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I daily drived the original Jolla Phone. However since I realized that it was even more proprietary (the core apps + UI toolkit Silica is proprietary) than a simple AOSP Android ROM, I decided that my next phone would be a regular Android phone again.
Now I'm dual-booting both postmarketOS and CalyxOS (which is an Android ROM) oh my SHIFT6mq and I have no reason to ever go back to SailfishOS, even though I liked the experience at the time.
I suppose you dual boot them because postmarketOS isn't usable as a daily driver right ?
I liked Sailfish UI a lot, and the fact it was a "standard" Linux with coreutils, git, rsync, etc... by default was the main reason I switched to it. But yeah, I've been quite deceived by their recent "updates". I now have an Xperia 10 III, but there doesn't seem to be much custom ROMs that support it unfortunately (which is also why sailfish support isn't great anyway).
I've used a Sony Xperia 10 III running Sailfish OS for a little over the last year. I've been a recent convert having used iOS before it. You're right that it does have some notable bugs, including the ones you have listed above. For me I don't use the camera for much so while the picture quality is really not good at all, it's fine for me. I also haven't experienced the echo issue, however I've heard people talk about it and I think Jolla officially recognize it as a bug. Excessive battery drain is another issue I have, I need to change daily more or less, it does use quite a bit more power in idle than android.
I haven't really considered switching back because the benefits of sailfish out way the problems, I think a lot of people who care about the camera for example would not make the same judgement call. I find the platform relatively problem free for what I care about. I want a linux system which I can ssh into, have the tools I expect (bash, coreutils, systemd, cron daemon, etc.) and be able to run some linux software (some KDE apps, syncthing, command line tools, etc.). This is why I wanted this phone, for a linux distro. I also required some amount of android support for 2 apps which are applicable in sweden (banking), which works great for me. I'd lastly say the gesture based UI is really nice to use and I like it a lot.
I do wish it had a better camera, I wish they'd open source the propitiatory parts, etc. but it's currently the best option for me. I think folks wanting to switch need to know what problems they'd accept and if Sailfish could be a good option for them.
Thanks for the detailed anwser. Unfortunately, the camera is a no-go for me (I'm 100% fine with the rest), so I'll wait until they (eventually) fix that.
I'm obviously biased as I'm a Jolla employee. But I am using Xperia 10 III as a daily driver. It's possible to use all three cameras; there's a patch which allows you to choose between the three cameras and the selfie camera. You don't have to use the loudspeaker; the echo issue happens very rarely - the last time it happened to me was in June 2022, i.e. over a year ago.
If you already have the device, why don't you try it out yourself?
Thanks for the feedback. I didn't try it because I didn't want to buy Sailfish OS (again...) just to end up with a broken phone, and rollback to android, especially as it breaks the warranty. I figured I could just wait for the next update for these issues to be fixed, but they never came and I simply did not bother getting the test image at this point.
Would you have a link to the patch for the camera ?
Understood - I absolutely recommend trying out the free version before buying a license.
Here's the patch: https://build.sailfishos.org/package/show/sailfishos:chum/x10iii-cam-button
and here's a forum topic about it:
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/toggle-xperia-10iii-cameras/15975
Hi, do you still work at Jolla? What is the current state of the company?
Hi, sorry I haven't been active in Lemmy. No, I don't work at Jolla any longer.
I was first on Nokia n500 than Sony phone (I don't remember witch model) and Sony 10. It's was really good OS but its lack of app and official app is still the same. And I must use a android apps... I miss a concept and idea, but for normal life / business I need up date apps , and communication with others... Graphene os without Google is good, no perfect but it's better solution for my work. Maybe in future will be perfect Linux phone...but it's still not. Sailfish OS...they was a really top chances but it's didn't developed apps... it's was good idea, but it's not enough, Jolla team was missed chances, I think so it's so late now.
I kind of wish I had played with ROMs and stuff earlier. I still like the idea, but I don't use it because I use mobile payments so much that it would be a PITA not to have that working.
I am daily driving SailfishX on an XA2
It has a few bugs and weaknesses, but not having to deal with android or IOS is worth the occasional annoyance. I was planning to upgrade to the 10 III soon, but hearing about your experience i think i wait a bit longer.
I was running on the XA2 Plus and it fit my usae perfectly. But I eventually broke it and decided it was time to upgrade so I picked the latest supported device on Sailfish, the 10 iii. It's unfortunately not ready though seeing the comments I got, so yeah, keep that XA2 for as long as you can :)
I'm jumping between SFOS and rooted Android on my 10 III. I like SFOS very much, but various bugs on 10 III (echo, bad battery life, the lack of camera2 api, OOM killer killing the browser to often, camera suddenly stops in Android apps, etc.) are stopping me from using it as a daily driver. It's great in theory, but not so good in practice (at least for me).
Ok that was my initial fear, and you just confirmed it. Thanks a lot !
Not using SFOS anymore, but I had a real good time with my Xperia XA2 compared to the 10 Mark II because of issues with the aarch64 platform.
One thing that was WAY below Android was the camera quality. A lot of the work happens on a software level that is unpolished on SFOS. GPS was having constant issues (lagging sometimes 30s to 1 minute behind real position) and crashes, and so on...
I got rid of it to come back to stock Android and my XA2 is also running android now as I gave it to my daughter.
But I'm quite interested about the answers you will get.
My experience with the XA2+ was pretty great, and the phone camera wasn't that bad for my use case. I truly enjoyed the experience and wanted the same with the 10 III, but it seems worse than with the XA2