Gadgetory

few companies in mobile have had as difficult a recent history as Yolo but in the words of co-founder anti Sarnia Yola is here sailfish is here and we are going to stay I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow here with a quick look at the companies sailfish OS 2.0 running on the Intex aqua fish and the new fairphone 2 sailfish has always had a very beautiful interface and that's evolved nicely in 2.0 the awkward left and right swipe interactions on the homescreen have been replaced by simple taps while the focus on one-handed usability remains you can access certain menus just by dragging down on the screen and the notification area instead of being placed stupidly out of reach on the top is just to swipe away on the left side of the home screen version 2.0 runs very smoothly and consistently - I tried it on a Snapdragon 801 and a Snapdragon 212 and couldn't tell much of a difference in performance the latter Hardware forms the basis of the Intex aqua fish an entry-level device targeted at the Indian market and priced at a very competitive 100 US dollars much more interesting was seeing selfish 2.0 running on the fairphone 2 though the responsibly sourced modular smartphone introduced last year we saw one of the companies representatives replace the fairphone 2's display in less than 20 seconds here at MWC she then proceeded to basically disassemble the entire phone in less than a minute highlighting just how easy it is for an end-user to upgrade its individual components rather than buy a whole new unit now despite the upbeat messaging of today's event it's hard to characterize the Yola situation as hopeful the company wants to push sailfish as a platform for e-commerce and government use in BRICS countries it's still poised to become the official mobile platform of Russia and on consumer devices it's offering so-called super apps direct plugins that make certain market specific applications more obvious but which feel suspiciously like bloat where it's possible sailfish can survive and even flourish in these niches but we're a long way from the hopeful vibe of last year's MWC where Yola had a new tab but the big booth and a bombastic attitude this year Yola is a company still trying to recover from a near-total implosion even for the custodian of such a promising software platform that's a tough row to hoe and we'll be watching closely to see what happens in 2016 there's still more to see from MWC 2016 in barcelona so be sure to subscribe here on youtube and follow all the breaking news in the pocketnow.com til next time this has been michael fisher captain to phones on twitter thanks for watching we'll see you next time