You just need to be a good consumer and buy that iPhone that Verizon orders you to have with their blessing.
2/3g deprecation and VoLTE is precisely because US carriers are pushing forward with new tech.
See https://www.att.com/scmsassets/support/wireless/devices-work...
To be whitelisted, the phones need to go through onerous testing process that goes way beyond just checking for network compatibility.
"CDMA" networks built on proprietary Qualcomm cdma2000 standards used its equivalent of eSIM, and that was why it required special trusted phones for OTA programming. It was also used by Verizon which IIUC had better coverage than others so lots of people would have had memories of having to go through something akin to Apple activation.
What are some of the innovations you're referring to?
Looks like they also support up to Xperia 10 V & there is the Jolla C2 community device:
Recently I bought another to have a spare. Cost me 50 €.
I go to the homepage. Zero screenshots. I go to the User Experience page. Zero screenshots. I even go to Design Principles under the UX page. Zero screenshots.
Talking about mobile phone design is like dancing about architecture. Show the thing or bust.
The UI is astonishingly polished. It has not changed a lot for 10 years, but still nice to use. There is e.g. the tutorial video that comes installed on every device. Sorry, probably won't have time to share it later, I have a funeral to organize when I get out of bed. Maybe some other user can if it's not on Youtube.
The biggest problem areas IMHO:
- No hardware that meets my reqirements. The current one is too big for my pockets / my taste. It's not very good HW either, in the period when Sony Xperia were supported the situation was different. Even the original Sailfish phone over 10 years ago was relatively better at the time.
- Predictive keyboard is gone. I understand it's a licensing issue that they cannot offer it anymore. Blame Apple and Google for killing all small players.
- There is a severe maintenance backlog in many places and it's probably also growing. The browser is based on Firefox with a 2 digit version number. It crashes on many bloat sites and Cloudflare blocks it for being too old. I severly hope it won't crash now before I click reply. (I guess most users use a Browser on the Android compatibility environment)
> The browser is based on Firefox with a 2 digit version number.
For some people the downsides are lack of apps. The few Android apps I use work just fine with the current hardware. Sadly I still have to use WhatsApp for a while, but for Signal there is a native app, WhisperFish.
The main thing to me is that SailfishOS is a Linux on your pocket. You can ssh into it, sync stuff with rsync or syncthing, edit your stuff with vim, have cron do stuff, or what ever you like. My old phones I use as remote sensors now.
There was a point that I tried to switch to iPhone. I struggled for a long time to get on par with the usability that I had with SFOS. I came pretty close, but the card house of different apps I had to build was pretty unreliable.
My phone is also my wifi hotspot. If I turn on vpn on my phone, then all the traffic from every connected device goes via vpn. I couldn't get iPhone to do this.
The team behind SailfishOS is pretty small, and regrettably shows in many areas. But still for me the clear winner of these three. It's not for everyone, but if you know your way around Linux it's great :)
So, not an Android or iPhone killer, but a good solid platform. The newest version 5.0.0.71 came out just a few days ago.
After that Jolla failed with the tablet. Then they didn’t deliver a successor device for Jolla One and provided SailfishOS only as aftermarket OS. You remember the Android problem from above? The hardware of others, without official support? That is calling for problems.
And to make everything worse Jolla started a cooperation with Russia in 2015. According to Wikipedia they quit it in 2021.
Hint about compatibility and APIs
Never try to be compatible to an environment which doesn’t want to maintain interoperability with you.
And there's a lot going on with Proton and the Steam Deck, so I don't think this is a valid argument.
A lot of known issues can be avoided with more experience and cooperation before changes happen.
Before anybody mentions Proton. Because always somebody mentions Proton?
Proton is WINE. But maintained by Valve. Which requires a lot resources of Valve (not of the users). But the key is Steam! Valve is controlling the Steam store.
It is still bad and Valve shall press hard on native ports (e.g. Linux only Steam Awards). Reducing the long term workload for Valve. WINE is not a solution and remains a workaround. That is why we use Inkscape and not Adobe.
PS: Remember when Apple dropped iOS 32-Bit? And PPC? And the classic APIs? Microsoft is trying to remain bug compatible. The problem? They’re bug compatible! My thinking is similar to Torvalds, Linux, GNU (GLIBC/GLIBC++, Systemd and Wayland shall strive for compatibility when possible. Users love compatibility. Programmers love compatibility. But it is hard work. It becomes difficult when security implications are involved. As long only re-compilation is need for compatibility I’m fine. When we need to adapt code I’m getting unhappy.
Native ports have huge problems as well. Most of them are hardly maintained and stop working years down the road.
ioQuake3 - still work's
CS2 - still works
HL1, HL2, CS1,CSGO - still works
Unrailed - still works?
UT2003 - there it is getting hard, unmaintained since ca. 2003. But it is doable if you want it.
Quake3 - same as above.
I would look to applaud the high quality work id and Valve or Daedalic. Weirdly Microsoft ships a port of Minecraft. Valve now ships the Linux-Runtime to ease ports. And Flatpak allows developers which want to package itself (weird hill to die on…) doing it.
Please use SDL when targeting Linux!
In 2015 Jolla were bought by Russian owners. They didn't understand open source or free software, they just wanted something for the Russian market.
In 2021 these ties were broken, but it took a long time since the Russian owners didn't respond in any way. It is only two years or there about that they are on their own feet again. They are still severely understaffed.
Also Sailfish OS Android emulation is quite good, good or even the best one I used on the Android emulation front.
PS: I'm rather sure Jolla never emulated Android.
User reviews seem very compelling, does anybody here have experience with it (especially if you can compare with unofficial Android ROMs, Sailfish OS, or Postmarket OS)?
- It is not for everyone. Some Linux experience and willingness to tinker with it is helpful.
- Despite the many limitations, I love the UI, the spirit, the platform, and the community. I fear the day where I have to switch to a different OS.
- Many Android apps can be run via the AlienDalvik/AppSupport middleware. However, raw BLE is not supported. Thus, most e-scooter apps won't work. My banking app runs okay-ish.
- Google Play Store and Google Play Services can be installed by following non-trivial tutorials. I don't use them.
- The hardware abstraction layer that makes proprietary Android drivers work with SailfishOS is cool.
- QML and C++/Python/JS allow for easy, rapid app development. The custom widgets have a unique, consistent, simple style.
- As most of the UI is written in QML, it is possible to adjust and extend most of the UI shell and the base applications just by editing these resource files on the phone. For example, one can add additional widgets to the lock screen or change animation speeds.
- A nice tool, Patch Manager allows transparently and reversibly applying such modifications. This is so cool, even though the patches often have to be adapted for each major OS version.
- Jolla, the Finnish company behind SailfishOS is tiny and had to let go a lot of engineers and supporting staff a few years ago. Development has slowed down significantly.
- There are about two dozen very active developers in the community who write awesome apps. There are native clients for Discord (no voice/video), Signal, Telegram, Slack, Mastodon, Hacker News, etc.
- Unfortunately, the browser is stuck with outdated Gecko (despite heroic efforts by a developer who upgraded it from ESR 78 to ESR 91 [1]).
- Only a few smartphones are supported by SailfishOS - either officially supported by Jolla (e.g., some Sony phones and some Jolla-branded ones) or supported via community ports. Often the hardware support is a little bit buggy.
EDIT: of course, if you visit the forums, you will see quite some criticism of Jolla - and some of it is well deserved. It would be great if there were better hardware, fewer bugs, better support for Android apps, etc. Personally, I feel that Jolla is really trying to make SailfishOS better but that they lack really stable sources of income and have made some less-than-ideal decisions in hindsight. The best solution would be to get EU funding for stabilizing the platform and finding a business model that generates recurring income from large organizations. Selling to private customers without being able to extract recurring income and being dependent on badly-documented hardware is not going to work.
[1] https://www.flypig.co.uk/?to=gecko&list_id=975&list=gecko
This is so sad and unfortunate to hear.
[0] https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone
Not to mention the most bloody war on European soil in a century - started by Russia.
https://www-sttinfo-fi.translate.goog/tiedote/54712711/sailf...
I've not used their OS but have been thinking for a while, and spent some time in their forums. I remember some dev saying this along those lines.
Reminds me of a joke - paraphrasing: someone from the US is speaking to someone from the Soviet Union and at some point the conversation mentions Soviet propaganda. The US person asks “you have propaganda?”.
(the punchline in case my terrible paraphrasing doesn’t make it clear is that the Soviet person is aware they are swimming in propaganda, while the US person is totally oblivious to their own gov’s one).
I don't know if the values and leadership at Jolla have changed since then, but it's not a company that I would trust to deliver and communicate honestly in good faith.
AFAIK they have bought by some other company (again) since then, but they have basically nothing. Most of their Sailfish OS is actually closed source (like AOSP vs all the apps from Google), they don't have any hardware, they just re-flash some phone from Sony.
I had high hopes for them, but now wouldn't even touch them with a stick. Pixel with GrapheneOS seems to be a much better choice and maybe even closer to their original ideologies.
On a more superficial front, the UI is far ahead of both iOS and Android. Complaining about it being closed-source misses the point: the platform is Linux, and other than the proprietary front-end, everything else in Sailfish is wide open to hacking and independent development. So there's that too...
There was a blog post committing to refunds given sufficient cashflow, posted in 2017:
<https://blog.jolla.com/summer-2017-ceo-update/>
HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14637748>
It does appear that Jolla has shipped other products (SailfishOS, the Jolla Phone in 2013, some tablets, and others, see Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla#Sailfish_OS_products>).
Since 2017 the company has gone through bankruptcy and re-launched.
It should be remembered that kickstarter / crowdfunded ventures, as with any other, are speculative and risky. A good-faith effort to deliver on spec is itself credible, and the landscape is littered with the husks of far more failures, especially in the mobile space, including from former (and current) giants: RIM, Palm, Microsoft, Mozilla, Canonical, off the top of my head). Google and Apple are the only present significant OS options standing, Apple (again) and Samsung dominate hardware, though there's increasing competition largely from China.
That's not an argument for not complaining against what was done, but given what they're doing - fighting two Goliaths that have 10000x the resources, I just wish people would give them another chance.
Now it's up to capricious EU leadership whether to support a sovereign OS, including mandating that banks and other institutions open up their requirements to use solely US-controlled devices.
P.S. unless there is a sailfish browser that ships separately with a different OS and I’m remembering that.
P.P.S. I would love a Linux phone that lets me take calls and has mobile data, wifi, web browsing and GPS/navigation. I don’t care about apps other than navigation. AFAIK there is not currently something that fits the bill and works out of the box.
I don’t have any first-hand experience but from the comment that linked that blog, and the site itself, it’s not clear whether the browser engine has been updated since…
1. https://www.flypig.co.uk/?to=gecko&list_id=975&list=gecko
This is also why you see Chome being used as a core in all kinds of applications and frameworks - AFAIK it has the necessary API for this.
There are dozens of functional mobile OSes. And OS isn’t useful unless it has application support for the tasks people want to accomplish, though.
Europe has none of the 3.
I mean, I have to write exit strategies from Azure because the EU might demand our industry to leave non-EU infra. Yet ironically the digital company ID I would need to sign new contracts with within Europe aren't available without one of the two app stores. It's not that I can't sign those contracts without the ID, but I'd probably have to go to Germany in person.
My impression was that this platform was only becoming less and less viable. Other problems: it's proprietary and only really runs well on any phone you've ever heard of if it's on top of an Android kernel with some kind of hardware abstraction layer.
https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/
It is not using Android kernel - it uses a Linux kernel with android features enabled and compile time & runs Android binary drivers for hardware that has no native Linux driver via a binary adaptation layer called libhybris (also used by some Ubuntu Touch devices).
The Android emulation layer nowadays runs in a container that talks to the Android bits in the kernel and to the blobs via libhybris.
That means you can't run just any linux software on it.
Yeah, with GUIs thats a different story...
> The main thing to me is that SailfishOS is a Linux on your pocket. You can ssh into it, sync stuff with rsync or syncthing, edit your stuff with vim, have cron do stuff, or what ever you like. My old phones I use as remote sensors now.
I don't use the cron part, but you can deffo do all things w/o hassle on a regular Android thingy. These arguments for "Linux in your pockets" have long, umm, sailed?
> There was a point that I tried to switch to iPhone. I struggled for a long time to get on par with the usability that I had with SFOS. I came pretty close, but the card house of different apps I had to build was pretty unreliable.
IMHO iOS is for mongos / simpletons that just use apps casually. Just look at their keyboard implementation, the cursor positioning and where characters / digits are accessed drives me crazy! Don't know if Apple permits 3rd party keyboards to be installed, i have to live with this shitbox as-is as it's a company device.
They also recently split the automobile UI part off from the Phone bits. That joint work was part of the problem for FOSSing everything, since they have deals with Car manufacturers which depend on their IP.
What would not be acceptable in a tuned/configured Linux / Windows OS on a smaller-form-factor touch- and voice-enabled device?
I'm excepting the obvious issue raised elsewhere of closed app stores and the tendency for ever more interactions (commercial, government, educational, institutional) to rely on these. That discussion has been had many times and is if I may suggest relevant, but stale.
It's for this reason I like SFOS. I've tried android and ios. But they suck.
As a developer, I also appreciate the flexibility even within the limits. Gradle and co. suck.
Via Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla#History>
The deghoulgled cellphone sphere (us) is pretty depressing if affordability is a factor.
I have 2 handsets here currently. It is completely real.
make it so that I can dock it and use it as a full fat OS on a desktop. If they wanna market this as an open phone, they need to make it first class as a primary computing device. so far only samsung is willing to enter this territory with a glorified chromebook.
if I could install the rust toolchain and vscode on it and use it in a customizable desktop environemnt by plugging it into a USBC monitor, you bet I'd buy it. Id happily pay 1-2k+ euros for it.
Sadly as is, it functionally does less than my locked down iphone so whats the point?
But there's another way, can't someone implement their own implementation of the core google services apis and then you can just load a regular app off the app store and run it? Google would absolutely want to block this as their control and monopoly depends on it. But it shouldn't be against the law.
It's obvious, so it means someone must have tried and it was not reasonably possible.
Same with the device proposed by the parent - I can plug my Librem 5 in to a display and keyboard and it runs a regular GNU/Linux distro while working well as a phone, without Halium or any other Android bits.
We had these things for many years now, just look around harder :)
Here you go: https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/