I’m trying to keep the hope alive for (at least) a community port of Sailfish OS for Fairphone 3. An ethical phone that’s designed with repair in mind (no planned obsolescence) running linux, what’s not to like?
It’s first in number of votes in the community port requests thread, am I missing something?
I confirm it could be a good idea to have Sailfish on the Fairphone 3. The full hardware adaptation should easier than on a Sony phone. After having bought a Xperia X and a Xperia 10, it is a shame that, two years later, there is no full hardware adaptation for the first one!
Ditto, I also jumped on Sailfish X with the Xperia X back in Q4 2017 and the lack of full hardware adaptation has been disappointing. With the battery dying and the phone suffering from digitizer issues & annoying ghost-typing, the Pinephone and Librem5 still being under development and far from a stage where they can be used as daily drivers, the Fairphone is the only viable alternative for someone who’s not interested in the latest hardware but repairability and freedom…
Has there actually ever been any comment from Jolla regarding this? I don’t find anything in the official blog
Yes, it’s annoying, being forced to buy a new phone every two years. I would prefer quality hardware and paying for the OS. Does anyone know if and how Sailfish works on a Fairphone?
Iirc there was talk about an official SfOS build for the FP2 (sorry, too lazy to search for evidence 
), but it was scrubbed since Jolla and Fairphone couldn’t agree on terms…
So unless anything changed on that front, I would consider an official SfOS release for FP3 unlikely.
@rsoto, not that I know of. @Kea, there was a community port of the Fairphone 2 but the device is not on sale any more from Fairphone. Mind you, if you can get a 2nd hand Fairphone 2, all the components are still available from Fairphone so in theory you could refurbish it yourself.
If I remember correctly, the customer survey that Jolla conducted some time ago showed that even in this community, people want the latest hardware so I guess the partnership with Sony is the way to go for Jolla as it gives them a new device each year…
I think it would be a win win situation. Fairphone gets a non android system and Jolla can sell more licesnes. I for my part bought one for my xperia and are willing to buy another one for my Fairphone 2. But the port needs to be done professionally. The community port on Fairphone 2 did not run very well.
People are stupid (sorry to say that straight forward) and think the latest hardware is always the best. But it is not. Continuity and durability its whats needed. Fairphone gives that and also the plus that you can repair the phone very easy.
Remotely related: does somebody still have a (recent) install image for a Fairphone 2 (e.g. sailfishos-fp2-sibon-release-3.0.0.8-beta3.zip as linked from the now defunct Mer wiki pages)?
SailfishOS should be treated as a software module for the Fairphone to be upgraded (licence) or exchanged like other modules.
verkkokauppa has started sales of fp3. any updates of sfos on it?
Yes , and it is a bit sad, knowing that /e/ foundation ported to the Fairphone 3 successfully.
I’m totally with you! Furthermore, I think that long life cycle of Fairphone products here would come as a great advantage.
Look at the situation from this viewpoint: since the time when Sailfish X was announced only two generations of Fairphone were introduced to the market (Fairphone 2 and Fairphone 3). At the same time, with Sony partnership Jolla is in a continuous yearly race to catch up with new Xperia models: Xperia X, XA2, 10, now probably adaptation for 10 ii is in development. So, instead of three limped official Sailfish devices, we would have two, but with more functionality because development team would need less devices to disperse their time to. I would prefer this, and I know many would. Plus long life cycle of the device implies longer availability on the market, better hardware service, longer driver support, and so and so…
I honestly believe that failure of negotiations between Jolla and Fairphone has backfired us all badly in the end… 
I’m not very positive about the future and specifically SFOS on FP3 arriving anytime soon… given the worldwide situation, the all long standing difficulties of Jolla and the recent difficulties of Fairphone in handling software-side the FP3+, I think we can guess very educately it’s not arriving in 2020 and neither 2021 I’d say. Plus, remember that Fairphone seemed not that interested in sfos for fp2 at the times, in the end. We can only hope in a community port, for which I entered the port request in the old TJC long ago as you can see. Sadly I’m not that much into programming even an app, let’s imagine a port! Regardless of all this, I think I’ll have a FP3 for christmas anyway, hoping in some discounts. I like too much the idea of open hardwares to not support it.
Well, you are right on that one, but, you have to consider that those are two different leagues. /e/ is a de-googled Android, nothing more. Sailfish is a whole Operating system and development ecosystem, hence you cannot really compare UBPorts (which also uses the Android Kernel as stated in their official documentation) or /e/ with Sailfish. All in all and for all its flaws, I do think that Sailfish is the most complete and ambitious alternative mobile OS project in existence. That said, of course I would love it to run on more devices/more open hardware, or at least hardware that is a little easier to find and has a longer sales period: even in Europe, the main target market, good luck finding a dual-sim Xperia XA2 plus or ultra in the colour of your choice!
You are right. I like Sailfish most, because it is much more elegant than Android. I also like the different icons in Sailfish, and the user interface. My problem is that I am not tech savvy enough to do with the device what most of the sailors do and instructions are not always clear.
Everyone is tech-savvy enough to learn to use Sailfish My advice is to learn to use Linux in general (specifically the command line interface which can get a lot done in short time), ideally in a live CD so you don’t even have to mess with your current installations.
For me the Fairphone 3 / 3+ and the Pinephone ought to be on the official map.
But even though I really do love the SailfishOS GUI and would pay for it - I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep replacing it with Plasma-Mobile.
Did you buy that phone in the end? Im thinking of buying one for myself. Bu with Android its hard for me to go for it. Is there a community port for this phone?
I don’t think the bootloader of FP3 can be unlocked, eg. you can’t install custom OS to it until they allow unlocking the bootloader.