New Jolla Phone owner seeks advice

[rgp]

There is no difference between the Commercial and free version in terms of the OS.
When you buy the license, and use those credentials to access the Jolla store, it allows you to download and install the Android App support, MS Exchange email support, and the Predictive text input software components (they are all pieces of software that Jolla paid a license fee for).

So apart from those pieces of software, the updates will be the same.

I am a little intrigued as to how they managed to install 4.2.0.19 on the device, as Jolla don’t distribute images from the store until they’ve made a General release, which 4.2 hasn’t had yet.

[zinoviev]

Another new user here. First, a short grumble. I am frustrated by the lack of manuals for new Sailfish users like me. I know that in theory things are supposed to be obvious, but the reality is different. Even small and obvious posts like the second post in this thread (by @nthn) are not obvious to new users. My first impression of Jolla Store with so many dead applications almost made me quit. Who would know that the community is kind of boycotting Jolla Store…

Anyway, after some play with my device, I ended up with a device with applications coming from many different places: Jolla Store, the OpenRepos, F-Droid, Aptoide, several sideloaded Androd applications that are available only on Google Play. So I have the following questions:

1. Is this normal? I mean do experienced SFOS users use so many application sources?
2. How do I know where does an application I have installed comes from? Does a native application come from Jolla Store or from an OpenRepo? Does an Android app come from F-Droid or it has been manually installed?
3. What do I do about the security updates? Do I get a notification when an update is available? Or I have to do manual checks for all installed applications (hopefully not)? If an application is sideloaded and then appears in a store, say F-Droid, does it get security updates or I have to uninstall the installed version and then install the version in F-Droid?
4. Is it possible to see how many storage memory each of the applications consumes?

[davidrasch]

If you want to use Android Apps from Google Play store, there is an app in F-Droid that lets you access Google Play store, its called Aurora store. This is more secure than Aptoide or sideloading from web sources. And it also manages updates.

[rgp]

There are a few guides and things at Jolla Zendesk
but yeah for a someone new to the OS I can imagine it can be a bit overwhelming.
The good news is that there are loads of helpful people here and on IRC who can give you a hand if you get stuck, but my first port of call is to search this forum and it’s forerunner TJC.

The Jolla store is a great source of vetted apps, and OpenRepos contains software that might not be allowed to enter the Jolla store due to their stricter rules.
Recently there’s another native repository, Sailfish Chum and there’s a discussion about it right here, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about it as most of the software there tends to find it’s way to Openrepos pretty quickly, and there’s talk of integrating Chum into the latter as it doesn’t have an app to browse through it yet.

I can’t speak for others, but I do have apps installed from the majority of those sources, I trust F-Droid and Aurora store, and sometimes a good app source (eg Whatsapp from their website).

I’m not sure if it’s possible to discern where apps have been installed from, for me personally the stock apps come from the Jolla Store, and then most of the native ones come from Openrepos. With Android I tend to grab most stuff from Aurora.

Security updates are incorporated with OS updates, which you will get a notification on the Event scree, but you can check manually by opening the Settings app > Sailfish OS updates and pulling down the pulley menu there to check.

You will get a notification from the Jolla store for any updates there, Openrepos, F-Droid and Aurora require you to open the app. (Aurora does have an option for running it as a service to automate updates, but as I want as little as possible running at any given time, I haven’t investigated whether this will work on Sailfish).

There’s an application called AlienDalvik Control in openrepos which gives you easy access to the Android Settings app (AD Control can be found as an applet in the Settings app once installed). This will give you details about Android apps.
If you explore the Storage section of the main Settings app you can find out the total memory usage of native apps, for more granular data the command line is your friend. You need to enable Developer mode in the Settings app, then open up the Terminal app and these commands from here will do the job:

List all installed packages and their sizes (in bytes):

rpm -qa --queryformat '%{SIZE} %{NAME} \n'

List top 10 packages, sorted by size:

rpm -qa --queryformat '%{SIZE} %{NAME} \n' | sort -n -r | head -10

[nthn]

@rgp

There’s an application called AlienDalvik Control in openrepos which gives you easy access to the Android Settings app (AD Control can be found as an applet in the Settings app once installed). This will give you details about Android apps.

You can also easily access the Android settings by installing an Android ‘launcher’. This is especially important if you’re using an Xperia 10 II (or later), because the versions of Aliendalvik Control on OpenRepos aren’t compatible with its architecture and therefore can’t be installed.

[SRU]

Now I have some more expelience of using Sailfish (4.2) on Sony Xperia 10 II dual SIM and have noticed some more issues:

Some Bluetooth devices don’t work well with the phone:
Sennheiser HD 4.5 headphones
VW e-Golf

An Android app that doesn’t work for me is the Swedish “SOS 112” app. Perhaps this is because I didn’t install GmsCore? I have written to SOS Alarm and asked them if they would make a version for Sailfish and would welcome more to do so.

It seems impossible for me to send and receive MMS. Would be great if anyone has advice how to make that work at least for SIM 1 (Hallon). When receiving, the phone says “Problem with downloading message”. I have checked the settings for the Messages app and “Download MMS automatically” is selected.

[pawel.spoon]

SMS , MMS… the settings that get applied are often wrong.
Google for the settings of your provider and crosscheck.
In my case MMS is always wrong and while data works in my country it does not aboroad until I fix the.settings

[atlochowski]

If apn settings in Sailfish OS are wront for your mobile network you can fix this here https://github.com/sailfishos/mobile-broadband-provider-info/blob/master/mobile-broadband-provider-info/serviceproviders.xml

[SRU]

Found that on a web page of my provider (MMS & surfinställningar 📡💻 | Hallons forum). So under Settings → System → Mobile network SIM1 → MMS access point → Proxy address, I changed from 172.16.53.11 to mmsproxy.tre.se. However, the web page also lists MCC, MNC and APN Type, which I don’t know how to check/set in Sailfish.