Support for official Fairphone 3+ port - FairSail -

Devices
#1

There have been a lot of posts related to a frustrating buggy SF experience across all devices. Dropped calls, buggy browser, maps/gps just not working, random crashes, low audio, Bluetooth issues the list goes on. This yields a best a frustrating user experience and is turning Sailors away from SFOS seeks for stability of Android/iOS. Couple this with the complexity of the install and not as easy to obtain of latest hardware X10ii is only really yielding a more fringe buggy experience and ever narrowing user-base.

Another discussion yielded to a conversation on what if we have a stable more viable hardware base. Refine SFOS with a series of bug fix releases and make a more robust and enjoyable experience. Jolla does not work on trying to make a new hardware revision work and all the effort that involves.

In my eyes Fairphone 3 + is the only viable option. EU based, sustainable sourced, modular (remember Jolla 1 ideas), readily available, spare parts, known chipset SD632, easily unlocked boot loader and most importantly long term support on the hardware side. It would not be unrealistic to see an official SF port on the FP website including Alien Dalvik as an alternative. I know jolla has its eyes else where for ArouraOS but I dont see what having sailfish X gains jolla any-more except frustrated narrowing band of users over too much hardware.

  1. Since we are the only forum for SF, do we as a community like to see this to happen and share this frustration ?
  2. If we do , how do we make this a more directed request towards Jolla. Knowing that that is all we can do is request/suggest this.
  3. If we do not do we just do nothing and accept the current situation ?
  • Edit

Perhaps if I change my questions we can have a more directed discussion

How can Jolla get to a long term stable hardware base. It feels like the ever changing Xperia X direction is introducing alot of bugs an ruining the user experience whilst adding more work to a limited development team

  • Would Fairphone which has a longer term more stable hardware support be a more viable option for full Sailfish + Alien Dalvik. Stable devel ?
  • Do we know why this is not the case ?
  • Do we thing this is a better direction ?
  • If so how do we influence this ?
19 Likes
Should Jolla focus and give maintance to Fairphones too?
#2

  1. I am sorry, but I donā€™t share your frustration. I am a happy user of Sailfish. I do see some problems that yes, sometimes they frustrate me. But I also know that using Android or iOS would frustrate me way way more. And I have some understanding that Jolla is only a small company, while Google and Apple have thousands of engineers plugging away on their phone platforms. What I donā€™t understand is the enormous frustration of some users, I donā€™t think that is healthy, personally and for the community.

  2. The right way to address this is the community meetings on IRC. The next meeting is august 5: Community meeting on IRC 5th August 2021

  3. That is a personal question. If you donā€™t like the current situation, I advise you to try an Android or Apple device. Maybe you enjoy the experience or maybe your frustration will be even bigger. If you do come back to Sailfish, you might come back with different expectations, which might be a healthy thing :slight_smile:

8 Likes
#3

You took the words from my lips. Imagine, Jolla developed a port for FP2 and now for FP3. Theyā€™d focus their resources on just two devices, instead of four crude buggy ports they have now. And theyā€™ll have to start working on a new one (Xperia 10 III) soon.

3 Likes
#4

Thank you for the reply, I dont wish to turn this into a complaining thread but try to get a positive direction perhaps and garner the mood given the derailment of another thread.

  1. I fully understand Jolla is tiny and that imparts alot of leeway in the expectations I have. However my comment was to say since Jolla is such a small company the extra development effort of bringing in a new phone each release is extra work and more bugs which alienate users.
    I do disagree with you quite strongly over dismissing our frustrations though. A constant or randomly crashing phone, no/poor/unreliable GPS, poor audio is a shared experience of many maybe not your direct experience. Dismissing that gets us nowhere. There should be no disagreement that all the basic functionality of a modern day phone should be robust and reliable.

My point was if you lock the OS to the baseline of FairPhone and not Xperia X you would have a better base to make a reliable and easier experience to get new users. Hardware is easier to obtain, does not change and if it does it is known modules

  1. A solo input to an IRC thread will not gain any traction. If a large section of the only official SF forum in unison as an official letter communicates as one then it is more likely to gain traction.

  2. Honestly I find this reply quite dismissive an unhelpful. I am well aware of iOS and Android phones. I have been using SFOS since my Jolla 1, I went to Android for a while and I have been back in SF for a few years. I know of the compromises and differences. I could go to them and have a reliable basic functional phone with a GUI that is frustrating, but the core functionality works, of no question of that.

How does SF as a community ever expect to bring in new users and make it easier to for people to gain entry when it is in the current state. As I said it is a narrowing niche which unless it changes it will dissipate completely.

3 Likes
#5

I would be happy for any strategy, vision, development or initiative that makes Sailfish more robust, reliable and stable than it is, or can be, today with the current hardware implementations.

I am a phone user (both a consumer user and a business user) not a developer, so for something to be usable it has to offer reliability and dependability on the basic core functionality of a smart phone (making and receiving calls, email, calendar, messaging, browsing the web, etc).

It is therefore the software that does this that is the differentiator, not the hardware. For me, all hardware today is pretty much the same - a candy bar format, reasonably sized clear screen, good battery life and decent memory and processing speed. Literally hundreds of different models will fit this bill.

The software, Sailfish, on the other hand is quite different to other ā€˜standardā€™ offerings and when it works it is superb. The problem is with the current hardware implementations coupled with Jollaā€™s small team ā€¦ well, weā€™ve all covered these issues in multiple threads.

So, for me (and I keep stressing ā€˜for meā€™ so please donā€™t criticise my view) pairing Sailfish with a longer term, but upgradable, hardware platform where Jolla has more control over the low level hardware interfaces and more time to get things fixed before they have to do it all over again with yet another new phone model seems a very sensible strategy to get them out of the current ā€˜we never quite get there on this phone before going onto the nextā€™ cycle.

2 Likes
#6

@not_just_a_username You do sound more reasonable in your second comment :slight_smile: Though we might disagree on many points.
I think fixing bugs ir more important than new features, but since B2C failed for Jolla around 2014, the B2B customers are more important. You can get angry over that, but I donā€™t see how we can easily change that.

I do want to add to the discussion that if the community cared so much about the Fairphone, there would be a good port for it. I have no idea what the status of that port is and how good it is.

#7

But this is a rather a defeatist attitude is it not?

Surely if you think you can help to improve things for the benefit of many who are living with these frustrations every day (even if some do not experience them personally and are happy) should you not try?

I feel this is a much better approach than simply packing your suitcase and going somewhere else. Thatā€™s a bit like saying ā€˜Well I donā€™t like my countryā€™s government or agree with their approach, so Iā€™ll leave and go and live in another countryā€ rather than using the mechanisms at your disposal (e.g. your vote, petitions, pressure groups, lobbying, etc) to try and persuade change to happen.

Of course, we could all leave and go permanently to Apple or Android or some other alternative, but then how many would be left?

1 Like
#8

But thatā€™s the point. A lots of the bugs (lousy GPS performance on XA2, sub-standard camera performance on XA2) and issues with lack of things like VoLTE are things to do with the issues of repeating hardware adaptations and the fact that Jolla has little access or restricted access to this layer. A more tightly integrated partnership with someone like Fairphone, someone small and with a similar vision, rather than a big boy company whoā€™s not really interested in Sailfish for their own purposes, would engender a more long term vision and strategy on a phone model which would last much longer than two years before all the adaptation work has to start again. This would give more time to fix bugs before moving on and more ability to fix bugs - so a good thing? As you said yourself, Sailfish is a small company - so why not make their effort count for 5 years on a phone rather than two years?

4 Likes
#9

I under stand B2C failed and its a B2B focus now and that we can never change. But why bother at all with sailfish X on xperia at all ? what does it bring , Aroura OS is not going to use Xperia.

On the community port. I am personally only interested in a version that can run android apps. I need to keep some semblance of a social life (signal) and normal (digid, banking. etcā€¦) otherwise I might as well have no phone and live in a cave.

2 Likes
#10

Iā€™m not so sure about this. I have no idea what Jollaā€™s commercial arrangements are with their (single, I believe) corporate Russian client, but it will not last forever.

This is maybe over generalising but certainly the Russian Government does not like to depend on western tech and likes to be self sufficient wherever possible. Thatā€™s why they are developing their own mobile OS in Aurora and not relying on IOS and Android. I guess to them, basing something on a Sailfish core is slightly less ā€˜evilā€™ than basing it on AOSP Android. At some point their commercial agreement with Jolla will come to an end, and then what happens?

It is a foolish strategy to put all your commercial eggs in a single client basket and I donā€™t see a huge corporate market for Jolla, certainly not in the west, and maybe in the east they will all end up using a totally Jolla-free Aurora OS one day, who knows?

So a B2C version of Sailfish is not beyond the realms of possibility one day - still a niche market, but probably (if they play it right) a profitable niche market so long as they have the right business plan and keep control of their costs and ambitions. A partnership with a hardware supplier is therefore more likely to make B2C a reality and be beneficial for both.

#11

A large group of guinea pigs who test their software for free, a sounding board for future developments and functionality, and a group of devlopers who write Sailfish apps for free that Jolla donā€™t have the time, resource or money to write.

Weā€™re being used ! :wink:

4 Likes
#12

For me, I sadly cant use the sailfish-xa2 a lot of times, because its not waterproof, nor a changable battery. On a weekend boat-tour as an example, youre lost with the xa2. For this i use an old S5_active.

#13

But you would with a Fairphone because it does have a removable battery I believe, though not I think waterproof!

#14

Thinking outside of the box here: If the Aurora OS phones already have a well working adaptation, then shipping them with Sailfish OS would be almost no work at all (Except for Android Support). Maybe Jolla should negotiate with them for a Jolla version of their hardware (As they did with Intex to produce the Jolla C) and bring out a new Jolla phone / phones?

4 Likes
#15

Crap hardware wont get you far. Aurora phones isnā€™t something iā€™d like to spend money on.

1 Like
#16

This is a good idea and, I agree with you, would probably be an easy and cost effective win. But given that its an obvious win I have wondered why Jolla has not considered this approach already. I donā€™t know enough about mobile hardware in Russia, but maybe it operates on different frequencies (not used in other parts of the world), or maybe there is some commercial agreement that prevents this from happening or whatever. It does seem strange that there must be a near ready-made hardware solution, which presumably must be better working, adapted and more reliable than SFOS on the Xperia range (unless Russians care even less about this than the rest of us, which seems unlikey) that has not been progressed.

#17

Iā€™ve never seen an Aurora phone, why are they no good?

#18

Aurora OS devices - #8 by kaktux take a look for yourself.

Other than them being -as it seems- run to the mil oem devices the ā€œproblemā€ is that a phone that will run SFOS must be designed with a SFOS philosophy in mind (gestures etc). That is also a problem for the xperia devices that jolla uses. Slapping SFOS on any device might work but doesnā€™t make for a great experience.

#19

Downplaying a serious question does not help. Sony is Android and Fairphone is Android. Jolla choose Sony, but Sony has, like most contemporary devices no future if it does not work on ā€˜reduce, recycle and repairā€™. Fairphone was the first company that really made efforts, where Google and Puzzlephone failed. So itā€™s not a bad idea to coƶperate with a company that wants to deliver sustainable products.
Giga could also be an option because they do some customisation, replacing batteries e.g. and perhaps others will follow. Higa products are made in Germany. This I know: every two years a new device is not only a lot of work for Jolla and the community, it is also a waste of materials and money and it is polluting.
The /e/ foundation works with Fairphone by the way. There have been meetings with Jolla in the past but coƶperation was blown off. A pity.

1 Like
#20

This I know: every two years a new device is not only a lot of work for Jolla and the community, it is also a waste of materials and money and it is polluting.
The /e/ foundation works with Fairphone by the way. There have been meetings with Jolla in the past but coƶperation was blown off. A pity.

Ill be honest both are important to me and good points. It seems your last sentence answers my question really Jolla looked into it but did not go that routeā€¦ so we are prob looking at a dead end hereā€¦ sighā€¦