I wonder about SailfishOS, has anyone tried it recently? I used to own a Nokia N9 and it was the best mobile OS I've ever used, but unfortunately the N9 just stopped charging one day. I've always been thinking about trying Sailfish out again, but have not had a phone that was compatible for a while, so am wondering if I should just get a compatible device just to try.
I have been using Saifish as my daily driver and only phone since 2014. I bought a Nokia N9 secondhand in 2013, but the battery was not great anymore and I could not use Whatsapp on it. The choice for Sailfish was then easy. For 5 years I used the Jolla 1, which has received updates from 2013 to 2020. Since 2019 I am on a Sony XA2. I bought it secondhand and after a commercial license for Android app support it still felt very affordable to me. I you would want to start now, the Sony Xperia 10II might be the best choice with Oled screen and Aarch64 support.
Sailfish is being made by a small company with not that many developers, which means there are rough edges compared to Apple and Google. They can spend many millions on their software. I am very happy with Sailfish updates though and also very happy with using it.
The only Android apps I use are Firefox in its last v68 incarnation, and also Whatsapp. I'm lucky not to be tied in too much with all kinds of services :) For many services there are native apps.
And yes, it is not fully open source, which is a pity. The current investor sees no business opportunity in that, but to be real, without that investor, Jolla and Sailfish would not exist anymore. They are mostly a B2B company now, B2C has commercially failed around 2015. I do hear sometimes that more people are using Sailfish, but I haven't seen real statistics. There is also the Nemo project, which started with reimplementing the closed bits in Sailfish, and later deviated somewhat. If Sailfish gets more succesful, that is always still an option to force their hand, but I do feel the time is not right. I do have to say that the Linux community can be very critical towards its own community, sometimes getting to be toxic.
I would be open for a Pinephone, but it is mostly regarded as a developer phone right now. I will wait for Pinephone2 and hope things improve to make it more a daily driver. The Librem 5 is priced out of my league, though I do admire what they are doing.
To add something, I very much adore the Ambience system. I very much prefer a 100% white on black system, and Sailfish Ambiences can do just that. Some Android apps don't really follow, but they sometimes have a darkmode setting.
I just want my phone to stay out of my way, and not jumping up and down :)
It's totally artificial limitations, solely for buying the Sailfish X license. Likely due to support obligations and/or due to software patent situation outside of EU.
In practice you just need to buy the license from a EU IP (so via VPN, europen VPS, etc.) and then you are good to go from anywhere in the world. This can be seen on these global stats for the Sailfish OS community software repository:
Lots of traffic from outside the EU. Also I took my Sailfish OS device for a trip across Japan twice, and everything worked fine for me as well. :)
So in general I recommend getting a EU based VPN and then buying the Sailfish X license for the device of your choice (I would personally recommend xperia 10 II). If you succeed, then I would get the device, just in case. :)
Thanks for sharing. I've been eyeing a fairphone 3+ for a while, and I remembered discussions around sailfish on the FP2, but it seems the FP3+ is not compatible. I'll have a look at the Sony Xperia.
For the FP2 and FP3 there are community ports. I think the FP3 port is in relatively good condition. Main drawback currently is that there is no Android layer available for community ports. There are plans at Jolla to bring Android support to community devices, but you can imagine that the expectations by users are hard to manage here :) Community ports are not supported by Jolla itself.
I've just switched over from iPhone to SailfishOS running on Xperia 10ii (the most powerful device to run SailfishOS officially and the only 64-bit one). Reflashing firmware took about 20 minutes in total, no issues since except for the need to figure out how to install OpenRepos.net on it.
It has a nice OLED screen (N9 vibe) and the on-screen keyboard makes it feel like typing on an N900; the camera works fine. I didn't install Android support so I am running pure SailfishOS.
I can also recommend Xperia 10 II with Sailfish OS, it works very well! :)
The installation took longer for me, but that was because I decided to change the default rootfs and home LV ratio, which included shrinking the LUKS container home lives on, which was a bit stricky, but I was successful in the end. :) Definitely not something 99.9% users would need to do but its still cool its possible. :)
As for Android support, I've installed that and it seems to work fine for the Android apps I've tried so far. Its apparently even possible to install MicroG or even full Google Play Services, if you have apps that need it.
Agreed, its a bit of a compromise if you want to use a non Google/Apple device in the first place, but still given that the Android emulation layer effectively lives in an isolated container, which you can also turn off at any time, its already quite a bit less intrusive than on an actual Android phone where it effectively permeates everything on the device like mycelium.
I tried it on the PinePhone and instantly loved the UX. Unfortunately, like boudin said, it's not fully FOSS which is sad cause I really wished the "future" mobile alternative to Android/iOS would be something like this.
Sailfish should open up their code fully, it would probably benefit them in the long rum
Yeah, I still personally think they got zero benefit from keeping the source closed. But as already mentioned up thread, some of their current investors might be a bit more conservative in these regards and they still need them to survive.
So oh well - at least we have something usable before some of the distros started on the PinePhone come off age. :)
I use it as a daily driver for about 2 years now. I've never used any other mobile OS so I can't make any comparisons. I run it on Sony Xperia XA2 with android app support. Its been stable, no issues so far. Updates are regular with UI improvements and new features.
I use it. You can feel their severe development resource constraints everwhere. The browser is years behind. Native apps are rather limited. I bought the newest supported hardware 3.5 years ago. It is stuck at Android 4.4, which is supported by fewer and fewer apps.
Whenever they support new HW, it takes quite a while to stabilize. Not sure what is the situation right now. My guess would be the newest supported HW is getting obsolete already and nothing new has been announced.
Latest supported hardware is Xperia 10 II, which is still quite recently and pretty fast (I got it myself).
Also, you can get the previously supported Xperia devices cheaply second hand. Just make sure it has an unlockable bootloader or else you won't be able to install Sailfish OS on it.
> Also, you can get the previously supported Xperia devices cheaply second hand
While they are still decent hardware that advice is useful only for purists that don't intend to use Android at all. As I wrote, you get only Android 4.4 on those devices.
Android 4.4 support is only an issue for the Xperia X. The Xperia XA2, 10 and 10II have updated support, first at Android 8, I think it is now at Android 9.
The Xperia X is somewhat tricky in this regard. It uses the "old" way of Android support. Android 8 and 9 is supported with an LXC container. Bringing that to the Xperia X would mean reflashing. Then you end up in the situation where some users reflash, and some stay on the old flash-image. Which needs another choice; support both groups, or drop all users of the old 4.4 image.
I do understand the disappointment if you have an Xperia X and see all other devices get updated Android support. But Jolla here is between a rock and a hard place.
The problem is not reflashing, we all have flashed the first time, we could do it again. The problem is kernel support. There is no new enough kernel for Xperia X hardware. For obvious reasons Sailfish does not have resources to port a kernel for a 3-4 year old device. Not sure whether source is even available from Sony for all drivers.
Thanks for correcting me. I wish all vendors would provide such clear and easy to read information. I was just repeating what I had heard elsewhere.
So is it just one of those management decisions that we don't put any work into an old device? It annoys me mostly because the X is the last device of a reasonable size. I would not even pay for a new one because I am entitled to a new work phone. But I don't like the huge devices you get these days.
Yep, IMHO it's a management/resource decision - the choose to only support one base port stream, not two.
Still if you manly use native Sailfish OS apps, you will be getting all support and updates on Xperia X for years to come.
It's unfortunate but at least the newer devices should hopefully be in better shape. And as for size, Xperia10 II does not feel so much bigger than X as its the same width, just a bit longer. Feels quite subtleactually.
The latest Sailfish OS release is supported on all HW generations except the first Jolla phone. But the Android version you get depends on your HW. Only the newest HW generation gets a newer Android. All previous HW generations stay at version 4.4 despite the Sailfish OS upgrade.
