- [Michael] We're on the eve of phone week
as I head off to the annual Mobile World Congress,
but it recently struck me that all the new phones
I'm gonna be seeing run the same OS.
So before we go all in on Android for MWC,
let's take a quick look at a phone platform
that you may never have heard of.
I'm MrMobile and this is the Sailfish OS.
(techno music)
The last extended experience I had with Sailfish
was back in 2013, when I demoed it for pocketnow on a piece
of hardware called the Jolla phone.
Nowadays if you wanna run Sailfish well,
you do it on other people's hardware.
The demo unit I've borrowed from Jolla is a Sony Xperia X,
which is about two years old
but still powerful enough
to run the OS known as Sailfish X.
Now if you're looking for reasons
to care about Sailfish from a practical standpoint,
frankly there aren't many.
Much of the platform's identity can be summed up
as we're not Android.
Jolla was one of the first
to come out strongly
against Google's data collection strategies
and Sailfish continues to market itself
as an independent and adaptable alternative.
Folks behind Sailfish have even found a way
to have their cake and eat it too,
by implementing Android app support.
But to me the alternative
or underdog status is not
as interesting as the interface.
At the risk of sounding a little woo woo,
this software is very soothing.
It's bound together by a thoughtful aesthetic.
With colors tying together themes called ambiances.
The home screen takes a cue from
older platforms like BlackBerry 10.
It's a totally clean canvas,
until you start opening apps.
At which point it stacks them sequentially
and gives you glanceable tiles that you can open with a tap.
Just like on the Google Pixel,
your apps live in a drawer
that you flick up from the bottom of the screen
but unlike Android you don't have
to stretch your thumb unnaturally
to get at your notifications up top.
Instead they reside in a feed
that lives off to the left
and can be accessed from any screen.
That's half of what makes Sailfish
so nice to use one-handed
and the other half is how context menus work.
When an app has a menu full of choices,
it'll stack those options above the screen
and selecting one is just a matter
of pulling down with a thumb
until you highlight the one you want.
It's also aided by haptics,
so you feel a little click with each option.
And again, you never need
to get a second hand involved
or hold the phone unnaturally
to reach a far-off toggle.
The same goes for the back function.
There's no back button,
because you just swipe when you want
to go up a level.
And you know when that's an option,
thanks to these strategic little spark highlights.
Granted, it's not the most intuitive software ever.
Even after a few weeks of using it,
I still have trouble remembering
that a drag in from the side is what gets me back home,
instead of a swipe up from the bottom.
And truth be told,
the phone still has trouble recognizing some
of those interactions as well.
Apple's gesture-driven interface on the iPhone X,
itself inspired by Palm's webOS is better in a few ways.
And now that Apple has decided to combat Google
by emphasizing it's own privacy advantages against Android,
well let's just say it doesn't look like Sailfish
will ever carve out a huge slice of the consumer market.
And after all, the time
for new mobile platforms has come and gone.
But as we settle in
for yet another smartphone cycle dominated
by two platforms that look more alike
with each passing year,
it helps to remember
that alternatives like Sailfish are out there.
And they've got good ideas
that I wish the establishment players would implement.
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Folks if you're still using an alternative operating system,
like Windows phone, BlackBerry 10 or Sailfish OS,
let me know in the comments.
And be sure to subscribe
so you don't miss everything
from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona coming very soon.
Until next time, thanks for watching.
And stay mobile, my friends.