I had a SailfishOS phone for four years; an Xperia XA2+. The operating system was wonderful, and being able to run Android apps when there was no alternative was a good way of filling in the gaps in the Jolla store.
However, as I've got older I find large phones more and more unwieldy, and I couldn't find a small enough SailfishOS phone to switch to. I'm now running LineageOS on a Jelly Star. The form factor is perfect for me.
Would I return to SailfishOS? Absolutely. But there'd need to be a small phone in the line up for me to migrate to.
I had no idea that you could run Lineage on the Jelly Star! That sounds phenomenal. My dream phone is a Star running Graphene. But short of that, Lineage would be great.
Which version of LOS do you run exactly? Did you compile it yourself, or did you pick a pre-made version? One from XDA?
I ask, because the device is not officially supported by LineageOS, but if it works well with a different approach it would be an interesting option for me as well.
They will be able to do banking at least once the legislators tear down the walled gardens in a sensible way. Are the security benefits from the Appstore/Playstore real or security theatre?
I'm pretty sure that, if there are security benefits, they have been artificially tied to the use of the company's distribution method, that coincidentally really needs to be sending usage statistics, monitoring, etc. Surely there exist no conflicts of interest to be found.
Ha! Well, not right now! Previous to the last year or so, this wouldn't have escalated to the current situation where we're actively having to be wary of fending off Big Brother or blatant power grabs.
However, given that we're talking about a European phone, I'm willing to bet that this type of effort goes hand in hand with decoupling from American-backed services (at least for those who've seen the writing on the wall and understand the risk to their sovereignty if they put all their eggs on an American basket).
fifteen years ago I use to do mobile pentests for banks and when we could not find anything significant for the reports we could’ve always count on “lack of rooting detection” and pin the risk on some vague mobile banking malware threat pushed by marketing. I am sorry I contributed to this nonsense.
It's understandable; I would maybe expect to undergo an extra step in verification for a sensitive app like, "we noticed this is the first time you are using this system that is not locked down; please type in the token we have mailed you".
But locking users out (which may not directly be the bank's fault for relying on OS's security APIs) seems anti-competitive.
I just switched to a Fairphone 5 with e/OS, which is a de-googled Android (it uses microG), and am pleasantly surprised how well everything works. My banking apps work, contacts and calendar lived on nextcloud already, the learning apps I use work.
The two things I have to get used to is not having google maps, but the map app on there has also worked fine for me so far. And casting to a Chromecast doesn't really work for me, but I can live without that.
It would not in principle, those rely on hardware backed keys with Google's latest iteration of Google Play Integrity. The only success people have had is by using leaked vendor keys and spoofing device fingerprints for old A11-era devices which did not have the hardware baked in. In time even this avenue will no longer work. People have been trying to get around it for a while [1] but afaik the concept is cryptographically airtight.
My banking app works fine on a rooted phone that I don't bother faking a proper Play Integrity signature for. Except for a warning about the phone being rooted when setting it up, of course. I'm not 100% sure what happens when you have integrity and lose it by rooting your phone, but I imagine the bank app will log you out.
Bank apps only stop working because banks decided they know better than you.
Unfortunately my bank also switched to Google Pay which does require Play Integrity, so contactless payments are out of the question on that phone now. Maybe if Wero compatible terminals extend support for QR payments I could use my bank app again on that phone.
Maybe I'm out of the loop but what is everyone doing with banking apps on their phones that's so essential. I see this argument all the time but it's baffling to me.
The vast majority of people on this site can afford a couple hundred dollars for a basic Android phone that's used only for tasks like that, and as a bonus it's safer than having banking apps on your main phone. Anyone who isn't willing to spend a couple hundred bucks on the freedom to run whatever software they want on their phone probably doesn't consider software freedom a priority anyway.
I really wish them success, but I just can't see it anymore. I had the first version and it seems it didn't move much forward from that time. And there were also many screwups, as poisonborz reminded a bit earlier.
Their UI looked novel, but wasn't that great in practice. It wasn't stable (hopefully that changed) and the lack of real apps was killing it before and now even more, as more banks/govs require some "trusted" apps
I dispute your assertion: Sailfish's UI is WAY ahead of iOS and Android. It's simple, consistent, and intuitive; a complete contrast to the mess of iOS and the clunkiness of Android. As for stability, native Sailfish apps on my Xperia XA2 seldom, if ever, crash.
The absence of eSIM is a deal breaker for me. I need to travel to the US for work and last time I was there I was having a hard time to find a physical SIM for the phone I had then.
I certainly do not want to try to talk you into this particular phone – but just in the general case so you know, it's pretty easy to get physical Sims that you can download an eSIM onto.
That camera bump, though. Maybe they could've shuffled components in such way, that phone would be overall smaller, but as deep as camera bump, to make whole back flat?
Regarding the issues of banking apps: if the EU is serious about tech sovereignty, it's up to members to mandate that banks allow their apps to run on Sailfish, or other alternative operating systems. It really is as simple as that.
(But whether any EU member is capable of rising to this (very shallow) challenge... well, I'm justifiably cynical.)
This is why i keep saying the Jolla management neds a rethink. Its 2026 GraphenOS is in a partnership with Motorola while Jolla is still doing early 2K style kickstarter campaigns.
The market is there , product is loved and ppeople have proved they are willing to take some pain adopting the product.But still the execution to serve that market is shambolic to say the least.
As i recall , they do not come preloaded and the usr has to do a song and dance to flash the ROM with the new OS. While also paying a separete license fee for the OS and updates.
Too much friction and limiting the potential - thats why i reiterate. The SailFishOS is a delight technically and aesthetically - the business side though needs a major overhaul.
Just thinking out loud , they could partner with someone likee huawei to preload for EU/rest of world customers that cannot use HarmonyOS outside CH. Or even one of the other smaller OEM with access to the deep tech ecosystem to give a prebuild/preloaded f;agship at a cost competitive price. Or do a Apple and auction search/maps defaults to keep BOM costs down and aim for widespread adoption.
they sell some preloaded xperias on their website, but i get the impression the only have a few at any given time because ive been checking every now and again and half the time they are sold out
Man I really loved MeeGo, I was in my early teens when I got the N9 specifically because it was such a beautiful experiment from Nokia. Amoled display, MeeGo os and the polycarbonate shell. The phone was hot garbage technically, would over heat had 0 apps and had idle battery times worse than a cup of tea left out on a cold day. However the phone was such a work of art I could accept just about any flaw.
Right after that I got a Blackberry Z10 and there's just something about the multitasking UI in both of these OSs' that just felt like it was the right way of doing it.
Blackberry OS 10 and MeeGo where so wonderful, I truly had a rich experience of mobile phone OSs' growing up.
I'm not sure about Jolla as much though. Like I enjoy having this additional option but I wished they digged deeper into features other than enhanced privacy. Not that I'm complaining, I enjoy having enhanced privacy but if they added more productivity features like the Blackberry Hub.
Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project and through all this time they couldn't make a foothold, or even sustain some small motivated community around them. During this time:
- company folded and changed hand multiple times, including russian ownership
- the tablet scandal leaving users with lost funds
- closed source parts
- locked bootloader
- charging a $50 device reset fee
- not much change in Sailfish OS since ages
- buggy Android compatibility and near zero native devs, all jumped ship
At this point I think they are just one of the grifters preying on naive "EU first" supporters shoveling whatever they still have in a new casing.
I'd love the idea of a greenfield EU Linux mobile OS, but I don't think it should come from this company.
Realistically building a production quality database takes 10 years. Building a production quality game engine takes 10 years.
They're building a mobile operating system and the hardware it runs on; that's harder and a moving target.
How long do you think it takes to build a supply chain of hardware that doesn't suck (if it takes 2 years to get moving: you need to start with hardware specs for 2 years from now) and an operating system that doesn't suck when you're also trying to catch up to a major duopoly cranking out devices at an unfathomable volume, with more money than most nation states?
Your standard is "succeed against Google and Apple within 13 years on a shoestring budget with no volume discounts." How can any project clear that bar?
> Your standard is "succeed against Google and Apple within 13 years..."
Absolutely not. My standard is the many other AOSP-based ROMs communities and companies that were founded around them, having success within a few years - yes, they could lean on the ecosystem compatibility and didn't produce their own hardware, but maybe that's a more viable way to start?
"shoestring budget with no volume discounts" does not explain the points of criticism above.
AOSP is just a totally different destination, it's not a faster route to the same one.
Sailfish is spiritually MeeGo: actual Linux on the phone, not a custom skin on Google's foundations. Obviously it's faster to build a kit-car than a car factory, I don't see how that's a rebuttal, it's an entirely different conversation.
An AOSP fork on Qualcomm hardware isn't independence. Jolla are actually trying to build the factory.
The $50 fee and tablet scandal are fair hits- but fuck-ups don't make you a grifter, and we've forgiven larger players far worse.
I don't see the issue of using AOSP. You get to skip the many years that Sailfish OS will still need in user testing. You get to skip all the possible incompatibilities with Android apps through the compatibility layer. AOSP is also Linux on the phone. I guess you mean GNU/Linux on the phone, but AOSP now also has official support for a Linux VM (you want a VM because traditional desktop Linux security is not great). They are even adding support for running Wayland apps. With the recently-added desktop support, you can plug a phone into an external screen and you'll have a desktop with Android apps and Linux desktop apps.
I think the chance of Google completely closing AOSP is pretty small, AOSP being open maintains a power equilibrium between Google and other OEMs. Closing up AOSP carries the huge risk that Samsung and some other big OEMs will fork it and Google has essentially lost the whole market overnight. I am pretty sure this is why Samsung phones also have the Galaxy Store with a bunch of apps like Netflix in it. The Galaxy Store is Samsung's subtle message to Google saying: don't try to rein us in, we can cut you out.
That said, even if Google closes AOSP, forking it and maintaining it as an open project is going to be far less work than brining Sailfish OS to the level of polish, security, etc. of AOSP.
Why is AOSP a wrong path? Why would it be "tainted"? Any large enough entity can fork. Hundreds already did, successfully. Even China couldn't do otherwise - via Huawei they mutated it to HarmonyOS (becoming much different from its roots, and incompatible to it, structurally becoming superior in many ways). Why throw away 20 years of development and a sea of dev experience?
But even if you insist on a non-AOSP way: Supporting any other, more well regarded projects and initiatives? Random top of my head idea: motivate Fairphone (Denmark) to adopt some non-android OS like Ubuntu Touch?
Sailfish is more like GNU/Linux, that is the OS in this context. For Jolla that is less code to maintain themselves then what Google maintains in Android/Linux. Hard forking Android/Linux looks to be quite a big bite to chew on.
> but I don't think it should come from this company.
Could*, maybe than should, unless you believe that all those things will apply to the phone they plan to release in September. Otherwise I don't see the issue with a company keep trying until they get something right (or give up). Why not?
True, but I also wanted to signify that I find any user trust (eg as a result of this new marketing campaign) is misplaced and steals air from a better alternative.
> Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project and through all this time they couldn't make a foothold, or even sustain some small motivated community around them.
Sure, but somehow RCS is viable in 2026. Old projects can come back!
on the other, I really, really loved my original jolla phone back in the day. I happily used it as my daily driver and only phone for 2 years. Until it had a hardware fault which I could no longer repair via the company.
How can a review of a smartphone not comment on how well it works as a phone? Calling, texting, and battery life are table stakes for a mobile phone, and the last time I heard about this device it was still struggling with those basics.
Americans/Canadians (and I guess Asians since they won't ship there) don't waste your time reading this, they have a Mediatek SoC and made the choice long ago to not touch these markets. The devices will not carry the band support needed for these markets.
Europeans, I guess good luck, have fun. I followed them in the early days and ran early builds of Sailfish on the N9, had high hopes but have long given up on them.
EDIT: I will say though I'm still impressed by the libhybris project which went on to make it possible to run linux distros on android SoC's, but the guy who did that for Jolla I think is not with the company anymore for some time.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but they're aiming to serve the EU and UK (and Norway and Switzerland) markets only. Although, with that said, the page for the September 2026 phone says this (https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-sept-26):
> But I have no idea if that means it'll work for you in the US/elsewhere.
Yeah, that's a fun part of the crazy bandplan for lte/5g where it's just a little here and there without global coordination.
But a look here [1], says it has all 5G bands for AT&T, 2/4 bands for TMo, and 4/5 for Verizon. Seems maybe a bit iffy for TMo, one of the missing bands is n71 (600 MHz) which is extended range that helps fill in coverage.
Some carriers also require your phone to be on their whitelist - for example AT&T.
And Verizon claims they don't do it that way, but we had a phone that worked on Verizon with an old SIM card until Verizon caught on, and then suddenly it wasn't compatible with their network and couldn't be used on Verizon.
Just a guess: maybe it requires fairly expensive certification that is not worth it when a SoC family is barely used in a region (yes, I know, chicken-egg).
I used to use a Sony phone with Sailfish but stopped when US shifted to voice over LTE and phones I used were not supported by the networks. If this phone works on US networks, I can't wait to get rid of my Android phone for sailfish. I vibed with Sailfish so hard.
They should have collaborated with GrapheneOS like Motorola instead of starting from scratch with Linux and a proprietary user interface. As it stands, this phone will have worse security than a Pixel with Graphene or the upcoming Motorola phone.
It's not an improvement over common closed source Android varieties either, and will certainly have worse app compatibility than Android. Hardware switches are irrelevant if you can't trust the software.
Their entire raison d'être is to make Sailfish OS (non-Android Linux) phones. I'm happy they're doing it. Graphene OS is great but it's just another Android ROM and still dependent on Google.
This is part of the (spiritual) lineage of Meego/Maemo, it's much older than GrapheneOS and the latter is older than Android itself
Anyway, it's as secure as any Linux distro as it uses the same standard stack as servers and desktops and does sandboxing[1], which is also really nice from a development perspective. You can harden it like you would a Linux box using standard Linux tools + kernel features.
Did GrapheneOS even exist in 2012? There is history at play here, they are still building forward from the Nokia Linux phones.
Also, what's up with all the sour grapes from people who use or develop GrapheneOS? There seems to be a general force dismissing Sailfish as insecure, without ever explaning how. Can't we just be friends in a de-googled world? Are people from Graphene feeling insecure about Sailfish as competition? It feels to me like infighting in small churches. It turns me off from ever considering GrapheneOS before I even looked into it.
To my knowledge you have some proprietary firmware blobs, drivers, HAL and the Trusted Execution Environment shipping with GrapheneOS. But replacing Pixel's stock Android with GrapheneOS doesn't expose you to more proprietary components but instead reduces it (by sandboxing Google Play Services for example) and improves upon Android security overall (memory allocation, etc).
So yeah, GrapheneOS isn't 100% OSS, as far as I'm aware. But it doesn't expose me to more proprietary stuff like Jolla would.
You're not wrong, but the main selling point of GrapheneOS in comparison to other options is security, and it relies on proprietary software. So to me it looks a bit similar, although I agree that less blobs is definitely important.
>Yes but that was not from Jolla, but some random Twitter user.
So if a random auto blog was saying how Tesla FSD was "ULTRA reliable", it wouldn't be fair for Waymo (or anyone else) to reply back and point that out?
> They should have collaborated with GrapheneOS like Motorola
Well, Motorola is already doing that :)
I for one is happy that there is at least someone out there not happy with the status quo and go with something completely different and homegrown instead of just going with customizing Android and calling it a day.
I had a SailfishOS phone for four years; an Xperia XA2+. The operating system was wonderful, and being able to run Android apps when there was no alternative was a good way of filling in the gaps in the Jolla store.
However, as I've got older I find large phones more and more unwieldy, and I couldn't find a small enough SailfishOS phone to switch to. I'm now running LineageOS on a Jelly Star. The form factor is perfect for me.
Would I return to SailfishOS? Absolutely. But there'd need to be a small phone in the line up for me to migrate to.
I had no idea that you could run Lineage on the Jelly Star! That sounds phenomenal. My dream phone is a Star running Graphene. But short of that, Lineage would be great.
Any notes on your experience?
Which version of LOS do you run exactly? Did you compile it yourself, or did you pick a pre-made version? One from XDA?
I ask, because the device is not officially supported by LineageOS, but if it works well with a different approach it would be an interesting option for me as well.
Can you use teams/outlook on your jelly star? I've been wondering how bad the ux could be in real world use.
Are these non Google non Apple phones viable any more?
Considering you almost can't do banking, and in some places interact with the government, without a locked down phone...
[delayed]
They will be able to do banking at least once the legislators tear down the walled gardens in a sensible way. Are the security benefits from the Appstore/Playstore real or security theatre?
I'm pretty sure that, if there are security benefits, they have been artificially tied to the use of the company's distribution method, that coincidentally really needs to be sending usage statistics, monitoring, etc. Surely there exist no conflicts of interest to be found.
Would you bet your company on that happening soon? :)
Ha! Well, not right now! Previous to the last year or so, this wouldn't have escalated to the current situation where we're actively having to be wary of fending off Big Brother or blatant power grabs.
However, given that we're talking about a European phone, I'm willing to bet that this type of effort goes hand in hand with decoupling from American-backed services (at least for those who've seen the writing on the wall and understand the risk to their sovereignty if they put all their eggs on an American basket).
A similar question could be asked of the banks too.
fifteen years ago I use to do mobile pentests for banks and when we could not find anything significant for the reports we could’ve always count on “lack of rooting detection” and pin the risk on some vague mobile banking malware threat pushed by marketing. I am sorry I contributed to this nonsense.
100% security theater, and here we are.
It's understandable; I would maybe expect to undergo an extra step in verification for a sensitive app like, "we noticed this is the first time you are using this system that is not locked down; please type in the token we have mailed you".
But locking users out (which may not directly be the bank's fault for relying on OS's security APIs) seems anti-competitive.
Looks like the Swedish bankid at the very least actually does work on sailfish[1]!
Not sure about equivalent apps for other regions, but I don't see why they shouldn't work.
[1] https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/swedish-bank-id-swish/11781/3
I just switched to a Fairphone 5 with e/OS, which is a de-googled Android (it uses microG), and am pleasantly surprised how well everything works. My banking apps work, contacts and calendar lived on nextcloud already, the learning apps I use work. The two things I have to get used to is not having google maps, but the map app on there has also worked fine for me so far. And casting to a Chromecast doesn't really work for me, but I can live without that.
Afaik there is an android compatibility layer but I don't know if it allows banking apps to works
It would not in principle, those rely on hardware backed keys with Google's latest iteration of Google Play Integrity. The only success people have had is by using leaked vendor keys and spoofing device fingerprints for old A11-era devices which did not have the hardware baked in. In time even this avenue will no longer work. People have been trying to get around it for a while [1] but afaik the concept is cryptographically airtight.
[1] https://xdaforums.com/t/discussion-the-root-and-mod-hiding-f...
My banking app works fine on a rooted phone that I don't bother faking a proper Play Integrity signature for. Except for a warning about the phone being rooted when setting it up, of course. I'm not 100% sure what happens when you have integrity and lose it by rooting your phone, but I imagine the bank app will log you out.
Bank apps only stop working because banks decided they know better than you.
Unfortunately my bank also switched to Google Pay which does require Play Integrity, so contactless payments are out of the question on that phone now. Maybe if Wero compatible terminals extend support for QR payments I could use my bank app again on that phone.
Maybe I'm out of the loop but what is everyone doing with banking apps on their phones that's so essential. I see this argument all the time but it's baffling to me.
For quite many banks a mobile phone is now the only 2FA they support.
So glad my brokerage supports good old totp.
Or worse.
My bank closed down their old online banking site and the new one needs the phone for 2FA... but ... drumroll ...
... the idiots also want me to keep using the token device to log in before approving the log in via my phone.
Security theater.
So switch the bank? Worked for me.
I'm doing the research ofc. Have other things to look for besides not being dependent on a phone so it will take a bit.
MFA largely, some banks also provide wallets for contactless payments.
I refuse to have my browser fingerprinted as a "trusted device" because part my bank is just bad at it.
Paying for things? Transferring money? What else do you do with a bank account?
The vast majority of people on this site can afford a couple hundred dollars for a basic Android phone that's used only for tasks like that, and as a bonus it's safer than having banking apps on your main phone. Anyone who isn't willing to spend a couple hundred bucks on the freedom to run whatever software they want on their phone probably doesn't consider software freedom a priority anyway.
You are allowed to have more than one cell phone.
If you use it without compatibility layer it's probably on the same level as a kaios phone. There is a lot of slop on the sailfish store.
I really wish them success, but I just can't see it anymore. I had the first version and it seems it didn't move much forward from that time. And there were also many screwups, as poisonborz reminded a bit earlier.
Their UI looked novel, but wasn't that great in practice. It wasn't stable (hopefully that changed) and the lack of real apps was killing it before and now even more, as more banks/govs require some "trusted" apps
I had Sailfish on XPERIA and it was no less stable than Android/iOS in my experience. But that wasn't the first version I don't think.
I dispute your assertion: Sailfish's UI is WAY ahead of iOS and Android. It's simple, consistent, and intuitive; a complete contrast to the mess of iOS and the clunkiness of Android. As for stability, native Sailfish apps on my Xperia XA2 seldom, if ever, crash.
And, to my eyes, it simply looks better.
I won't dispute you. Maybe it evolved into more usable state, but the beginings had many problems and rough edges.
The absence of eSIM is a deal breaker for me. I need to travel to the US for work and last time I was there I was having a hard time to find a physical SIM for the phone I had then.
I certainly do not want to try to talk you into this particular phone – but just in the general case so you know, it's pretty easy to get physical Sims that you can download an eSIM onto.
In 2026, I would not want to travel to the US with a phone that does not have the level of device security of a Pixel with GrapheneOS or an iPhone.
(I actually do not want to travel to the US, period. But that's a different story.)
Would highly recommend not taking your actual phone to the US anyways
That camera bump, though. Maybe they could've shuffled components in such way, that phone would be overall smaller, but as deep as camera bump, to make whole back flat?
Regarding the issues of banking apps: if the EU is serious about tech sovereignty, it's up to members to mandate that banks allow their apps to run on Sailfish, or other alternative operating systems. It really is as simple as that.
(But whether any EU member is capable of rising to this (very shallow) challenge... well, I'm justifiably cynical.)
So many years and they can't(or refuse to?) ship to Asia, ridiculous.
Previously:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216037
This is why i keep saying the Jolla management neds a rethink. Its 2026 GraphenOS is in a partnership with Motorola while Jolla is still doing early 2K style kickstarter campaigns.
The market is there , product is loved and ppeople have proved they are willing to take some pain adopting the product.But still the execution to serve that market is shambolic to say the least.
Jolla does have an arrangement with Sony, so there are a few other device options: https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/
As i recall , they do not come preloaded and the usr has to do a song and dance to flash the ROM with the new OS. While also paying a separete license fee for the OS and updates.
Too much friction and limiting the potential - thats why i reiterate. The SailFishOS is a delight technically and aesthetically - the business side though needs a major overhaul.
Just thinking out loud , they could partner with someone likee huawei to preload for EU/rest of world customers that cannot use HarmonyOS outside CH. Or even one of the other smaller OEM with access to the deep tech ecosystem to give a prebuild/preloaded f;agship at a cost competitive price. Or do a Apple and auction search/maps defaults to keep BOM costs down and aim for widespread adoption.
they sell some preloaded xperias on their website, but i get the impression the only have a few at any given time because ive been checking every now and again and half the time they are sold out
Man I really loved MeeGo, I was in my early teens when I got the N9 specifically because it was such a beautiful experiment from Nokia. Amoled display, MeeGo os and the polycarbonate shell. The phone was hot garbage technically, would over heat had 0 apps and had idle battery times worse than a cup of tea left out on a cold day. However the phone was such a work of art I could accept just about any flaw.
Right after that I got a Blackberry Z10 and there's just something about the multitasking UI in both of these OSs' that just felt like it was the right way of doing it.
Blackberry OS 10 and MeeGo where so wonderful, I truly had a rich experience of mobile phone OSs' growing up.
I'm not sure about Jolla as much though. Like I enjoy having this additional option but I wished they digged deeper into features other than enhanced privacy. Not that I'm complaining, I enjoy having enhanced privacy but if they added more productivity features like the Blackberry Hub.
Nokia N9 still has the most modern and refined user interface, 15 years after being discontinued:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCFNXhiFnKY
But it really was a once in a lifetime experimental device. The aesthetics were a little whack, in an endearing sort of way.
Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project and through all this time they couldn't make a foothold, or even sustain some small motivated community around them. During this time:
- company folded and changed hand multiple times, including russian ownership
- the tablet scandal leaving users with lost funds
- closed source parts
- locked bootloader
- charging a $50 device reset fee
- not much change in Sailfish OS since ages
- buggy Android compatibility and near zero native devs, all jumped ship
At this point I think they are just one of the grifters preying on naive "EU first" supporters shoveling whatever they still have in a new casing.
I'd love the idea of a greenfield EU Linux mobile OS, but I don't think it should come from this company.
"- buggy Android compatibility and near zero native devs, all jumped ship"
I'm a bit confused by this. Are you saying that the developers who once wrote native Sailfish OS apps are no longer writing those native apps?
Is there any hope for using the responsive libadwaita programs from the Mobile Linux space? I realise this isn't particularly large, but it is active.
> Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project
Realistically building a production quality database takes 10 years. Building a production quality game engine takes 10 years.
They're building a mobile operating system and the hardware it runs on; that's harder and a moving target.
How long do you think it takes to build a supply chain of hardware that doesn't suck (if it takes 2 years to get moving: you need to start with hardware specs for 2 years from now) and an operating system that doesn't suck when you're also trying to catch up to a major duopoly cranking out devices at an unfathomable volume, with more money than most nation states?
Your standard is "succeed against Google and Apple within 13 years on a shoestring budget with no volume discounts." How can any project clear that bar?
What would you do?
> Your standard is "succeed against Google and Apple within 13 years..."
Absolutely not. My standard is the many other AOSP-based ROMs communities and companies that were founded around them, having success within a few years - yes, they could lean on the ecosystem compatibility and didn't produce their own hardware, but maybe that's a more viable way to start?
"shoestring budget with no volume discounts" does not explain the points of criticism above.
AOSP is just a totally different destination, it's not a faster route to the same one.
Sailfish is spiritually MeeGo: actual Linux on the phone, not a custom skin on Google's foundations. Obviously it's faster to build a kit-car than a car factory, I don't see how that's a rebuttal, it's an entirely different conversation.
An AOSP fork on Qualcomm hardware isn't independence. Jolla are actually trying to build the factory.
The $50 fee and tablet scandal are fair hits- but fuck-ups don't make you a grifter, and we've forgiven larger players far worse.
You still haven't said what you'd actually do.
I don't see the issue of using AOSP. You get to skip the many years that Sailfish OS will still need in user testing. You get to skip all the possible incompatibilities with Android apps through the compatibility layer. AOSP is also Linux on the phone. I guess you mean GNU/Linux on the phone, but AOSP now also has official support for a Linux VM (you want a VM because traditional desktop Linux security is not great). They are even adding support for running Wayland apps. With the recently-added desktop support, you can plug a phone into an external screen and you'll have a desktop with Android apps and Linux desktop apps.
I think the chance of Google completely closing AOSP is pretty small, AOSP being open maintains a power equilibrium between Google and other OEMs. Closing up AOSP carries the huge risk that Samsung and some other big OEMs will fork it and Google has essentially lost the whole market overnight. I am pretty sure this is why Samsung phones also have the Galaxy Store with a bunch of apps like Netflix in it. The Galaxy Store is Samsung's subtle message to Google saying: don't try to rein us in, we can cut you out.
That said, even if Google closes AOSP, forking it and maintaining it as an open project is going to be far less work than brining Sailfish OS to the level of polish, security, etc. of AOSP.
Why is AOSP a wrong path? Why would it be "tainted"? Any large enough entity can fork. Hundreds already did, successfully. Even China couldn't do otherwise - via Huawei they mutated it to HarmonyOS (becoming much different from its roots, and incompatible to it, structurally becoming superior in many ways). Why throw away 20 years of development and a sea of dev experience?
But even if you insist on a non-AOSP way: Supporting any other, more well regarded projects and initiatives? Random top of my head idea: motivate Fairphone (Denmark) to adopt some non-android OS like Ubuntu Touch?
> Why is AOSP a wrong path?
Because its existence relies on a good will of Google. See:
Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android (9to5google.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028
and
GrapheneOS accessed Android security patches but not allowed to publish sources (grapheneos.social)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45208925
> Any large enough entity can fork.
Only megacorps will likely be able to support a hard fork for such a large codebase.
> Hundreds already did, successfully.
Which of them are hard forks? China will not be a benevolent dictator of AOSP
> Fairphone
It's Android again.
There are indeed non-Android alternatives, but not in Europe. I use Librem 5 btw.
>Because its existence relies on a good will of Google
AOSP is open source. Anyone can fork it.
>Google will allow only apps from verified developers
This is done by Play Services which is not included in AOSP even.
>Only megacorps will likely be able to support a hard fork for such a large codebase.
The same can be said about any operating system. The scope of an operating system is huge.
> The same can be said about any operating system.
GNU/Linux is already supported without a (single) megacorp. So not all OSes have this problem.
@charcircuit
Sailfish is more like GNU/Linux, that is the OS in this context. For Jolla that is less code to maintain themselves then what Google maintains in Android/Linux. Hard forking Android/Linux looks to be quite a big bite to chew on.
Most of Linux is written by corporations and that's just a kernel, not a full operating system like ChromeOS which took Google to be able to build.
I updated my comment to indicate GNU/Linux.
> but I don't think it should come from this company.
Could*, maybe than should, unless you believe that all those things will apply to the phone they plan to release in September. Otherwise I don't see the issue with a company keep trying until they get something right (or give up). Why not?
True, but I also wanted to signify that I find any user trust (eg as a result of this new marketing campaign) is misplaced and steals air from a better alternative.
Which is?
See my reply above
> Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project and through all this time they couldn't make a foothold, or even sustain some small motivated community around them.
Sure, but somehow RCS is viable in 2026. Old projects can come back!
on one hand you're not wrong
on the other, I really, really loved my original jolla phone back in the day. I happily used it as my daily driver and only phone for 2 years. Until it had a hardware fault which I could no longer repair via the company.
I got burned with the tablet too. Still have the phone and the first one t-shirt that went with it, as well as a Nokia N9.
And I agree, it’s turned into a bandwagon grift. They’re also selling AI boxes that do who knows what.
I would like it to have also hardware video output.
Then I could become a PC in our pocket.
Librem 5 already exists: https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/
How can a review of a smartphone not comment on how well it works as a phone? Calling, texting, and battery life are table stakes for a mobile phone, and the last time I heard about this device it was still struggling with those basics.
I think your information is very out of date.
I wrote a bit here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45276516 and here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39461180.
Americans/Canadians (and I guess Asians since they won't ship there) don't waste your time reading this, they have a Mediatek SoC and made the choice long ago to not touch these markets. The devices will not carry the band support needed for these markets.
Europeans, I guess good luck, have fun. I followed them in the early days and ran early builds of Sailfish on the N9, had high hopes but have long given up on them.
EDIT: I will say though I'm still impressed by the libhybris project which went on to make it possible to run linux distros on android SoC's, but the guy who did that for Jolla I think is not with the company anymore for some time.
> The devices will not carry the band support needed for these markets.
Their technical specifications state:
> Cellular: 4G + 5G with dual nano-SIM and global roaming modem configuration[0]
Is that implying "global" is actually not global?
[0] https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-preorder
> The devices will not carry the band support needed for these [non-EU] markets.
Would they have zero radio coverage, or sub-optimal coverage?
Could be a feature for those wanting a Wi-Fi only mobile Linux device.
What network connectivity does it have for US?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but they're aiming to serve the EU and UK (and Norway and Switzerland) markets only. Although, with that said, the page for the September 2026 phone says this (https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-sept-26):
> LTE FDD: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28AB, 66
> LTE TDD: 34, 38, 39, 40, 41
> 5G NR: n1, n2, n3, n5, n7, n8, n12, n20, n26, n28, n38, n40, n41, n66, n77, n78
But I have no idea if that means it'll work for you in the US/elsewhere.
> But I have no idea if that means it'll work for you in the US/elsewhere.
Yeah, that's a fun part of the crazy bandplan for lte/5g where it's just a little here and there without global coordination.
But a look here [1], says it has all 5G bands for AT&T, 2/4 bands for TMo, and 4/5 for Verizon. Seems maybe a bit iffy for TMo, one of the missing bands is n71 (600 MHz) which is extended range that helps fill in coverage.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_5G_NR_networks
Some carriers also require your phone to be on their whitelist - for example AT&T.
And Verizon claims they don't do it that way, but we had a phone that worked on Verizon with an old SIM card until Verizon caught on, and then suddenly it wasn't compatible with their network and couldn't be used on Verizon.
Also missing Band 13, which is Verizon’s main band for coverage
Why aren't modern SoC modems just support all bands? How hard is it?
Just a guess: maybe it requires fairly expensive certification that is not worth it when a SoC family is barely used in a region (yes, I know, chicken-egg).
I used to use a Sony phone with Sailfish but stopped when US shifted to voice over LTE and phones I used were not supported by the networks. If this phone works on US networks, I can't wait to get rid of my Android phone for sailfish. I vibed with Sailfish so hard.
They should have collaborated with GrapheneOS like Motorola instead of starting from scratch with Linux and a proprietary user interface. As it stands, this phone will have worse security than a Pixel with Graphene or the upcoming Motorola phone.
It's not an improvement over common closed source Android varieties either, and will certainly have worse app compatibility than Android. Hardware switches are irrelevant if you can't trust the software.
Their entire raison d'être is to make Sailfish OS (non-Android Linux) phones. I'm happy they're doing it. Graphene OS is great but it's just another Android ROM and still dependent on Google.
They could have done both. GrapheneOS is as dependent on google as their android app compatibility layrr, if I had to guess.
This is part of the (spiritual) lineage of Meego/Maemo, it's much older than GrapheneOS and the latter is older than Android itself
Anyway, it's as secure as any Linux distro as it uses the same standard stack as servers and desktops and does sandboxing[1], which is also really nice from a development perspective. You can harden it like you would a Linux box using standard Linux tools + kernel features.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS#Software_architect...
Did GrapheneOS even exist in 2012? There is history at play here, they are still building forward from the Nokia Linux phones.
Also, what's up with all the sour grapes from people who use or develop GrapheneOS? There seems to be a general force dismissing Sailfish as insecure, without ever explaning how. Can't we just be friends in a de-googled world? Are people from Graphene feeling insecure about Sailfish as competition? It feels to me like infighting in small churches. It turns me off from ever considering GrapheneOS before I even looked into it.
They didn't start from scratch, the first Jolla phone was released in 2013. The Sailfish OS continues the Maemo/MeeGo lineage that Nokia abandoned.
Agreed. Also, the second I found out that their entire UI stack is proprietary I lost all interest in that platform.
Don't the security hardware features of the GrapheneOS phones also rely on proprietary software/firmware?
To my knowledge you have some proprietary firmware blobs, drivers, HAL and the Trusted Execution Environment shipping with GrapheneOS. But replacing Pixel's stock Android with GrapheneOS doesn't expose you to more proprietary components but instead reduces it (by sandboxing Google Play Services for example) and improves upon Android security overall (memory allocation, etc).
So yeah, GrapheneOS isn't 100% OSS, as far as I'm aware. But it doesn't expose me to more proprietary stuff like Jolla would.
You're not wrong, but the main selling point of GrapheneOS in comparison to other options is security, and it relies on proprietary software. So to me it looks a bit similar, although I agree that less blobs is definitely important.
They cannot, because for some reason GrapheneOS is shitting on them
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2029651838975328512
Graphene OS really like to shit on competing projects, it seems. Maybe they're right, but it seems a bit obsessive.
/e/OS: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1946269698498105813
iodéOS: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1892555359656534284
CalyxOS: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1953856218931376421
Unplugged: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1861593971685798351
PinePhone: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1964441930760409499
More projects:
Kicksecure: https://forums.kicksecure.com/t/grapheneos-attacks-kicksecur...
Purism Librem 5 and Pinephone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47260196
Seems fair given that it was in response to a tweet referring to the phone as "ULTRA secure!"
Yes but that was not from Jolla, but some random Twitter user.
They were also shitting on it earlier in December, so GrapheneOS is probably run by some teenagers going through problematic puberty
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115685433938468549
>Yes but that was not from Jolla, but some random Twitter user.
So if a random auto blog was saying how Tesla FSD was "ULTRA reliable", it wouldn't be fair for Waymo (or anyone else) to reply back and point that out?
Is there anything inaccurate in that post by the Graphene devs however?
> They should have collaborated with GrapheneOS like Motorola
Well, Motorola is already doing that :)
I for one is happy that there is at least someone out there not happy with the status quo and go with something completely different and homegrown instead of just going with customizing Android and calling it a day.