Community meeting on IRC 22nd Apr 2021

nthn · 18 April 2021 18:35

I sadly can’t attend the meeting, so I’ve written down all that seemed relevant:

Name / IRC nick: nthn
topic: Collaboration with community on future-proofing Xperia X with updated Android app support
some details about the topic:
In Nov 2019, Jolla decided against an updated baseport for Xperia X because they would have to maintain two baseports for one device, but community sees no problem in abandoning the old baseport and reflashing their devices, and is able and willing to help Jolla out with a new baseport - community member @vknecht already got Sailfish running on kernel 4.9 in Dec 2019. Would Jolla revisit their decision, and if so, what should community do to make updated kernel/Android app support on Xperia X a reality?
approx. time needed: 15m
optional: name of substitute if you cannot make it to the upcoming meeting (and inform your substitute): @rubdos

extended details:

Sailfish is running on Xperia X with kernel 3.10, but Xperia X has kernel 4.4 and 4.9 officially available from Sony. Community member @vknecht already got Sailfish running on Xperia X with kernel 4.9 in December 2019 (1) (2).

In November 2019, Jolla stated (3) that they would not update Android app support on Xperia X, as that would require maintaining a new, additional HW adaptation based on a newer baseport and kernel, and would require a reflash. However, this was decided before vknecht showed Sailfish running on kernel 4.9 on Xperia X, and nearly all comments below the blog post and elsewhere indicate that current users would be more than happy to reflash their device to get modern Android apps (min. ver. for many apps is now 5.0) running and abandon the old HW adaptation. Jolla could even sell a new license for it - a new license is still much cheaper than a new phone. Community wants to put in the effort, but it’d be pointless if Jolla doesn’t provide the useful proprietary license-exclusive bits like Android app support.

Presumably, modern kernel support would prolong Xperia X’s lifespan far beyond that of Jolla C and Jolla Tablet, both of which also use kernel 3.10.
Presumably, it would be easier in the long run for Jolla to maintain the same baseport between Xperia X, XA2 and 10.
Xperia X is still a solid device in 2021 that is now the cheapest and easiest to come by of all SF X devices, and people who already have one running Android wouldn’t have to abandon most of their apps to start using Sailfish.
Providing updated Android support would also take away the bad blood set by the original decision not to update.
(Technically, a forced reflash would make also make it possible to use a larger root partition and avoid the “you have to uninstall all of your applications to install the Sailfish OS update” problem forever.)
Bonus question: work is ongoing to make Xperia X supported by the mainline Linux kernel. This would allow it to essentially survive forever. What would be the implications for Sailfish?