Understanding differences in the Sailfish OS variants

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Due to 2G & 3G upcoming shut down, I need to replace my current phone that does not support VoLTE with a new one. As far as I know, Sailfish OS is still the best option for someone who wants a usable daily-driver smartphone while avoiding the obvious mobile duopoly (and I already know it so that’s a bonus for me).

I am not asking “What phone should I buy?” but “Did I understood the differences and impacts correctly?” so this is meant to be a factual assessment (as much as possible) of possibilities, anyone would be able to make there own choice depending on their own needs.

Right now, my questions are mostly about Fairphone Gen. 6 vs. Jolla 2 but specific data for other phones may help other people. I understand that choosing the phone that is sold with Sailfish OS preinstalled is obviously the best choice regarding support but I do have concerns regarding the MediaTek SoC (mostly their non-friendliness towards open source—that was the reason for FP1 not to have proper AOSP support) but these are my own concerns.

Definitions

First, in order to ensure we understand each other, I would like to propose a few terms and definitions for the Sailfish OS variants.

  • native: I will use this term to indicate the behavior, support, etc… linked to devices that were/are sold with Sailfish OS pre-installed (JP-1301 or Jolla Phone, JT-1501 or Jolla Tablet, JP-1601 or Jolla C—Intex Aquafish, Jolla C2—Reeder, and obviously the JP-2601 or J2).
  • licensed: This term will match devices sold with Android as the base OS and the Sailfish OS port is officially supported with a Sailfish X license (Gemini PDA and multiple devices from the Sony Xperia series).
    • Note: For completeness, this license also include support for Microsoft Exchange account even if it’s not a criteria for me.
  • community: Last but not least, this term includes all ports done by the community and not officially supported by Jolla (thanks @mal for the Fairphone ports and everyone else for the numerous port I won’t even try to list).

Many people (myself included), are interested in the support of Android applications to some extents so here are some related definitions (please correct my definitions if I misunderstood some properties of the applications described here).

  • AAS: Android AppSupport is the official support for Android application by Jolla and is only available on native and licensed devices.
  • Waydroid: Waydroid seems to be the most common/recommended way of using Android applications on community devices (as I understand, it could be installed on native and licensed as well but AAS is easier to use).
  • gapps: Google Apps is the base for many Android applications that would not run without it being installed first.
  • microg: This is an independent (and open source) implementation of most of gapps capabilities without relying on Google cloud service (enough to replace gapps for some applications but not all).

Duration for Sailfish OS support (major updates)

A very important point (for me) is is duration of the support for OS updates as I intend to keep the same phone as long as possible.
There is no general rule or promises AFAICT⁽¹⁾ but some history for native and licensed (community usually entirely depends on 1 maintainer so it is dangerous to extrapolate):

  • JP-1301 : 1.0 (2013-11) to 3.4 (2020-10, 7 years)
  • JT-1501 : 1.1.9 (2015-08) to 4.6 (2024-09, 9 years)
  • JP-1601 : 2.0.2 (2016-05) to 4.6 (2024-09, 8 years)
  • Xperia X : 2.1.2 (2017-09) to 4.6 (2024-09, 7 years)
  • Gemini PDA : 3.0.2 (2019-03) to 4.6 (2024-09, 5.5 years)
  • Xperia XA2 : 3.0.0 (2018-10) and still supported as of 5.0 (2025-10, 7 years)

Sources: https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/ with the help of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS#Version_history for the dates (Version history for the beginning, Stop releases for the end).

Gemini PDA was somewhat on the low side but pretty nice track record overall. There is some promises made nowadays on Android side but beware that it’s usually from the first availability (like the table above, not like the C2 promise below).

Question: My first question is whether there is an official commitment regarding Sailfish OS support in general and on the J2 specifically.

⁽¹⁾: 5 years from the last sold Jolla C2 unit

VoLTE

With 2G and 3G being shut down in more and more places, this is mandatory (and precisely the reason for this status, as explained).

Unfortunately, it is often limited by the fact that the phone service provider must consider the phone compatible with it so it way be linked to whether the official Android version supports it on the device—verification is left to the user as there are too many phones and service providers). Another question is the support of emergency calls in VoLTE as well (Australia & Sweden blocking phones based on IMEI) which seems to exclude at least 10 III https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/my-xperia-10-ii-dual-sim-will-be-blocked-by-tele2-in-sweden/25757.

Here are some device known(?) to support VoLTE:

  • Jolla C2 & probably JP-2601 (not actually written) for native.
  • Xperia 10 II & III (not XA2 or 10) for licensed (see remark above).
  • FP4 and FP5 (hopefully FP6 as well) for community.

Provided we check the state of the device before buying, it should be OK with recent device ports.

Usability of Android Apps

While Waydroid will probably require more skills to install, it is still an alternative to AAS and remains the main (only?) option for community devices.

On the Jolla Phone, I played a little with AAS and some of the first Humble Indie Bundle games and the experience was quite smooth (games even seem to run faster than on similarly-spec’d Android phones) but I have no idea about the current state of things (yes the J1 is still my daily driver).

Question: Are there some comparison between AAS and Waydroid use on the same phone, performance-wise?

I’m not much of a player so apart from casual games like SGT puzzles (yes, I found the native port, I’ll have to check which ones are ported), I will mostly use some convenience apps so not very resource-hungry. I’m guessing neither AAS nor Waydroid will be a problem.

From what I’ve seen, both gapps and microg can be installed from a side-loaded apk, so there should be no specific difficulty for the installation itself.

Banking apps (and others) require gapps to be installed (some accept microg instead) but also check whether the device is rooted or not. Given that unlike base Android phones, we really own the device, I understand that under Sailfish OS, the device is usually detected as rooted.

Question: Regarding root-detection, is there a notable difference between AAS and Waydroid? Meaning, is it possible to fool more applications with one than with the other or will it usually be the same result with both solutions?

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All these questions have already been asked in their respective threads - and should ideally continue there. While a very nice write-up, all this thraed will add is yet more fragmentation of information, i’m afraid. After all, it is called “topic”, because a thread should have one specific topic for the linear discussion model to work.

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I understand what you are saying but despite extensive search, I didn’t find specific answers to my questions.

Is there an official commitment regarding Sailfish OS support in general and on the J2 specifically?

As said, I only found the commitment for the Jolla C2.

My bad, written on the Jolla Phone Pre-order page but I scrolled directly to the Tech Specs and missed this box: Long-term OS support, guaranteed for minimum 5 years.

Are there some comparison between AppSupport and Waydroid use on the same phone, performance-wise?

The only threads I found with some info are WayDroid on SFOS? (mostly about installation and making it work), Waydroid vs. AlienDalvik & AD history (some technical differences and a few issues but still nothing on performances), and Performance Under Par (talks about performances but Alien Dalvik and AppSupport only mentioned together to remind the difference).

Regarding root-detection, is there a notable difference between AppSupport and Waydroid?

Once again, I did not found any direct comparison.

Somewhat hidden through [Sailfish Community News, 21st October 2021, 10 Year Announcements : Sailfish OS 4.3.0 will have a signed system image for Android App Support. This should allow apps that previously complained about not running on a rooted device to work correctly.

It is not a comparison, but does address the question.

So regarding direct comparison of AAS and Waydroid regarding performances, if you have any link, I will happily check there. Also, it is entirely possible that no-one performed these comparison, which is fine, I’m just wondering if I searched with the wrong keywords (I did not try with “Alien Dalvik” at first, for instance) or if there is indeed no data.

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User experience wise, the difference is:
AAS is fully integrated into the Sailfish UI, Android apps start from the app grid and gestures are partly available as in SFOS.
Using Waydroid, you have simply a Waydroid app on SFOS app grid. On launching Waydroid like an app, a full subsystem starts with opening a Waydroid/Android-like GUI or ‘desktop’ and as long you’re inside, the phone looks like a normal Android/LineageOS phone.
It’s possible to alternate between Waydroid and SF by horizontal swipe, but alternating between Android apps has to be done like on an Android phone.

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I have zero experience with Waydroid, but I am thinking differences in usage. As I have some android apps like Firefox installed even when I am inside Sailfish application like Tooter and click a link, I get option to open it with Firefox. I would imagine that it won’t work like that with Waydroid?

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Unfortunately I don’t remember clear, it’s too long ago when I had Waydroid on a Volla phone. Unfortunately the Volla broke and is unusable now.

It may be that it works under condition, Waydroid is up and running. But if not, I don’t think that Waydroid will start automatically and Firefox will start automatically when clicking on a weblink in a Sailfish app.

edit: Please don’t be too hopeful!

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I don’t think so. Copy/paste between SFOS and Waydroid didn’t work for me and share folders ain’t easy … I used it a while on a Sony XZ2 and a OP6 to fiddle around with it…

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Although that’s not specifically was I was looking for, I think I understand better how Waydroid works and it answers my last open question.
It seems that it’s a full virtualization of the OS, similar to a VirtualBox VM while Alien Dalvik would compare to Wine.

With that in mind, it would mean that on an equivalent device, Android AppSupport / Alien Dalvik would use less resources than Waydroid for the same application.

The difference in behavior (especially for the application switch) is also very interesting, thanks. :grin:

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Ah good point that with AAS you can also share files! AAS can access my contacts etc from native side which is big plus

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Just to avoid any misunderstanding, both Waydroid and AAS run an AOSP system image inside an LXC container. In other words, they use OS-level virtualization (like Docker), not hardware virtualization via a hosted hypervisor such as VirtualBox. The differences are mostly about platform integration and implementation details. I haven’t tested Waydroid on Sailfish OS myself, so I can’t provide a definitive assessment of its performance, but in principle any performance difference should be marginal, with Waydroid potentially being slightly heavier since it runs the full Android system UI.

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Thanks for the details.

Sorry @Seven.of.nine , this is closer to a definitive answer. :face_savoring_food:

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Did I miss something or did you define all sorts of words, EXCEPT the word you are asking for: support?

What do you mean by “support”?

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I thought it was obvious but you’re not wrong.

By support, I mean “provide software updates, whether feature upgrades or security updates”.

Of course, there could be 2 different answers regarding both types of updates.

I choose to consider only the feature upgrades as can be deduced by the listed duration (security updates are always expected to be provided at least as long but often even for some time after the last feature update).

For JP1, last one being 3.4.0 at the end of 2020 but I think I remember of a security update a few months after that (maybe even more than a year, probably linked to a critical issue with a fancy name—not Heartbleed that was in 2014).

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AAS works that way. If AAS is not running, I don’t get the option of opening links in Fennec. Then again, AAS can easily be set to start automatically on boot.

I can’t comment much on Waydroid as I haven’t used it on a SailfishOS device, and I haven’t seen a need for similar integration on my Linux computers.

What I do see, on my computers, is that installing an application in Waydroid also sets up a .desktop file in my desktop environment to launch Waydroid directly to that application (rather than having to first launch waydroid, then find the application within waydroid). I figured it would work similarly on SailfishOS, considering it uses the same xdg-desktop spec as desktop Linux.