I’m a 19-year-old student from India and a dedicated fan of the privacy-first vision behind Sailfish OS. With the pre-orders for the independent Jolla Phone going live, I see a huge opportunity to prove that this OS can be a success in the massive Indian market.
As a student, the current €499 hardware and customs costs are out of my reach. However, I am writing to propose a community-seeded test unit in exchange for field testing and localization services in India.
Why I can help the Jolla project:
• 5G Field Testing: I will verify connectivity and signal stability for the Indian mid-band (n78) and coverage band (n28) on both Jio (SA) and Airtel (NSA).
• The UPI Payment Audit: India is a payment-first market. I will rigorously test and document the compatibility of major UPI apps (PhonePe, GPay, BHIM) on the Android AppSupport layer—a dealbreaker for Indian users.
• iOS to Sailfish Transition: As a current iPhone user, I want to document my journey switching to Sailfish OS to create a “Switcher’s Guide” for other students looking for an independent alternative.
• Localization: I am happy to help audit or expand translations for Hindi (or your native language) to make the UI feel truly regional.
I’m currently an iOS and Android user with experience using various SDKs, and I’m ready to contribute the “boring” documentation and testing time that helps an OS grow.
Is there any precedent for seeding devices to active community contributors in developing markets? I would love to represent Sailfish in India.
on the list of “what is forbidden to send to india” mobile phones are listed. So next to collecting money sending it to you will be a bigger problem to solve.
I like your idea, but I think it wont be doable, to get a device for you and send it. There probably is a small SFOS-community in India - years ago there was a Intex Smartphone with SFOS available in your country.
Are Sony Xperias available in India? If yes you could start with that into the sailfish journey.
Oh, thats a pity.
It will be a good Idea to jump on the train of translation, like @sanginteret suggested. And if Jolla sees you are contributing steadily, you can ask them directly for a phone to test in India with your ideas described above. With a bit of luck, it could work.
I totally understand - but I think you have to contribute first, and then you can contact Jolla and ask. They wont send devices to people, who tell they want to contribute - you know saying “I will do” is easier then “acutally doing”. You have to prove it first. Perhaps they even wont do it, if they understand your purpose and see that you are contributing, because entering the indian market could be something thats not on the roadmap for the next two years or so. But I keep my fingers crossed, that it will work out: for you, for the Indian Linuxusers, and for Jolla also.
Using AI in the responses gives it that “spammy” feel…the bold text, bullet points, vocabulary, etc gives it away…now I sound like a curmudgeon but that’s the heuristic that people use for spam these days. See what’s happening with curl AI slop security reports submitted to curl · GitHub and you’ll see why I feel this way.
I did my first research with ChatGPT and it says, that it has to be at least 10000 (probably up to 30.000) devices been sold based on how many online-ratings are existing (and how many people usually use online-rating). So thats quite a nice number of sold devices I think.
And Intex provided updates for the phone for nearly 2,5 years (from 2.0.2 up to 3.0.08). Thats also a longer time, than I what I would have expected for complete failure trying to enter the indian market. (Yes, in the end, it was no success, but it shows it could be possible). And it seems that in India more people discuss to leave “big tech” behind now, than in that times. So I think its not uninteresting to think about reentering the indian market.
haha I like to type and make my points as attractive as I can . That’s why they seem like an advanced ai is writing them ( Im also a calligraphy student ).
If a user uses the markdown features, include technical details and a closing paragraph it counts as AI – nice.
If the headings included Emoji then I would say that it was definitely written by AI and even then it isn’t like that would be a bad thing as I would prefer easy to read text written by AI then some hard to decipher text, patched together by a non native speaker – like me
OK, for a translator the use of AI for translation and fleshing out the text would be bad…
So difficult when you type a different language when the conversation is in English. Can’t you let AI translate it for you before posting?.
Even though Android is something most (?) Sailfish OS users do not want to use, it is a necessity for most users as it is the only way to use Sailfish OS as a daily driver.
Most of us would prefer native apps. App development, however, is a big task and not everyone has the same needs. Most companies don’t want to create two of each app (iOS and Android), why would they like to create a third for Sailfish OS? Jolla for sure doesn’t have the manpower or time to also develop lots of native apps.
Thus, we are stuck with using a third party system that supplies the needs the native apps cannot meet.
