The Astri Slide newsletter this morning had some very interesting piece of news: There is now a preliminary UBports build in existence, and the kernel sources and bootloader are available:
Another great news is that the production of Finnish/Swedish keyboard has started!
I am not very interested in Waydroid. I need a Linux phone with well integrated Android. As far as I can tell, the only option is Sailfish + AppSupport. I can not understand why Jolla want to limit AppSupport to the Sony devices alone? Why not sell AppSupport for open source Sailfish integrations? Either that, or do an official Sailfish port for the Astro that includes AppSupport?
I am not sure that is the case. We aren’t talking about redesigning Sailfish from scratch here, it is only the adaptation to a new hardware platform. Unix is originally designed for high portability so most of the OS remains the same. This is what libhybris is about and the foundation of Sailfish. Besides Jolla kan probably leverage help from the community for a device like this.
Year and a half later, I still haven’t received my Astro Slide, although it should be pretty dang close, since there are reports of Swe/Fin layout devices being delivered on social media!
As I read the room here, there may not be an official port, but a community port is within the realm of possible. Is there any interest in a community port, and who would step in and start it?
(I am able to participate at least, but I believe it’s going to be quite a big undertaking, and as I have never done anything serious with device ports, it could take a long time to get anywhere all on my own )
Taking into account the situation the manufacturing is currently (the manufacturer factory was sold and the new owner pulled the deal) there is no point in spending any effort to the platform.
I lost my money in the campaign, and so did many others. That is the risk of crowdfunding