Clearly you misunderstand. I’m not arguing with you or anyone else.
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Jolla is a Corporate Operating System, but seems that Sailfish X is for end users.
since this is getting overly complicated…
JOLLA OY is a Finnish company established from former Nokia devs after their dissatisfaction of how Nokia saw the open-source field, thereby killing OS2005 (responsible for the Nokia Internet Devices of yore) and Meego.
SAILFISH, whether it is just Sailfish as a B2B product, or Sailfish X Free and Paid for end users, is the operating system, and therein, their whole product. Aurora is an otherwise full contract with Rustel and is more their project upstreamed to Sailfish.
in terms of what we’re paying for, I wouldn’t be surprised if a hefty chunk of it was going back into Sony and companies supporting this initiative, to ensure a monetary incentive to offer the freedom of bootloader unlocking, rooting, and these custom OSes. Regardless of the cost, it IS a payment made, and we ARE paying customers. Calling it whinging is ignorance to that. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what we, the community, want from Sailfish. What matters is that the product is stable and reliable, and its shortcomings don’t impede that. If we truly are beta testing this product, then the entire stack should be labeled as such, and more importantly than that, those bugs need to be quashed.
Regardless of this, Jolla is the only company whose Linux-based mobile phone operating system is not simply a developer-only system. Beyond the bugs, glitches, and lacking features, Sailfish OS 4 is at least a matured, and smooth experience that, for a large number of users who maybe don’t go outside the Jolla Store for any of their app needs, and who might not even be using the Android support, it already is daily driver material. It’s obvious that Jolla is not trying to appeal to elderly folks or millennials, but they’re offering a product with much higher privacy and security benefits than competing software is doing. If they wanted to have mass appeal, I’m sure they’d have done what Samsung did with Tizen, baking smaller embedded versions of Sailfish OS into smaller products like smartwatches (remember that demo?) and then making those products widely available to slowly build up a userbase on a different scale. But that’s not what has happened, and the reality is that we have maybe 10 total supported devices under the Sailfish X model, and some of those have already been deprecated due to Linux kernel support.
A stable OS for a majority is key. Anything less justifies a refund.
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The only thing that bothers me is the not mature update process. First many messages what I should uninstall everything and then after the update it does not run smoothly. after a complete reflash runs the XA2 except for the bad GPS (no hardware error) really great. but that can not be the goal every time to re-flash the phone. I see the license purchase rather as a donation in the hope that my generated data will not be abused for advertising, etc…
I have also already managed to get away from Android except for 2 apps. If someone wants to use a lot of Android apps, maybe this operating system would be the wrong one.
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Beyond the caricaturist post of @808, the underlying issue of the anger, frustration or disappointment when using SFOS is due to:
- Misunderstanding of the expectation and the target of the OS. As @Edz hinted, and confirmed by SFOS during one of their iirc meetings, the OS is aimed to corporate clients, while the X license if aimed to enthusiasts and developers. After the first Jolla phone, the general end user is not their target anymore as far as today. So a random user might try it and think the experience will be as smooth or easy as Android or iOS, and the expectations about applications and functionalities will be similar, but then get disappointed (and potentially frustrated or angry because the Xperia phones and license aren’t free).
- The evolution of mobile OS shifted since Jolla started SFOS. When providing basic functionalities + a few add-ons and apps were sufficient even in 2014, these aren’t anymore now. That’s partly because Apple and Google pushed their proprietary services and APIs and most apps now can’t live without them, and partly because Jolla (for many reasons) didn’t or couldn’t keep up to date to those usages. Volte is an example, but may day-to-day things are there, such as sending an MMS picture from the app, etc.
- The small user base and thus the small number of developers willing to write quality apps. Many of the things we use now in Android aren’t developed by Google directly, and lots of new functionalities are actually developed by Samsung and co. and then added later to upstream Android. It’s business, except a few enthusiasts or FLOSS developers, most want to monetize their app, and that’s quite hard with a small user base (whether paid app or ads, both won’t recoup the development costs). And major service providers won’t bother spending time and money for an app (such as banking or email providers) if the user base is quite small.
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I am just wondering why I am happy with 4.3 on my Xperia 10 ii. I am just a user without dev skills. And I am not frustrated. Ok. loss off mobile connection for too long a period of time (up to a couple of minutes) and loss of internet connection for Android apps from time to time (requiring stopping and restarting of android support) annoy me too. But I am glad that so many things are just working - in particular file handling (Music and photos, on the SDCard or the internal memory, Email attachments etc.), something I am really messing with Android or iOS
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Personally, I’m not frustrated but quite happy with SFOS 
But I do understand people who might get the false impression they’re getting a 1-to-1 replacement of Android/iOS and end up having something not fit to their needs.
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I’m happy with SFOS too. But 3.4 is currently my daily driver and 4.3 is an experimental playground 
I think we almost need a stable/testing dichotomy that differs from the current release schedule. For normal users, I mean. But, frankly, I don’t know how that should look. It’s clear that the ‘new phone’ issue makes this completely different from the problem on PCs.
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Well, good luck trying to get a refund on a free product. The only thing you pay for when you purchase a license is Android support, keyboard predictions, Exchange support, easy access to updates and, of course, access to customer support. Everything else can be installed and used by anyone regardless of whether they paid for a license or not. It is perfectly possible for people to officially install and run Sailfish on their device without ever paying Jolla a single cent.
Otherwise your post hits the nail on the head.
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Well, if it is a false impression then it is one Jolla have been actively promoting themselves on their website for a long time. They are still positioning Sailfish as a ‘a European alternative to dominating mobile operating systems ’ (Jolla website, about Sailfish ).
The only possible reasonable interpretation of ‘dominant mobile operating systems’ can be IOS and Android, and if they are saying that Sailfish is an alternative then they are clearly giving the impression to any potential user that if they install Sailfish on their phone then they can expect the same sort of maturity, reliability, security, functionality, etc as the ‘dominant’ IOS and Android systems (what other interpretation could there be?)
I can therefore well understand why there are disappointed ‘normal’ users when they later find out that Sailfish is really only a niche product (albeit a very good one - when it works!) for technically capable users who are prepared to tolerate broken functionality and outstanding problems, sometimes for years, and often having to invent their own technically complex (for any normal user) patches or workarounds to keep the show on the road.
Perhaps if Jolla was more honest with its marketing, specifically for Sailfish X, targeting it openly at the ‘technical user market’ or whatever words would adequately explain that it is not really a product for ‘normal’ users, then there would be a better match of expectations.
Now standing by for the inevitable incoming from the normal forum suspects…
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Multiple release branches. Right there on the update screen. Experimental / Update/ previous with the understanding that you may be exposed to vulnerabilities that were fixed in the update branch.
trust me If I could go back a few versions I would.
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Well, I could do, but…
Since ‘someone like me’ is clearly beneath contempt for you, I won’t bother.
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I first thought you’re a non-technical perosn who’s angry because you paid something while expecting another. But it seems you’re with Jolla’s adventure for some time so if you’re keep buying their services and OS, while knowing its limitations, I don’t understand your anger.
No one is forcing you to continue buying into the company’s products. If the product isn’t satisfying, give your constructive feedback and/or use another one.
No need to be harsh or rude to anyone here…
But it seems more a troll post. So I’ll stop commenting here and I’m off this discussion.
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I guess I was thinking something like debian old-stable, stable, testing, etc. Frankly I don’t understand how the release strategy works vis-a-vis devices, which I think is a part of the problem.
For instance, I have LESS issues, it seems with a community volla phone and the transition from 3.4 to 4.3 though there are a couple of annoying bugs. That seems really weird, since the releases seem focused on devices where you would expect less problems.
I need to ask @mal @rinigus @piggz and co. what they think.
Lastly, I’ve always avoided Sony hardware since they gave up on the MD format Oh, and intellectual property foo.
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You’d probably have better results if you didn’t approach your issues with derision and vitriol. If your goal was to have your post dismissed outright… you’re on the right path.
That aside, I’ve experienced none of the issues you’re reporting on either of my devices.
Your gripes are trivial feature requests, not bugs. Your inexperience is blatantly obvious when you have issues with fundamental things like management of third party repositories, metrics gathering and basic troubleshooting.
Passive aggressive “bug reports” whining about user error while using an alternative mobile operating system? What did you hope to accomplish? Do you feel better? Perhaps you’re better suited for the Android or iOS “communities”.
Best of luck.
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I think the biggest issue about SFOS is not the number of bug but the communication (or more specifically the lack of it).
A public wishlist for missing feature would be a great think so there would be a direct user - dev communication what people needs to see in their hands when they use SFOS.
On the other hand a clear development roadmap would be very nice, so at least we could see a rough plan what Jolla wants to do for the next 12 months or something like that.
Also a more fixed, time based release schedule - something like weekly beta builds, and stable on every 6th week - would be really nice, so we could have more predictable updates, what I miss currently.
Personally I miss the features I would expect from a modern smartphone focused OS, not the fancy proprietary apps. Features, like a Wallet app, better CardDAV/CalDAV support, more recent browser engine, PWA support, „official” RSS reader, Telegram integration. I need built in feature, shipped with the OS instead of 3rd party apps (either Android or native), because I think this is the best way to ensure consistent UX.
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You know… I still use MD? There’s something delightful about physical media that can survive being tossed in a backpack with tools and a bunch of other crap.
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To ensure we’re not blowing smoke here, let me actually mention that some of the issues described here are ones I’ve experienced myself.
MMS, especially with T-Mobile, fails downloads if you are connected to a wi-fi network. Doesn’t matter if you have mobile data on, it will try, and fail, until you disable wi-fi. I’ve even had downloads lock up, and indeed, restarting the phone is the only way to make it cancel, and become possible to download again.
Up to 4.3, I would regularly miss calls, and have calls go into a sinkhole without ever dialing out correctly. I’ve had call failures where both I and my recipient cannot hear each other. Takes a second call sometimes. This issue seems to be fixed for me now, whatever caused it at all. However, I find myself having to call my voicemail in order to receive texts, especially with 2FA.
I’ve regularly had my phone drop from 4G to 2G for no good reason, and stay there until I do an airplane mode cycle. GPS only ever worked with 3.2 on my XA2, and has been broken ever since. The newer Android versions have made apps a little snappier, but I see apps turn off regularly now since the newer AD seems to take more memory to run.
And naturally, awaiting VoLTE support, and group SMS support. I’m sure there’s an argument to be made for XMPP in place of group SMS, but that’s the same issue that happens with making someone pick Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, Discord, etc. and people don’t want or need ANOTHER chat app, especially not sailors here. I’m not asking for RCS, and no one else is. Basic multi-recipient simultaneous texts in a group chat format.
This is the case of Sailfish having a genuine lack of features that have been on the contemporary OSes for a decade now. Features that Meego had, even. Seems very backwards to me.
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I also still use my MD. I have hand-rolled white albums of concerts in squats that I only have on MD (too much data!). Squat punk beer survival kit. It’s just one of the things that my GF and I have in common. But somehow seems fundamental!
EDIT: I also ONLY buy vinyl. I also make mix tapes on chromium dioxide tapes. I enjoy soldering. With lead, especially. I am so old. Hah!
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