My post wasn’t meant to sidetrack the issue at hand, but more to point out a ‘cause and effect’ chain that had resulted in at least part of @nshiell 's problem. As @olf pointed out above, it was the installation of problematic repositories that seem to have caused at least some of the issues.
But that is pretty much the first thing nearly everybody does after installing Sailfish - go to whatever app store they need to obtain the apps they need to make their Sailfish phone usable for what they need it to do - and if it is a community app store then that involves the use of unofficial repositories which can then cause problems - yes? I would imagine very few people use Sailfish purely in its Jolla released/installed form only with no additional apps whatsoever.
So by solving the Jolla app store issues, by making it the first ‘go-to’ place to obtain the up-to-date, maintained, reliable apps that the are popular with the vast majority of users, rather than multiple community app stores which often cause these compatibility issues, doesn’t this at least solve some of the problem?