I have been watching the project and pretty much decided to buy a used 10iii, but I have a few of questions:
Is 5g working?
How is the battery life?
Will it replace my Oneplus 6T as a daily driver?
Has anyone switched from a 6t….how is the speed? I hate to spend $300 on a less powerful phone, but haven’t found a Linux distro that works as a daily for the 6T.
Not yet, but it is being worked on.
It’s fine. I usually end my days around 70%.
Only you can answer that.
I have always daily-driven Sailfish OS and been happy with it. This is probably the most comfortable.
I’ve had Android phones (Samsung S21 and S9 before that) for work which have gone unused outside the occasional work email.
Can you really tell speed to that extent, or have you been reading too many reviews trying to invent content?
Phones are like computers now; unless you buy the worst crap you can’t tell a difference in normal tasks.
If you can, or think you can, perhaps you’ll find something that is not to your liking.
You probably already knew this, but do note there are limitations. If you plan on running dozens of Android apps that are “essential” for you, you might be in for a bad time. One may use some oddball features, or have strict “security” requirements. Some people came here ranting about that since it doesn’t ship google play services, it was false advertising to call it Android support. Some have a really bad time with that certain connectivity management APIs cannot be handed over to the Android side (i.e. NFC, Bluetooth apart from sound, USB, WiFi scanning/config, other network config like VPN).
The battery life is far worse than with Android. But thanks to the huge battery of the 10iii, it will easily last a day or two.
If you want to use many Android Apps, it would be good to know which ones, maybe someone can tell you if theres an Sailfish Alternative or if they work as expected.
I don’t know how it is on Android, but with SailfishOS it is possible for me to only charge the Xperia 10 III every second day, as it was with my old OnePlus 5, my OnePlus 6T I had for a while and my iPhone SE. So unless you are using the device really heavily, I think you won’t have any problems.
Honestly, I didn’t note any difference. Like it was pointed out before, speed doesn’t really matter anymore since every phone basically is powerful enough to provide a comfortable experience.
It maybe is less powerful on paper, but in the real world you won’t notice any difference
It can’t be working as it is not even supported atm.
Some say that it is fine, while in reality its power consumption is (for no valid reasons but lack of proper power optimization of either the AOSP layer or some power-related SFOS parts directly above it) twice or more higher than that of the XA2 Ultra with the same OS version onboard. Noteworthy is also the fact that the 10 III has considerably bigger battery than the XA2 Ultra, so 1% of XA2U battery is much less power consumption than 1% of 10 III battery. In other words, if both the XA2U and the 10 III show 70% left in the evening, the 10 III ate much more mAh than the XA2U.
I’ve done a lot of tests and while the XA2U sleeps at 9-12 mA, the 10 III never goes below 35-50 mA. And when active, the XA2 Ultra idles at 50-80 mA, whereas the 10 III hardly ever shows anything below 100 mA. And so on, and all that with 10 III’s (allegedly) more power efficient display and SoC.
In other words, its power consumption leaves A LOT to be optimized. It is much worse than with stock Sony Android.
Of course, with such a huge 4500 mAh battery it still somehow manages to give you more than one day (and with a light use probably even up to two days), but it seriously affects battery durability. I bought my 10 III in mid July and already now (i.e. merely 3,5 months later) it shows 45 full recharge cycles done, which is around 10% of typical Lithium battery durability. Just to compare, on a properly power optimized 7 years old BlackBerry Passport (which used to be my daily driver since 2016 until the end of 2021) I still have less than 300 full recharge cycles and above 70% of battery health.
No single complaint here. Speed is really decent.
I use my Xperia 10 III as my daily driver so I hope I can shed some light regarding your corcerns. What you can do for us is to let us know, what you mainly use the phone for. That way we might be able to provide better answers. Anyways, let’s cut to the chase:
I use these native apps daily / almost daily: Browser, Mail, Terminal, Clock, Calculator, Fernschreiber (native Telegram client), Whisperfish (native Signal client), Battery Buddy, ownKeepass (native Keepass client) and PureMaps (navigation app). So far the only real problem I have stumbled across is the browser crashing occasionally, but I can always restart the browser from the UI and get right back to where I was.
On the Android side I use work-related apps, banking apps and NewPipe. Everything else works great, but NewPipe crashes everytime I want to change to another video. However, this wasn’t the case a couple of months back, so I’m keeping my hopes up.
I charge my phone at night till 85% and usually I have around 25-35% left at the end of the day. Some days I’m using the phone really intensively, which means I need to charge my phone at the evening as well. The battery life could be better of course, but I have never been in trouble because of it and I don’t use a powerbank.
The UI feels really snappy and it is really fast to change between the apps once you get used to the UI. However, my last phone before 10 III was several years old iPhone SE, which may not set the bar as high as some other phones. The only instance where I notice lack of smoothness is when using the browser and scrolling up or down.
Off topic a bit, but I’m curious, @Glockdoc, have you tried running Ubuntu Touch on your 6T? I’ve been considering buying a OnePlus for Ubuntu Touch, but haven’t got around to it, so I’d be keen to know your thoughts.
One huge bonus, if you get a 10iii is that it’s a decent step up in performance compared to all the other supported devices, and you’ll have a device that is supported for years. So if you do go away from it for a year, hold onto your 10iii and enjoy the latest updates when you come back.
But it’s worth to point out once again that with stock Android onboard, the 10 III lasts many days. See e.g. the GSM Arena Endurance test which says that the Xperia 10 III put out impressive, class-leading battery endurance results - 137 hours, over 26 hours of continuous video playback, 15.5 hours of continuous web browsing, 31.5 hours of talk time. So I dare to repeat that current SFOS battery performance of the 10 III is actually HORRIFYING.
I’m not really believing those sort of numbers for stock Android anywhere I use it.
I just spent two days away and flattened my Android 12 X10III. I would say it took 5 hours screen time (including zero streaming video) and 1/2 hour talk time. No Wifi. Of course I was not anywhere close to the cell towers…
They describe the test procedure as *“The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily.” Many other reviews of theirs have similar results, e.g. Samsung A52 or Xiaomi Poco F3 (which both also have 4500 mAh batteries). So do you think that they are faking results of all their tests?
Anyway, all other reviews I could find also praise the 10 III for spectacular battery life and I haven’t seen a single one that wouldn’t be stating minimum 2 or 3 full days of typical use.
I have UT on a Jingpad A1 tablet and it is okay. Far better than Jing OS was and, according to the telegram group, far worse than a debloated Android OS that is available.
To answer your question, no. I did have Mobian w phosh on it and was getting to a point a could go most days without switching back to my android partition. Then… there was a DISASTROUS update when they upgraded Debian base that ended up wiping out my phone and it took a week to get it back ( partly my refusal to boot up windoes and use the recovery tool, which was the solution. ) When I did all this UT did not have everything working.
If you go that route see if you can dual boot. I was able to with mobian.
Thank you everyone for all the GREAT info. Now that I have decided to pull the trigger and go for it all the phones in my area have disappeared! LOL
I live in Thailand and there were 4 or 5 on marketplace I messaged about while I was making up my mind. Now, they are all gone so I will check daily until I get one.
I’m certain those numbers could be achieved with bare Sailfish OS as well.
With Sailfish + Android subsystem running it is certainly less, which is to be expected because you’re running two operating systems basically.
Although MicroG+enabled Cloud messaging(push notifications, without MicroG, most apps revert to polling) seems to work very well.
Besides that, I’ve noticed Wifi is a big constant drain on Sailfish on X10III. So I’ve setup Situations app to disable Wifi when screen is off.
Easily get two days now with light to moderate use(and charged up to 90% with battery buddy).
It thought since you guys were so kind to share your thoughts with me before I bought my phone I will follow up.
I have had my 10iii for about a month now and absolutely love SFOS on it! There has been a minor hicccup or two, but nothing like the screw ups I am used to with Linux and ME! LOL
Speed is great. The apps open a little slower than I would like, but it’s livable. I have used it as my daily since the 2nd day I had it and only pick up my android phone for the 2 apps I have just been too lazy to move over.
Super happy I pulled the trigger and bought the phone.
Great. Have fun with your 10 III. I love mine like the two other Xperias before. Minor glitches but overall simply a fine phone.
Honeymoon is over. After 6 months with SFOS I am most likely going to go back to Android via LineageOS w Micro G.
I live in Thailand and noone in Pattaya can service a Sony I found out when I broke the screen. Screen is not a huge issue, but I have some charging issue now that is sporadic and no one to change a charging port if that is what it is.
SFOS is a huge improvement of UT and Mobian when I tried them borth before SFOS, but not having a closer to flagship device kind of sucks. If Jolla would use a higher end phone I would be more inclined to stay. Typing on this phone is miserable. I am using a keyboard patch that made a big improvement, but it still sucks.
The camera is, well, embarassingly poor. I was told to download open camera from fdroid and it is quite an improvement, but still laggy.
Android support for the few apps I need works great, but I can’t use google maps and have not found a substitute that even comes close here in Thailand. Maybe in Europe or the US, but everything else I have tried leads me right back to google maps.
Native apps, like all the other Linux mobile OSes I have tried, are pretty much lacking. I get it, they are not funded by big tech.
The trade offs for being able to use Linux mobile and kick google out of bed have gotten to be irksome over the last 6 months. Especially when I can use Lineage with Micro G and accomplish a very similar goal and better quality hardware.
Feel free to change my mind, but unless Jolla is releasing a decent handset soon, I can’t see me staying with SFOS…and that is disappointing.
You can use the swype keyboard called okboard. You have to train for your language probably, but there are instructions in the sources for okboard and i can also do it for you, because i already did it for Hungarian. For Google maps: you can install them, but you probably mean play services, for those is also script in this forum for installing them.
Thank you for the suggestions, but I have ZERO interest in using a swype keyboard. Maybe super easy, but I will never know. =)
Installing google play services defeats my reason for using SFOS.
I hope you find what you’re looking for with the new OS/device.
I understand that some issues might be a dealbreaker for some people and I do agree that the keyboard & predictive text are just horrible.
Personally I just finished with my complete transition from 13 pro max and now my personal sim and data are on the 10 III. The iPhone will serve me as a business line that I leave at the office, mostly due to Wi-Fi calling and some proprietary software my company uses.
There are many shortcomings and headaches with the 10 III and sfos, but I would like to fully enjoy the journey with the fish while it lasts!
At the end of the day, maybe I’ll start chatting less with the phone due to the bad keyboard and spend less time on the phone.
I see the glass half full here 
I completely agree with your reasoning, and I have since moved away from Sailfish too - I’m currently using crDroid. I actually bought an XZ2 and used the port to enjoy sailfish - it’s good, but I can’t get Waydroid going, and it’s made me realise how much I require some android apps - I’m holding onto it in hopes to go back at some point.
Regarding fixing your phone: if you have the patience, and don’t mind devaluing your phone a bit, I highly recommend fixing it yourself as it’s rather simple once your get the hang of it. You generally need a heat gun, a fine metal pry bar, glue and replacement parts. Once you invest in the heat gun, pry bar and glue, you’ll find yourself fixing anything wrong with your phones and saving yourself money. The devaluing part is if you don’t do a perfect job gluing it back together or your slightly damage the outside. There are so many videos out there for repairing phones that you can see what to expect before you do it, and AliExpress usually has all the parts. I generally buy broken phones and fix them so I get a better deal.