Sailfish X licence transfer from xperia X to XA2

General
#1

I have sailfish X on an xperia X. If I understand things correctly, then I would need an xperia xa2 (or xperia 10) if I want android 8 support, correct?

And if this is the case, and I would buy an xa2, can I actually transfer my existing sailfish X licence from one phone to the other?

A secondary point is that it seems to be not advised to actually go for an xperia 10, as that would be bigger, more expensive and not really better in any way. Am I right?

All advice welcome!

#2

with respect to transfer of the license: that’s not possible as stated https://jolla.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003837053?mobile_site=true
“There are four licence groups. A licence from one group cannot be used on a device from another group.”

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#3

Thanks! That is really unfortunate, if not to say stupid. I am ready to go to any length to prove that I won’t be using the licence on two different devices in parallel, but I would really have thought that I could actually transfer it from one to the other…

I’d still be interested in the response to the other questions.

#4

Send an email to Jolla Desk and explaining that you need to transfer your license from a brocken X to an XA2 you bought. It should be enough

#5

If the licensees were perpetual, how should Jolla make any money at all?
This (license following the device) was chosen instead of yearly payments, and is a fair compromise imo.

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#6

With regard to your other questions, whilst Xperia 10 is last device officially supported by Jolla there are community ports available for XZ2, XZ2Compact and XZ3 albeit without Android App Support https://github.com/sailfishos-sony-tama/main
Whilst Xperia 10 has Snapdragon 630 chipset XZ2 & XZ3 have Snapdragon 845 chipset and feel a lot faster in use. Bear in mind that you need to be able to downgrade from Android 10 to Android 9 should your chosen device come with latter to install Sailfish X, so XZ3 is probably last device to which this appertains. Covid19 has disrupted process of Jolla releasing any information upon future supported models intention and in the past by time it is announced models are becoming obsolete and hard to source.
Here is a comparison photo of Xperia X, XA2, Xperia 10 & XZ2Compact and only reason Xperia 10 not shown running Sailfish is that I have an ongoing issue with it’s camera function upon Sailfish OS but not Android 9 or 10.

Xperias
Xperias4900×2447 2.59 MB

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#7

Thank you, this is helpful. The Xperia 10 is just too big for my taste. So I keep thinking about the XA2 as my possible upgrade.

#8

I am not suggesting they should be perpetual, but there could be a subscription model for significant OS upgrades, for example. Just changing the hardware does not for me logically constitute a reason for buying the same software once again.

#9

I don’t disagree, but software licensing is always a quite arbitrary.

I think this is preferable to the alternative, where often you see:

  • Overhyping and/or holding back features to make it “enough” for a major release.
  • People not wanting to pay and being left on outdated versions, and getting rather angry that they don’t get security updates or their favourite parts of the next major version. (same goes for yearly licenses)

Now we at least get a steady stream of features and security updates for all, for the lifetime of the phone.
Yes, it is a compromise, but to me the alternatives seems worse, at leat in most cases. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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#10

I changed from XA2 to Xperia 10 in Feb. 2020. My impression was, the X10 is (felt) a little bit faster.