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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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 / 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.
> 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!
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.