Hi I’m a newcomer of this forum. I’ll try to be active and helpful and polite as much as I can. I’m a human, after all.
When Google posted about Android locking down installing apks, I started looking around other mobile OS systems. I’m coming from a OnePlus flagship if that’s important. And because of apk lockdown that’s how I stumbled upon Sailfish OS and the New Jolla Phone. I took a gamble and pledged to it. And I never thought this pledge will change my life so much. I went to Finland for the first time, and it was absolutely awesome, for a lot of reasons. Of course, the Day1 event was the icing on a cake, really magnificent and powerful, and I am very grateful to Jolla, its small team of devoted developers, and the community for the event.
The phone. Did not have much time for daily driving, but first impressions:
- The phone is real, everything works so far as it should!
- Feels really good in hand. It’s plastic, but feels really rigid and has a very comfortable feel to it. My friends also felt the same, but some who have like big iPhone Pro Max models were surprised by how light it is. Buttons are pretty clicky (still better than mushy), and feel solid, too.
- Sailfish OS is glorious, and performance here is very good, only minor hiccups here and there. It’s beta-first release versions, so problems are to be expected. First time setup was really easy. Gesture system is intuitive, only needed an hour to understand it and now I navigate with ease.
- Fingerprint works really fast and accurately, battery is holding charge very well, though on Wi-Fi idle drain is higher than no internet at all. No heat coming from the CPU/phone, I’m glad because my two last Android flagships were hand warmers.
- Repairability is a huge strong point! Easy to replace battery, back cover. And back cover is also cheap, compared to smartphones of today.
- Digital detox and privacy. I can still browse the web, navigate on maps, use 2FA, chat with relatives and friends, occasionally play mobile games, but without the urge or need to scroll for a whole day. While Big Tech is looking at everything I do. And I’m trying to transfer to native Sailfish OS apps as much as I can, or go app-less (for example with banks), which means even more privacy.
- The camera. Tried with Camera app which is pre-installed in Sailfish OS, yeah it works, but don’t expect miracles. But I don’t see it as a big problem, because I hope quality will improve over time. But personally this triggered me to look for simple, small point and shoot cameras with 1 inch sensor, which still do a better job at photos and videos than most flagship Apples and Androids.
- The only real con that I see so far, and it might just be me, is the vibration motor. When the phone vibrates, it sounds very cheap, and feels pretty cheap. I don’t know. If it’s at all possible, I would try and fit the vibration assembly of my earlier Androids to this phone, make it better in this regard.
I saw some people about talking potential defects of the phone. So far, it doesn’t look like my camera has any color tint. The Privacy Switch is firm, but I think it’s designed to be that way. Mine also came with a screen protector and a plastic film on top, and I don’t see any bubbles or other issues with the screen protector. And the AppSupport minimized windows are not black for me, but sometimes they are black even on Android phones, if you catch a bug, or minimize when showing private window content, it makes them black.
Oh and I also made sure to update the system and then revert the system back to factory settings, to minimize bugs. But I was surprised to learn that this also removes all the updates. Pretty interesting detail.
For new users like me, these links might be interesting for you:
Thank you.