Jolla installation – few first timer observations

Basically Jolla seem as nice phone with innovative user interface and multitasking. They are “very unlike” as they say. There are few things, good to know while getting started, to avoid frustration.

First thing you want to do is to get your contact information into phone. Hands up, who has so few contacts that they would fit into SIM card? Mostly contacts are also containing richer information than SIM can carry through. This minor issue thing was quite easy to handle after figuring out the right path. First cvs extracted out from Hotmail, then imported to Gmail and after that connect Gmail account to phone and you are done. Maybe direct import of cvs would have been easier, but could not figure out how that could have been possible to do. Anyhow little bit of advice in Jolla’s home page for this would have been useful.

Second thing are the apps. The Jolla’s comment about not providing pre installed because of customer convenience seem little controversial. Most people want same basic apps anyhow (facebook, twitter, whatsapp, instagram, caller, etc), so why not provide them directly as an option? It is so easy to take away unwanted apps.

Jolla’s own app store as well as Yandex store are quite empty to be honest. It is not matter of # of applications, but rather # of quality applications. I was trying to seek additional open stores. Found F-droid. It had few additional applications, but that was not enough for what was required. Few applications were available directly from vendors sites like WhatsApp.

After few hours of desperate browsing i found excellent blog, which had answers how to plug in the GooglePlay store. It is little shaky as it makes changes into system itself, but after one day exploration it seem to be OK. Instructions are clear, but few first timer additions to avoid pitfalls:

Step 1: just type password and save (don’t generate!)

Step 4: copy system folder to root (not to downloads:)

Step 5: open SSH-connection from phone (not remote connection from computer). Terminal appears as new application after developer mode is activated.

Step 7: copy command line carefully: notice space after “system” and double “-” before “ignore”.

Step 9 and 10: new Google settings and GooglePlay apps appear into Settings-Transfers, from where you have to click them to become active.

So far so good. Apps are working fine. Only thing is multitasking which is not working with these new apps. Every new opening is closing the previously opened app. GooglePlay store has disappeared once, but i just reactivated it from “Transfers”.

Plenty of manual work and information seeking. I think Jolla has to put some more emphasis into consumer guidance as soon as it attempts to seek wider audience. Generally i think phone as such is positive experience so far. Good tail wind for Jolla!