I agree, this approach of leaving a trail of half finished phones in their wake does not leave Jolla in a good place as far as customer trust is concerned. And, as a result, a lot of potential customers who would have bought this phone on trust will now not do so until they can see for themselves how and whether it is actually usable as a modern smartphone from Day One, rather than several years later, or maybe never.
Its hard to forget the XA2 which never got GPS properly or reliably working; or the 10 iii which, years after SFOS was officially ported to it, still loses mobile data for Android apps, has a camera that won’t take pictures of anything moving, and has memory management problems which ramdomly kills open apps; or the 10iv and v, which are still in a restricted functionality trial state over a year after the release of SFOS on these models; or the C2 (supposedly the SFOS reference model) with the ‘Dead On Arrival’ problems, no video camera functionality and mobile data issues.
Jolla constantly over promise and under deliver. They spread themselves far too thinly and ought to do a small number of things well, rather than lots of things less well. Above all, they need to learn from history.
I would very much prefer the community to grab the existing (wonderfully good working) Xperia 10 IV & V Lineage OS base and make based on it within a few weeks/months something similar to what @rinigus has recently showed us that is very much possible on the 1 IV and 5 IV, i.e. great working SFOS ports based on LOS base.
So maybe we should collect some money and simply fund a few 10 IV’s and 10 V’s to either him or someone else who’d have the time and skills to do the porting, and we’d get a wonderfully well working SFOS phone in such a short time as how quickly the already now very well working rinigus’ 1 IV and 5 IV ports came to life.
Which brings us back to exactly the same situation as with Sony blobs, only someone else’s. Because I don’t think you get it fully open sourced, so you still depend on what they do and when, and in case of bugs and issues you have to wait for them to fix it (or not). Can’t see much difference, other than that with small manufacturers it can be even worse than with Sony.
As long as it could come with the official AppSupport Android stuff then I would be happy to contribute. Unfortunately since a lot of commonly used apps don’t exist natively on SFOS, for an SFOS phone to have any realistic possibility for use as a daily driver for me (and probably many, many others), Android support is a sad necessity.
So would I. As I replied to @rainemak’s first mention about it, I would happily pay regular licence price for AAS on a 10 V, even if the whole rest of SFOS was a community-made port. But it’s been a month now since they mentioned such a possibility and I haven’t seen a word of follow-up, so they may just as well “think about it” until 2030, especially now that they have something new to spend time on.
You’re completely missing the point here (which I guess is part of the problem! ).
Sure, they are maybe fixed now, but they took a very long time to fix for a reference phone running ‘Sailfish as it was always meant to be’. And there were a lot of disappointed and unhappy customers as a result.
But I suppose if it doesn’t matter to Jolla how long basic functionality takes to fix then fine.
Doubtless in the now year+ after the release of SFOS on the Xperia 10iv and 10 v, and the future weeks, months, years or whatever it still may take to fix issues like non working camera, fingerprint sensor, microphone only working on phone calls, etc, you can similarly tell me that I’m a bit behind because its all fixed now so the half finished implementation that lasted years doesn’t matter.
As far as I understand, the Community Phone was more targeted toward developers and not end-users. The new Jolla J2 is for end-users, so let’s hope they can iron out all possible issues with the hardware before its release in summer 2026.
I can imagine they have learned lessons from the C2 and chosen the Mediatek chipset for the desired features and best driver support, make it easier for them to ensure that Sailfish runs optimally.
I have been using the C2 as my daily driver for a year now. Yes, the hardware may be weak in some areas, but I am impressed with how well Sailfish OS runs on it.
It may be difficult to express this clearly, but perhaps they should drop the Sony support and allocate those resources toward developing their own hardware.
I find that even some small bugs, which I can fix myself (like restarting services, etc.), are more tolerable than reverting to Android or iOS. It’s daily-drivable, and I can do all my tasks while having full control.
I really hope so too. But, for me, the ‘in advance’ trust that this will be the case is gone.
Jolla can have my money in six months, a year, or whenever they release a properly working product, but not now. And I suspect I will not be alone in this.
If it was so then they would have manufactured some 50-100 units. Or do you know some more SFOS developers than that? I mean, it obviously wasn’t a developer only phone, not in practice and not even in theory.
I’m impressed how easy it is for those who haven’t shelled out money on Xperias to speak on behalf of those who did, and suggest Jolla to just flush those people and their expenses down the toilet, “for the good of us all”. I wonder if you were saying the same if you bought the 10 V for 350 euros based on Jolla’s statements from May 2024, and never got what was promised.
If you have code compiled into the Linux kernel, you are by law obliged to publish those drivers. This also include the code from Sony. I’m not sure what is included in this Sony blob, like if there are proprietary software in it as well. However, the Linux drivers are there and you can go and have a look at them right now if you want.
It is possible for a HW vendor (like a camera component for example) to distribute a closed source driver for Linux (with past Nvidia as a prime example, with the infamous Linus Torvalds middle finger) but realistically that would piss off so many customers that I don’t think anybody would do it.
Technically, Jolla will have more or less all drivers for the reference design. The state of those drivers is another question though.
Jolla’s relationship with Sony remains until this day remains a mystery, and the quietness from Jolla about this has led many frustrated, like with the Xperia IV/V port.
I’m happy that Jolla can stand on their own legs now, with the HW support.
I agree, we have a 5 year old phone that doesn’t get better or any fixes, an 8 year old phone that only gets worse, and two 3/4 year old devices that never got to a working state.
I also believe they should focus on the new device, fixes for C2 (since it’s a trash SOC, obviously it will never get better performance-wise), and just drop the Xperia devices.
But on the other hand, I didn’t see anything getting fixed or better on my Xperia devices for so many years, so I am not sure if they actually work on them specifically.
I can guarantee you that even those who did spend a lot would prefer a new great device than keeping something that still doesn’t and will never work properly.
What improvements or fixes have you seen on your 10 II/III and XA2 for example the last 3/4 years if not more?
And I believe this is what we get anyway.
I mean, I still can’t use sms and have volte on at the same time on my 10 III, plus every other issue I had since day 1.
Well, it seems clear that their current business model doesn’t work - they’re far too small a company to properly support the current wide product base. That is painfully obvious to any user who thought they might get a properly working modern smartphone and ended up with years old hardware supporting partially working software.
EOLing support for the Sony phones might be the right thing to do resource-wise, but this will now be difficult as users have bought Xperia 10 iv and v based on Jolla’s promises to support them. The company would lose even more goodwill if they abandoned support for these phones now. Unfortunately Jolla are the victims of their own decisions.
What they need is a proper published 5 year roadmap (yes, I know it has been asked for many times before) showing a planned evolution of their product line over time into a sensible and supportable end state. This end state may just be the C-line and the J-line of phones, just two models and no Sony. The roadmap could also include resources for community ports as well. Jolla wouldn’t support these, but would provide resources to ease the porting activity. If the roadmap included when official support for legacy models would be withdrawn (note that this wouldn’t mean that legacy phones would stop working) that would enable customers to make proper investment decisions of which hardware to buy ( I believe there are some who have already bought the Xperia 10vi in the hope that Jolla will one day support it).
Often the stated reason for not publishing a roadmap is that dates move, things change. Of course they do, and everyone expects this. It is perhaps the sequence and intentions that are more important than fixed timing though.