I bought and used sailfish on a Sony phone (also had a second one), with my work issued SIM card for mainly calling as a test, it also had a few popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and whatnot, maybe for 5 years, but got tired of the interface and apps mediocrity. On a personal phone after several years and several mediocre android phones that had to be switched way too often for my tastes I switched to an iPhone. And as I expected cause had a Mac 20 years ago, despite using Linux for all these years, God what a pleasure to use an iPhone. But anyway got tired of that sailfish phone and replaced it with an older pixel + graphene, not as huge as iPhone but still much better than the sailfish os, in both app support and interface.
If you ask me this are the only tho decent phones now an iPhone or graphene.
That Sony is running murena now I think cause it’s on the table getting an update once in a while.
Wanted to mention that Sailfish has a lot of closed-source components, especially UI-related, despite the overall marketing/"vibe" making it look very open. If anything, AOSP (Android) is more open than Sailfish. I don't think this has changed with Sailfish 5, see e.g.:
Huh. I really don't see the point of this, vs something like GrapheneOS.
Edit: I'm well aware of the differences between typical Linux and Android (especially the security architecture!), and I'm willing to make some sacrifices in the name of FOSS... but only if it's actually FOSS.
Given how sensitive information most people have on their phones (banking, chats, and whatnot), it's a disaster in the making.
The typical answer is "but I'll only use open source apps that I trust". Sandboxing doesn't only protect you against rogue apps, it primarily protects you against 0-days in apps that you do trust.
If it has the "security" architecture of Linux (it's really more of a multi-tenant architecture) then that's a complete deal breaker. Wouldn't want it if it was 1000x faster/betterer than Android.
Our desktop OSes are just incompatible with running untrusted software, and you're gonna want to do that.
/etc configuration instead of the insanely bad system properties crap, glibc instead of bionic (which has even worse POSIX compliance than Windows), ld instead of linker, FHS, not having a batshit insane No-Sockets rule, not needing to port software that already compiles and runs on GNU/Linux, X11/Wayland/Arcan, system services aren't entangled with Java, normal IPC mechanisms instead whatever the fuck binder is. The list goes on.
Android (and by extension GrapheneOS) uses Linux as a kernel, but it lives in its own world and is completely unrecognizable. I'd say it's even more alien than macOS. For most users, the differences don't matter. If you're a programmer or a sysadmin with reasonable expectations, you feel like a fish out of water very fast. And I cannot honestly the changes are for the better.
> /etc configuration instead of the insanely bad system properties crap, glibc instead of bionic [...]
The practical downside, however, is that this phone does not natively run Android apps, while GrapheneOS runs all Android apps bar those that require Play Integrity. Desktop GNU/Linux programs are either unusable or a terrible experience on a mobile device with a small screen and no mouse.
> Desktop GNU/Linux programs are either unusable or a terrible experience on a mobile device with a small screen and no mouse.
Is this an assumption or coming from your experience? Because I'm typing this on a GNU/Linux phone in a desktop browser and use a bunch of desktop applications daily and haven't noticed.
Of course if you run GIMP or something like that it won't fit unless you plug an external screen and a mouse in, but all the applications I use daily are perfectly usable. There's a lot of Kirigami and libadwaita programs these days that just work well on a phone, and if I need to launch my bank's application there's always Waydroid.
Well, can you take a picture that looks better than what I made 20 years ago on a flip phone?
I have a pinephone and try it out year after year.. Well, let's just say that there is so many areas of improvement to make "GNU/linux" run on a mobile device (that sorta includes laptops as well, even though I have done so for years) that we might as well start over from statch.
For example one can't just let everything run whenever it wants, wasting battery life. Android's "more complicated" system and binder was criticized in this thread, but that's exactly what ties together the whole thing to be able to run on a device that fits in your hand, with centrally managed "let's pause this app now" etc
Could you please elaborate, which software is usable on mobile Linux except for Firefox? I've seen multiple people using mobile Linux, and they were using Firefox and webapps for everything, no exceptions.
I can use most native GNU/Linux apps on my Librem 5 like gnome-calculator, gnome-calender, gnome-weather etc. I can run Android apps via Waydroid. F-Droid works fine, too. Its default app store (https://software.pureos.net/categories) provides things like music players, OTP app, and games. Flatpak works, too.
That's true, but is contingent on you running those Android apps for it to be meaningful. I have a very small number of interactive things I do with my phone. For me what matters is that writing software isn't a pain in the ass, my usual expectations on storage (eg remote filesystems) works and works well, maintaining my system works, my non-interactive system scripts work, etc. Almost all of this is broken on Android, and it doesn't really make up for it by breaking it to make it better. I find much of the design choices of the operating system to be completely tasteless.
If you say, rely on google maps, banking apps, apps for your IoT appliances, etc. it's certainly relevant. I don't have any of that though.
For me the most and truest pressing issue is that cell modems are very, very tightly coupled with Android. It's still true for the Jolla Phone that it simply is a worse phone because the modem drivers are buggy. This is a complicated issue that isn't getting better, and is mostly to do with legislation legally mandating the tivoization of cell modems, a weird line in the sand on what responsibilities fall to the hardware or to what software, as well as the modem manufacturers themselves not really caring.
For me the most and truest pressing issue is that cell modems are very, very tightly coupled with Android. It's still true for the Jolla Phone that it simply is a worse phone because the modem drivers are buggy.
My impression (also for Ubuntu Touch, etc.) is that all these systems use the upstream vendors' Linux kernels trees and firmware blobs for Android.
Unfortunately, since we are not talking about Samsung or Google, but just some random Chinese ODMs, it's usually years old Linux versions and ancient firmware blobs full of known holes (e.g. the C2 is running a Linux tree from October 2022). It's only thanks to the tireless work of postmarketOS etc. that some devices boot on modern kernels.
Also Play Integrity (if you run sandboxed Google Play Services), but it only passes at the basic level, which is enough for most apps that use Play Integrity.
The irony you fail to realize, the differences listed in fact would be typical of a random Unix system in the 80s, where it's just a mountain of bad and random opinions stapled on top of a Unix system. Some random and half-baked libc? You got it! Some bizarre and overly convoluted greenfield filesystem structure? It's right there! Completely different and frustrating custom linker behavior? Yep!
Everything I listed was an advantage. Now see, I don't think Unix is the be-all end-all of operating systems design. I don't particularly care for Linux, the BSDs, macOS, etc. But Android is a definite regression in the strongest terms. Give me a PIMOS or Genera or Squeak phone that works well. I'll be happier than I would with a Linux phone.
Ehm, a Pixel 9a is currently 349 Euro here (10a 399 Euro). Given that the OS is free, that's only a 19 Euro difference. For a much better camera, much better SoC, much better pretty much everything.
Of course, if your goal is to run SailfishOS, there is currently not much of another option.
I read somewhere that the owners have ties to russia, but the most important thing is that they’re marketing very aggressively through posts that slander GraphenOS.
IIRC the company tried to become a major mobile operating system in the BRICS countries, which led to Rostelecom, the Russian state telecom operator, purchasing a majority state in the company in the mid-2010s. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the company's management started a new company and moved all their employees and IP over to it to escape the Russian ownership.
Russian Aurora OS was an official Sailfish OS offspring, focused on MDM devices, but Sailfish cut ties with Aurora in 2022, after the Russia-Ukraine war has emerged. It's now developed independently of Sailfish, although they share the same code since the codebase was unified before the split.
I know the people behind SailfishOS, they’re not like, friends or anything: just ex-Nokia developers who got fucked by Microsoft (like I did, btw, which is how I know of them).
I feel like the big tech smartphone duopoly would have a reason to spread such rubbish, but its so patently obvious that I doubt they are so stupid.
It’s a sensitive topic for the US because it is an an EU-backed and funded project to move away from US tech, which undermines US interests globally. which is why you might see some unusually intense anger/vitriol hurled their way and Goebbels-level fabrications
"It acquired new investors in 2016, among them the Russian company Votron. In March 2018 they were joined by Rostelecom (which is state owned) as investor, which took over Votron and OMP."
Note that was after 2014 russian invasion into Ukraine.
(I actually couldn't find information on their nationality, they might be e.g. Ukrainian or second-generation Russian immigrants; Micay is somewhat Russian-sounding too, btw, although I think he's known to have been born in Canada).
GrapheneOS also does, as does iOS (Jobs visited the USSR on July 4th of all days) and Android (Sergey Brin is of Russian descent). The FSB is likely reading over your shoulder as we speak. Also, have you checked your closets lately?
I don't think this is true at all? AOSP is completely open source modulo driver blobs (which Sailfish has too) and Google services.
One can make a fully functional system, modulo drivers, out of only open-source components using AOSP. It's not possible to do this using Sailfish; the compositor, UI libraries (Silica), and most of the "core" apps are still closed source.
Ahh, thanks for the correction, it's the window manager that's closed (lipstick-jolla-home). Regardless, I will stand by my statement that a fully open-source build of AOSP is significantly more complete and useful than a fully open-source build of Jolla.
If we're going to start counting forks, we get to count LineageOS and GrapheneOS for Android, and then the goalposts really move.
A pure AOSP distribution is now lacking a lot of basic apps. Distributions like LineageOS or GrapheneOS fill the gap with their own, but pure AOSP is totally unusable.
I think people got too used to bundling by Apple and Google. For most of the core apps there are good and open source alternatives available.
The main point is that AOSP as a system (modulo firmware) is open source and SailfishOS is not. Also, even though Sailfish has an Android compatibility layer (though only for official devices), compatibility is most likely always going to be worse than 'real' Android.
That said, I hope that Jolla Phone becomes a success, more competition is good. Hopefully being funded better will move them to fully open source the base system.
The Email app had been forked into K-9 Mail, which later became Thunderbird for Android. AOSP Browser no longer made sense to develop after Chromium was ported to Android. And so on. The barebones applications in AOSP have been succeeded by better open source apps outside the AOSP repos. It doesn't make sense to maintain them when nobody putting together an Android distribution would choose to use them over those alternatives.
Because no one was using them. Everyone was replacing them and shipping other apps. AOSP is very modular and customizable letting you configure what apps get included in the OS.
If the openness is important to you, you may want to have a look at other GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone. The former runs an FSF-endorsed Debian derivative.
Personal experience with Jolla:
I bought their first mobile (still have it somewhere) that would be a "Linux Phone that run android app".
Wanted to support it and was ready to expect some bugs but it did not work all.
No support at all, most of android app did not work. The OS was not finished that it was already obsolete. And now there are doing it again like the first one never existed.
I have zero trust in this company
I still have my first Jolla from 2016. Still works and got updates till 2 years ago. The android stuff I used was minimal but worked fine except for bluetooth and nfc. I build my own mostly.
I still have my first Jolla from 2014, I used it until... 2022-ish? My main gripe was that RAM was limited, the OOM killer killed my browser way too often while I was actively using it. I didn't use too much Android stuff, but as far as I remember it mostly worked. I'd expect this new one to work just fine.
The thing that sounds really fishy is the "User configurable physical Privacy Switch". If you can configure it in software (how else?), then it's software-defined. If it's software-defined, then it's not physical.
European companies sometimes take your money and do not deliver the product if you're a foreigner. It happened to me. I have never experienced an American or Chinese company doing the same.
Seems like a lot of European tech companies are kept afloat by "digital sovereignty" and maybe EU grant money, while having products that are far behind US and Chinese competitors. Mistral, W Social, maybe this one. Unfortunately it seems to be starting to backfire to where all EU companies, even legitimate ones, are being tarred with this brush.
To be fair to Jolla, their brand predates the concept of "digital sovereignty" as we know it today. They were making Android alternatives even before China or Apple did.
Went from iPhone (with PostMarketOS on PinePhones as tests) to /e/OS on a CMF Nothing installed by Murena to GrapheneOS on 2nd hand Pixel 8.
I'm not advocating any of those specifically but I do recommend you take whatever step you are comfortable with to a saner mobile technology lifestyle.
IMHO it's a worthwhile learning journey that is probably less challenging and more empowering than you can imagine.
E.g. on most Samsung phones you can uninstall (from the user partition): third-party Meta/Microsoft/etc. apps, the McAfee app scanner that not enabled by default, Gemini, Bixbee, most Google apps, most Samsung apps, some analytics services. You can make a pretty vanilla phone with just OneUI.
That said, best is to grab a Pixel, the only phone with an unlockable bootloader that also has modern device security (separate security processor, MTE, etc.). Installing GrapheneOS gives you a very pristine and quiet OS, while still providing great compatibility through sandboxed Google Play Services.
Also the only OS that provides Android 17 now, besides Pixel OS (and obviously betas like the OneUI 9 beta).
750 USD? I like the idea. And appreciate all the people who support such products, so phones are getting cheaper. But no way I'm getting it for over $150. It looks really cheap, and the marketing is bad, honestly. I think these corporations have spoiled me, and I was really looking for huuuuge wow effect for $750, but it's just a Linux phone.
I got first Jolla Phone ages ago, wanted to love it but in the end I disliked it bebause of gesture-oriented UI (it simply didn't 'click' for me and was annoying to use in the long run).
Right now I'm more excited about PostmarketOS which seems to be more vanilla Linux with more approachable UI…
I like the idea of these new phones that might be a bit more privacy centered, and even with some different OSes but I think the biggest problem for a lot of adoption is the compatibility with things like banking apps, 2fa etc. It makes it quite an impossible daily driver thanks to some strange rules.
2FA is not an issue. Many, but not all banking apps work fine. I have an android phone for 3 apps which I need about once a month. Daily driving a linux phone since 2016.
I get all my 2FA through SMS or a Yubikey. It took a bit of wrangling from corporate IT, but it was "Get my yubikey or SMS working or buy me a company phone and pay for service that I won't use for anything else"
I never really did a lot of banking on my phone before, but it really wasn't that hard to let that go. I'd say the biggest hangup is not having Venmo or something for splitting bills with friends, yard-sales, etc, but I've started carrying some amount of cash again for those instances and it's worked out alright.
Been daily driving a dumbphone since 2023. Yes it takes a bit of work, but it's so SO worth it.
I don't think you NEED to open your online banking on your phone every day. Just use cash and cards.
That's an overgeneralization. In many countries online payments require approval through a smartphone. There are also banks that barely have a mobile banking website (e.g. Bunq last time I had it).
Yup. Which I like, but not the lock in. Anything over 100€ I have set to manually approve by the app. Also if I need to quickly transfer some cash to my current account, who I do regularly enough, I'm a bit out of luck.
I've not heard of a bank in the last while that doesn't have the restrictions, at least in Ireland and Italy.
I think the challenges here exist but the reality is overblown to be honest, the vast majority of banking apps (everything that isn't struck through in that list) work just fine.
Fully agree the concern is discouraging adoption though. I would love to see more of a solution here, it seems like purely anti-competitive behaviour by Android that will block competitors emerging.
I wonder if humanity will ever go back to Nokia times small phones. If this phone was 50% smaller, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I don't want to carry these huge bricks anymore.
People who remember when phones had "flat backsides" and were constantly getting scratched and abraded by regular use just putting them on tables and picking them up again.
The tripod posture is a feature, not a bug.
I still occasionally use my iPhone 4 as a music player, and the flat back not only makes it susceptible to scratching, it makes it hard to pick up off of smooth surfaces like my coffee table. With a bump, you have something to grip.
I really wanted the official Ubuntu phone to catch on. I gave to the IndieGoGo for it but sadly it wasn't funded, so I installed Ubuntu mobile on a different old phone (a OnePlus One I think?) like a decade ago.
I thought it was very cool. It felt a lot more like a "computer that I could use as a smartphone" than a "smartphone with some computer stuff". I thought the interface was clean and nice and it was fun to hack on.
I really should buy a compatible phone and play with it again...I'm sure they've done a lot of work on it.
The Mediatek Dimensity 7100 in this phone does not support MTE and the phone is unlikely to have a secure enclave. So does not meet the GrapheneOS requirements by a long stretch.
Ah I forgot about that. I don't think Russians will allow those companies to return for a very long time. When all the Western companies left the huge markets across verticals were handed out to local and east asian companies.
Russians hate the West and the incumbents know it. If Western companies started to muscle in again they would drop the price to protect their market shares.
Kind of silly to give up your entire market share over an unwinnable war.
reply to below: I had to add the rebuttal to your racist comment earlier (which you ironically deleted) by editing this comment, because I am being throttled and cannot reply to anymore comments.
Stuff gets put together in Finland to form the final device they ship, even if the parts aren't made in Finland. I think a dictionary lookup for "assemble" might help if this explanation did not.
Well, assembly can mean that a pick and place machine is assembling individual capacitors onto a raw circuit board, or it can mean a teenager putting the battery in and putting the battery cover on before packaging it. That’s why “look it up in a dictionary” comments aren’t helpful. We aren’t confused about the word, we are confused what it means in this use because it can have a VERY broad definition.
Pick and place PCB assembly is very different from the final assembly of batteries in terms of who is capturing value and building a reasonable moat. Their sales angle is around European autonomy.
Low wage workers putting batteries in phones is not that, but PCB assembly is much closer to that.
I don't know anything but I thought it's the opposite of that? I thought pick-and-place machines are like fancier 3D printers, and they can be bought and copied anywhere sufficiently advanced, but low-wage assembly workers are organic AGIs that require multi year culture building and prompt engineering know-hows accumulation to be able to achieve and maintain even usable yield rates and cannot be spun up overnight, especially after a workplace was once torn down.
Or am I just spoiled by apparent local regional abundance of cheap roboticists?
Seems much more likely to me that the main board of the phone is assembled in China and the battery and the case, and perhaps the screen are added in Finland. But it would be nice to know for sure.
Exactly this (when nitpicking the phrasing). Is putting the finished unit in the box "assembly" of the delivered product?
OTOH, I'm not sure how much it matters. Apple products are "designed in California" (which is a bit of a lie to begin with), and very much assembled overseas.
Of more interest is how few units they've pre-sold compared to mainstream phones. I wish them well, but I doubt they'll change history.
It's almost like a "ship of Theseus" problem. If something arrived in Finland for assembly that could theoretically be disassembled, does the final product count as being assembled in Finland? What even counts as "assembling"?
Is putting the finished unit in the box "assembly" of the delivered product?
I've seen "Packaged in $country" on boxes before, so I suspect they are two different things.
Like food made in Canada that shows up in American chain stores being labeled "Distributed by QFC." There's lots of rules about this sort of thing.
Reminds me of back in the late 90's when Wal-Mart was all rah-rah about "Made in the USA!" on all of its products. Then my company bought every employee a Sam's Club membership and the cards were all marked "Litho en Mexico."
Is there anybody out there making a thin client device that runs almost everything remotely?
Basically a screen, battery and LTE chip with microSD storage for times
The way most people use phones are functionally useless without internet, so thats already a critical requirement and having the “phone” part of it you can do with 5c of hardware and free software.
Another almost good phone without a mini jack :( User-replaceable battery, SD card port, mini jack, touchscreen that works consistently. Do I really ask for that much?
I'm also a bit dissapointed by that, but the community sponsored me a phone and I've been testing usb dongles. They're actually surprisingly good for no money. I think if I was a daily phones user I would probably be using bt.
Google is so anti open it's the new Microsoft. I hope for a day when my phone runs nixos with Qt apps. Qt is so much better than java that I'm sure I'll be able to make do in 4gb what android takes 16gb for.
In the era of hallucinated apps, this doesn't even seen like an imaginary wishful scenario.
Mal, from Jolla has ports to from the 2 till the 5, I believe. I used an FP2 for about a year. Big difference is andoid app support, not present on the fp ohones.
I still can't take a device with a mid-range Mediatek seriously. Probably from my XDA days, where just its presence meant locked bootloaders and no kernel sources.
Congrats on selling them but "assembled in EU" can't be the main selling point.
I bought and used sailfish on a Sony phone (also had a second one), with my work issued SIM card for mainly calling as a test, it also had a few popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and whatnot, maybe for 5 years, but got tired of the interface and apps mediocrity. On a personal phone after several years and several mediocre android phones that had to be switched way too often for my tastes I switched to an iPhone. And as I expected cause had a Mac 20 years ago, despite using Linux for all these years, God what a pleasure to use an iPhone. But anyway got tired of that sailfish phone and replaced it with an older pixel + graphene, not as huge as iPhone but still much better than the sailfish os, in both app support and interface. If you ask me this are the only tho decent phones now an iPhone or graphene. That Sony is running murena now I think cause it’s on the table getting an update once in a while.
Wanted to mention that Sailfish has a lot of closed-source components, especially UI-related, despite the overall marketing/"vibe" making it look very open. If anything, AOSP (Android) is more open than Sailfish. I don't think this has changed with Sailfish 5, see e.g.:
- https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-os-clarifying-claims...
- https://docs.sailfishos.org/Develop/Open_Source/
Huh. I really don't see the point of this, vs something like GrapheneOS.
Edit: I'm well aware of the differences between typical Linux and Android (especially the security architecture!), and I'm willing to make some sacrifices in the name of FOSS... but only if it's actually FOSS.
If what you want is android and you have privacy concerns, GrapheneOS is probably the best you can get.
Then again, SailfishOS is a linux with much of the usual linux stuff like userland with bash, coreutils, glibc, systemd, wayland, pulseaudio etc.
And way less security, sandboxing is far more limited and the default profile looks pretty much YOLO:
https://github.com/sailfishos/sailjail-permissions/blob/mast...
Given how sensitive information most people have on their phones (banking, chats, and whatnot), it's a disaster in the making.
The typical answer is "but I'll only use open source apps that I trust". Sandboxing doesn't only protect you against rogue apps, it primarily protects you against 0-days in apps that you do trust.
It's very simple, this is about the threat model.
If you are worried about big players profiling you (hard to avoid, high likelihood of happening, low likelihood of damage), then you want Sailfish.
If you are worried about apps profiling you (easy to avoid, high likelihood of happening, moderate likelihood of damage), you want Android or iOS.
Graphene and Sailfish sit on different points on that spectrum, just like OpenBSD and Linux do.
If it has the "security" architecture of Linux (it's really more of a multi-tenant architecture) then that's a complete deal breaker. Wouldn't want it if it was 1000x faster/betterer than Android.
Our desktop OSes are just incompatible with running untrusted software, and you're gonna want to do that.
/etc configuration instead of the insanely bad system properties crap, glibc instead of bionic (which has even worse POSIX compliance than Windows), ld instead of linker, FHS, not having a batshit insane No-Sockets rule, not needing to port software that already compiles and runs on GNU/Linux, X11/Wayland/Arcan, system services aren't entangled with Java, normal IPC mechanisms instead whatever the fuck binder is. The list goes on.
Android (and by extension GrapheneOS) uses Linux as a kernel, but it lives in its own world and is completely unrecognizable. I'd say it's even more alien than macOS. For most users, the differences don't matter. If you're a programmer or a sysadmin with reasonable expectations, you feel like a fish out of water very fast. And I cannot honestly the changes are for the better.
> /etc configuration instead of the insanely bad system properties crap, glibc instead of bionic [...]
The practical downside, however, is that this phone does not natively run Android apps, while GrapheneOS runs all Android apps bar those that require Play Integrity. Desktop GNU/Linux programs are either unusable or a terrible experience on a mobile device with a small screen and no mouse.
> Desktop GNU/Linux programs are either unusable or a terrible experience on a mobile device with a small screen and no mouse.
Is this an assumption or coming from your experience? Because I'm typing this on a GNU/Linux phone in a desktop browser and use a bunch of desktop applications daily and haven't noticed.
Of course if you run GIMP or something like that it won't fit unless you plug an external screen and a mouse in, but all the applications I use daily are perfectly usable. There's a lot of Kirigami and libadwaita programs these days that just work well on a phone, and if I need to launch my bank's application there's always Waydroid.
Well, can you take a picture that looks better than what I made 20 years ago on a flip phone?
I have a pinephone and try it out year after year.. Well, let's just say that there is so many areas of improvement to make "GNU/linux" run on a mobile device (that sorta includes laptops as well, even though I have done so for years) that we might as well start over from statch.
For example one can't just let everything run whenever it wants, wasting battery life. Android's "more complicated" system and binder was criticized in this thread, but that's exactly what ties together the whole thing to be able to run on a device that fits in your hand, with centrally managed "let's pause this app now" etc
Could you please elaborate, which software is usable on mobile Linux except for Firefox? I've seen multiple people using mobile Linux, and they were using Firefox and webapps for everything, no exceptions.
Checking Flathub should give you some idea: https://flathub.org/en/apps/collection/mobile/1
There are more, not every application that works fine has metadata filled up (and not everything is on Flathub either).
I do use some webapps, but with Epiphany rather than Firefox.
I can use most native GNU/Linux apps on my Librem 5 like gnome-calculator, gnome-calender, gnome-weather etc. I can run Android apps via Waydroid. F-Droid works fine, too. Its default app store (https://software.pureos.net/categories) provides things like music players, OTP app, and games. Flatpak works, too.
See also: https://linuxphoneapps.org/
That's true, but is contingent on you running those Android apps for it to be meaningful. I have a very small number of interactive things I do with my phone. For me what matters is that writing software isn't a pain in the ass, my usual expectations on storage (eg remote filesystems) works and works well, maintaining my system works, my non-interactive system scripts work, etc. Almost all of this is broken on Android, and it doesn't really make up for it by breaking it to make it better. I find much of the design choices of the operating system to be completely tasteless.
If you say, rely on google maps, banking apps, apps for your IoT appliances, etc. it's certainly relevant. I don't have any of that though.
For me the most and truest pressing issue is that cell modems are very, very tightly coupled with Android. It's still true for the Jolla Phone that it simply is a worse phone because the modem drivers are buggy. This is a complicated issue that isn't getting better, and is mostly to do with legislation legally mandating the tivoization of cell modems, a weird line in the sand on what responsibilities fall to the hardware or to what software, as well as the modem manufacturers themselves not really caring.
For me the most and truest pressing issue is that cell modems are very, very tightly coupled with Android. It's still true for the Jolla Phone that it simply is a worse phone because the modem drivers are buggy.
My impression (also for Ubuntu Touch, etc.) is that all these systems use the upstream vendors' Linux kernels trees and firmware blobs for Android.
Unfortunately, since we are not talking about Samsung or Google, but just some random Chinese ODMs, it's usually years old Linux versions and ancient firmware blobs full of known holes (e.g. the C2 is running a Linux tree from October 2022). It's only thanks to the tireless work of postmarketOS etc. that some devices boot on modern kernels.
SailfishOS (from Jolla) runs Android applications via Alien Dalvik.
Also Play Integrity (if you run sandboxed Google Play Services), but it only passes at the basic level, which is enough for most apps that use Play Integrity.
I think he was asking about advantages, not "how is it similar to a Unix system from the 80s?"
The irony you fail to realize, the differences listed in fact would be typical of a random Unix system in the 80s, where it's just a mountain of bad and random opinions stapled on top of a Unix system. Some random and half-baked libc? You got it! Some bizarre and overly convoluted greenfield filesystem structure? It's right there! Completely different and frustrating custom linker behavior? Yep!
Everything I listed was an advantage. Now see, I don't think Unix is the be-all end-all of operating systems design. I don't particularly care for Linux, the BSDs, macOS, etc. But Android is a definite regression in the strongest terms. Give me a PIMOS or Genera or Squeak phone that works well. I'll be happier than I would with a Linux phone.
Which system has better security from an end-user perspective?
Only iOS comes anywhere close.
My xperia 10 iii was 280€(+50€ OS) vs 500€++ for a pixel.
But I hate phones. All I want is navigation, sms/call, signal, steam and firefox.
Ehm, a Pixel 9a is currently 349 Euro here (10a 399 Euro). Given that the OS is free, that's only a 19 Euro difference. For a much better camera, much better SoC, much better pretty much everything.
Of course, if your goal is to run SailfishOS, there is currently not much of another option.
You might be interested in the callback:
https://commodore.net/callback/
It's pretty cool looking! Very optimistic about it.
It doesn't have any web browsers. Who you are replying to wants Firefox.
The Pixel 10a is on sale for $399 on Amazon right now, and it's a far better device, and it can run GrapheneOS.
I read somewhere that the owners have ties to russia, but the most important thing is that they’re marketing very aggressively through posts that slander GraphenOS.
> they’re marketing very aggressively through posts that slander GraphenOS
I would really appreciate it if you could give some references - any at all - to back this claim.
All I have seen is GrapheneOS folks (or probably just a certain individual affiliated with the GrapheneOS org) accusing them of doing this.
IIRC the company tried to become a major mobile operating system in the BRICS countries, which led to Rostelecom, the Russian state telecom operator, purchasing a majority state in the company in the mid-2010s. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the company's management started a new company and moved all their employees and IP over to it to escape the Russian ownership.
Oh, thanks for sharing. everything russia related is a hard pass until they repent
Russian Aurora OS was an official Sailfish OS offspring, focused on MDM devices, but Sailfish cut ties with Aurora in 2022, after the Russia-Ukraine war has emerged. It's now developed independently of Sailfish, although they share the same code since the codebase was unified before the split.
Jesus christ, what is this FUD?
I know the people behind SailfishOS, they’re not like, friends or anything: just ex-Nokia developers who got fucked by Microsoft (like I did, btw, which is how I know of them).
I feel like the big tech smartphone duopoly would have a reason to spread such rubbish, but its so patently obvious that I doubt they are so stupid.
It’s a sensitive topic for the US because it is an an EU-backed and funded project to move away from US tech, which undermines US interests globally. which is why you might see some unusually intense anger/vitriol hurled their way and Goebbels-level fabrications
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla
"It acquired new investors in 2016, among them the Russian company Votron. In March 2018 they were joined by Rostelecom (which is state owned) as investor, which took over Votron and OMP."
Note that was after 2014 russian invasion into Ukraine.
You mean that GrapheneOS has ties to Russia? https://ised-isde.canada.ca/cc/lgcy/fdrlCrpDtls.html?p=0&cor...
(I actually couldn't find information on their nationality, they might be e.g. Ukrainian or second-generation Russian immigrants; Micay is somewhat Russian-sounding too, btw, although I think he's known to have been born in Canada).
No, Jolla. They worked with the Russian government. But they cut ties even before the 2022 invasion:
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/plea-for-official-statement-f...
GrapheneOS also does, as does iOS (Jobs visited the USSR on July 4th of all days) and Android (Sergey Brin is of Russian descent). The FSB is likely reading over your shoulder as we speak. Also, have you checked your closets lately?
They are (slowly) releasing more and more components
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/open-sourcing-proceeding/2468...
https://github.com/sailfishos/sailfish-weather/
https://github.com/sailfishos/jolla-camera
It's still more open than AOSP
> It's still more open than AOSP
I don't think this is true at all? AOSP is completely open source modulo driver blobs (which Sailfish has too) and Google services.
One can make a fully functional system, modulo drivers, out of only open-source components using AOSP. It's not possible to do this using Sailfish; the compositor, UI libraries (Silica), and most of the "core" apps are still closed source.
The compositor is open (Lipstick) : https://github.com/sailfishos/lipstick
And OSS projet based on the SFOS core exist : https://nemomobile.net/, https://github.com/nemomobile-ux
Ahh, thanks for the correction, it's the window manager that's closed (lipstick-jolla-home). Regardless, I will stand by my statement that a fully open-source build of AOSP is significantly more complete and useful than a fully open-source build of Jolla.
If we're going to start counting forks, we get to count LineageOS and GrapheneOS for Android, and then the goalposts really move.
A pure AOSP distribution is now lacking a lot of basic apps. Distributions like LineageOS or GrapheneOS fill the gap with their own, but pure AOSP is totally unusable.
I kinda wish NemoMobile would be default UI… current SailfishUI with force gestures is (for me) highly annoying…
If I remember correctly a lot of AOSP core apps have been discontinued though.
I think people got too used to bundling by Apple and Google. For most of the core apps there are good and open source alternatives available.
The main point is that AOSP as a system (modulo firmware) is open source and SailfishOS is not. Also, even though Sailfish has an Android compatibility layer (though only for official devices), compatibility is most likely always going to be worse than 'real' Android.
That said, I hope that Jolla Phone becomes a success, more competition is good. Hopefully being funded better will move them to fully open source the base system.
Yes and most people don't realize that the current "AOSP" apps are the LineageOS apps.
A true AOPS image is missing most core Apps.
The Email app had been forked into K-9 Mail, which later became Thunderbird for Android. AOSP Browser no longer made sense to develop after Chromium was ported to Android. And so on. The barebones applications in AOSP have been succeeded by better open source apps outside the AOSP repos. It doesn't make sense to maintain them when nobody putting together an Android distribution would choose to use them over those alternatives.
Because no one was using them. Everyone was replacing them and shipping other apps. AOSP is very modular and customizable letting you configure what apps get included in the OS.
I think you mean less. Since AOSP is fully open?
If the openness is important to you, you may want to have a look at other GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone. The former runs an FSF-endorsed Debian derivative.
Personal experience with Jolla: I bought their first mobile (still have it somewhere) that would be a "Linux Phone that run android app". Wanted to support it and was ready to expect some bugs but it did not work all. No support at all, most of android app did not work. The OS was not finished that it was already obsolete. And now there are doing it again like the first one never existed. I have zero trust in this company
I still have my first Jolla from 2016. Still works and got updates till 2 years ago. The android stuff I used was minimal but worked fine except for bluetooth and nfc. I build my own mostly.
I still have my first Jolla from 2014, I used it until... 2022-ish? My main gripe was that RAM was limited, the OOM killer killed my browser way too often while I was actively using it. I didn't use too much Android stuff, but as far as I remember it mostly worked. I'd expect this new one to work just fine.
The thing that sounds really fishy is the "User configurable physical Privacy Switch". If you can configure it in software (how else?), then it's software-defined. If it's software-defined, then it's not physical.
I was about to write the same. I even had a chance to meet their then CTO at their booth in WMC in Barcelona and complain in person but well …
I used it as a daily driver back in 2014/15 and it worked ok from what I remember.
Careful with preordering, they seem to ignore requests to cancel & the community is rather hostile to any form of criticism
thanks for this. as soon as I realized it was a European company I already had some doubts going in. Won't be ordering.
Wait, what? What is wrong with European companies by default?
European companies sometimes take your money and do not deliver the product if you're a foreigner. It happened to me. I have never experienced an American or Chinese company doing the same.
They don't harvest all personal data becase they don't give a duck like the Usanian counterparts /s
Seems like a lot of European tech companies are kept afloat by "digital sovereignty" and maybe EU grant money, while having products that are far behind US and Chinese competitors. Mistral, W Social, maybe this one. Unfortunately it seems to be starting to backfire to where all EU companies, even legitimate ones, are being tarred with this brush.
> Seems like a lot of European tech companies are kept afloat by "digital sovereignty" and maybe EU grant money
woah indeed.
Good ol' European statism at work.
To be fair to Jolla, their brand predates the concept of "digital sovereignty" as we know it today. They were making Android alternatives even before China or Apple did.
Went from iPhone (with PostMarketOS on PinePhones as tests) to /e/OS on a CMF Nothing installed by Murena to GrapheneOS on 2nd hand Pixel 8.
I'm not advocating any of those specifically but I do recommend you take whatever step you are comfortable with to a saner mobile technology lifestyle.
IMHO it's a worthwhile learning journey that is probably less challenging and more empowering than you can imagine.
For those who do not have the funds for anything else, its worth looking into uad-ng:
https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
E.g. on most Samsung phones you can uninstall (from the user partition): third-party Meta/Microsoft/etc. apps, the McAfee app scanner that not enabled by default, Gemini, Bixbee, most Google apps, most Samsung apps, some analytics services. You can make a pretty vanilla phone with just OneUI.
That said, best is to grab a Pixel, the only phone with an unlockable bootloader that also has modern device security (separate security processor, MTE, etc.). Installing GrapheneOS gives you a very pristine and quiet OS, while still providing great compatibility through sandboxed Google Play Services.
Also the only OS that provides Android 17 now, besides Pixel OS (and obviously betas like the OneUI 9 beta).
I gave them money once on Kickstarter. Never got anything and they held my money hostage for years.
I'm never ever, ever buying anything from Jolla. They can go out of business for all I care.
750 USD? I like the idea. And appreciate all the people who support such products, so phones are getting cheaper. But no way I'm getting it for over $150. It looks really cheap, and the marketing is bad, honestly. I think these corporations have spoiled me, and I was really looking for huuuuge wow effect for $750, but it's just a Linux phone.
> European alternative
What about the regulatory side where all of Europe is starting to require stock Android or iOS to even have an ID card?
Have they unlocked the bootloader? Can I install a different OS on it?
I got first Jolla Phone ages ago, wanted to love it but in the end I disliked it bebause of gesture-oriented UI (it simply didn't 'click' for me and was annoying to use in the long run).
Right now I'm more excited about PostmarketOS which seems to be more vanilla Linux with more approachable UI…
I ordered two in the September batch, which was way less expensive.
Jolla phones are fine. I have friends who use it every day. Happy to support them all the best I can.
—— Sent from my iPhone 17 Pro
I like the idea of these new phones that might be a bit more privacy centered, and even with some different OSes but I think the biggest problem for a lot of adoption is the compatibility with things like banking apps, 2fa etc. It makes it quite an impossible daily driver thanks to some strange rules.
2FA is not an issue. Many, but not all banking apps work fine. I have an android phone for 3 apps which I need about once a month. Daily driving a linux phone since 2016.
I get all my 2FA through SMS or a Yubikey. It took a bit of wrangling from corporate IT, but it was "Get my yubikey or SMS working or buy me a company phone and pay for service that I won't use for anything else"
I never really did a lot of banking on my phone before, but it really wasn't that hard to let that go. I'd say the biggest hangup is not having Venmo or something for splitting bills with friends, yard-sales, etc, but I've started carrying some amount of cash again for those instances and it's worked out alright.
Been daily driving a dumbphone since 2023. Yes it takes a bit of work, but it's so SO worth it.
Unfortunately for the foreseeable future you'd need a cheap Android or iOS device for those apps and whatever you want as daily driver.
I don't think you NEED to open your online banking on your phone every day. Just use cash and cards.
2FA should be easily available on any OS
I don't think you NEED to open your online banking on your phone every day. Just use cash and cards.
That's an overgeneralization. In many countries online payments require approval through a smartphone. There are also banks that barely have a mobile banking website (e.g. Bunq last time I had it).
Yup. Which I like, but not the lock in. Anything over 100€ I have set to manually approve by the app. Also if I need to quickly transfer some cash to my current account, who I do regularly enough, I'm a bit out of luck.
I've not heard of a bank in the last while that doesn't have the restrictions, at least in Ireland and Italy.
There's a compatibility list at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa....
I think the challenges here exist but the reality is overblown to be honest, the vast majority of banking apps (everything that isn't struck through in that list) work just fine.
Fully agree the concern is discouraging adoption though. I would love to see more of a solution here, it seems like purely anti-competitive behaviour by Android that will block competitors emerging.
Perhaps my bank is special (Triodos), its app works just fine on the Jolla.
I wonder if humanity will ever go back to Nokia times small phones. If this phone was 50% smaller, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I don't want to carry these huge bricks anymore.
Who designed such ridiculous camera bump? It would be a really nice device, if only it had a flat backside.
Who designed such ridiculous camera bump?
People who remember when phones had "flat backsides" and were constantly getting scratched and abraded by regular use just putting them on tables and picking them up again.
The tripod posture is a feature, not a bug.
I still occasionally use my iPhone 4 as a music player, and the flat back not only makes it susceptible to scratching, it makes it hard to pick up off of smooth surfaces like my coffee table. With a bump, you have something to grip.
does this have some weird ad tech? It turns white screen on me.
I hope Ubuntu Touch has native support for this, as it's a great OS with massive potential and active community.
I really wanted the official Ubuntu phone to catch on. I gave to the IndieGoGo for it but sadly it wasn't funded, so I installed Ubuntu mobile on a different old phone (a OnePlus One I think?) like a decade ago.
I thought it was very cool. It felt a lot more like a "computer that I could use as a smartphone" than a "smartphone with some computer stuff". I thought the interface was clean and nice and it was fun to hack on.
I really should buy a compatible phone and play with it again...I'm sure they've done a lot of work on it.
If this Sailfish phone is 700 and Commodore's is 500, I know which Sailfish device I can pay attention to.
What do you mean?
Ship to the US with GrapheneOS and I'll be first in line :)
The Mediatek Dimensity 7100 in this phone does not support MTE and the phone is unlikely to have a secure enclave. So does not meet the GrapheneOS requirements by a long stretch.
Does anyone know when they'll sell their company and product to russia again?
They will sell in Russia when it’s legal to do so, just like every other company.
Are you talking about European companies? There are already many companies in Russia doing extremely well like Korean and Japanese companies
European or American.
Currently Russia is sanctioned so it’s illegal to do business there. If it were legal they would be straight back.
Ah I forgot about that. I don't think Russians will allow those companies to return for a very long time. When all the Western companies left the huge markets across verticals were handed out to local and east asian companies.
Russians hate the West and the incumbents know it. If Western companies started to muscle in again they would drop the price to protect their market shares.
Kind of silly to give up your entire market share over an unwinnable war.
reply to below: I had to add the rebuttal to your racist comment earlier (which you ironically deleted) by editing this comment, because I am being throttled and cannot reply to anymore comments.
Don’t completely rewrite your comments after somebody replied.
After they make Zelensky pres.
I hope it eats you if you don't wear your Christmas clothes
What does "Assembled in Finland" mean?
Stuff gets put together in Finland to form the final device they ship, even if the parts aren't made in Finland. I think a dictionary lookup for "assemble" might help if this explanation did not.
Well, assembly can mean that a pick and place machine is assembling individual capacitors onto a raw circuit board, or it can mean a teenager putting the battery in and putting the battery cover on before packaging it. That’s why “look it up in a dictionary” comments aren’t helpful. We aren’t confused about the word, we are confused what it means in this use because it can have a VERY broad definition.
Pick and place PCB assembly is very different from the final assembly of batteries in terms of who is capturing value and building a reasonable moat. Their sales angle is around European autonomy.
Low wage workers putting batteries in phones is not that, but PCB assembly is much closer to that.
I don't know anything but I thought it's the opposite of that? I thought pick-and-place machines are like fancier 3D printers, and they can be bought and copied anywhere sufficiently advanced, but low-wage assembly workers are organic AGIs that require multi year culture building and prompt engineering know-hows accumulation to be able to achieve and maintain even usable yield rates and cannot be spun up overnight, especially after a workplace was once torn down.
Or am I just spoiled by apparent local regional abundance of cheap roboticists?
Seems much more likely to me that the main board of the phone is assembled in China and the battery and the case, and perhaps the screen are added in Finland. But it would be nice to know for sure.
I read it as "how much is actually assembled in Finland versus arriving pre-assembled?"
Probably things like fixing the mainboards to the casing, putting in batteries, back covers, flashing the software, running hw tests, packaging etc.
the pieces of the phone are put together in the country of finland
Yes, but which pieces are put together there and which are already assembled elsewhere?
Exactly this (when nitpicking the phrasing). Is putting the finished unit in the box "assembly" of the delivered product?
OTOH, I'm not sure how much it matters. Apple products are "designed in California" (which is a bit of a lie to begin with), and very much assembled overseas.
Of more interest is how few units they've pre-sold compared to mainstream phones. I wish them well, but I doubt they'll change history.
there is a legal differentiation between putting a finished product into a box ("packaged in") and assembling component pieces ("assembled in")
It's almost like a "ship of Theseus" problem. If something arrived in Finland for assembly that could theoretically be disassembled, does the final product count as being assembled in Finland? What even counts as "assembling"?
Is putting the finished unit in the box "assembly" of the delivered product?
I've seen "Packaged in $country" on boxes before, so I suspect they are two different things.
Like food made in Canada that shows up in American chain stores being labeled "Distributed by QFC." There's lots of rules about this sort of thing.
Reminds me of back in the late 90's when Wal-Mart was all rah-rah about "Made in the USA!" on all of its products. Then my company bought every employee a Sam's Club membership and the cards were all marked "Litho en Mexico."
What does their website say?
Why so expensive :(
Is there anybody out there making a thin client device that runs almost everything remotely?
Basically a screen, battery and LTE chip with microSD storage for times
The way most people use phones are functionally useless without internet, so thats already a critical requirement and having the “phone” part of it you can do with 5c of hardware and free software.
Another almost good phone without a mini jack :( User-replaceable battery, SD card port, mini jack, touchscreen that works consistently. Do I really ask for that much?
I'm also a bit dissapointed by that, but the community sponsored me a phone and I've been testing usb dongles. They're actually surprisingly good for no money. I think if I was a daily phones user I would probably be using bt.
Did you consider Librem 5 or Pinephone?
Google is so anti open it's the new Microsoft. I hope for a day when my phone runs nixos with Qt apps. Qt is so much better than java that I'm sure I'll be able to make do in 4gb what android takes 16gb for.
In the era of hallucinated apps, this doesn't even seen like an imaginary wishful scenario.
> Google is so anti open it's the new Microsoft.
You can unlock a Pixel's bootloader and install GrapheneOS. It would be highly ironic if the Jolla's was locked.
GrapheneOS seems to focus on privacy and security, not freedom.
why this over Fairphone?
Mal, from Jolla has ports to from the 2 till the 5, I believe. I used an FP2 for about a year. Big difference is andoid app support, not present on the fp ohones.
fair enough!
> 99€ down payment to lock your October delivery
...
I still can't take a device with a mid-range Mediatek seriously. Probably from my XDA days, where just its presence meant locked bootloaders and no kernel sources.
Congrats on selling them but "assembled in EU" can't be the main selling point.
Their branding & website looks like a generic fake shop that was created in 30 mins for testing or scamming