[nl]

Yeah, that's probably a fair point. It wasn't clear until I looked at the architecture diagram, though.

Native Sailfish apps are Qt based; with android apps as a secondary thing, presumably to kick-start the platform while they try to build an ecosystem. (Which makes sense, developers won't come unless people are using it but people won't use it if there are no apps.)

I'm guessing that was Blackberry's strategy too. Didn't work for them - be interesting to see how well it works here.

[daliusd]

I have different question.

Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view. Bazillion megapixels, bazillion megaherz, bazillion cores and etc. - nobody cares about that. It takes decent pictures - good enough. It is not camera with lens replacement anyway. It works reasonably fast - good enough, I take it. Replaceable parts(1) - meh I don't care unless I can attach lens but then it is mirrorless camera not smartphone. It doesn't have my favorite app (twitter, vine, endomondo, hangouts, skype... name whatever else is important for you) - I don't need it.

Basically software ate hardware. Now let's talk about software. Development tools for Android are good enough but far from perfect. iOS tools are better, Qt tools are better (at least for me), Windows tools are better, HTML tools are better. The only important advantage Android has its openness. iOS lose because of that (2), Blackberry lose because of that and Windows will lose because of that (IMHO). Jolla are much more open here but are they open enough? Does it matter anymore? Firefox OS is in much better position as a lot of people have explored using HTML for apps and writing app for Firefox OS is basically packaging it and you have app. Most probably you don't need to write app at all if you already have responsive design website.

Android problem - it is dependent on Google very much and it is both good and bad. It is good for users as they get good experience, it is bad as they are getting closed into Google's world and I doubt that it is good thing.

My question is: what next smartphone OS should offer to be considered winning?

1) Replaceable parts are still good thing if it will create market where you can buy cheaper parts to replace broken ones or outdated ones.

2) iOS market share in the world is low but pretty good in USA. So I'm using "lose" very loosely.

[wisty]

Just checking ... you know why Microsoft has won so many wars? Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

You could almost always upgrade to Microsoft without losing your old data and programs. CP/M programs could be ran virtually unmodified on DOS. Lotus documents could be opened in Office. But if anything used special Microsoft-only features them the customer would need to keep using Microsoft products.

Assuming customers will only upgrade to a new system that can run their old programs, and open their old documents, then eventually they'd all end up stuck with Microsoft.

Obviously, not every customer is like that, and iOS customers won't have a reason to switch, but it's not a terrible strategy.

Offering Android means that users can upgrade from an Android phone. Offering Qt means that users will get trapped (at least, until there's enough users that Android makers start trying to fight back, but that's a good problem to have).

[daliusd]

Just checking if I got it right: Google with Android is successfully using Microsoft strategy.

In that case Firefox OS is in the best position to compete against Android. FxOS phones can be very cheap as well. But is that enough to make it next big thing in smartphone's market?

[alextingle]

Totally disagree with you on hardware:

> Technically no vendor can offer something exceptionally different from hardware point of view.

Just because vendors are falling over themselves to makes Iphone clones, doesn't mean there's no other way.

Personally, the whole current smartphone scene leaves me cold, because no-one is making hardware for me. I want a small, robust phone I can put in my pocket and forget about. Something with a big fragile screen is completely useless to me. I don't really care what software it's running - if I have to leave it at home because I'm afraid of breaking the screen, then the software is irrelevant.

[RyanZAG]

Huh? There are thousands and thousands of devices just like that. They don't make the news though because they're boring and cheap. Head past your nearest phone shop and you can find a huge variety of those kind of phones at incredibly low prices ($20 prepaid kind of prices).

[alextingle]

It would be nice to see a small form factor phone capable of running Android - it should be possible, now they can make hi-res displays.

[daliusd]

Nokia 515 is waiting for you. Really. Check out it.

Still there is nothing exceptional about this hardware IMHO.

[Kluny]

Wow, that looks amazing. I find myself wishing there was a banana for scale, though. Is it as small as the old candybar phones?

[daliusd]

You can always use online tools to compare size:

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Nokia-515_id8116/size#/phon...

[alextingle]

Yeah, I'm waiting for prices to come down on that one. (Although it's still a bit large for me.)

[smartaleckkill]

True; and Blackberry weren't starting from scratch, either.

Personally I'm kind of rooting for them without being entirely convinced; if there are enough people like me, they're probably screwed.