[Video and Changelog] Sailfish OS 2.0 is out!

Although only for the early access users, Jolla has released the long-waited Sailfish OS 2.0.

There’s been a lot of buzz around this new iteration of the Finnish OS, both because it will power also the Jolla Tablet and it brings a complete revamped UI.

As you may have seen from the screenshots that flooded the web in the previous days, and how we anticipated at the last MWC in Barcelona, the new UI resembles the old MeeGo Harmattan UI, which was gorgeous, if you ask me.

Here there are the main changes in this update, 1.1.9 Eineheminlampi.

Release Highlights

• Refreshed visual style in Homescreen and Silica components namely button, pulley menu, time picker, volume bar and remorse timer
• Homescreen is now a carousel, flick to cycle between Events and Home
• Grouped notifications shown in Events
• Refreshed active cover layouts for Gallery, Jolla Store, Settings, Notes and Camera apps
• Refreshed layouts for Calendar, Jolla Store, Clock, Email and Camera
• Richer and configurable Events via Settings > System > Events
  • New Calendar widget displays your upcoming events
  • Redesigned Weather widget with five-day forecast information (tap on the widget to view it and remember to set your location in the Weather app)
  • Pick your favorite settings shortcuts to be shown in Events on the Jolla Tablet
  • Perform favorite actions directly from Events on the Jolla Tablet like connecting to internet, search the web, find your location, take a photo, make a note or add an reminder
• New gesture option to enable quick Events access with a left swipe in Settings > System > Gestures
• Swipe down from the top edge of the screen to open Top menu with lock action and ambiences. The currently active ambience is marked with an indicator.
• Long-press power key also opens Top menu, but replaces lock action with power off
• Lock Screen media controls for native Media app
• Three finger volume control gesture enabled for Tablet only
• Ambience tones now follow global tone settings. You can override global tone settings by adding actions to ambience. Read more to understand the new behaviour better.
• New ambiences based on the winners of the Jolla ambience photo campaign with Jolla tones set as default actions
• Support for US English language in the OS
• Support for Lohit Devanagari font (Indian fonts)
• Support for Sunday as the first day of the week based on the locale set
• Receiving multiple files via Bluetooth are now auto-accepted within same session from non-trusted device if initial transfer was authorized
• Platform upgrade to using a new camera and media stack based on GStreamer 1.x
• Improved user experience to guide the user on how to install Jolla apps if Jolla account creation is skipped during start-up wizard
• Tutorial app updated to introduce the new homescreen
• Notes can now be shared as text files
• Browser graphics architecture updated
• Android apps now use the “Chat” system tone for notifications, and alert with vibration and notification LED
• Android app notifications now wake up the display
• Camera records video clips in H.264 format now

The next OS upgrade will include further improvements to the Sailfish user experience, thus completing the transition to Sailfish OS 2.0. Here is a glimpse of the changes expected:

• Pick your favorite settings shortcuts to be shown in Events on the phone
• Perform favorite actions directly from Events on the phone like connecting to internet, search the web, find your location, take a photo, make a note or add an reminder
• New Settings app layout for both phone and Tablet
• Feeds support in events view
• Enhance the speed of pulley menu selection animation
• Improvements to ambience handling
• Maps app layout updates for the Tablet

Usability changes w.r.t 1.1.7

The main driver for the new UI changes has been to improve the existing functionality while easing the learning curve for new users. We hope this list of changes gives you an insight on the usability changes compared to the old UI framework.

• No more limitation of having only 9 open apps visible in Home, you can freely scroll to view all open apps
• The first row of app launcher icons is no longer visible in the homescreen. The app launcher is now accessible from anywhere in the UI with a swipe up gesture from the bottom edge.
• Open apps remain in the order they were launched in Home. Hence the last opened apps appear in the end of the grid. Now you can also drag to rearrange the apps in housekeeping mode. This change gives you the control to place the open apps in the order you prefer.
• You will see dimmed app covers when they are closed due to low memory. This way, you can continue to access/relaunch the app from Home.
• Active cover actions are now tappable. Swipe gestures are now reserved for view navigation in the homescreen
• Active cover actions limited to one for Browser, Phone, Clock and Mail apps.
• Enable silent mode by swiping from top edge of the screen and activating Silent ambience
• Turn off all system sounds by long press on volume down key
• Presence settings has moved from Events pulley menu to Settings > System > Presence.
• Manage ambiences under Settings > System > Ambiences, moved from Gallery app. Read more.
• Feeds support for Facebook and Twitter accounts are temporarily unavailable (will be re-introduced in the next release)
• SMS and IM notifications use the same icon now
• Faster flicking speed across the platform
• Old default ambiences will be removed on upgrade

 

Upgrading your device

Upgrade path through 1.1.7.28 for early access users

As the issue update to 1.1.7 hang at 95 – 99% remains open, we’ve enabled persistent logs during software upgrade process in 1.1.7.28. Should this issue reoccur while upgrading to 1.1.9, you will be able to retrieve logs from the affected devices to assist the debugging. To make this possible, we have forced the upgrade path to 1.1.9 through 1.1.7.28 for our early access users.

And now to the usual drill before attempting to upgrade your devices,

• Take a backup of your data before attempting to upgrade your device. A successful backup operation is indicated by a green dot in the UI.
• Do not reboot the device while the update is in progress, even if it appears to take a long time.
• The device screen may blank out during the update process, you may waken the display by a short press on the power key to monitor the progress.
• Do keep the phone connected to a battery charger during the whole process.
• If you use Phonehook from OpenRepos, uninstall it before upgrading.
• If you use Patchmanager, revert all applied patches before upgrading.
• If your device is running software version lower than 1.0.4.20 and have WareHouse app installed (i.e you are using OpenRepos), disable all openrepo repositories before attempting to upgrade your device.

For detailed instructions on updating software, visit Zendesk.

If connected to the internet, and your account is subscribed for early access releases, your Jolla should receive an OS update notification shortly.

Ambience and global settings

We have harmonized the system default tones and ambience tones to be global tone settings.

• The system default tones on your device are listed under Settings > Sounds and feedback.
• Available ambiences are now accessible under a separate menu in Settings > Ambiences.
• When you create a new ambience from Gallery app,
  • you now have the option to override one or all of the system default tones by adding “actions”.
  • this action will change the system default tones to the custom tones set globally, i.e for all ambiences.
  • you can verify this by going back to Settings > Sounds and feedback, you should see your newly set custom tone applied in there.

For example: Consider that you have two ambiences A and B. A has an action for replacing default chat tone and B doesn’t.

• case1: Activating ambience A will change the current chat tone and that tone will be shown in Settings > Sounds and feedback
• case 2: Activating ambience B will not change the current chat tone, it will continue to use the tone set earlier by ambience A
• case 3: If you want ambience B also to have a different chat tone, then set an action to change the chat tone to something you want. It will then change the current chat tone.

Known issues

• When there are no notifications on the lock screen, quick events access by left swipe takes you to Home instead of Events view.
• In rare cases, Gallery may appear empty after the upgrade. This is due to a glitch in indexing the files. A reboot should set this right.
• In landscape mode, text field does not autoscroll to visible area.
• Unable to zoom on text documents in Office app.
• At times, toggling wifi hotspot reboots the device.
• Maps app has lags and delays in zooming for long routes.
• Local changes done to calDAV accounts trigger automatic sync to the servers. The sync schedule has no effect on this. We are working on providing a control point for you to disable automatic sync on local changes.
• The order of Android app notifications may vary after a reboot. This is expected as 1) the order depends on the time the notification was received 2) upon a reboot, the notifications are resent, thus the time of arrival may vary.
• Rendering issues for special characters in Gallery/Media app.
• Local changes to calDAV account triggers automatic synchronization of changes to the server.. With the next upgrade, we will provide a toggle switch to control the behaviour.
• First key-press after changing layout comes with old layout when using TOH KBD or bluetooth keyboard.
• Deadkeys on TOH KBD do not work.
• Unable to zoom in/out of pictures synced from Facebook in Gallery.
• After installing Android runtime from Jolla Store, a reboot is required before Android apps can start functioning
• Facebook Android app installed from Aptoide marketplace may take a long time to log in.
• Password input field in some web authentication forms may not open the virtual keyboard automatically. In such cases, a tap anywhere outside the textbox and back into the password field should bring up the keyboard.
• The UI does not currently have an option to safely unmount the SD card. Please be cautious to not remove the SD card while it is in use.
• Tablet specific:
  • 1080p video recording is not supported yet, will be enabled with the next OS upgrade
  • Viewfinder aspect ratio is shrunk in video mode until you start recording. It is fine in the recorded video itself.
  • Bluetooth keyboard does not work on Android apps yet
  • Camera settings displays incorrect resolution options in Settings > Apps > Camera
  • Photos may have artifacts (e.g. green lines)
  • In rare cases, inserting and removing SD card multiple times may reboot the Tablet
  • Some Android apps installed from Aptoide (e.g. Facebook, Facebook messenger, Spotify) do not launch on the Tablet. We are in discussions with Aptoide to resolve this issue.

Here’s the full changelog.

If you don’t want to be part of the early access group, but you still want to see the new Sailfish OS 2.0 in action, check out my video preview. Enjoy it!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utVzhGXRf-A]

SOURCE [1], [2]