Re: the article, they really need some partners who are willing to pump money into the development of Sailfish and its ecosystem. The 'Sailfish Alliance' turned out to be completely hollow, with the hoped for "€200m" funding announced 2 years ago being a complete fantasy. Had they managed to keep some of the intitial partners** and attract actual €€€€, I suspect development would have been much less delayed. Of course, all the delays make partnerships and development funding much more difficult to secure, further prolonging the development process. It's a vicious cycle.

**What you could call the big 4 (ST-Ericsson, Opera Software, D Phone & Tencent) either withdrew entirely or have yet to play any role.

Why the status bar has to go

That's becouse you are ignoring One of nokias most ignored phones. The nokia D666. Simply brilliant. And ignored by most. Maybe the same guys working with sail 10 now, worked with this earlier in the history.

I like Jaakko, and some of what he says, but the logic displayed in that particular article is about as wonky and prescriptive as that applied by MS to the UI in recent desktop OS flavours (butchering menus - Start particularly - and Metro).

He even talks about screen burn-in for goodness sake, and moreover it's his first point! What decade is he living in? LCDs don't suffer from it, and neither do recent Samsungs' mobile AMOLEDs nor LGD's TVs (dunno about AUO's OLEDs). Plasma which did suffer, but had workarounds to fix it latterly, has never been used in mobile and is dead now anyway. Emissive Quantum Dot displays will have no problem with burn in either, and they're some years away. I'm certain Jaakko knows this, despite not being a hardware engineer, and he's just hoping to back up a tenuous argument with an impressive technical sounding false premise.

There is a valid point about the status bar, that is getting difficult to decipherer overcrowded with small symbols, besides in Sailfish the status bar is always available just half a swipe away.

I've yet to use one that is less legible than some of the status and notification symbols on Sailfish's lockscreen, even in some of Jolla's own ambiences - Snow White is awful in this respect, as an example. Size isn't everything.

Much as I agree with nodevel that killfiling bluefoot might be good for one's spiritual wellbeing, I must also concede that he has a point. The lock screen is totally pointless. Has been since N9 days. And yes, I dearly miss the permanent status bar with its "tiny" icons. The battery level, the signal strength, the connection status*), those are absolutely crucial in a phone. If you really miss those few pixels, then perhaps implement a UI mod or tweak to hide them, but it is a bad idea to not even have an option to see the status at a glance. Yes, I can learn to live with it, but that does not make it an optimal UI design. You may say next that Gnome 3, Unity or Metro are good UI designs too.

*) Not to forget the little envelope indicating that you have new voicemail messages. The old "dumb" phones considered it important enough to have LCDs specially made with dedicated segments for such icons. But then, we know already that those were better at being phones than the new "smart" devices.

As far as I can see, both Jaakko and those making an argument for no status bar are happy with the aesthetic status quo, rather than its function or practicality. But a huge, ugly status notification pop-up that obscures the top part of apps and looks completely out of place with the rest of the OS co-exists with this 'clean' design philosophy, specifically because of the lack of a status bar.

What is the point of blocking screen?

> not even have an option to see the status at a glance
> status at a glance
> glance

Ifreakin love the glance and fullscreen on my reader

Yes, my eyesight isn't brilliant. I'm shortsighted. I wear glasses to give me good distance vision and I have another pair for working at my computer.

With either pair on I can read the Jolla screen. I have to take either pair off to read a traditional status bar as the focal point on either of my glasses is wrong.

For me, peeking at the status on my Jolla works, especially as it also shows the running tasks.