Although it is a difficult journey, compared with other mobile operating systems such as webOS and BalckBerry10 in the same industry, Sailfish is still alive as the successor of MeeGo, and Jolla seems to have found a way to make money: not long ago, another paid version of Sailfish X Beta (exclusive to Sony Xperia XA2 series) was launched, with a price of 29.9 euros. After the storm, what about the Sailfish experience where the version number has soared to 3.0?
UI interface
At present, the latest version of Sailfish is 3.0.1.11, code name Sipoonkorpi (this name is taken from the Sipogorbi National Park in Finland). The "homepage" of Sailfish is designed as a multi task interface, which is similar to that of BlackBerry's BalckBerry10 system. However, the homepage of Sailfish does not have the limit of up to 8 backstages as BalckBerry10 does, and it will automatically adjust the layout according to the number of open apps. After long pressing on the home page, the background apps can be managed separately, but it is not set to close all the apps with one key. When there are too many background apps, they need to be closed one by one, which is slightly cumbersome.
Swipe right on the home page to enter the "Event" page, which is the notice aggregation place. Phone, SMS, social source and other related notices will appear here. This is also similar to the BlackBerry Hub built into BalckBerry10, but the overall design actually continues the style of MeeGo. I believe that users who have used the original Nokia Asha series will have a deep understanding. This event page is basically the result of stripping out the multitask management of Fastlane in Asha system. It is believed that careful users will notice that there are no keys such as Home key and return key in the whole system of Sailfish, which is a highlight of Sailfish. Gestures are used throughout the operation. Details about gesture operation will be introduced later.
Sliding down from the top is a shortcut bar similar to Android. Since various notifications have been integrated into the event page, only shortcut operations can be performed here, which can be customized in settings. If you slide from the bottom to the top, you will enter the app page, which is officially called the application grid view. Here are all the apps installed.
In most apps, the interface of Sailfish can be said to display only the content, and any option must be operated by sliding down the page and sliding the corresponding submenu at the top. There is no inconvenience in daily use, but there is a lack of buttons that can directly perform shortcut operations on the page. Each operation needs to slide down and slide again. It is more convenient to click one or two buttons on the content page.
Gesture operation
Sailfish inherits from Nokia's MeeGo. Unlike iOS and Android, which add gesture operations in later updates, Sailfish was designed from the beginning to be a comprehensive gesture operation. It can be seen from the official design drawing that all UI interfaces are optimized for one hand gesture operation. All operations focus on the center of the screen. This design can ensure the high availability of one hand operation whether in the current 5-inch "small screen" or in the 6.4 inch "normal" size.
However, for the daily use of users, Sailfish naturally considers the learning cost. In fact, there are only a few gestures used in the whole system. In addition to the popular click and slide of touch screen machines at present, the official instructions only add "slide down and slide to select submenus", "slide back from the non first level menu screen to the right", and "long press to call out operations", And "slide in the left and right edges of the screen to return to the home page", a total of four gesture operations. It sounds like a lot, but all the gesture operations are very consistent with the user's intuition. It is very easy to get started with the system tutorial.
Of course, this is the current gesture operation of Sailfish 3.0. Compared with the original 1.0 and the later improved 2.0, the gesture operation of Sailfish has been deleted in order to make the operation logic more unified and the user's learning cost lower. At least in the aspect of gesture operation, the author can say that Sailfish 3.0 is more unified and has a better experience than iOS and Android.
App ecology
Today's smartphone competition has already become an ecological competition. It is difficult to obtain users just by making breakthroughs in the system itself. After all, the cost of migration is too high. In this respect, Sailfish can be said to be a complete disadvantage.
First of all, Jolla has considered the Chinese market. The system has built-in options of simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, but the input method is not open. Even if the Chinese keyboard is selected, it still cannot be enabled. Some netizens reported that the corresponding operation has been officially implemented, but the Free version is not open. You need to pay for it or install a third-party input method to solve the problem.
Secondly, the resources of the built-in store are worrying. For the time being, let's not mention the apps such as WeChat Weibo, which are common in the domestic market, but also Facebook Twitter and others have no official client, and can only be solved through third-party applications. This is very embarrassing. After all, BlackBerry10, the BlackBerry next door, has at least built-in Facebook and Twitter and other commonly used social apps.
Moreover, the connection of the built-in store is very unstable, which often leads to download failure or no response (a disadvantage of servers overseas). At the same time, in order to make up for the shortcomings, the built-in store also has a converted version of Android app to download, but the version is too old, and Sailfish needs to pay to unlock if the system supports Android.
In contrast, the app provided by the OpenRepos website next door is more practical than the official built-in store, such as Chinese input method, available map software, video player, etc., which can be found on it, quite similar to the feeling of Preware on webOS in those days. But to be honest, the current Sailfish ecosystem seems worse than webOS and BalckBerry10 in those years. If it is intended to be used as a main machine, it may basically fail to meet the demand. Unless the system Android support is paid for, it may be barely satisfied by making up through the Android app.
Some details
In addition, add some details when using Sailfish. The first thing is the baseband problem. After the author finished cleaning the machine, he slightly struggled to install the app. There were two cases where there was a signal but he was unable to answer or make calls or send SMS messages. Restart to solve the problem. In the future, even if there is no similar situation, it has left a small shadow in my mind.
Then there is the atmosphere setting worth mentioning. This atmosphere setting of Sailfish covers the detailed settings of the system theme and status, which can be customized according to user needs and has a high degree of freedom. It is worth learning from the current Android or iOS; There is also a quick app on the lock screen interface, which can enable the corresponding app fairly quickly without unlocking; In addition, in terms of multimedia performance, Sailfish can be said to be weak, its photo performance is not as good as Xperia's native firmware, and there are also some defects in music decoding.
tail
After a complete experience, Sailfish can be said to be a good system, but not a qualified system. The version number has soared to 3.0, but most users can only continue to experience the functions provided by the system itself. Third party expansion is almost useless. It can not be used as a main machine in the current environment. It depends on the user's own needs to act as a standby machine. However, I still hope that Sailfish can survive. After all, a diverse world is more exciting.
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