Apologies if the category is wrong or if the post would fit better to an already existing thread.
Yesterday, Jolla put out a press release through STT, a Finnish news agency. This part caught attention at a forum I frequent:
Käyttäjät voivat käyttää Android-sovelluksia Jollan AppSupport-teknologian kautta. Pankkisovellukset, viestipalvelut ja jokapäiväiset sovellukset toimivat normaalisti.
English:
Users can use Android apps through Jolla’s AppSupport technology. Banking apps, messaging services, and everyday apps work as normal.
This surprised me, because of my earlier Sailfish experience and because AppSupport documentation still warns against Google Play and Google Play Services. Most banking apps for Android are (in the eyes of an everyday user) available only through Google Play store, and as far as I know, they often have security features tied to Google. A quick glance at “Banking apps on Sailfish OS” here seems to confirm those suspicions, but I didn’t have time to read it thoroughly.
Does anyone know if Jolla, or Finnish banks, have mentioned app distribution plans separate from Google, or some solution along those lines? It would be wonderful, but I’m pretty skeptical if nothing has been stated directly.
If not, this claim feels like false advertising. From a regular user’s viewpoint having to hunt for .apk’s and then wrestle with security features is hard to see as “working as normal”.
(as a “new” user I can only put out one link, so I can’t link directly to the AppSupport documentation or the thread.)
That sentence was why I pulled the trigger and ordered the phone. Then I stumbled upon this forum and learned that the apps will propably not work, or it’s unclear if they will work. I posted about this at the banking app topic.
I’ve since asked for a refund. I’ve been also wondering if my health care apps, public transportation etc would work or not.
If there would be a guarantee that everything should work fine I’d cancel the refund request, but after reading the forum I highly doubt it.
I agree the sentence can be misleading and there is probably some marketing blahblah at play but this does not really say that all Android applications will definitely work. This is quite expected that if the application maker is trying hard to block any users that do not use a standard Android phone then there is a chance that the application will not work on Jolla phone. Banking apps are the first to come in mind even though not all banks are that restrictive. One can understand why banks are doing it but they should offer an alternative secure way to validate financial movements.
Users can use most of their Android apps through Jolla’s AppSupport technology. Many Banking apps, messaging services, and other everyday apps work as normal.
While I don’t think it’s “full fledged false advertising”, as there are some (banking) apps working perfectly well. But those 5 words I’ve added in bold would have made it “completely clear” without loosing the general “marketing vibe”. Being too general and optimistic like that may even hurt the brand image, as people expect a smooth experience, and instead need to take a deep dive into the technical background workings of an mobile operating system. A thing, most “regular users” are not really interested in, and may get frustrated because of it.
In the end, it’s a dynamic and case-to-case thing. Some users may be lucky, their bank app works, and they don’t even get to know about the problems others may have … while others may struggle to get anything up and running at all. An app that works today may not work tomorrow, or the other way around.
2FA apps for accessing the banking website have a much better chance to work on appsupport in comparison with full featured banking apps where you can place orders etc.
You have to obtain them from Google via Aurora Store, there is no other option. If this not works, it will not work.
In Belgium all my banking apps work. I have microg installed, I never tried without it. In the past (2-3years ago) I stumbled on issues but with the improvement of microg, the issues at least with my 4 bank apps here in Belgium were ironed out.
I never tried microg, so when using mg, things may be better. But even without mg, my 2FA app always worked. But I don’t want to promise too much. SFOS is an experimental system.
Hey, and welcome! I don’t think this is false advertising. As can be seen from Banking apps on Sailfish OS a lot of banking apps do work normally. All the banking/financial apps I have work normally (OP, S-mobiili, Nordnet, Mobilepay, Finnair Visa). All of the messaging apps I have tried work normally (whatsapp, snapchat, instagram, signal), all the public transportation apps etc I have tried work normally (HSL, Wolt, Bolt, Finnair, VR, Nysse, Moovy). All the work related apps I have tried work, except the Microsoft authenticator (Outlook, Teams, Epassi, Joplin, Nextcloud). I don’t know but lets say that 90-95% of android apps work. That is pretty amazing considering that phone isn’t android based. Could they have said that they don’t guarantee every app to work? Surely, but they don’t have any ultimate list of the apps that don’t work. Best ones are found from this forum, but they are community led lists where reports can be many years old. When thinking about marketing, wouldn’t it be quite bad to put label that says most of the apps work, but we don’t know which ones? About same apps work under AAS that work with any custom ROM and I don’t think android forks advertise that some of the apps don’t work?
Neat thing here is that you can use Aurora store to download actual apps from Google Play store anonymously. This is why so many apps work and the experience is similar to end user as just using Play store. And with MicroG you can fake most of the check regarding Google services. Only safety net isn’t working IIRC.
Jolla can’t guarantee anything because they can’t test all of the apps out there. Or even all banking apps as they don’t use those banks. It just isn’t realistic. What I did was that I listed all the apps I want to install and asked (searched before that) from this forum before hand. That way I found out that all my apps work currently, except the Microsoft authenticator. Had to count, I currently have 40 (hopefully less in the future….) android apps installed to my SFOS device. 1 of those is the MS authenticator that isn’t working. And that might be fixed in the future as only problem seem to be this: Unable to set lock pin for Android apps requiring it
I finded this to be amazing record! Of course I am lucky that all my banking apps work. OP needed one command line change to work, Finnair Visa required android level 13 or something that came to my phone in the latest update. It didn’t work before that. But still 4,5/5
This made me think if I should reconsider the cancelling of my order. Does anybody know if Jolla has a return policy for the pre-ordered phone? Can it be tested?
Can’t remember for sure, but try to find information if C2 had return policy. If I remember correctly it had and it was okay to return it but definitely check that as I don’t have first hand experience about this. My understanding has been that everything that is ordered from online has 14 days return option in the EU, please someone correct if I am wrong
If it’s a Finnish article the only question would be if all the known Finnish banks work. I don’t think a local article would try to find info for the rest of the world.
You can get any used supported device right now and test everything you need beforehand with 25€ license and 20-100€ for a device.
Either way if you cancel your preorder and wait you would be paying 700€ for the phone afterwards and you won’t be sure still.
Yeah this eactly. There aren’t all that many, and according to @CLMA31 many do work, and according to this thread many more work.
Everybody uses marketingspeak. It’s sad, but from that POV the advertising is fine.
Well, technically this is true. Some banks doesn’t even require Google Play services for their app, and some banks have web apps with functionality similar to android app.
bunq is even more interesting – existing clients could use API key which gives opportunity for native app development (except 3DS, but it’s available in the web app)
The two banking apps that I need (Postbank BestSign, Volkswagen Bank PhotoTAN) both work.
I’d prefer if banks were more standards-compliant so that they’d work with e.g. SailOTP.
I use 4 banks and 3 of them work on SFOS. And all of them would work if the European bank didn’t decide that a commercial US company vetting access to their app is a good move.
I don’t mind them accepting the vetting by a US company as much as I mind them only accepting vetting by US companies. This is a strategical nightmare to make key economic functionality dependent on US companies, with no backup to which consumers could easily shift.
I live in Finland. I have 44 native apps or web pages on my app grid on my Jolla C2. I am mainly happy for those apps. One special app is SeaPrint, which I use when my Ubuntu fails to print on my Epson printer.
On Jolla C2 AppSupport I have 31 apps. Of those 5 do not work on my phone. I have microG installed.
On spare Android phone I have 54 apps. 26 of those I have not used or use once a year. Because most of them belong to the package, I have not had power to get rid of those.
Summa summarum: If I could get 3-5 apps functioning on my Jolla C2, my spare Android would stay mainly in drawer. Normally I do not carry my Android phone with me but using it at home when needed.
