Hi sailfish community, I pre-ordered the new Jolla phone in batch 1 and I’ve been notified that it’s time to make the purchase, defer it or cancel entirely.
Honestly, I’m on the fence as to whether I should purchase and could do with some input from existing sailfish users. Any thoughts on these questions would be much appreciated and any other thoughts people have on whether it’s worth taking the punt.
Can you use sailfish as a daily driver? Any initial hurdles to expect?
Does Android Auto work or some equivalent?
Is there the possibility for tap & pay through nfc?
I’ve seen there’s some support for banking apps, i’m in the UK. How does support improve over time? Some major banks in the UK are missing from the wiki sadly
How open is sailfish os? Could the jolla phone be theroetically flashed with other flavours of linux?
Could/does it support usb otg devices of any kind?
Thanks for the replies but I did use the search function first. The information found seems scattered, incomplete or out of date, so this is why I’m asking.
You are still better off asking for clarifications in the respective threads than starting all over again bunching random stuff up in one thread.
Imagine if everyone did the same - not only would the forum be completely cluttered, but the scattering you already found would only get worse and the information would never be complete.
I have used SFOS as daily driver couple of years ago, and it worked ok. Unfortunately a lot has changed in the last 3-4 years and the following things were show stoppers for me:
very basic camera and lack of support for Camera2 api (limits what could be done with camera)
not being able to use basically anything than bluetooth audio in android apps (e.g. fingerprint scanner doesn’t work in AAS so you can’t use apps that require biometrics login)
android auto does not work
I have experienced on multiple occasions that calling or sending/receiving sms messages stopped working after some updates
Having said that, A LOT has changed in the last couple of months and I see a lot of work done by both community and jolla. I’m confident 2026 year will be the year of sailfish OS and we will see much improvements in the whole ecosystem.
Once I receive jolla phone I plan to use is as my secondary device and try to find time to actively contribute to SFOS through testing and app development.
Hi, I had some similar doubts. Besides looking on the forum, I bought a second-hand Xperia for less than 100e and installed Sailfish on it. My technical skills are very (very!) basic—I didn’t even know what “flash” meant— but I managed to do it on my first try by following the instructions. Now it is my main phone. My advice is that you should try it yourself to see if it works for you.
Thanks for the summary, those first three items would definitely be show stoppers for me too. Hope the new phone and sailfish updates resolve some of those and it becomes a mainstream competitor!
Hello and welcome! I am quite new also here, only around year. Most of the points have been discussed before, but I know it can sometimea be hard to find info with search without spending hours.
My best answer:
Can definitely be daily drived! OS seem to be very mature, with some shortcomings. Biggest thing probably is if you can be happy with all the apps that works, some bank apps can be hit or miss. If you have some specific apps you are wondering you can search in this forum or ask if someone can test them.
Don’t know personally, my car doesn’t support that anyway. But I assume there is topic about this.
Don’t know, but not at least native option I know about. And NFC doesn’t currently work inside AAS.
You can ask if someone could try those bank apps
Mostly UI bits are closed, AAS and microsoft exchange integration. I would bet yes as device probably will be user flashable
I use USB-OTG to connect memory card reader and it works. Today I tried USB keyboard and mouse (which I normally use with my PC) and both work except numeric part keyboard and scrolling wheel in default browser which is weird because in other native apps scrolling wheel works (I don’t have AAS so can’t test it there). On mouse also work back/forward buttons in default browser. Many years ago I tried to connect ethernet to USB adapter and didn’t work but I think this depends on kernel modules so maybe on another SailfishOS smartphone it could work.
Hi - I’m very new, too (this is my first post). For what it’s worth, I’m planning to dive in and hope for the best.
My life is currently tied up in the Google world so I expect to carry my Pixel as a second phone. Hoping my Pixel will hotspot off the J2 so I can pivot to my android when needed.
I’m also a little concerned the camera might be a painful downgrade.
I realise this reply has no value other than to signal that you’re not alone in having these doubts.
I can’t comment on the differences between the image sensors between Jolla Phone and your Pixel, but things on all phones using SFOS should improve once Jolla gets their Camera2 API implementation completed.
