New Phone on horizon?

nice price indeed !

*12234567890

Xperia 10 iii should be out soon (albeit with Android 11 and not being an open device initially). This should cause a drop for Xperia 10 II prices (may be not below 240 pound though)

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The phone has arrived. Now the ā€œonlyā€ thing missing is an OS update :slight_smile:

just did a googleling and gigaset belongs now to 80% to some chinese fund: golden something

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To some Hong Kong entity, no? It makes a kind of a difference, to me at least.

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You are right. I did searching in Qwant and have read in Wikipedia that Gigaset is now for 70% owned by the Goldin Group, that is controlled by a Hong Kong businessman. Gigaset is listed on the German stock exchange. The phones are made (assembled) in Bocholt, Germany.
Sony is a global Japanese corporation and the headquarter of Sony Mobile is in Tokyo. Where the Xperia phones are made, I donā€™t know.
Nearly all brands are assembled in China, even the Librem 5.

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Sadly new open hardware is almost not available. I would be really happy with a risc gpu even without a gsm modem, like an Ipaq Pocketpc 2002, without fiddeling with hybris running on SFOS because of its userfriendliness to small screens.

I DO get my PCBs made in china, though the prototypes are made here (at 10 times the cost and with less clear lithogrophy) ā€¦ most of the parts are made in china too, butā€¦ I have a bunch of parts (made 20 years ago) that were made in the netherlands :slight_smile: old stock is great. canā€™t beat old chips from philips!

and, yes, it sucks the Volla, as most phones do, but Iā€™m using 3.4 on the Volla and itā€™s ā€˜OKā€™. Not great but better than the old Jolla phone. Gotta fix Fahrplan. The SDK was more reliable than it is now. Frankly, the Andoid 7 on my honor 5c was less resource suckage but that could be either SFOS or the 290.

Fahrplan can be fixed, merely by recompiling with a 3.4 target.

While Volla phone has about the same build and specs as Gigaset GS290 I can give my experience with the Gigaset.
Recently I bought it with /e/ because the new call menu of Sailfish doesnā€™t work well with me and because I was curious about the device and about /e/.
I am very pleased with Sailfish and Xperia XA2 (plus), but it has only 32 GB storage and the card slot of my device is broken.
And I have to say that I donā€™t appreciate the long thin flat devices that we now see.
GigasetGS290:

  • well build, strong,
  • 64 GB storage
  • fantastic battery, lasts three days
  • VoLTE support
  • GPS, mobile and WLAN works well
  • slippery surface, so you need a case
  • camera not good, ugly colours like many cheap android devices
  • not a good sound quality, by far not as rich as Sonyā€™s
    The speed is comparable to that of the XA2
    So I think this Volla phone/GigasetGS290 is not an improvement to what we have now.

About /e/ : it has the functionality of Android and the look/design of Apple. Satnav MagicEarth is fast and reliable, because the system has the Mozilla location license. The appstore is a collection of existing apps. No nice client apps like Piepmatz, Telegraā€™me, Fernschreiber and so many other charming Sailfish apps (Talefish!)
/e/ is a good alternatve to some people but it has no soul.
Sailfish is definitely the most beautiful and the most user friendly OS in the world.

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Same here - as Android support is not really important for me, I just bought another Xperia X 2nd hand (ā‚¬30 in very good state - couldnā€™t resist) just to have a backup I can play around withā€¦

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I have an Xperia X in the drawer. I didnā€™t like it, for it made screenshots spontaneously when I picked it up. The buttons of the X were not on the right place for me. And the colors of the camera were not right: to pinkish. So I was glad that the XA2 came.
It is a shame that we need to buy new devices so often. Therefore I wonder: could Jolla not make an appointment with Gigaset and let them make a device with replaceable parts? They are already busy with a replaceable battery. Just an idea.

I havenā€™t had a chance to get the Fairphone2 running but I know that mal is working, also, on the fairphone3 ā€¦ I really like my fairphone2 (running android 8, not actively used). Itā€™s nice hardware. A fairphone3 is something Iā€™ll probably buy just to support those guys. But, if mal getā€™s the 3.4 and 4 kernels running, Iā€™ll go with sailfish on the fp2 for sure. And, should I have the means, the fp3.

My volla phone, the gigaset, is ā€˜okā€™ and now my main phoneā€¦ (had to re-compile a couple of apps for 3.4).

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My volla arrived today. will try out the os for a few days, before switching to sailfish.

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You can even have both. :wink:
On the Telegram-Channel ( https://t.me/andbootmgr ) of AndroidBootManager some guys report to be running triple-boot on their Volla Phones.
(Volla OS on EMMC, UBTouch and SFOS on SDCard)

ABM is still beta and at the moment youā€™d lose warranty, because you have to root your phone to use it. But Volla says theyā€™re working on a solution to run ABM on unrooted phones in the future.

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Can you report back how SFOS runs on the Volla Phone?

Iā€™m currently on my iPhone 11pro, and playing around with a XA2 on SFOS 4. The XA2 is so much subpar that i can barely motivate myself to use it.

Would be interesting to know if the Volla Phone performs better.

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If it is the same as the GigasetGS290 it is not an improvement, but you arenā€™t going back either.
Screen and speed are about the same. The card slot of the Gigaset/Volla is metal and stronger than the flimsy XA2 card slot. Camera and sound of Gigaset/Volla are not as good as on XA2. Picking up Wilan on Gigaset/Volla works better than on XA2.
The overall build is good. How much storage does Volla have?
Again, Giga could be an option for Jolla to work with, since they build unlockable devices and having replaceable batteries, but camera and sound should be better.

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i will, i guess its pretty subjective and depends on your needs
after one day:
battery seems very good. pictures are ok, better then on experia x, not sure about x10
i have issues getting used to android.:slight_smile:

volla os:
the launcher removes the feeling of operating an android, but it is not consistent enough. you can type to send an mail or sms but not to start a chat. (yet ?)
fdroid and aurora is pre-installed but that was known
froid works fine, aurora had issues to install apps. had to try a few times to succeed

size is nearly as x10, same length, but <1 cm wider
voice in speaker during calls is rather on the quite side

update: 48 hrs on one charge: 100 - 37% (without situations app) 6% loss overnight with mobile on. with xperia 10 i could barely do one day, when using browser. xperia would also got hot during browsing.
yes, to replace launcher is easy but then it really looks like an android. volla launcher has issues to find your contacts when not stored on phone. the only function that it currently has is to serve like rocket-launcher.

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I didnā€™t like Volla OS. The launcher I got rid of immediately. I installed my usual raft of things and realized that the battery (new 4700 mah?) didnā€™t get me through the time my Honor 5c with ā€˜thatā€™ android got me (about 2 days). A 4 year old phone with a 2700 mah battery outperformsā€¦! I was a bit stunned.

Fairphones AOS ist better (also doesnā€™t battery drain as badly). Ubuntu Touch I found too ugly to use. Iā€™ll install it on a phone to do some development.

SFOS for all itā€™s lacking, is just so much nicer. Iā€™m doing development now.

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battery is to my knowledge not that replaceable. you will need a hairdryer and a guitar pick again