Very informative comment @wetab73
That helps of course to change my opinion.
sometimes i wish i could write the 2 magic words, when i read comments like this.
but the netiquette forces us to be polite.
Sorry for the choice of words, I admit I exaggerated, but I leave it as it is and one can report.
I do stand by these:
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Always pick your gadgets as free as the can come, as you would pick hardware for your linux computer.
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If you cannot do the above, put up with evolving the current situation, and make a change for everyoneâs good: write that bluetooth middleware that solves it.
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If you cannot do the above, find projects that already solved these problems, link them here, maybe somebody else has the knowledge to deliver the solution
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If you cannot do any of the above, complain about it but make it clear that you donât know how to fix it and youâd humbly expect someone else to fix it.
If you reached point 4 without humbleness, then my words are directed to wake you up.
p.s. The diminishing words were for hardware and api makers, not for us the clients.
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@vlagged wrote here already the main Points. There is nothing to add.
If someone canât live without Bluetooth in Alien Dalvik - just buy Android phone and be happy. Everything will work. Many people did that already, there are really good Free and Open Source Android derivates around, where all that âvery important closed source appsâ will work. If you need Sailfish because it GNU Linux OS - than the non working Bluetooth in Alien Dalvik shouldnât bother you.
Or you can whine and whine all the time here in forum how bad this is to take 2 mobiles with you.
Or you can write you own middleware which will somehow disconnect the Bluetooth chip from the host OS and connect it to the virtualisation
Or you can write open source APIs and Apps which will not rely on buggy closed source Apps.
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The point is to close the gap for some apps, which are not yet ported to SailfishOS. But when you use SailfishOS only because of Android Emulation, why you need SailfishOS than?
And donât tell me please about the end of the OS, when it will be used by the âhandfull of nerdsâ. We are a Handfull of nerds compared to Android and IOS User base. Its an Niche-OS and this is good so. I donât want it became the same garbage as Android.
And btw.: You need an app for Railway connections which need bluetooth from the Android? I check the railway connections from Fahrplan (Native SF App), ok maybe you donât live in Germany and need other apps, but why the hell they need Bluetooth?
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Just as much as yours about what you can live without, ridiculing and reducing the usability of Bluetooth support to âpeople not being able to live without opening a car or a scooter from the phoneâ. Very informative, indeed.
A relative of mine who has to use a wearable device monitoring 24/7 his sugar levels in blood (severe diabetes) loves Sailfish but cannot make SFOS his daily driver because of just one single reason: that monitoring device communicates with the smartphone via Bluetooth and of course there are only Android and iOS variants of the application.
Same problem is with smartwatches serving many people with real time health monitoring (especially cardio). There is no way to normally use them with SFOS, for the very same reason.
And so on, and so forth. So no, it is not just opening scooters.
Why would I care to try to change your opinion? It has absolutely no impact on whether Jollyboys ever bother to add the missing Bluetooth support or not.
In this whole thread I only wrote half a line of text - merely a simple example that just because one can live without something doesnât mean much about its actual usability or importance, especially to other people.
Well, if such an entirely innocent and polite comments like that one is what makes you want to say 2 magic words in return, then please 2 magic words too, possibly twice. And a happy new year.
Plonk.
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Your comment was not polite and not innocent at all. If you find it so doesnât mean another one will find it the same way. Thats all. What you give - is what you get back. But you are absolutely right, lets mute each other and (hopefully) never meet again. Happy new year also for you.
Than Sailfish is not the right device for this person. So simple as that.
Exactly! And thatâs why as the person who suggested me to ****, you were kindly requested to do the same, too. Iâm glad that we both agree how it should work, especially if the only reason of your reaction was writing (let me quote it in its ENTIRETY) âone can live without legs and/or arms, too. So what?â, which basically meant that only because one CAN live without something (be it Bluetooth support, or leg, or liver) doesnât mean that it is useless (oh, maybe except for vermiform appendix 
). Anyway, there wasnât a trace of impoliteness in that, so either you didnât understand it or you must be overly sensitive.
Why would the ENTIRE Sailfish OS be ânot rightâ for that person? In his opinion the OS has multiple highly important advantages and he literally loves it. And he does have a SFOS phone and tries to use it as much as he can. But at the same time he is literally FORCED to use an Android phone as his main device, because he cannot get his diabetes monitoring readings and warnings on SFOS, and it is - literally - a matter of life or death for such person⌠But still, telling that only because of that the ENTIRE platform is ânot rightâ from him is actually quite a simplification and generalization.
Same for smartwatches - thereâs no way to normally use them with SFOS phones. Amazfish tries to help, but it only covers older and simpler devices, and only partially. New powerful smartwatches are not supported at all, and without an Android phone you canât even properly sync time, let alone all the data. Does it mean that only because of that I shall dump SFOS? Obviously not. But this is what forces me to use an Android phone specifically for smartwatch handling, which makes me curse everytime I have to do it. And I still end up with only small part of smartwatch functionality as the rest is not really possible without permanent companion of dedicated app that only communicates via Bluetooth.
The idea of Android support was to fill the app gap. And it mostly does it. Actually, lack of Bluetooth support is probably the only missing piece, because of which the App Support is only able to cover some - say - 70% of Android app/functionality gap rather than 100%. But telling someone that only because he needs a specific functionality from those missing 30% âthe entire Sailfish is not right from himâ isnât serious, because no one here ever said that those missing Bluetooth uses are SOLELY what one wants to use his SFOS phone for.
The question is why Jolla doesnât address this missing piece, if they - allegedly - target the automotive market with App Support. How do they expect such an automotive platform to communicate with the driverâs smartphone if not via Bluetooth?
Anyway, thatâs it from me regarding this. Jolla probably wonât give a flying saucer about it anyways, so letâs move on. Ein glĂźckliches neues Jahr. And chill out, bro.
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Lets end the endless conversation, i wish you the next time to think not only about what you write, but also about how you write it. Everybody has the right of his own opinion as long it not offence others. Your comment offended me and i answered you what i wish to do, when i read such statements. I hope we both said, what we had to say, and we can end it now.
Back to the topic: Again, IMHO: The problem is not the âbadâ Jolla who do not want to integrate the latest âso importantâ function. If it would be an easy task - it would be already done. The Problem is, that people want a Non-Mainstream OS to use Mainstream Apps. This is the wrong path. You canât live without Mainstreem Apps, which are only available on IOS and Android - than you need IOS and Android. You want something cool, geekey and GNU-Like - than be prepared to make sacrifices.
There is a cool device on the market with a funny name âMooshimeterâ (I better not write here, what it would mean in German when you read or pronounce it, probably the US inventors were not informed about its German meaning. But back to the case:
Its a Bluetooth Multimeter. The python code is FOSS, but the 2 official Apps are of course only for IOS and Android.
I asked here in the forum, if someone could use the python code to create an native Sailfish App for it.
In 3 days - the first version of VoltFish was in the Storeman.
This is an example how it should work.
Better to ask, nerve, force the app or device developer to open source their apps so we can get native SailfishOS Apps. (Bluetooth works great in SailfishOS) instead of whining how bad Jolla is, that it donât want to deliver the hardware access for a device, which is part of the Linux Host OS dev tree - to the virtualisation, which works absolutely independent.
Maybe it will come one day, maybe not. Life continues. lets make life better instead of asking for something which is not impossible, but very complex and expensive to realizeâŚ
And by the way: I ask me, what had all people with diabetes done, when there were no wearable devices? The measured they blood sugar with a simple offline device. So its not a question about life and death. If someone uses a device which only works on IOS or Android and has no alternatives - than this person need exact this device. It can be second, third or whatever device. In this case this person has 3 possibilities:
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Ask the hardware developer to opensource the API or the Source code of the wearable device to write a native SailfishOS App or ask for the help with writing.
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Use SailfishOS as a main phone and Android/ios for his diabetes measurements.
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Use only IOS / Android.
When i would be Jolla, i would be very careful, with such devices and/or Apps. I see on the horizon some lawsuits against Jolla where someone died, because the sugar measurements from the Android Virtualisation was buggy, or not correct, or whateverâŚ
When you ask me, i would not give my life in the hand of developers of an closed source app which is only available on Android or IOS. I am pretty sure, there exist alternatives.
Smartwatches, well. I have one and it works with Amazfish. I donât need a watch which tracks me and ask me if i already was in the toilet, but maybe someone need it⌠Again, its only my opinion.
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Itâs a free world, so you have full right to feel offended by whatever you want, including merely stating an obvious fact that one can live without a leg or arm. Iâve seen much more bizarre things on the Internet than feeling offended by a few vowels and consonants, so letâs just move on.
Another silly generalization and oversimplification, once again ridiculing people who use smartwatches e.g. for health monitoring (blood pressure, pulse, ECG, SpO2 blood saturation, etc.), quite often because of cardiac, circulatory or respiratory problems, or for sport. You keep ridiculing and bashing such people and their needs in almost every single post of yours, while at the same time acting as a poor victim of alleged offence. Quite an interesting behavior from a psychological point of view.
As for tracking you, donât worry, your smartphone tracks you just as much as typical smartwatch, regardless of the OS you have in it, because it lives on a hardware level in the SoC, which since 9/11 has been officially permitted and openly admitted. Just like all your phone calls being recorded, monitored live for certain words and phrases and triggering certain actions if the result is positive, and then stored for 10 more years (along with all your SMS) should any authority ever need them.
Really funny. The same way they could be sued for literally anything else, e.g. GPS support (fully relying on those shitty AOSP blobs) giving incorrect coordinates and guiding someone seeking urgent medical help to cemetery rather than emergency, or their reverse-engineered beta VoLTE support getting disconnected in the middle of an emergency call, or the ever-green âsudden disappearance of audioâ bug that has been in SFOS for ages suddenly appearing in the midst of such a call, and so on. So, following your opinion, they should actually quit their business altogether as rapidly as possible, because bugs and issues can (and do) happen not only with Bluetooth but with actually anything else.
What kind of silly question is that? Itâs like asking what were hearing impaired people doing when there were no hearing aids yet. It absolutely doesnât matter what they were doing then, if now there are technological advances that can make such peopleâs lives much easier and better. It is not for fun, it is to give an impaired person a better life. Whereas you keep regularly ridiculing it to âopening scootersâ or âtelling someone if he already was in the toiletâ, which makes such discussion pointless.
Whoâs ever said anything else? Havenât I told you exactly that, i.e. that my relative is forced to use an Android device as his main phone only because of no Bluetooth support in AAS?
Which is a pity, because then we hear all that never ending whining about too small number of SFOS licences being sold to make this business profitable, and therefore it being such a small company that they have no man power needed to push it further at the pace the rest of the world is spinning, and so on. Closed circle.
It is Android Support what many people buy the licence for, as the whole rest of Sailfish OS itself is available free of charge, so people clearly need that functionality and access to mainstream apps and also cooperation with mainstream devices like the aforementioned wearables.
Let me repeat my question: how do they intend to succeed with their Android Support in the AUTOMOTIVE BUSINESS that they allegedly have such high hopes and plans about, if that platform of theirs doesnât support Bluetooth connectivity, which is commonly used in all automotive multimedia platforms? So will it be the first and only automotive solution not to offer Bluetooth connectivity with the driverâs phone?
Not âwantâ but need. Unless you live in a jungle or taiga, todayâs world literally starts to enforce using them. While some traditional options are still supported in parallel, they will slowly start to disappear soon, too.
While you may of course keep dreaming about Sailfish remaining a purely geeky thing used by literally a handful of hobbyists, it will CERTAINLY not keep Jolla financially secure for much longer.
Wrong. Itâs not me who should be prepared for sacrifices. It is Jolla who needs to be prepared for a permanently unprofitable business (like it is now and has always been) unless they do something to attract more people to their platform, e.g. by enabling functionalities and services that overwhelming majority of people need and use. Otherwise, they will remain perpetually unprofitable and the very next crisis (like the ones they already went through in their history and survived them mostly thanks to those bad Russkies) will eventually sink them. As simple as that. And, once again, I donât get it how they intend to enter the automotive market with their AAS lacking Bluetooth support, which is commonly used there. But maybe they know better, like they always did.
It is Jolla who needs to become sustainable (if not profitable) to survive, or else itâll eventually sink (like they almost did already twice or so). So it is not a matter of such idiotic things like users begging or forcing some developers to provide some app which wonât change anything in the broader time frame, it is a matter of making the platform more functional (to the point that there are no MAJOR missing pieces compared to the mainstream platforms in the eyes of an average customer) and thus more attractive to more people. Believe me, Jolla is not a cat with 9 lives, one or two more crises like the ones they already went through and thatâs it.
So stop dreaming about them remaining oh so geeky and non-mainstream and cr*p like that, start dreaming about them finally getting enough customers to start earning money. Or else soon theyâll be no more.
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Oh come one @wetab73 , i really donât like to continue this useless conversation. I am silly, you are the master, i have understood. Let me in peace. I wish you all the best!
How could I have expected a reasonable responseâŚ? Or maybe I actually havenât⌠Take care, bro.
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There is something about Take The Power Back (1993) and If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (1998) where people still dreamed of a better world, and heck, phones and feature phones were still fun and not scary.
The other day Iâve confiscated my daughters smartphone; while itâs running LineageOS, MicroG and is as free as an Android phone can be, she managed to tick me off by becoming a zombie browser user, one of them Gen Z scrollers if you know what I mean; despite all my talking with her about it and her not actually using âsocialâ media.
And now she complains about how she canât enter her gym because not just all the fitness devices but their bleeding front door requires it to gain access ⌠and I pay a subscription for that shit?!
So, my daughter has sent them a mail and is going to call them today about an alternative way of access, with us cancelling her gym subscription and us finding an alternative gym if they keep up this BS. Something about fighting that power, ey?
Anyway, take from my random ramblings what you will, yeah it sucks there ainât no BT on Android on SFOS, but thatâs not at the root of what sucks.
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It may sound strange, but the good âprivacy scoreâ of SailfishOS is not least due to the fact that so many proprietary shit apps simply donât work here. For me, itâs better not to use such âgreatâ apps and services than to share my data everywhere.
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Yes, I can. I just need to add a Bluetooth USB dongle.
By the way, I donât take desktop PCs along with me, therefore I donât use them to access my smartphone or my OBD2 interface.
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I donât get that discussion either. If you support Android Apps because of not having native apps, you should support them 100%. Bluetooth, NFC, Playstore/MicroG Alternative for PrivacyâŚ
Banking Apps, Smartwatches, Public Transport Tickets, Carsharing/Bikesharing apps ⌠Will not be developed for an OS with < 1% market share.
And not every app can be reverse engineered by geeks. Sometimes itâs even prohibited by the original authors.
I try to avoid those apps as much as possible and try to rely on alternatives as well. I also try to fight those fights like the gym example.
A lot of developers from Symbian/Meego Era warned about using alien dalvik and have been afraid it could stop developers from supporting SFOS natively. There are still devs around and giving us great apps for daily drivers like Signal, Telegram or Navigation, but as already mentioned they will never be able to create apps like banking, payment or public transport apps.
Maybe European Union comes up with some Open Source Act, that forces some of those companies to open APIs or support development for e.g. SFOS, but I think, it could be easier to create Bluetooth HW abstraction for libhybris.
Unfortunately I am not capable of doing such a thing, or I would probably try, because it would IMHO really help SFOS.
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I think you have only one wish: SFOS shoud remain a niche OS forever and everyone who donât share your opinion and has a feature request you cannot understand should leave SFOS.
What an arrogant attitude.
This discussion here makes nor more sense as you donât try to understand other opinions.
Many SFOS user took sailfish for their privacy and the possibility to run an Android app if there is no other feasibility. And Jolla started out with the promise of being able to use Android apps.
So what is the problem, if those user, who by the way have payed for the Android emulation now wish the whole bluetooth functionality.
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I think you see it wrong: I would be also very happy if we would have a âEierlegendewollmilchsauâ.
But the reality looks different. We are not the business case for Jolla. Jolla canât survive only with selling licences for the users. From this perspective - the whole business model is not B2C, but B2B oriented. We are just community and beta-testers.
Privacy is good case, i also use use SF because of privacy.
Jolla promised nothing. we had exact this communication with Jolla CEO Sami Pienimäki @spienima during the Berlin MeetUp month ago.
âEverything, someone wrote somewhere here in Forum is understand as a Promiseâ
and
âMy wife also complains there is no Bluetooth in Alien Dalvikâ
Jolla only advertised, that they would support Bluetooth Apps with no 100% warranty which apps will work.
We can whine as long we want, if Bluetooth will work one day in Alien Dalvik, than because some Business Customer paid for this use case.
And yes, Jolla will remain Niche-OS. Because 08/15 user is Happy with Android/IOS. He donât want to sacrifice his user experience, and probably donât need all the functions which makes SF better than Android / IOS.
My message was only: Stop complaining, wait, drink tee, make open source native SF apps, or help them making, and maybe one day it will come.
And @seehas - I try always to understand others opinion, when i see logic there. I am SailfishOS user from day 1. Since 2013. And all the 10 years i see people complaining about missing bluetooth in Alien Dalvik. As since 10 years complains brought nothing, than complaining seems to be a wrong strategy, or am i wrong?
And I am happy for everyone new Sailfish User, because a bigger user base would make the OS better, more apps etc.
But what i see wrong is using SailfishOS and try to force Jolla to delivery the same user experience like in Android.
Nobody complains at Debian or Ubuntu, that they should support all the Windows Games, right?
Bluetooth in Alien Dalvik is possible, but complex. Business customers like Mercedes might move Jolla to implement such function, and we can profit from it.
And hopefully Samiâs wife can also profit from it⌠
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But there is a slight difference here: linux does not advertise windows compatability. Whereas SFOS does that with Android. And: if I run Windows in Virtualbox on Linux, I am capable of attaching my e.g. Bluetooth device to that virtual machine. So from this perspective and because Jolla seems to put some great efforts in Alien Dalvik and libhybris and also advertises that as a USP, itâs slightly strange, that they stop on Bluetooth/NFC/⌠abstraction. Shouldnât they do it for their own benefit, to strengthen their position to Business Customers that want SFOS because of Android compatability (e.g. for Automotive entertainment systems)?
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Neither bluetooth nor nfc is required to be android compatible.
I would like to have it of course.