I understand your frustration and would be angry too with an unusable phone.
But I have to say that my experience with XA2 (dual but not ultra, tho) is very pleasant.
Since ~1 month of use, the only problem I encountered is this GPS thing.
EDIT: …but we are totally OT here…
EDIT2: Though, it’s true that I have a basic usage (never tried to switch between data and wifi, and so on)
It isn’t frustration. I’ve got more important things in my life (especially in these times) to frustrate me. It’s just stating facts and describing my experiences.
I’ve given SFOS another go on January 1st when Blackberry turned off their servers, making any further app development impossible (no way to sign code) and restricting usage of BB10 phones.
Since then, i.e. within the last three weeks, I encountered:
- problems with GPS and a hardly working compass (both working fine on Android)
- inability to normally reject incoming calls,
- problems with handling SIM card slots - when I enable and then disable the second slot the SIM card in the first slot becomes inactive and loses network connection
- quite ‘fragile’ Android support, which with more heavy apps such as e.g. Google Maps or YouTube Vanced tends to freeze and restart itself
- problems with connecting to a saved hidden WLAN network, especially after exiting Flight mode. The network is correctly recognized (proper SSID and MAC address are shown) but it still keeps asking for SSID and passphrase, and even if fed with it, it still can’t connect. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes of fiddling, or - much quicker - rebooting for it to connect (maybe restarting the corresponding services would also help, haven’t tried)
- there are also problems with switching between different connections in Android, especially between mobile data and WLAN. Sometimes it takes restarting the whole Android support for Android apps to regain network connectivity.
- all kinds of problems with MMS. Some as bizarre as that MMS must contain some text in addition to image or else SFOS fails at “decoding MMS PDU” and refuses to receive it.
- no way to easily turn off cellular radio when I need to be temporarily ‘unreachable’, without using Flight mode (to avoid having to re-enable WLAN, reconnect Bluetooth, etc). The only way I could find is to enable the second (empty) SIM card slot in order to be able to temporarily disable the first card slot (as it requires at least one slot to be active). I can then enable the first slot (which brings back cellular network connectivity) but since then (until reboot) I can’t disable the second (empty) slot or else the card in the first slot also gets disabled.
- buggy Call barring settings. They do not show options which are enabled (e.g. International calls barred), and setting them does not work, either, because after closing and re-opening they are all inactive again.
- and that’s definitely not all, just what I could recall quickly at the moment. All that after two reflashes to ensure that it wasn’t caused by some bad flashing process, some bad software installed, etc.
I’ve owned (and in fact I still do) the classic Jolla from the very first batch of pre-orders in 2013. I came back to SFOS after many years of using and developing for BlackBerry BB10, and I really hoped that 10 years would have been enough for such basic bugs to have been removed. I was wrong.
I LOVE the look and feel of SFOS, I love its openness giving much more possibilities than what the severely restricted BB10 platform was letting developers do, and I really would love it to stay alive and succeed and allow me to make it my daily driver, because even just thinking about having to go Android or iOS gives me headaches. But all those bugs are really overwhelming.
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Your issues include items 99.9% barely to never use. Call barring? MMS? Extensiv simcard/network switching? Yes, SfOS may have its issues there, but many if not all current OSes have their drawbacks compared to the good old and rock solid Nokia network stacks as they were implemented in e.g. Symbian…
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What’s of “barely to never use” for you doesn’t make it such for other people. MMS? Lots of people need ability to quickly and easily send/receive photos, not just for fun but also professionally. Imagine car dealer or real estate agent who’s requested by his client to quickly take and send a photo of some details. Such people RELY on this functionality of their smartphones.
Call barring? Yes, it is a useful security feature. For instance, both my 75 years old mother and my children now have outgoing international calls (that they do not need) barred, after they clicked and dialed some international numbers sent to them in some fraudulent/advertising email or SMS and made a few expensive calls to some exotic countries. Now they can’t. Other call barring options are also quite useful, especially during foreign trips.
As for “extensive simcard/network switching”, I never wrote a word about any such thing. There is a bug in handling SIM card slots on XA2 causing that after you turn off the 2nd slot then the active SIM card in 1st slot disconnects from the network. It has absolutely no relation to frequency of doing so, so I don’t get where you took your “extensive switching” from. Doing so even just once a month (which surely isn’t “extensive switching”) still triggers this bug and causes that the phone becomes unreachable without the user being notified about it, which sometimes may have very bad consequences either for you or those who were unable to contact you because of it.
Anyway, on a platform that aims to ever become SERIOUS, bugs are to be reported and fixed, and not (quite pathetically) EXCUSED.
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I think if there was a company providing phones with preinstalled SfOS the hardware support would be much better. There never was this kind of hardware related issues on the genuine Jolla phones. I don’t understand why Jolla can’t collaborate with Sony somewhat closer to have a sailfish xperia series with full hardware support. Or maybe convince Nokia to release some of their phones as a Jolla series. There has been a feature phone poc years ago already. Plus, there are a couple of AuroraOS phones available to government personnel in Russia. Why not ask them to produce a civilian version for the international market, running SfOS w/o Russian spyware? It could indeed be better. On the other hand, it’s still not that particular bad and probably SfOS is still miles ahead of e.g. Plasma Mobile, UT e.g., so remains your only choice if you want a somewhat Linux LSB complaint system on you phone. If you don’t care, maybe LineageOS is better for you. But don’t expect everything to work ootb with Lineage, you’d be disappointed too.
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I am not interested in LineageOS, so why would I care about what works in it and what doesn’t. Also, I do not think that bugs in LineageOS or whatever else are a valid excuse for having plethora of bugs in SFOS, especially those not fixed for years. Stating that all those bugs are acceptable only because some other OS also has bugs is like being OK with broken brakes in your own car just because your neighbor’s car also has them broken.
I develop in Qt, so after BB10 demise I am naturally interested in this platform, not in any other. I had been a Symbian user since its beginnings around 2000-2001, starting with Nokia 9210 Communicator and Sony Ericsson UIQ P800 and going through nearly all Symbian flagships, all Maemo tablets, the N900, N9, and even the rare N950, then BlackBerry BB10. In the meantime, in 2013 I got the Jolla 1 from the pre-order batch, so I can consider myself a supporter of Jolla when it was an early startup and relied on such support. Coming back to SFOS after 8 years and discovering so many bugs and issues isn’t too much comforting, since I really hoped that it could become my daily driver that I really could rely on, like it was during the last 5-6 years with the rock stable BlackBerry Passport. Well, that’s the whole story.
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Excuse me, please but could you be so kind to provide short summaries of your contributions?
And MMS… As far as I can see this service is already or will be discontinued in december 2022 or 2023 in many European countries. Maybe this discussion is worthwhile but what about a decent gopher client?
No, I couldn’t because I don’t consider it necessary to exhibit myself here, and certainly not to undergo your judgements. This discussion has no relation to my past work on other platforms. Whether in the past I had developed some top notch apps or none at all doesn’t change absolutely anything when it comes to bugs of SFOS, so kindly focus on them and not on me.
And whether MMS is going to be discontinued in a year or two doesn’t justify it being broken on SFOS already now that it is still in normal service. It’s like if you excused broken voice calls only because 2G and 3G networks are to be shut down in a year or two.
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Excuse me, which other platforms? 
And what about the gopher client or maybe Veronica? Remember: Veronica is the archie of gopher space? 
Why do you think that I want to waste time on any further discussion in such an unfriendly, provocative and completely pointless way you’re stubbornly trying to impose?
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I don’t think so. .