I've been using SailfishOS since 2014. Jolla 1, Xperia X, Xperia XA2 and currently Xperia 10III. I also have used Android phones and iPhones at work.
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.
I would seriously consider SailfishOS if it shipped on decent (recent) hardware that was available in the US. The last good experience I had with it was on the Xperia XA2, but that hardware was turned into ewaste by the VoLTE requirements of US carriers. Although they claim to run on more recent Xperia phones, they don't have full hardware support, and aren't on the most recent models. If I'm going to pay for a phone OS and hardware to support it, I want some assurance it won't be total jank.
Well you'll need to talk to your monopolistic carriers then. US mobile innovation is dead for the foreseeable future due to them, all new innovation is happening in China and other SE Asian markets.
You just need to be a good consumer and buy that iPhone that Verizon orders you to have with their blessing.
Carriers in the US restricted the phones people used in the 00s and early 10s, back when there were short model whitelists, CDMA networks, and radios with only a few bands… but not so much today. Global market GSM phones activate pretty much on any US carrier just fine today.
2/3g deprecation and VoLTE is precisely because US carriers are pushing forward with new tech.
What you are describing is much more accurate of the US cell carriers before the iPhone. I remember paying $20/mo (to the carrier) for a terrible mail application on a feature phone. The iPhone's AT&T deal saved us from that situation.
What are some of the innovations you're referring to?
I remember not too long ago seeing a similar table from Jolla that showed these devices, but also included a breakdown of specific hardware features that were not fully working. Was there a major update in the last few months that cleared that up?
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.
I type these words on my year old Sailfish device. I had 2 other ones for roughly 10 years altogether.
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)
Homepage has dozens of screenshots as well as descriptions. Submitted link isn't the homepage but '/info'. That said screencasts will've been even better because for long-time a distinction/advantage Sailfish had over Android/iOS was being heavily gesture-based.
SailfishOS and the Jolla One were good (awesome usability) But the integration of Android was a horribly failure. It is like WINE, half working applications preventing native ports of quality. I left the boat.
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.
Why games on Windows ship their own C++ Redistributable? Well, the same problem. And for the very same reason macOS app bundles come with a lot libraries and we still see a lot updates after every macOS release.
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.
There are plans now in 2025 to work on this slowly. A few apps have recently been opened up. More are coming. So it is underway.
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.
Don't know 100% sure. But would dare to claim most UI apps are still closed source. All the basic libraries and probably most daemons are open source. In the HW adaptation it looks bad again, but there Sailfish is not to blame.
They've been opening up bit by bit. First stuff like 'jolla-weather', recently, the notes app and numerous bits in the backend ... Currently sync for nextcloud system integration is in the works.
Mhm, this is a proprietary OS developed by a dilapidated company… Here is another OS sharing the Nokia/MeeGo heritage, except fully open source and actively developed (not ready for general use either, AFAICT [yet]): https://nemomobile.net/
I am not a fan anymore I used it for over a year on a XPERIA XA2. It's usable but barely so. The Android layer usually craps out with heavier apps or crawls to a halt. Most of the native apps are really basic I would compare them to early Windows Phone apps in functionality and UX. The UX itself is an odd mix of really intuitive and absolute horrible. It seems like they are missing focus and the felt development stalled for some years now. I hope plasma or gnome get more momentum because this isn't a viable alternative for 90% of smartphone users. Meego was better and I don't understand why they pivoted in the direction they are going now. It's certainly opinionated.
I have been using SailfishOS phones as my main driver for ten years now. Some random, personal, possibly uninformed thoughts:
- 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.
> 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.
I am surprised that nobody has mentioned yet the (seemingly) functional Linux mobile OS/device: the FLX1s from furilabs (https://furilabs.com/).
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)?
Please note that user reviews are only out for the FLX1, not the FLX1s, which is about to start shipping soon. That said, as they went with the same SoC, hardware enablement is hopefully going to be fine and the software will work as well as on the FLX1.
I have their FLX1 device here, but I have yet to spend more time with it (instead of my postmarketOS daily driver I am writing this on). It's humongous (the s is going to be smaller), which is holding me back - but feel free to ask questions.
What's nice is that it's 5G hardware, and as they use the (4.19 IIRC) Android kernel they have a lot of hardware working which would be a huge struggle on mainline (think photography, finger print, ...). The Android integration via a Waydroid fork is also decent (but 'basic waydroid' is IMHO fine too, the hardware just needs enough RAM), and overall, it feels quite polished and the team is responsive in adressing customer feedback where they can.
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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.
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.
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:
https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/
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)
Deleted Comment
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.
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.
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.
Nemo is a great project, but only build by one guy (neochapay) in his spare time.
Jolla still has ~5 full-time engineers and a super active community.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6vCWFleBHk
- 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.
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)?
I have their FLX1 device here, but I have yet to spend more time with it (instead of my postmarketOS daily driver I am writing this on). It's humongous (the s is going to be smaller), which is holding me back - but feel free to ask questions.
What's nice is that it's 5G hardware, and as they use the (4.19 IIRC) Android kernel they have a lot of hardware working which would be a huge struggle on mainline (think photography, finger print, ...). The Android integration via a Waydroid fork is also decent (but 'basic waydroid' is IMHO fine too, the hardware just needs enough RAM), and overall, it feels quite polished and the team is responsive in adressing customer feedback where they can.