Jolla 10th year anniversary in Berlin - a summary
I'm back from Berlin, where Jolla held a nice conference/meetup to celebrate its 10th year anniversary - let's see how it went!
The event
Jolla has turned 10th recently (the company was founded on October 14th, 2011).
Sami Pienimäki, Jolla's CEO, has written a nice
post summarising what it all
means, and all the things that happened during those 10 years.
Initially I wasn't planning to attend, as it's quite a trip from where I live
(west-side of France) to Berlin.
But hey, it's not every day that you can celebrate such a milestone, and also, I
haven't been traveling abroad for almost 2 years because of the pandemic, so in
the end I decided to go and finally meet face to face with some of the Jolla
folks and community!
D-Day
Warm-up
As I arrived the day before, I had plenty of time the day of event, so in the
morning I went for a nice run in Berlin (albeit a bit grey and rainy).
And in the afternoon, I sent a message on the SFOS Fan Club Telegram group to
let people know Friedrich (@fridlu) and I would be in a coffee shop close to the
location, if others wanted to join.
We were joined by Sebastian Wolf, aka WerkWolf, who a lot of you probably know
thanks to his many contributions to SFOS, with among others
Fernschreiber
(Telegram client) and
Piepmatz (Twitter client).
It was fun to sit together at the same table, with 3 Xperia 10 ii all running
Sailfish OS :)
Although in the end we discussed other things than just SFOS, but that's what
networking is all about, right?
The venue
We then walked to the venue, which was an easy 10-min journey, and easily spotted the entrance, thanks to a Jolla banner proudly sitting in the stairs:
Upon arrival, we got a nice Jolla laneyard (we joked about having to choose between the dark and light side of Jolla, since there were black laneyards with white Jolla logos, and white laneyards with back Jolla logos) - we all picked the dark one for some reason ;)
The venue by itself was nice, with one room where food and drinks were served, and the main one with the "stage":
Speeches
I will just highlight the main topics, as I'm sure there will be a blog post from Jolla covering that with a lot more details.
Sami's speech
Sami Pienimäki (Jolla's CEO) took the stage to present a quick history of Jolla:
- inception in 2011 with Marc Dillon, Stefano Mosconi, Jussi Hurmola, Antti Saarnio and Sami Pienimäki
- presentation of Sailfish UI at Slush 2012, first hardware at MWC 2013, followed by ST Ericsson not able to provide chips anymore, and the "Jolla Love Day" to fix it and come up with a device
- Jolla launch with DNA in Finland (November 27, 2013)
- Launched in 38 countries in the following months
- Jolla Tablet launch at Slush 2014
- Jolla Tablet "Best Tablet Award" at MWC 2015
- Financial struggle in 2015 with the tough decision to layoff people and change the company's direction, moving away from Hardware and focusing on Software instead
- Launch of the Sailfish X program with Sony in 2017, with the Xperia X
- Followed by the XA2 in 2018, the 10 in 2019, and the 10ii in 2021
Sami concluded his speech by stressing Sailfish OS strengths, a Unique World Class Asset - SFOS is:
- Independent,
- Has Security and transparency at its core,
- Focuses on User experience,
- is Developers-friendly,
- and thanks to its Android AppSupport (previously Alien Dalvik), it can run native Android apps, which is hugely interesting for companies who want to break free from Apple/Google.
On that last point, it was interesting to see that there were Jolla partners around automative attending the event, so I guess we can expect some more announcements soon® :-)
Joona speech
Next, Joona Petrell (Jolla's Chief Architect) shared some insights, looking back at 2021, and beyond:
- 2021 was the year of API for Sailfish OS:
- Sharing API (introduced in 4.2.0),
- Camera API (also 4.2.0),
- WebView API (4.2.0),
- Web Authorization API (will be introduced in 4.3.0),
- and MPRIS API (will be introduced in 4.4.0).
- Sailfish "Core" improvements:
- 64 bits supports,
- Sandbox for Jolla applications, now extending to 3rd party apps,
- Alphanumeric code for encryption soon introduced, making it more secure than the current digits-only option,
- Support of multiple cameras,
- ... and VoLTE announced for Early 2022!!!
Browser:
- ESR soon® upgrade to 78, bringing a lot of improvements,
- Faster engines/rendering
AppSupport (previously AlienDalvik):
- Upgraded to Android 10 (API level 29) in 2021,
- It'll soon be possible to share content from SFOS to Android apps!
- and also open files and links with Android apps (see pica)
Recognising the community
David Llewellyn-Jones (SW Engineer at Jolla) then took the stage for a shoutout to the community.
There were some internal votes within Jolla, along with some votes on the forum,
to elect some outstanding community members, and thank them publicly during this
event:
- Damien Caliste was thanked for his many contributions, notably calendars and sync
- Adam Pigg (piggz) for his tireless work on hardware (PinePhone, Volla, FxTec Pro1) and software (Amazfish)
- Atlochowski for his precious input and many PR related to UX/redesigns
- Rinigus for his work on apps such as Pure Maps, OSM Scout server, or Tama port (Sony XZ range)
Devices, you said you want devices with Sailfish OS??
The Jolla folks have done a very nice things: a line up of devices either running Sailfish OS, or linked to Jolla:
First picture:
- Nokia N900: the iconic one, with a sliding keyboard, running Maemo 5
- Nokia N950: dev version of the N9, with a sliding keyboard
- Nokia N9: the device which got me into Meego/Jolla :)
Second picture - from left to right:
- Dev board 1 (Marvell)
- Dev board 2 (NovaThor)
- the Jolla 1 - someone even brought a TOHKBD (sliding keyboard)!
- Jolla tablet
- Jolla 1 "box"
- Jolla C
- LG smartwatch with SFOS (Proof of Concept)
- Intex Aquafish
- Rugged Innoi R7
- Inoi R7
- Xperia X
- Xperia XA2
- Xperia XA2 Ultra
- Jala
- Gemini PDA
- VSmart
- Xperia 10
- Xperia 10 II
- Xperia 10 III
side note: upon manipulating the N9, two things struck me:
- it looks super small compared to the devices we use today - but yet, it feels just "right",
- Meego is still awesome and super nice to use - what a shame it is that the whole Elop thing happened - but hey, you never know how things could have go, and it's impossible to change the past!
Of course the "Jolla 1 box" was there, featuring a Jolla 1 along with a few The Other Halves :)
We even had a Sony Xperia 10 iii (just announced as being the next device for Sailfish X) running a dev version of SFOS (4.4):
Wrapping it up
With all these announcements, and after having spent some time manipulating all the devices running SFOS, it was time to enjoy a piece of cake and some music, and of course keep talking with all the Sailors and community members :)
I really enjoyed this event, it was very nice to finally meet and discuss with some of the Sailors (David, Andrew) and community members (Sebastian, Fridl) I had been discussing with on Telegram and the SFOS forum.
This event was so nice that, upon discussing it with the French SFOS community, we have decided to organise a meetup in France, so stay tuned! :-)
Tags: SailfishOS