Well, the Sony Xperia 10 v is now nearly three years old and the 10 iv nearly 4 years old. Sony will release the Xperia 10 viii this year - so three generations on from the 10 v.
I don’t know how likely it will be for Sony to now have any further interest in working on updated blobs for phones that, in their model terms, have now been obsolete for some time?
So, regardless of whether the current situation with regard to SFOS on the 10 iv and 10 v is down to Jolla or Sony, or both, it doesn’t look good for us customers who bought them based on the original commitments made.
Last release of AOSP-blobs (september ‘25) from Sony include blobs for Xperia 1iii and 5iii, thats a generation behind 10iv. And the last release for devices like the 10ii was in summer ‘24. So its possible that they are still working on blobs for 10iv/v. But as long noone has an insight into Sony, we won’t know till they release new blobs. And that can happen at any time, some years they released four or five times a year and in other years they released only two times.
Sony phones enter the Open Device Program when the next generation comes out, so technically when the 10VIII comes out, 10V becomes only two generations old for the AOSP-team (which is completely different from the stock Android -team).
Maybe someone can fill me in here, are the “later” blobs (like v7b) that unusable?
And perhaps someone from SFOS Team can enlighten me, (how) do they respond at all?
I mean I do not know how they work there, but Sony at least claims to accept feedback etc. for the open devices program- I’d wish to toy with all this myself, but I plain don’t have the time and energy to work me into all this stuff, RL challenges me to much atm.
Don’t have first hand experience about the functionalities of 10 V so won’t comment those.
My understanding is that Jolla can give feedback to Sony’s team that is working with the open device program. Other than that Jolla don’t have any special position and needs to wait that Sony fixes things. Only after that Jolla can do SFOS side. With full focus Jolla probably could bring some function to life (like recently they found way to fix the mic), but as they are only 10 V specific and takes apparently quite a lot of work they aren’t actively trying to find new hacks as those could be broken with next blobs released by Sony. They are currently working more with general SFOS stuff that benefits everyone, like camera api 2, that might also benefit 10 V. For me it has started to seem that the resources inside Sony for the open device program is very limited and they also have quite enormous task as they try to implement the AOSP from the scratch to multiple devices. Probably if someone did community port on top of lineage for 10 V, it would work much better
I checked and indeed there seems to be an actively maintained LinageOS for the 10V - but how do they do that? Is everything “Sony special” reversed by somebody?
Or is it that they “only” use the open android base and it provides the necessary drivers already, or are there fitting drivers somewhere already maybe provided by the hardware component producers, and if so, why can’t be the same done here?
But regardless all that, I can only fully agree that it would make much more sense to use Lineage as a base then instead and leads me to wonder why this isn’t considered at all or why this would need to be a community port then?
Wouldn’t the general usage of LineageOS as base maybe even open a way to support more devices for SFOS in general (or at least with considerable less effort)? Or do we have some kind of “opensource, legal, whatever” issue here?
Sorry for my stupid questions, I plain don’t grasp all the dependencies against each other of all these things.
You will find much better answers with search. But here goes my understanding of situation. Jolla can’t base any port on top of Lineage because they couldn’t then make business with it. Jolla uses Sony open device program as a base, where Sony nukes everything they have in their phones normally. And then try to build android from scratch to those devices without any co-operation between these two teams = open device program progress is slow and buggy.
Lineage on other hand utilises proprietary blobs etc. from android side, which allows them to adopt so fast many devices and function quite well. Usually community ports are build on top of lineage so that they can use those proprietary stuff. So Jolla can’t do port based on Lineage, but community can.
Oh I tried search already quite a few times, but never got the situation nevertheless, it maybe was just to scattered for me to overview it - it’s sort of difficult if not being into all this matter.
What a nasty situation that is, but it makes now sense to me.
Well that is good point, information is quite scattered. Might have been some community meeting where this has been discussed in depth or smth. But glad to hear that it explained the situation a little bit.
In theory, yes. Someone would firstly need to make the port and the Jolla would need to offer the license for it. Note that Jolla hasn’t guaranteed it, they have said something between lines “we have been thinking about offering license”
Well let’s just say I prefer the Sony phone format more.
As mentioned in other posts here by me, I’m always patiently waiting AT LEAST 2 (two!) years, before purchasing a newly supported device and migrate to it.
This strategy was successful with my former Xperia X, XA2 and now X10III, which seems to be long enough for Jolla to iron things out.
Not to forget the X10III just got its Android VM updated to A13, so @least 4 more years I’m in no hurry.
2526 or even later