When Nokia went the way of Microsoft a small team left and formed Jolla.
Jolla created the spiritual successor to the N line of high end Nokia phones. The phone, however, lacked a keyboard like the famous N800 and N900. Jolla is about to remedy this problem using their “other half” feature.
Jolla is creating a kickstarter campaign for a keyboard back for their current phone. Could this be the spiritual successor to the amazing N900? Unfortunately Jolla’s phone is not available to the US market or I’d back this without question.
I love the energy of Jolla, but I think they have a pretty long road to travel to be successful, and modeling their success on the N900 is not the right step forward in my view.
The mobile market is driven by volume, and they are going to struggle unless they can build something that is accessible to the mass market, otherwise the major carriers and retail outlets won’t take it.
I think the same challenge applies to Ubuntu and FFOS.
I think something that is good about the hardware keyboard idea/option/supplement is that it shows that they are trying to have a distinguishing factor other than being more floss-y than android, which they need to get a recogniseable market share.
That’s not something I see in Ubuntu.
Firefox’s low end strategy will have the problem that in this segment especially volume is important, and the capital of the big players will alow them to produce higher spec-ed devices cheaper.
Aside, I don’t think the campaign is by Jolla, although they endorsed it. It’s a somewhat independent initiative that maybe shows what the modular concept of their phones makes possible.
I don’t think that the option having an additional keyboard alone makes Jolla a good replacement for the N900. For me already the N9 was much better and usable than the N900. Jolla improved that experience again.
I absolutely enjoyed the keyboard of the N900. Texting was incredible fast and it made the terminal really usable. But the few guys hacking on the terminal shouldn’t be the main target audience for the sailors and I’m happy it isn’t .
By the way it’s great to have the possibly to opt-in a keyboard and I think I’m gonna pledge that thing.
I would love to be able to commit to a Jolla, I really, really would. The big issue for me is the fact I use my phone for things like paying bills, banking Etc. All of which require apps, none of which are on Jolla. To an extent, that’s a weak excuse, I know, but it’s reality.
