Anbox on SFOS phones

I don’t think he’s making a direct mention to LXC on his Jolla 1, given he immediately implied he wasn’t using LXC on Jolla 1.
He’s just mentioning it as a whole. In this case, LXC already works well running ARM apps in a desktop fashion, thanks to the F(x)tec Pro1.
Also, consider that people willing to run Sailfish OS on a community device, and willing to run Anbox, probably will accept the limitations if it means they can run the most bare essential apps they need from F-Droid, and run the rest natively.

The list of restrictions is long and anyone who wants to use Android apps expects more convenience.

Problems

GPS, Bluetooth, sound playback, camera, app installation, clipboard, notifications, access to the file system inside and outside the container, key assignment in the keyboard and so on. Phone functions, SMS, MMS ?? Hardware sensors ??

This is a conceptual study and not to work effectively. Examples: A messenger may work, but no pictures/video/audio/files are sent, no notifications. Better to write an SMS. Conversations and Threema work, but with many restrictions as described above. Navigation? No speech output, no GPS. Many apps from F-Droid work, but rarely completely. As soon as a special function is included (example show pictures from the gallery, etc.), there is no access to the file system. Either the screen stays blank or the gallery crashes. Take a photo? It does not work…

I’ve tried it on a Nexus 5 with UT where it comes pre-installed. The expectations that some have are not met. Anbox doesn’t solve any problems, Anbox makes new ones for ambitious users :wink:

I forgot. The phone needs a back button, otherwise you won’t come back from the menus and you have to quit and restart the app.

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But it runs without too much crashes, is what I read here. That is already better than a few years ago.

That’s right, but not really useful because of the high power consumption. It halves the battery life on the Nexus 5 and the Pinephone. - and no app is running! There are still crashes if functions that have not been implemented are called.

A nice gimmick but not for serious work… but everyone has to decide for themselves.

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To do screenshots from the command line, I was able to test with Anbox on my computer using adb shell and a command like screencap -p /sdcard/Pictures/screenshot.png. Only the Android app was in the screenshot, so that’s good (maybe the result with other screenshot apps is different). When I tried the command screencap on my Jolla 1 smartphone, the screenshot was empty but finally I was able to take a picture only of the Android app that is currently displayed, using sleep 5; screencap -p /sdcard/Pictures/screenshot.png so I have 5 seconds to display the Android app before the screenshot is taken.

Using Anbox on my computer, I was also able to record all clipboard changes using the open source Android app https://github.com/PRosenb/AdbClipboard with this command (read and display the clipboard every second):
while true; do sleep 1; am broadcast -n ch.pete.adbclipboard/.ReadReceiver; done.
So this is a good reason not to run Android apps in the background when we don’t want the clipboard to be shared. I was not able to reproduce this command on Jolla 1 but the clipboard is shared also for the app currently displayed, for example when using Firefox Android app.

Feel free to test these commands on other Sailfish OS devices. Another security / privacy issue that I had with Android on Jolla 1, is that any Android app can read and create files in Sailfish OS folders which bypasses the chroot isolation (I added a comment about this on https://together.jolla.com/question/107023/running-android-in-lxc-container/). I don’t know if it also happens with other Sailfish OS devices using Android in an LXC container for isolation but at least it does not happen with Anbox on my computer.

I haven’t tested with an open source Android keylogger yet.

The Anbox campaign has move to new website.

There is a new webside of the waydroid project (before anbox)

Nice! But does somebody know what happened to Anbox on Ubtouch? There were 2 crowdfundings, and it seemed that they nearly reached their goals, and there were also videos circulating of prototypes. But since then you didn’t hear anything, also the Twitter account of the main conzributor Rudi Timmerman seems to have disappeared on Twitter. Does somebody have more info? Their approach seemed so successfull :confused:n I was hoping that when it would work out on Ubtouch, it would quickly find its way to SFOS

They raised enough money and decided to close the crowdfunding. They closed the first one because a policy history with the platform or something similar.

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Thats nice, but how did the project advance? I can’t find any new information about it…

There is a telegram group you can ask.

Early Preview of Waydroid on Ubuntu Touch (Pixel 3a)

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What does A.D. stand for ?

Perhaps Alien Dalvik?

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i have waydroid on gs290
i can run deezer and listen to music
even in car when i connect first using i.e.native music app
corona app also works
all that i need

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Is it also coming for Sony Xperia X!? :stuck_out_tongue:

not sure if waydroid deps are same as lxc, but current X kernel is lacking a module for lxc…
https://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1568652&postcount=26

i would just try

its two or three cmd line lines

However, there are people in US available to pay between $1.200 and $2.000 for a smartphone fully Android compatible but secure and privacy compliant.

For a piece of hardware that which the specs are below of Sony Xperia 10 II on GSM-Arena and Jolla sells for $360¹ as you can see:

Other significant differences:

  • hardware kill switches for camera, microphone, bluetooth, wifi and mobile networks.

  • the premium version is build in USA instead of outside the country

The 2nd point can be withdraw and the target price became €1.200¹ while the Jolla top gamma smartphone² is offered for €450 minus the cost for the Alien Dalvik license and others stuff like Sony permission fee of re-locking the boot.

There is a gap larger of €800 per unit between a smoothless user experience and the current Sailfish OS running on Xperia. I cannot say about Jolla OS because I never seen it.

Remains the gap of the kill switches but as long as you can remove the battery to a smartphone, it safe enough. It is not equivalent because kill switch allows the smartphone to be completed discontected but still functional³.

Conclusion

Improving the user experience for SFOS and increase the Android compatibility can bring to Jolla:

  1. a value that fullfil that gap and sell their Jolla Phone '22 and X23 in USA at higher prices

  2. which is more probable and fair, sell much more devices at a little bit more the price listed today⁴

Going for the 2nd way, they will start to raise money to increase - not the number of native applications - but the user experience. In such a way the Sailfish OS will go out the hakers niche and reach the advanced users market.


NOTES

¹ €329 are c.a. $360 at the current exchange rate but usually in consumer electronic the conversion ratio used by companies in proposing their priceses is 1:1) therefore in the following part, I will use 1:1 conversion rate.

² which is the Jolla Phone '22 because the Jolla X23 is a rugged device which is a completely another market and we cannot confuse apple with bananas.

³ in Purism 5, there is not a kill switch for the GPS hardware and in theory the GPS chip is able to fix the position and store it into a internal memory for future uses and it would be not so strange because speed / direction of travelling are differential quantities.

⁴ a reasonable estimation indicates between €30 for the X10 II and €150 for the X24/'24 of added value per unit sold considering a selling 2x of devices.

Jolla does not sell any devices. Probably you are referring to jolla-devices.com, which is an independent seller (actually one person).

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Thanks for the information.

Again, where you see a barrier, I saw an opportunity.

In fact, I evaluated for myself to open an e-store in Italy. Unfortunately, Italy is a country in which security and privacy are a hot topic but also a poor market.

A poor market because people prefer a shiny iPhone to a secure phone. Not poor in terms of poverty because Italy with the highest Gini index¹ in EU have a relatively lot of people that in teory can wish to buy a secure phone but the culture.

Today is a single person shop, tomorrow can be a network distributed among some EU countries and not only in Europe… :wink:

After all, if Jolla were Apple, they would not care about privacy nor they would feel the need to consolidate and expand their business. Because the day they will end of the business, probably it will a sad end also for SailFish OS as well.

I do not think that we have to worry about that they will grow so big to start selling our privacy after having sold to us their phones / solutions. :face_with_hand_over_mouth: :rofl:

NOTES

¹ The Gini index is an economic / finantial index that indicates the concentration of the wealth in a society / country: higher means more poors and more riches but a lack of the middle class.