New binaries / blobs for Xperia V and IV : What is happening actually?

[Ride92]

@unmaintained

They do what they can do and work with what they have.
Yes, there are still old issues but there’s also only so much time and hours in a day.

Im no dev, one language I’ve really known to good point was HTML. So I don’t want to judge, but it seems to me that either they really lack knowledge or just don’t want to touch task that requires some effort and extensive testing because the outcome may fix something and broke other things and that require more effort, testing and so on. So they better stay “It is good enough” bypassing problems completly.
In my days of building pretty complex web sites I faced many bugs that took days of effort, research and getting additional knowledge but I couldn’t just post a site that could crash in some way, even if the chance was small. Apperantly Jolla has it the other way.

@unmaintained

That could be some form of bias, though.
How many people will open a thread because something worked 100% as they expected?

100% true, no argue on that.

@unmaintained

E.g. they have been more-or-less pressured into announcing the support for Xperia 10V and are probably kicking themselves now.

They have been, but go back to that time, why there was a rush? Because they were already really late as those devices where in open devices program for a very long time. Little proof of that is that they bound themselfs to release beta for IV and also for V, that is two generation of devices. Before they released beta versions 10 VI was already in open devices program.
At that time many forum users gave their conservative assumption that jolla should focus of polishing port for 10 III and after it’s done, go to newer phones. Otherwise it could spin out of control. And it kinda already does.
They were focused with hardware-obsolete C2 for very long time. Clearly they ate more that they could digest. But we humans learn from our mistakes, right?
They are making the same mistake right now. They keep complaing they out of resources and taking even more tasks.
As you said, many hours, many days, but no amount of time can compensate for lack of resources.

[filip.k]

It’s a lot of wanabe managers in this forum. They seem to know all the fact precisely as they are.

[Ride92]

It would be much better if we shouldn’t make guesses.
It would be nicer if Jolla comes forward, not only with the design with their new money-maker.
It would be just fine if you would also don’t judge, as you don’t know all the facts either
We pay, we expect some level of robustness, not yet another problematic platform.

[wetab73]

@unmaintained

hey do what they can do and work with what they have.

It’s been now nearly two months since they said that they “might think about different approach” (i.e. a community port upon Lineage OS base rather than Sony blobs, with AAS made available as an optional paid component). As it turns out, during that time they didn’t even start discussing it with authors of the best ports in existence, like e.g. @rinigus, who recently made fully functional LOS based 1 IV and 5 IV ports in literally no time.

So what they really need to do is actually simple: hire a person like @rinigus to make LOS based 10 IV and 10 V community ports (which turned out to be fully functional and working exceptionally well on the 1 IV and 5 IV) that Jolla would bless but wouldn’t be an author of, which would rule out licencing problems, and then just make AAS available for those ports at the price of the current commercial licence. That’s what it takes, and not that they “might think about different approach” for months, without even starting to discuss it with any of those who possibly could do it, for two months now. It is now entirely clear that Sony blobs for the 10 IV and V won’t ever get any better, so either Jolla actually does something to initiate and endorse such LOS based community ports for the 10 IV and V, or they just keep doing nothing, which is precisely what’s been happening since May 2024.

[rinigus]

By hiring someone, Jolla would get exposed too. At least that’s my understanding of it.

Now, I would suggest to someone who owns Xperia 10 V or IV which collects the dust or is used in Android, start working on the port. There are several elementary steps that are needed to be done anyway without any major development:

• Get Lineage 21 running on your device. Test it properly: calls, network, and all possible hardware/software functionality.

This test is vital before starting development of the port. Its important to understand whether the base works as expected and report all the bugs to Lineage devs. With the base tested, SFOS porting would be simpler.

SFOS porting is nothing super complicated. It mainly requires YOUR time and patience. All porters started with some port and we have a great channel and docs that would help you as you learn. Many corner cases are already solved and you just have to ask on IRC (or use Matrix/Telegram bridge instead) and I am sure some porters will be happy to help.

So, instead of waiting for someone doing it for you, I would recommend at least one or several users to organize and start working on it. There is this special worm feeling of booting into your own port - you may like it as well.

PS: “you” would correspond to any Xperia 10 IV / V owner wishing to test it.

[unmaintained]

@wetab73

So what they really need to do is actually simple: hire a person like @rinigus

I do not know what their financial constraints are, and hiring someone is not exactly cheap. I am just a simple software developer myself, and the minimum I would even consider for getting out of bed in the morning is $100k per year. That means they would have to sell around 2,000 licenses annually just to offset that cost, without making any profit or paying any taxes, if they wanted to hire one person full time.

I can imagine it would not take a full year to create a port, but this at least gives an idea of the scale of the issue they have to deal with.

[wetab73]

@rinigus

By hiring someone, Jolla would get exposed too.

I didn’t mean officially. Nor that it takes literally hiring someone. I rather meant: let someone do it, with their (more or less official) bless. As for them, I would just expect that they finally state whether they would make AAS available for such a port or not. It’s been two months since they “might start thinking about it” but they haven’t decided even just that….

As for trying to work on it myself, who knows, maybe it’s not a bad idea

@unmaintained

I do not know what their financial constraints are, and hiring someone is not exactly cheap.

Please see above, I didn’t actually mean strictly and officially hiring, paying, etc. I mean endorsing, inviting, maybe supporting to some extent, maybe somehow initializing. Even just by saying that they would enable AAS and other commercial components for such a port, and such things. But months are passing and we don’t hear even just that.

@unmaintained

I can imagine it would not take a full year to create a port

Well, if I am not mistaken, those recent 1 IV / 5 IV ports took a few weeks at most to reach quite a mature state. And that including the LOS part that had to be done as there were no LOS releases for the 1 IV and 5 IV ready to just grab and utilize, so it had to be built. Whereas in case of the 10 V there is an actively developed LOS port in existence.

So let’s not exaggerate with that $100k as a person who already has an appropriate experience it could probably be done in a matter of weeks. I wouldn’t exclude that the time that Jolla employees wasted by now on trying to make it work upon Sony blobs already costed them multiple times more, as those employees could have been doing something else instead.

Anyway, as it has always been the case, what’s missing from Jolla side is proper communication. If they cared to even just verbally encourage / endorse creation of such a port and stated that they would make AAS available for it, quite possibly someone would have already decided to give it a go. But since they said that they “might consider it” they only mentioned it once then, by saying that now they are going to have Xmas holidays, so “maybe later”. Not too much encouraging.

[rinigus]

@wetab73

Well, if I am not mistaken, those recent 1 IV / 5 IV ports took a few weeks at most to reach quite a mature state. And that including the LOS part that had to be done as there were no LOS releases for the 1 IV and 5 IV.

It took 1 year. Large fraction of it was porting to LOS as there were no working sm8450 ports at that time, or at least not officially. So, it was a huge mess to get through. Next, there were new interfaces here and there to be developed for. For example VoLTE AIDL based support. And few other new interfaces, workarounds, as far as I remember.

But, hopefully, for 10 iv/v it would be simpler since you have LOS base already AND some other SFOS port(s) that use LOS21 as a base (including Nagara port)

[wetab73]

@rinigus

It took 1 year. Large fraction of it was porting to LOS as there were no working sm8450 ports at that time

Yes, I am aware of it, and I did mention it. OK, by saying “weeks” I was actually rather thinking about your recent SFOS part of work, I shouldn’t have included in it the LOS part that the 1 IV / 5 IV ports required due to no LOS builds readily available for them at that time that certainly took you a lot of time and work. But in case of the 10 V we do have an existing (and very mature) LOS release to use, plus also some things can be taken from your ports. So isn’t there MUCH less to do in case of those devices and at this point of time and would it be a huge exaggeration saying that for a person with some experience in porting it might take just “weeks” in case of the 10 IV / V?

[rinigus]

Looked up the timelines regarding Nagara:

• LOS21 porting was more or less ready in April (took from ~Nov 2024)
• SFOS that I started using was probably Jul-Aug
• Announced Oct
• Released Nov

So, if all goes well and there is no need to develop new interfaces / support, that’s where major time was spent for Nagara, it maybe doable in “few weeks”. Definitions of “few” vary, maybe a month or two if port is simple and you can rely on others for solutions. Good chance is that it is that way.

Nagara timings above are taking into account that its a hobby project, but tried to find at least some time to work on it almost every day.

But overall, while timing is hard to predict, port is surely not going to happen while phones are in the drawer. I would still suggest to take a chance and try. And at the start, try to test Lineage 21. If LOS21 is not available anymore, start from compiling it and testing that. Ideally, keep LOS21 as a base as we already have ports based on it.

[rinigus]

Hmm, lools like these phones had LOS 22 as the first official release. Now question is how much SFOS supports it. Maybe mal already prepared for this base.

[wetab73]

Thank you very much for the information. I fully agree with your suggestion that everyone should start trying to port it (or, ideally, let everyone join forces and make it a group job) instead of keeping the phones in the drawers. I will take a look at it after this busy holidays time and see if I’m capable of doing something about it…

Sadly, I’ve just checked and indeed, LOS 22.1 was the initial release for both 10 IV and V, so LOS 21 base would need to be compiled from scratch ourselves. Well, next week I’ll attempt to build it. I’ve never done it before so let’s see if I manage to do it.

Still, it would be a great incentive if Jolla cared to at least make up their mind and cared to clearly communicate if they would release AAS (as well as other commercial components and other things like e.g. official Jolla account support, store access, etc.) for such a port if it is out. Saying like rainemak did, i.e. something like that they “might do it if such port existed but since there is no such port then there’s nothing to talk about at the moment” actually brings us no information whatsoever, which - sadly - is their typical style of communication.

While, I guess, we all understand that this 10 IV / V situation is not necessarily Jolla’s fault and that now that they’re going to sell the J2 the existence of such ports might not necessarily be desired by them (or maybe they’d at least prefer to delay it past collecting enough J2 orders), in case of the 10 IV / V they have a special obligation because they did officially announce upcoming support for those phones back in May 2024 (at the Jolla Love Day event or whatever it was called) making quite a lot of people (myself included) buy those devices, solely for that purpose. With that in mind, after 16 months past the originally scheduled release date (August 2024) of doing nothing, they should really finally show some authentic (I mean UNFEIGNED) care to ultimately solve this stinky situation.

As I wrote, I guess that it’s now clear that we shouldn’t expect any serious improvement with the state of the Sony blobs, so staying with them won’t ever considerably improve the situation. And if so, then probably the ONLY reasonable way out would be a LOS based community port that Jolla would somehow endorse/accept/support. But if all that they do in such direction is saying once or twice that “they might consider it”, and then months pass without a single word more in that regard, then it is really a hopeless case.

Anyway, once again, thank you VERY much @rinigus for your replies and for all the information you provided. I admire your ports and everything this community gets from you. Merry Xmas and a happy new year!

[mbrazi_1]

[mbrazi_1]

some one can help me i must reinstall android first how can i do the phone is always rebooting

[avhakola]

Have you tried Emma-tool on Windows or Newflasher on Linux?

[rinigus]

I think in this case it would make sense to test LOS22 first. If it works properly, go to SFOS porters channel and ask whether LOS22 can be used as a base. Its possible that there is a support for it too.

[mbrazi_1]

I tried Ema but nothing happens the phone is not recognized with ema. While the driver is well recognized under Windows. Is my phone repaired

[pherjung]

Check this thread: Enable USB debugging
Probably an issue with USB2.

[yusssufff]

To my opinion, it is better that Jolla does the job. Community porters are great people, but they may be suddently tired and stop porting a model, and leave us without more updates. It is too much trust in one volunteer’s good will to work for free, for me.

Famous Bus Factor issue. Jolla team is much more solid that one or two porters.

That is why i really hope for the Jolla’s official support. I think that will bring support for many years, with company liability and trust entitled.

I’d rather resell my 10 V than get a community port.

But anyhow i think while most of the team is busy, Mal is the jolla team person who keeps working quietly on the official support for the xperias. So my guess is that as just one person from the Jolla team is on it, progress goes slower, but still it comes.

So far Jolla already said they managed to get the Volte nut cracked, Jack and Camera working, with the Sony Blobs. They are just ironing things out .

As @attah said, they were pushed to communicate that they worked on the 10 IV/V. So we bought the phones when they were still on the shelves, that is very nice. I always prefer to buy a new phone myself.

Now we have the device, Jolla work slowly on the port, and all will get the licence happily delivered in 2026, just have some faith i suggest

[lkraav]

@wetab73

Anyway, as it has always been the case, what’s missing from Jolla side is proper communication. If

Communication is probably the easy part. I’m fairly certain they’re massively lacking leadership / decision-making bandwidth to juggle all the(ir) balls in the air.