Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts

Saturday 25 March 2017

Facebook Messenger for Sailfish OS (workaround 2017)

Integrate Facebook Messenger chat on Sailfish OS Messages


Step by step guide for a workaround to get Facebook Messenger as a Sailfish OS account on Jolla Phone, Jolla Tablet or any other Sailfish OS device. Does not require Android support. Using your phone number or your unique FB-ID when logging in you will also have all your Facebook contacts integrated to the People app.

This workaround is tested to work on September 2017 using Sailfish OS 2.0.4.14 and 2.1.0.11. The test was done using a phone number known by Facebook. This workaround should work on all Sailfish OS versions.

Tuesday 29 March 2016

No Facebook Chat Jolla? Hello Diaspora*

D* chat integration to Sailfish OS Messages

Comparing Facebook and Diaspora* as social media platforms and guiding how to integrate D* chat on Sailfish OS. The guide applies to both official and unofficial (ported) Sailfish OS devices. Sorry Facebook, but without Sailfish OS support you might be dropped out in this growing community.

Sunday 13 September 2015

Customizing Sailfish OS - mce tools by Nokia

Below the deck: Introducing Linux terminal and MCE Tools by Nokia, available for Sailfish OS, Meego and Nemo mobile devices

Now that the user interface is changing from Sailfish OS 1.0 to Sailfish OS 2.0 it's time to introduce mce tools by Nokia. It's pretty easy to install Linux terminal on Jolla, and with mce tools you can tune up your user experience.

Monday 8 June 2015

Workaround: Facebook chat on sailfish OS messages

Step-by-step guide to get Facebook chat working on Jolla Phone or Tablet Messages app

While Facebook updated their API, Jolla phone users lost some functionality on Facebook contact sync and messaging. Other services, like updating status and sharing photos are already back by now, and here's an easy workaround to keep up chatting as well. It's a Linux, you know.

Update: This workaround is not working any more since December 2015. Facebook doesn't accept XMPP login any more.

Tuesday 17 February 2015

[step-by-step guide] Jolla phone unresponsive or laggy

Step-by-step guide: Jolla phone file system, full cleanup

If you're experiencing slow response times, lags and app crashes, or get errors like "Cannot write to file" or "Couldn't install update", these steps will probably help you.

I've followed them all through myself, but I can only confirm them safe on my Jolla. As always, doing stuff as root is in your own responsibility. Be careful!

UPDATE: Part of the process is automated since Sailfish OS 1.1.4.29

Tuesday 9 December 2014

Christmas Calendar - Day 9

Daily tips and backgrounds for Christmas

December 9th, we share you a tip fitting perfectly to what happened today - and maybe useful on the next time as well

Today's background for an ambience is a photo of Blue Jay, common in many countries in winter. Photo by Mdf

Monday 8 December 2014

Christmas Calendar - Day 8

Daily tips and backgrounds for Christmas

December 8th, we share you a few basics for a better battery life on your Jolla phone

Today's background for an ambience is a photo of West Virginia Grist Mill in a Winter Snow Storm by ForestWander

Sunday 7 December 2014

Christmas Calendar - Day 7

Daily tips and backgrounds for Christmas

December 7th, you'll find out that Jolla phone has a nice feature in its multitasking for music apps.

Today's background for an ambience is a winter sunset view from Pennsylvania, photographed by Andrew Crouthamel

Friday 5 December 2014

Christmas Calendar - Day 5

Daily tips and backgrounds for Christmas

December 5th, you'll find out how to shoot ambience backgrounds with your Jolla Camera application

Today's background for a Christmas ambience is cropped from this beautiful winter view by Triangiel

Thursday 4 December 2014

Christmas Calendar - Day 4

Daily tips and backgrounds for Christmas

December 4th, you'll find out how to organize your apps into folders on Jolla phone

Today's background for a Christmas ambience reminds us about Kiev, Ukraina. Beautiful image by Valerii Tkachenko

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Christmas Calendar - Day 3

Daily tips and backgrounds for Christmas

December 3rd, you'll find out how to answer your friends text message (SMS) with instant message (IM) after checking if he/she is online.

Today's background for a Christmas ambience is Kirkkokatu street with Christmas lights in November in Oulu, Finland

Tuesday 2 December 2014

Christmas Calendar - Day 2

Daily tips and backgrounds for Christmas

December 2nd, we have a simple guide to adjust your own pulley menu to access your most important apps straight forward after unlocking your Jolla phone

Today's background for a Christmas ambience is provided by "Tampere tunnetuksi ry", an organisation working for tourism of the largest inland city in Scandinavia

By the way, Jolla has an office in Tampere also

Monday 1 December 2014

Christmas calendar - Day 1

Daily tips and backgrounds for Christmas

Hi Jolla fans, thanks for reading this blog! It's December, and I thought to share some simple tips and new backgrounds for our readers during this month. If you have any special wishes for the following 24 days, please leave a comment.

On the first day we're customizing the settings menu and share a background image cropped from a nice photo by Herry Lawford. 

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Jolla battery life power consumption problems

Update 18-Jun-2014 - It's Android support related


There is a bug, some processes caused by Android support are left running on the backgroud causing extra battery drain. More reports with different Android apps running (list them in your comment on the last page) would be very useful at this point, please contribute: User Report Tool

Thursday 9 January 2014

Jolla streaming video with Plex media server

Jolla as a remote for Samsung Blueray player
Reading on mobile browser? Switch to mobile content for better view

1. Overview

Plex media server works perfectly on Jolla Smartphone. Here's a review to streaming media from computer to Jolla's screen, use Jolla as a remote control, and use another phone as a remote control for Jolla's Plex player. Everything introduced in this article have been fully tested to work. Installing guide is not included. In this review we:
  • stream videos from Plex media server to Jolla smartphone over WiFi
  • check  if Jolla works as a media server, sending content to other players in the same network
  • use Jolla as a remote control for a Samsung Blueray player
  • use Jolla as a Plex Player and another phone as aa remote control for Jolla

2. Plex supported devices

Plex software includes a backend media server (Propiertary sSoftware) and a frontend media player (OpenSource, based on XBMC player). Plex software (before version 1.0) can be installed for free on
  • Windows (XP with Service Pack 3 or later)
  • Mac (OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or later)
  • Linux (Ubuntu 10.04->, Fedora 14->, CentOS 6->)
  • FreeBSD 9.1
  • NAS (Synology, Netgear, QNAP, unRAID, Drobo, Asustor). With some limitations.
  • Mobile devices: Android (inc. Jolla), iOs, Windows Phone 8
  • TV's & Blueray players (Roku, Google TV, Samsung)
  • Chromecast supporting devices (this is not free. Requires Plex Pass)
From November 2013 Plex introduced version 1.0: Plex Home Theater. Latest version is available for computers running on Windows (Vista or later) and Mac (Snow Leopard or later).

3. Plex on Jolla

Version 0.9.8 works on Jolla, via Android Support, both as a player (no Plex Pass or account required) and as a media server (to use, account and paid Plex Pass required). Without Plex Pass Jolla is capable to play any streaming media supported by the device (e.g. H.264 video format). Media server can transcode most video streams, audio streams and subtitles to supported formats in desired quality. Plex Media Server including the media must locate on the same network with Jolla (e.g. same WLAN)

4. Plex player on Jolla - Photo Review

Plex on Jolla. View to the content of the Media Server
In my setup, I have installed Plex Media Server on my Win7 computer and on Jolla Smartphone.
Plex on Jolla. Watching a BBC document in 720p quality
Additionally Plex Player is installed to my Samsung Blueray player (HT-D5500) and a remote control for that is installed to my Jolla. Here's a view to the remote control, each function works great on Jolla:

Even more, I've installed a 3rd party remote control for Plex Player to another smartphone, so I'm able to control my Jolla from that. Maybe this doesn't seem too important, but it was required to fix the player screen size on Jolla:
Screen overscan wizard is located on the Player Settings, and a remote control was required to adjust the screen. Using the touchpad of another smartphone (ZTE) I was able to adjust Jolla's screen for full use with the player. Some other settings on Jolla are shown below:
As you can see on the right image above, it's possible to select Jolla to be advertised as a server. I tested that, of course, and I was actually surprised that the Plex player on my BD was able to connect to the Plex Media Server on my Jolla. So, the server was recognized, but sharing Jolla's files seems to require sync option, and I haven't activated a Plex Pass to be able to use that. After enabling sync it would propably be possible to share files stored in Android environment (as Plex server is running under Android Support on Jolla).

Streaming video quality was absolutely great. I was able to strem 1080p videos over my WLAN network without any lagging. I did it just in testing purpose, streaming with this quality is useless as Jolla's screen resolution (540x960 px) has only a quarter of full HD quality (1080x1920 px)
Plex on Jolla - adjusting stremaing quality while watching the stream
Audio sync and quality were great too. For my first listening test I attached a DENON amplifier and a nice pair of Gradient speakers to Jolla's audio plug. I would have liked to test if Jolla would support any 5.1 audio stream too, but I was missing a suitable media for that. However, the stereo sound was absolutely fantastic.

Subtitles time sync isn't adjustable on Jolla's player, and as subtitle files are also transcoded when needed, it's pretty possible that some subtitles are in sync and some are not. My testing night ended to watching a movie in my bed with a nice pair of light Sennheiser headphones. In that one, subtitles were in sync too.

After watcing an 1h 30min movie, my Jolla had 25% less battery charge (screen brigtness at half). No lagging, no problems - everything seems to work as it should with Plex. I give this my full recommendation.

Friday 27 December 2013

Jolla HowTo: Workaround for battery life NFC bug

Link to mobile view for Jolla Sailfish browser (browser is not automatically recognized yet):
https://reviewjolla.blogspot.com/2013/12/jolla-howto-workaround-for-battery-life.html?m=1

After publishing an article about finding the NFC bug, lot's of users have tested workarounds to fix the bug. The software solution given there is now confirmed as safe, so I share it again in this detailed HowTo. Workarounds like this remains the only change for users to extend their battery life for normal level, as the next Sailfish update 2, version 1.0.2.5 does not offer a fix the this bug yet, but an update is on it's way:

To enable developer superuser mode in Jolla

  1. Go to Jolla Settings -> Developer Mode
  2. Enable developer mode. Enable SSH connection.
  3. Enter or generate a new password (options are visible after SSH). Remember it and Save.
  4. Reboot your phone
After steps above, your phone has a new app called Terminal in the laucher view. Via terminal you are able to give commands to the phone as a root user, and practically everything is possible there - even causing the phone not to start, so please be careful and doublecheck every letter you write there. Giving wrong commands might affect to the warranty of your phone.

To prevent Jolla's communication with The Other Half (NFC bug)

Open terminal. You see an exchanged keyboard, and an enter line showing "bash-3.2$ ". That's where you write your commands. During the following commands, the enter line changes to "bash-3.2# ", telling you that you have entered developer superuser mode. In this mode it's possible to command the phone's hardware. During your writing, either the keyboard or the command line is higlighted - you can write even when keyboard changes to grey. Write the bolded commands below, and press enter after each:

devel-su <- you command your terminal to enter developer superuser mode
(your password) <- note: invisible writing. Jolla confirms that you are the superuser
systemctl mask tohd.service <- you put a mask to a buggy service commanding NFC chip
systemctl stop tohd.service <- you stop the service
exit <- you leave the devel-su mode
exit <- you leave the terminal (it closes)

Terminal closes, and you have now a phone using less battery. Cconsumption is reduced by 2% per hour, giving you max 500h standby time. Your phone does not recognize The Other Half any more, so the ambience does not change when you attach it. Everything else is normal. Masking the service, like commanded above, prevents the phone to enable connection after reboot, so this offers a permanent fix until removed.

To return everything the way it was

After Jolla distributes a Sailfish OS update fixing the NFC bug, you can remove your changes to the system. It's safer to do before installing that update, but this should work as well after it. Open terminal again, write the bolded commands below, and press enter after each:

devel-su <- you command your terminal to enter developer superuser mode
(your password) <- note: invisible writing. Jolla confirms that you are the developer.
systemctl unmask tohd.service <- you take the mask away, so the system can find the service again
systemctl start tohd.service <- you start the service
exit <- you leave the devel-su mode
exit <- you leave the terminal (it closes)

Terminal closes, and your Jolla can communicate with The Other Half again.

Is this all safe?

According to Harri Hakulinen, Chief engineer at Jolla, yes it is:
According to several users, yes it is. I've been carefully following comments going on at forums, twitter and The User Report tool during the last 4 days. People are reporting better standby hours, and none of them has reported  problems caused by this fix.

However, keep in mind that you must be careful with what you do. In the developer mode, wrong commands given can break your phone.