Developing for Mobile OS Sailfish features with Hands on Video on Nokia N950. Whats all the fuss about new upcoming mobile OS 'Sailfish' from Jolla?

Are you guys ready to know about features and design of developing for Mobile OS Sailfish,which is expected to be released in the first quarter of the 2013. As we have heard, 'Sailfish' was on a tested Nokia N950. Sailfish, Jolla insists, will become a legitimate alternative to the Coke and Pepsi of smartphone platforms: Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Well that's a big comment, looks like Jolla has found some 'secret ingredient'. But right now Jolla is very secretive about the Sailfish so the best features of the OS is kept a secret before release.

As we have said in our previous post that Jolla's Sailfish based on two old Mobile OS MeeGo and Mer. The Mer project is the core OS that serves as the base of Sailfish OS. It provides a functional core Linux stack but without any user interface, e.g. another Mobile OS Nemo provides functional user interface that is Supported by Sailfish. Lets have a look at both OS front screen view down there.

Left: Nokia N9 (aka The unicorn) Running MeeGo Harmattan
Right: Nokia N950 running Jolla Sailfish
Source : Engadget.com

Icons

Honestly, it doesn't look like latest generation Phone, icons are a bit repent and out dated. So Jolla might need to think about it. Today, phones like iPhone have rounded corner squares and pretty distinctive. N9 has semi square rounded shapes, so it's pretty easy to locate an app you are searching for.

Launcher page, Same rows as Harmattan, but less attarcting

Source: Engadget.com

Pulley Menu

Basically, this is what we call the generation difference. The most amazing feature of Jolla Sailfish is 'Pulley Menu', which will replace all unnecessary buttons like 'settings', 'options','more', 'Back button'. So you need to pull left from the middle of the screen to come back to the previous screen, and a full pull from right to left will get you back to the home screen. While pull down Mechanism might be present in Android or Apple iOS, Sailfish offers a completely new method of operation. Instead of using the pull down to refresh content or show notifications, Jolla’s OS allows users to display menu items that helps to share photos or videos to social networks and other specified actions using Pulley menu's pull up and pull down functionality.

Pulley menu from down

Source: Engadget.com

Pulley menu from up

Source: Engadget.com

Pulley menu from up

Source: Engadget.com

Multitasking 

Well, according to the Demonstration, the multitasking menu looks similar like a Windows mobile. It shows the cards of each running app, instead of tapping it if you tap and hold the a app, it will give you more functionality to the particular app. As you can seen below, holding down the music app adds more functionalities like if you want to play, pause or skip from multitasking menu. Isn't it amazing ?

Cards and their little icons for interaction

Source : Engadget.com

Now lets have a look at Nokia N95 Running on Sailfish hands on from Engadget

Why should it be a competition for others?

• Phone Doesn't need a so called 'Home button'.
• Looks really user friendly.
• One of my fav feature is that the new application window is almost transparent so the background wallpaper will be visible with different effects like blurry, watery etc.
• The font color and Pulley Menu highlight color adjusts themselves automatically according to the background image color.