I’ve used my new Jolla Phone a little over a week now, so the impressions are starting to mature a bit.
So far, I have mostly complained about things that don’t work, or bugs in the system, so now I thought I’d be a bit more positive.
First of all, I have to say that I love the Inari Blue ringtone. I even prefer it over my own YRGB ringtone, which I have been using constantly for the past 12 years. So, well done @Jolla !
Secondly… the phone is damn good-looking and the screen is absolutely amazing. At least compared to my previous X phones.
What? What does “rings cold” mean?
I have used SFOS daily for pretty much 13 years - i do not recognize it being hard to answer or it being locked behind fingerprint at all.
I mean when application menus appear as thin bars at the top of the screen, indicating a pull-down menu, I often don’t realize that there are useful actions available in the app there. I don’t think the problem is any worse really than a traditional hamburger menu, it is just something I need to keep reminding myself of.
When the phone is ‘off’: the screen is turned off and the phone is not logged in (login has timed out), and then a phone call (possibly in signal on Android) comes in. Perhaps you can describe your experience when this happens?
I think you are on the right track here, associating the thin bar with a menu, just like you associate the hamburger with a menu. (This design leaves more useful area for apps, so I prefer it over the indicator-and-hamburger-laden UI of other mobile operating systems.)
edit: I think you will soon get used to the pull-down menus.)
So far, my experience with the JP as my first Sailfish device was similar to learning Golang: I was expecting it to be a big change, having to overhaul a lot of my workflows, … - but after setting it up, it just worked and there was nothing more to it. (Granted, I did decide early on, that I don’t need to carry a lot of things everywhere: WhatsApp and Banking Apps are now on an old android device at home)
I appreciate the simplicity of applications - it reminds me of the ‘old days’, where functionality was prioritized and not everything wanted to be a ‘platform’.
The one Software-gripe that I have is around top-to-bottom swipes: At times I find it hard to differentiate between 3 different actions all triggered by swiping down:
Showing the ‘action menu’
Showing the ‘top menu’ / quick settings area
Closing the application
Similarly, swiping up from the bottom should reveal the app drawer, but sometimes applications also have a lower action menu.
All-in-all however, I like the phone and I am glad to have waited for it. I suspect though, that switching to it may be a bit harder, if your reliance on ‘big tech’ products is heavier.
It is a bit Ubuntu-ish in that there is not much scope for personalisation.
Really? You can change Ambient (wallpaper), sounds, colours, icons, font size easily. With some skills even more.
The Events page would be better as the default home screen rather than the running apps page.
I don’t argue your preference. I just don’t remember that anyone expressed that before.
I want some app icons permanently on-screen, either at the bottom like Android or up the side like Ubuntu Touch.
They are definitely not icons. They offer preview and often some app action. Besides if you want some apps to be open all the time it can be easily achieved. Look for Situations or Automagic apps.
The running apps page needs to be laid out more cleverly, to use more of the screen and not waste so much space …
I’m not sure it ‘needs’ but I agree that this annoys me to sometimes.
The running apps page … not waste so much space with useless dead screenshots of running Android apps.
It’s definitely not a ‘dead screenshot‘. It’s live preview of app. See above about icons.
Folders of app icons need to display the icons so that you can see at a glance what is in the folders.
Two of those need to start at the very top of the screen:
Top menu (swipe from the middle of the top)
Close app (swipe from from the outer 20% or so left/right of the top)
You should start the Pull-down menu swipe lower down, inside the app. The thin bar at the top is more of an indicator than something you interact with.
Pro tip You normally don’t even need to reach for the top to open a Pulley Menu.
Try the Month/Day view of the Calendar app. Hold your phone with one hand, put your thumb on the display where it’s convenient. Probably somewhere in the Day part. Pull.
Still waiting them to fix the Teams audio bug issue and that you can set pin code for android or fingerprint to use bank and other sensitive apps like authenticators on android emulation
I was one of the first to get the Jolla Phone (2026), and after almost two months, I am still onboard!
I got the grasp of the unique gestures in the first day or so, the phone itself and the UI feels like home now. I honestly kind of like how everything has the same design language. And doesn’t look that boring compared to modern Android. The phone doesn’t lag, which I was a bit worried about, because the SoC is mid-range, and I was accustomed to flagship ones. The biggest selling point, at least for me, is the battery life. It truly feels like a phone with a one day (or even two days) battery life. I never understood people who say that their iPhones or Android hold a day, or even two days. It never did. Unless they just never touch the phone or something. Furthermore, I will be grabbing some batteries for it, just to make sure I can always contact my relatives without thinking much about a wall plug.
Unfortunately, I am one of those that don’t have I3C, and suffer from (more intense than before) front camera dust buildup, and have that black-is-not-so-black display, as well as (really) poor signal strength and (really) slow charging. And one of the banks I heavily rely on doesn’t work in the AAS, which is a big bummer. I guess I have gotten used to these, so they don’t bother me that much, but yeah, I am waiting for Jolla’s email to have it replaced under warranty. At least that’s what they said in the camera dust thread. Though I got the phone in the Day1 event, so it will be sad to see it go
I have couple challenging issues and these are big problems for me.
bank app stopped to work, OP latest. Soon old version stops to work.
mobilepay does not work anymore
Specially bank issue will be show stopper if cannot be solved some way. Mobilepay is not so big issue.
Disturbing issues:
Neste app. Cannot charge if not credit card possibility.
Bluetooth unstability. Very annoying especially with headphones.
Call volume setting, actually lack of it.
Many things work very good. I would like to continue using as daily driver but let’s see.
I have had so much fun digging through the file system, it’s been so much fun to see how things work. I’m thinking about getting the SDK to run on my PC to test things on the actual device. I think I’ll also need to make a Github-account at some point, but my previous trials with that just left me confused. Also after working so hard trying to get rid of services by digital giants, making another Microsoft account is a mental barrier. But nothing is perfect and overall I’m very happy with the device.
I’ll update my blog to make this clearer.