture - see the aforementioned things)

but i am confident they will make great progress in the future, they definately have the talent.

and all the critics: what did the first iteration of ios look like? android 1.0? wp7? what were the features?
jolla is entering the market on an incredible high level of professionalism (regarding the product, not the presentation :P) and they did it almost from scratch in one year. and they are only 40 people or so, and ha to build a company while creating the product.

my prediction: this is the beginning of something big. the scalability and ability to run on so many devices is definitly something new (not a new idea, but they are finally doing it) and a great thing. this plus android compatibility are absolute dealbreakers and will massively push the ecosystem.

oh, and in the in depth presentation, they did everything live on what i believe was a n9(50). and it was absolutely fluid and nice, i didnt see any stuttering. assuming their own device will have a lot more power we will see an incredibly smooth and fresh user experience.

Sure, for your finger it's only a small distance. But for your mind, it "feels" like a long distance.

I tried several transition effects, including Jolla's one, for a mobile application. Half-transparency was quickly disqualified as it neither allows to comfortably "peek", nor to make it obvious what's happening. Furthermore, there is no real-life association which makes the move unnatural.

I personnally did not install more that 3 or 4 apps and also (or especially) in that case, the application grid does not fill right. WP has an interesting (and radical) approach because it combines the tiles with the launchers and thus removes one dimension. But there are probably better ideas to explore, this is grid is absolutly not unlike...

Anyway, there are some really nice ideas and the concept is much stronger than any widget-like approach with 5 to 10 home screens