Feedback on Jolla C2

Devices
#823

You can find this app with Fdroid

#824

I could not get it work yet on the X 10 III (complains about root as well) and others there seem to struggle in this thread.

Do you have MicroG installed?
Or is it do to some other C2 specific feature, that it works for you?

#825

My feedback after using it for a few days:

Pros:

  • Larger size makes for a better UX compared to Xperias with my big hands
  • making calls works great, no echo bug
  • basic telephone functions work
  • I didn’t have any problems setting it up
  • Entering the PIN is responsive and fast compared to 10 III
  • I can do without face unlock, fingerprints and all that stuff so that’s a plus as well for me
  • The Android Apps I need work well (known bugs notwithstanding)
  • SFOS runs reasonably fast (I’ve had worse)
  • battery life is great compared to 10 III

Neutral:

  • Photos are bad in low light and look like watercolor paintings when zoomed in, but that is expected from cheap hardware and might improve with proper camera 2 api some day.

Cons

  • There is bad connectivity. Either the SoC is really slowwwwwwww or something is buggy. With my Poco F6 with Snapdragon 8s I get from my window 30mbit LTE+ speeds, with the T606 only 1mbit.
  • Upgrading the platform from a 2021 bargain bin chip to something more reasonable for a few € more certainly wouldn’t have hurt anyone. Like a Helio G99, Snapdragon 4 series etc. I don’t see the T606 holding up well over the years since it’s at a snail’s pace when running Android Apps already.

Conclusion:
I always see using SFOS as a lifestyle choice, like being vegan, building a hut in the woods to live off the land or deciding you’re only gonna run free and libre software on your librebooted thinkpad from yesteryear. For having a peace of mind you accept dealing with hardships and hinderances that normal people don’t.
I expect any Sailfish device to be a bumpy ride at this point, but that’s a trade I’m willing to make for increased freedom from big tech surveillance.
At least until the 10 V is working properly, I’ll keep the C2 as my daily driver while my Android phone will be kept as backup, since I don’t really need much more than a feature phone that can do email and whatsapp and sometimes browse things and make snapshots.

13 Likes
#826

Hello
I am a long time user of SailfishOS, since the first Jolla phone (Sailfish OS 1). I use it as my main smartphone. Before the Jolla C2, I was using Sailfish OS 4.6.0.15 on Xperia XA2, that I compare with my current experience with Jolla C2 version 5.0.0.43.

Things that I generally like are display size/resolution, camera zoom/wide angle, web browser update, great battery duration.
But there are too many software limitations to be used happily.

This are the main issues I come across that are really annoying.

  • No DNS resolution with Android apps (know issue https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/no-mobile-internet-with-android-apps/20586/30)

  • In the Email client, the search function is not working properly. Searching is working only in the seen/downloaded email. Older emails are not searched into. In the search options, chosing to search in server, the search is not done. (I am using an IMAP4 server, previously this was working)

  • Bluetooth is not working properly. I can pair Bluetooth audio devices, and auto-reconnect is working.
    However when using a headset, the phone disconnect it after some seconds of usage, and has to be manually reconnect or reconnects automatically after some time.
    This issue is found in both making a telephone call or watching a video using a browser.

  • WLAN is not reconnecting automatically when I go away from my WiFi and then come back (don’t know if it’s relevant, but WiFi network has hidden SSID).

  • Text prediction xt9 is a missing feature (know issue https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/c2-predictive-text-input-on-sailfishos-5-0-0-missing/21010)

  • Camera does not support video (know issue https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/jolla-c2-camera-freezes-when-taking-video/20561)

  • Mobile related (I am using only SIM1 alone):

  • 5G is missing (but it’s an hardware limitation?)
  • 4G data speed is really slow

Other things not annoying:

  • VoLTE is not working (Iliad SIM in Italy)

  • Whatsapp migration guide has to be updated →
    https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Help_Articles/Whatsapp_Setup/#moving-your-whatsapp-data-to-a-new-phone
    To read the UID of user, the path is not
    ls -l /home/.android/data/data
    but now
    ls -l /home/.appsupport/instance/defaultuser/data/data

  • During booting, after entering the first PIN for disk encryption, and before entering the system, there is a while with a blank screen. I would just put some loading screen there, as it can be confusing.

  • I miss fingerprint unlocking (hardware limitation)

7 Likes
#827

Great report!
I don’t see your report in a C2 VoLTE table.

Wifi does sometimes reconnect automatically for me.

#828

Hello, just updated now.

2 Likes
#829

I haven’t tried using the C2 as a so called “daily driver” yet, mainly due to the appsupport mobile data bug. But every time I take it out of the drawer I get the same feeling after playing around with it for a bit; it is way too slow to replace my xperia 10 II. I don’t use many apps, the browser is the most important. On the xperia 10 II the native browser works fine, the only problem is that the OOM killer kills it every now and then (like two-three times when reading a long thread on this forum), but then I just restart it. If it gets too annoying I can switch to firefox on appsupport which works even better. On the C2 scrolling in any somewhat heavier site (like every news site there is) is just painfully laggy in the native browser, and much worse in firefox on appsupport. If this doesn’t get any better (or really much better) I can’t see myself using the C2 as a daily driver.
It sadly is much worse than my old xperia 10 II in every way except the amount of RAM. I originally thought that I could live without a fingerprint sensor, but then it occurred to me that it also doesn’t have a notification led. I would have to enter the (at least) 5 digit code manually every now and then just to poll for incoming messages! I have never had a phone that required me to do that, and I really think that will become a deal breaker for me. I’ll just have to find out if I can live with it when it otherwise becomes usable.

3 Likes
#830

Check your notification settings (Events view, I think). You do not need to unlock phone to see notifications.

#831

You’re right, I don’t need to unlock it. But I still need to pick it up and turn on the display, I can’t just glance at its general direction when I walk past as I’m used to. Maybe I can learn to live with that.

4 Likes
#832

For MMS : MMS setting for Bouygues Telecom and co (Fr)

#833

It’s all a matter of muscle memory :grinning:

I can enter my 26 digit code in under 10 seconds now.

2 Likes
#834

Nice feedbak indeed. I haven’t used Xperia with sailfish OS and was disappointed to the poor performance of the browser. I thought the browser was too outdated so too slow to render modern websites.

#835

Is the browsing slow because the browser SW is poor or that the C2 has a weak CPU?

#836

I would say there is already room for optimization because, on some days, the same websites are super smooth, while on other days, the scrolling stutters. I don’t know what causes this, but it shows that this is not weak hardware but rather a problem in the software somewhere, which can be fixed. Knowing that, I can live with it.

#837

I noticed it is sometimes caused by a swap/zram being too agressive. Try issuing swapoff as root when you experience a slowdown. Imho with 8gb on c2 it could be deactivated for most use cases.

#838

As I mentioned in this post, I had already turned off the swapping early on, but the slowdowns still occur sometimes, so there must be another cause.

#839

The C2 is a LTE phone and lacks a 5G modem.

However, for me it is not critical at all. I do not see any real technical advantage for such a phone to operate in 5G or 4G, except for the fancy 5G logo on the screen.

For a normal smartphone, 5G does not make a real difference over 4G. It’s more a marketing strategy.
(PS: I work on this field…)

7 Likes
#840

Yeah, 5G doesn’t make sense on the phone over 4g but can cause planes to crash.

5G causing more problems than it’s worth but somebody needs to make a lot of money

#841

Do others also experience a massive and fast drop of the last ~10-12 % of battery. For me it feels like bad calibrated. Can i somehow make force the C2 to calibrate the battery levels?

For Telekom in Germany nevertheless the “phone” part of the C2 is much better from my experience than with the XIII that often did not end calls well or was occasionally not or very late ringing etc. Never experienced that with the C2 yet.

4 Likes
#842

Yes, for me this starts at ~15%. SFOS shutdown then very fast within minutes with a long warning tone, even when not used in standby.

And when reaching 100% its still charging for ~37 Minutes until its done.

So there seem to be a calibration shift.

Edit: Added on 30.1.2025

Here are my measurement

grafik

grafik

So in my case it seems displayed 15% Battery is in reality ~5% and 100% maybe 90-95%.

7 Likes