Jolla Phone : First Experiences, Pros and Cons

General
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I’ve been using the JP2 for about a week now so I’d like to share my first experiences as well.

Let me start off by saying I really like this phone. I’ve been very impressed that they managed to deliver it in the short time frame that they set out initially. I did not expect that.

I’ve been using Jolla phones since the first one in 2013 (but I have no experience with the Nokias that came before that). I’d say my best experiences were with the JP1, the initial Xperia X and the XA2 (except for the GPS).

I do switch to a GrapheneOS device now and then but spent most of my time on SFOS. I’ve also written some apps to scratch the itch of missing software and I did notice some of them are in dire need of updates :sweat_smile:

Anyway, the pros:

  • The phone looks really nice,
  • Getting GPS fixes with “High-accuracy positioning” is quick and navigation (mainly with Waze and Organic Maps, both Android apps) works fine,
  • The pictures taken with the camera are much improved compared to earlier phones, especially the late Xperia 10 line, and low-light performance is much better. It’s still not great but I do not feel the need to bring another phone or camera with me anymore,
  • Some Android apps that didn’t work in the past now work with the updated Android version,

The cons:

  • The camera is still too slow slow to start up and focus, especially the focusing is annoying,
  • Automatic brightness adjustment is too bright even at the lowest setting,
  • Sometimes apps (also native ones) don’t want to start up any more and I need to reboot, I’ve not looked too deep into this but killing the existing processes didn’t seem to help (this has happened about three or four times now),
  • Android connectivity seems flaky (I’ve only used “Treat mobile data as WLAN” so far) but it seems to be mainly with the Ironfox browser, so this might just be on me,
  • Connecting to WiFi captive portals is flaky (even with the CPH app),
  • I’ve never really liked the default browser and the current one still doesn’t really click with me. It is also laggy, it seems like one bad tab can affect the whole browser,

I might have more cons than pros but these are just the biggest things I run into. I couldn’t list all the things that I like and that work will :wink:

(I run without microG and Bluetooth.)

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