The previous month has meant loads of hard work, sweat and focus for all Jolla teams. Getting prepared for an event of such magnitude and importance as Mobile World Congress requires a lot from everyone in the company. It also worked as a perfect quality milestone in the roadmap for our teams working on the Jolla Tablet, since this was the world premiere of Sailfish OS running on this particular device. Showing it to the press, analysts, business partners, and of course the event audience for the first time ever means that the important elements in the demo software need to work and they can be demonstrated to the world.
So, how did it go for us? It was fantastic! Read more about that in our separate MWC2015 blog post.
Making a demo software in a nutshell
Having a tight deadline for MWC 2015 (you can’t really postpone that…) meant that we needed to have a constant flow of changes, a lot of testing and iterating on the results. The heart beat of development intensifies the closer we get to the deadline, and this is when we move swiftly from monthly planning and weekly checkpoints to polishing the experience in daily iterations. We considered this as a real product launch (even thought it was a demo software we were showing), meaning that the demoed experience needs to be polished, layouts pixel perfect and animations smooth.
Joona Petrell, Jolla’s Chief Engineer explains the process like this:
“In practice, the whole process starts so that design, product management and development teams together identify the key features for the product. Then we start building prototypes to test the user experience (UX) and the technical architecture. Designers review the software daily and send feedback to developers. Typically, new features go through multiple different versions before design is satisfied with the UX, and we can move forward. The good thing is that compared to the early days of Sailfish OS we now have more resources, and we can spend more time in prototyping and usability testing phase, to properly nail down the user experience.
The MWC2015 demo software in the Jolla Tablet, ‘Sailfish OS 2.0’ was a combination of new features, i.e. the new UI and gestures, and pre-installed demo content that helps to demo the features on the actual device. Demo content includes extra photos and media in apps, persistent notifications in the Events View, contacts in People app listing our beloved sailors behind the product, pre-installed events in Calendar, imaginary conversations in Email and Messages apps, and so on. Note that while demo content is fake, the new features they demonstrate are real and we already use them on our daily devices. There are some parts not fully functioning yet in the tablet, which of course meant some planning and training for the stand people demoing the device in MWC.
Even though a demo software is not the same thing as the final product, most of the MWC demo work we did will directly help to mature the end product as well. And perhaps the most important lesson for making a demo software is that you should never demo features that you aren’t sure will make it to the final product”.
Sailfish OS Yliaavanlampi out of the box!
During the last month we also worked pretty intensively on stuff not directly related to Mobile World Congress. The February software update for Sailfish OS, Yliaavanlampi was released first as an opt-in version for more advanced users on February 19, and a few weeks later to all Jolla smartphone users. The update included some important and handy new features and fixes to the OS, e.g. a renewed browser UI, a new integrated weather application from Foreca, and the possibility to customize main colors of your favorite ambiances.
Read more about it here and update your software now if you haven’t done it yet. We highly recommend you to do that!
What’s next?
This month we’re again working on a lot of individual items. On the development side of things there’s a lot of tablet adaptation work going on, working on many security fixes, and finalizing the new UI framework features demonstrated in MWC. We’re also working hard on the next Sailfish OS upgrade (called Äijänpäivänjärvi, try to pronounce that!), which is currently in the release candidate phase. If everything goes according to the planned schedule it should be out in a few weeks. This release will include e.g. landscape mode for Maps, Split keyboard in landscape mode with a setting to disable it, IMAP idle/push support for mail accounts, and resolution independent icons.
On the business side we are working rigorously to build the Sailfish OS alliance, which was introduced in Mobile World Congress. We can’t wait to announce some new partnerships that are cooking right now!
Enjoy the spring time, greetings from sunny Helsinki!
Marc
“a new integrared weather application”
integrared. theehee.
all jokes aside.. good work, sailors! keep it up, you are awesome. <3
Marc
I have noticed in the photo and others on previous announcements the tablet is charged by what appears to be a mini USB port. My experience with devices ( and yes, some were very cheap ) using mini USB ports are subject to misalignment and difficulty in making a clean connection. Has this been addressed with the tablet connection?
I have to comment that the previous MWC report was exciting and very professional presentation. You should be commended on the award and the obvious hard work put into the preparation.
Looking forward to more.
Great job you are doing there! Looking forward to hearing more news from you guys
Marc
We appreciate all your hard work.
What is your opinion about including some of the key features that are missing, and already have simple patches available, like VoiceMail notification and Conference/Merge call, in the next update? Patches seems to work great!
Advanced users maybe able to use patchmanager and apply the patches, but most people are very unhappy that the phone does not have these basic features and don’t know how to fix it.
There are few other simple patches that could be included as part of the OS as well.
Anyway, OS 2.0 looks very good and hope that you will offer a new phone soon with global support for LTE.
Hola, soy de Argentina, perdón por no escribir en ingles, pues es muy malo mi ingles.
Quería comunicarme con Ustedes de alguna manera, pues me gustaría adquirir sus productos.
En mi país en estos momentos, las leyes de importación son muy restringidas, pero quiero enterarme cuando los productos sean comercializados o enviados a España, Mexico o Uruguay, pues me lo pueden traer de esos lugares, y deduzco, que también estarán disponibles en español el sistema operativo.
Desde ya muchas gracias por su tiempo.
Hola MKyetana! Gracias por tu mensaje! Ya estamos en España via nuestro webshop (http://shop.jolla.com/eu_en/) pero todavía no tenemos las buenas bandas de frecuencia UMTS para poder funcionar en Sudamerica. De todas formas, estamos haciendo todo lo que podemos para entrar a nuevos mercados este año también.
Great comments, here is a few answers:
jb0411, Micro USB charging is a worthwhile standard both in the EU and globally, it has been well engineered in the tablet. Thank you for your other comments, we are doing our best.
abyzthomas, one of the things about the features you mention is that they vary dependent on the local operator and network settings. I am glad you found those that work for you and the patchmanager, but hopefully we can do more in the future. Thanks for writing!
Thank you very much for your reply.
Again, we are very thankful for all your hard work.
vaya esa foto de las tablet me recuerda a aquellos tiempo que era h…. buen en fin yo también soy de latino américa y sigo a jolla desde el anuncio de marc iba a fundar jolla hace bastante tiempo no jajaja, ansioso por ver el primer teléfono con procesador novathor que luego esto dejaran de producir e hicieran que se retrasaran meses, dígame que no estoy pendiente jajaja, en estos momentos jolla para mi representa un amor platónico por ahora, creo y confió que pronto tendré un jolla y la tablet no puede faltar, yo creo que faltarían palabras para decir cosa, sin tener el teléfono en la mano solo con verlo siento la calidad de sistema operativo sailfish yo sé que no está 100% terminado y faltan cosas por hacer pero dios demasiado nivel en el detalle, buen trabajo sigan así, espero pronto estrenar un equipo jolla, Pauliina gracias por el dato 😀
Hola alexprox! Gracias por tu soporte, me alegro de ver que tenemos tantos interesados en Latino América también. 🙂
Any news on tablet delivery? May is almost over and no news on being on-time or being delayed.
I agree, May is on a horizon but no news regarding Jolla tablets from Indiegogo campaign. I would definitely like to hear about progress, ETA. I do hope that Jolla won’t do same scenario as Sony with their lollipop release. 3 times delayed release… They lost lot of customers because of that…
Chinese translation of this article is [here](http://www.jollaqiyu.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=50532&page=1&extra=#pid104959). Anyone who want to help translate Jolla’s article & application into Chinese please join me at [tylertempdev@gmail.com]
这篇文章中文版在[这里](http://www.jollaqiyu.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=50532&page=1&extra=#pid104959)。有人想我和一起为Jolla翻译文章&应用的请联系我:[tylertempdev@gmail.com]