Very buggy OS on Xperia 10 II

General
#31

If you only ever used the free version then I agree, that is a different matter entirely. Although there will still be a license agreement between the user and Jolla which should cover how the product is to be used and supported by them.

But as soon as you buy a Sailfish X license then you become a paying customer who has a legal contract with Jolla for the supply and support of the product you have bought. This will be covered by both the terms of the contract with Jolla and the provisions of consumer contract law.

And until you have bought that license you cannot test out either (a) the “quirks and features” of the functionality (e.g. Exchange, Predictive text, Android support, etc) that the paid product brings, or (b) how that additional functionality interacts with, or adversely affects the functionality of the free product (e.g. bluetooth and android, system crashes, etc).

There would be a strong legal argument (I speak as a lawyer who specialises in contract law) that once you had bought the functionality of the paid product (the performance and reliability of this being dependant on the existence of the free base product and how the two integrate), would mean that the two (free base + paid additions) would effectively be indistinguishable when considering the reliability and performance of the product as a whole. Hence anybody who has bought the paid product should be provided with a phone that works reliably as any other mobile phone might reasonably be expected to work in 2021.

Furthermore there is an implicit requirement to separately purchase hardware to run even the free product on, so unless you had already purchased a compatible (Sony) phone with no original intention to ever re-flash it to Sailfish (i.e. you original bought it to always run Android and then only decided, later, to flash to Sailfish) then even the ‘free’ product is not without cost to the user.

Finally, do you not think that there is an ethical obligation on Jolla to deliver a properly working product? And that is aside from the fact that it makes good business sense - a reputation for a flaky, partially working product is hard, if not impossible, to ever recover from.

2 Likes
#32

That’s a good list. Most of those seems to be getting attention.

Summarizing

  • Unclear status - hopefully fixed with browser uplift
  • Very stealthy bug, being looked at.
  • Minor - being looked at.
  • Minor - fixed, upcoming.
  • Android apps are finicky :man_shrugging: Fixed according to report in release notes for 4.1.
  • Now this one is pretty bad. At least it is being looked at. (the workaround is trivial…)
  • Self-inflicted
  • Sounds quite bad, but very few people affected it seems… logs missing.

Maybe i have huffed too much Copium, but seems pretty OK to me.

#33

Interesting discussion, it stated that wasn’t intended to sound like a rant, but it become a rant. Personally if I was so unhappy with sfos I would reverted it back to Android and become a happy phone user.

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#34

Rant - “a tirade of empty turgid talk, using bombastic language noisily and intemperately” (Oxford English Dictionary definition).

No ranting here - just a group of people with differing viewpoints offering their take on a particular situation. :grinning: I presume this is allowed on the forum?

And if you’re referring to me (and I am just guessing here) I am a happy phone user. I came to Sailfish from my old Nokia N9 via Blackberry 10 in between. I am hoping that, one day, Sailfish will be a viable alternative to those now dead OSs and the market big boys - but that day is not today. And it may not be the day for years to come, or maybe even ever. So I watch and wait and am content with using my iPhone 12 as my reliable daily driver and my Sailfish XA2 as a hobby phone to play with.

If I thought Sailfish wasn’t worth anything I would have bailed long ago, but I don’t like Android and my tolerance of ios is simply there because there is nothing out there which is better and that I can rely on at the moment.

I am happy to admit that I am not part of the “All Hail Jolla” brigade. I see the company as one like many others, delivering a niche product to a market of consumer enthusiasts (corporate Aurora clients aside); a company that is deserving of support, but not to the extent that denies the reality of poor quality and doesn’t allow any descent or criticism of such. Only by recognising and understanding what’s wrong will they hopefully get it right in the future.

Is that so unreasonable?

6 Likes
#35

That was never my intention.

Exactly! And by being concrete and precise we can hopefully do just that.
All i asked was to not make nebulous claims of that everything is crap, and to have a modicum of understanding of what is physically/humanly/financially possible.

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#36

Wait, is anyone? I thought pretty much all of those people left once the charismatic leader (Marc Dillon) jumped ship.

There are many things to criticise about Sailfish and Jolla, but in most cases, when people make these posts about how frustrated they are, it essentially boils down to “I’m experiencing some annoying bugs and if they aren’t given top priority I will move to the United States and sue you”. I’m personally severely annoyed by several bugs, like the fact that it hasn’t been possible to take screenshots on the tablet for about four years (if not more) (surely it can’t be that hard to fix?), or the fact that the update to 4.0 broke some critical component in the tablet that locked me (and one other person) out of using it, or the fact that the fingerprint reader on the Xperia 10 II doesn’t want to recognise my fingerprint on occasion, or the fact that the browser is still two years or so behind modern Firefox, or … But writing lengthy blog posts about it won’t fix the bugs any faster.

1 Like
#37

By no means I am referring to anyone in particular, and I do respect ppl and I want to be polite too. What I do not like in the discussion is that fundamental things are not taken into account. SFOS runs on “borrowed” devices with experimental drivers on which there is practically little control. For me this is the main issue, and that’s why camera is not that good, battery consumption is worse, radio signal issues, etc. At the same time Sony’s AOSP programme is the best option available for SFOS. Future releases will improve things with 10 II, as they did previously for 10, XA2, X, improvements might be limited and that can be a hard fact too.

It seems like re-inventing the wheel for each new xperia model ported into SFOS, I do not know if it’s called planned obsolescence or simple competition, again the reality is that Android and Apple can push huge resources, provide improvements and eliminate the weaker ;-(

2 Likes
#38

‘Crap’ - your word, not mine.

I have never made a nebulous claim which has not been backed up by either a proper ‘concrete’ bug report by myself based on personal experience, or a contribution to a bug report posted by another user …

What more are you demanding?

2 Likes
#39

So, what are you suggesting?

That this forum is completely pointless because nobody takes any notice of contributor’s views in terms of what bugs are important, what bugs should be fixed, and how to prioritise those bugs?

I believe Jolla themselves have already said that they have no real interest in consumers as customers and that the community is really only being used as a ‘free’ test bed for new Sailfish releases. This being so I would have thought they’d be very interested in what contributors find with each new release?

But I guess that if you’re right we might as well all pack up and go home because we’re wasting our time …

#40

I do understand all this, but does that mean that we, as customers, should be then happy to put up with a sub-standard product as a result? It is Jolla’s choice what they use as a platform for their mobile OS, not their customers.

Jolla are selling Sailfish as a ‘a European alternative to dominating mobile operating systems’ (Jolla website, about Sailfish) so they are clearly positioning their offering as an alternative to ios and Android (what other interpretation could there be for this statement?).

Am I the only one who thinks that this is misleading? Am I the only one who thinks that the current state of Sailfish cannot realistically be compared with the maturity, reliability, functionality and app ecosystem of ios and Android?

I know that there are a lot of very enthusiastic proponents of Sailfish on this forum, but sometimes, just sometimes, you have to be realistic.

If Jolla are selling a product, then regardless of the history and difficulties of how it is designed, the technology choices made by the company who produce the product, and the borrowed systems that it depends upon, shouldn’t the paying customer be entitled to a product that actually does what it says on the tin?

#41

There’s one thought that comes to mind when reading this and other posts of the like:
Expectation is proportional the possibility of frustration

When I first decided to buy a Sailfish X license I knew this was a ‘bricolage’ project. Having flashed a few different custom ROMs before, and fiddling around with TWRP. Sailfish X, despite the marketing, was and is a ‘hobbyist OS’. 50 euros in license fee (paid for usage rights of certain apps, not for the hardware adaption layer, mind you) is nowhere near the figure development would cost.

From my point of view it’s a problem to judge SFOS for Sony devices to be anything else than that. Sailfish X is - putting it a bit pointedly - a custom ROM developed by a small and smart company. But without the big vendors (Broadcom, Sony, hardware manufacturers ) it’ll remain just that: a custom ROM.

Corporate customers are a different story: OMP (was that the name?) will most probably have access to all hardware components, allowing for a proper hardware adaptation for Aurora OS.

#42

I don’t know where this quote comes from but I like it very much!

You make a very good point, and you are clearly technically astute to recognise Sailfish for what it currently is - a hobby OS.

Part of the issue is that people do buy Sailfish X, not unreasonably expecting it to be a properly working product and are then disappointed because it clearly isn’t and Jolla either don’t fix problems at all, or take months or years to fix them (the reasons - lack of resources, ‘borrowed’ technology beyond their control, no money, etc - behind why this may be are, and should be, irrelevant to the paying customer). So there is inevitably an expectations mismatch, disappointment, frustration and the inevitable reputation for poor quality. This is what multiple posters have highlighted and what Jolla needs to address.

Incidentally, the amount of money, the price, paid for the product (known as ‘consideration’ in legal terminology) is actually irrelevant and need not be related in any way to the cost of the product. The important fact is that money (consideration) changed hands in exchange for the product. A bargain was made - money for a product which then legally has to be fit for purpose, or conform to a specification, or match a sample - whichever the contract of sale and consumer law stipulates.

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#43

But isn’t this exactly the reason for the ‘free’ version of the hardware adaptation of the Sailfish X devices? They don’t build those adaptations for free, I’d say it would cost more than just a few weeks of a few developers. You then, or any new user, could test their device with the free version and therefore know if they want to add the license for the Android layer, the predictive text & MFE?

#44

Perhaps, but I do not claim to know the reason for Jolla offering the ‘free’ version. It may be to support their committent to open source, it may be because all the development work has recently been paid for by their Russian corporate clients so the incremental costs of providing it ‘free’ to others is sustainable, or it may be, as you say, to entice people to buy the full license (although I honestly can’t understand how this would generate any real income).

Personally I think that, by offering it ‘free’ to the community, they get free testing on their new releases in return before they move the new release or base on to their corporate clients. The amount they charge for the full license is so small it probably only covers their own licence costs for using ActiveSync, Aliendalvik and whomever supplies the predictive text function.

And of course you are right, anyone can test the free version before deciding to buy a license - as long as they are prepared to spend a few hundred euros on a compatible Sony phone to allow them to do this.

But my point was slightly different, and maybe not very well put in this thread above. So, me being me, I’ll offer another example.

Say, as a newbie to Sailfish, I buy my Xperia 10 ii and flash the free version. Ok, there are a few issues after using it for a week or so but it seems OK - and of course any serious bugs I (or others) find I would expect to be fixed within a reasonable timescale according to the severity of the bug (remember, in this example I’m new to all this and I don’t know that Jolla don’t do hot fixes and can take months or even years to fix quite serious issues).

But all is good so far - my imap email synchronises without problems and I can browse the web on most websites, though quite a few don’t seem to work if they have cookie dialogs (but I’m sure Jolla will fix this in a matter of days as this is quite a serious restriction).

I know I need Exchange email on my phone for my work email and also Whatsapp, because that’s how my work teams communicate with each other - so I will be dependant on these functions. But that is OK because Sailfish X provides both Exchange and Android support. I can’t test these functions because I don’t have a license yet, but Jolla have been providing Exchange and Android support for some years now so it must be OK.

I take the plunge and buy the license. Its not much money, only 50 euros (so I’ve now spent around 300 euros for my Xperia 10 ii - typical price in the UK, others may get better or worse deals - and 50 euros for the Sailfish X license).

I am disappointed and frustrated. Exchange email doesn’t always synchronise, sometime it errors, sometimes it stops completely and sometimes it gets stuck for hours on end just “Updating” with the rotating circle. I have to re-boot my phone to get it working again. Some of my email folders are missing and notifications for new email often arrive hours after the email has actually arrived itself. Events in my Exchange calendar are always an hour (late) out and all day events seem to always having an extra day tacked on to the end of the number of days I entered. Android support can’t use bluetooth and keeps losing its connection with the network - so I don’t even know if I’ve got a Whatsapp message from my boss until I restart the network subsystem (I have to go into settings, find Sailfish Utilities and do it from there - what’s that all about? I’ve never had to do this type of thing with any other phone …). Also I’ve found that sometimes there is no audio in calls, or it disappears half way through a call, or its so quiet on my bluetooth headphones I can’t actually hear anything properly. I get some really good help and advice from something called the ‘SFOS forum’ but am shocked that some of these problems have been known about for months or even years and still not fixed. I feel I’ve wasted 350 euros on an unusable product.

Returning from my above example, I think I have good evidence that the Exchange sync problem has nothing to do with Jolla’s implementation of Activesync (i.e. a paid component) which probably works just fine, but actually is more likely to be a fault in how the network stack (‘free’ component) handles the changeover or fallback from one network protocol to another (i.e. mobile to wifi, wifi to mobile, 4G to 2G, 2G to 4G) when there is a dropout of the ‘in-use’ network (and I believe Jolla, in the form of flypig, believes this also may be the reason). The same may be true for the connectivity issues in Android as well for all I know.

Anyway, my point is that I have bought a paid product (the Sailfish X licence), which I could not test before I bought it, and it doesn’t work properly or deliver reliably the functionality on which it was sold to me and on which basis I purchased it. If this was any other consumer product - a laptop, a toaster, an iPhone, would you not be justified in being dissatisfied too?

That, in a nutshell, was my point.

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#45

This is why Sailfish will not grow into a useful alternative to Google and Apple, which I regret: too much of a hobby-system. And it looks like Jolla has abandoned the idea of making something suitable for everyone. This is also characteristic for a community driven OS without a steadfast business in the background. After the tablet debacle Jolla needed money and went to Russia. I wished they had coöperated with Fairphone, working on device and system that is future proof, asking for EU funding. Then it would really be European.
I use Sailfish for 7 years as daily phone with pleasure and with pain and the most pleasure comes from some nice apps made by community developers. The pain comes from malfunctions and missing features (browser, mail, wifi disturbances, lack of sharing possibilities, video calls,GPS, etc.)
I use Sailfish because I don’t want to support Google and Apple and because I like the elegance and UI of Sailfish. I can do that because I am retired. I know no other personmwho uses it. Lately I gave my XA2 to an aquaintance, a linux man, to try it. He bought an iphone for daily use and keeps the XA2 to play with. Typical.
Who is Jolla now, we don’t know. Who is the CEO, what is the relation with AuroraOS, we don’t know. Yet I still hope it will survive and improve.

7 Likes
#46

That’s me! :laughing:

#47

I very much share this opinion, almost to the point.

My main issue is I do not trust my phone to work when I need it most. It feels like a liability in my pocket, if I am lost or am late for an appointment I cannot trust GPS to get a lock in and give me directions. If I need to make/receive an important call the phone will crash or reset. These two keep on happening when I need the phone most. At this point I am looking at getting another phone and keeping SFOS as a hobby phone on the side. Its too frustrating.

I completly agree with Kea and I have said it elsewhere before. SFOS + Fairphone for an EU non-google phone with fixed/ known & upgradeable hardware that is repairable is/was the only way SFOS would actually be able to expand and grow. Its a solid visible base. People who use FP dont want the leading edge hardware and would probably be more convinceable to try SFOS.
Fixed hardware should allow alot more bug fixes to happen, the xperia line was a good idea but not sustainable.

What is happing now is not working.

5 Likes
#48

Fully agree - however, since SFOS 3 I am not using my iPhone X anymore. For me, there is no point in using the iPhone anymore since beside all the obvious deficiencies of SFOS it works quite well, better than iOS (for me; due to the limited or rather none-existent offline-capabilities of the iPhone that several times made me missing appointments. I cannot trust the iPhone anymore).

Maybe I have adapted to the deficiencies of SFOS and am unable (unwilling) to adapt to the deficiencies of iOS.

SFOS 4.1 on the Xperia 10 ii is the best SFOS so far - but there is a lot to improve and all these bugs should be eliminated. Jolla might be to small to do all the bugfixing and the necessary further development of SFOS to a degree that suits most users - which is a pity because I still believe in the potential of SFOS.

1 Like
#49

I wonder about the GPS lock-in problems. I just travelled France, Benelux and Germany fully relying on Puremaps and never had problems with GPS lock-in. In fact, it always only took a couple of seconds (or even no noticable time).

These mixed experiences with SFOS make me wonder - and you are right, changing HW platform with every major release complicates bug fixing. But Jolla must also adapt to developments in HW.

#50

I think the GPS lock time has much to do with whether there’s (good) AGPS data for your area. Since there seems to be none for the Americas, GPS lock can take quite a while. I would assume (without any proof) similar issues in Africa and much of Asia as well. I really wish I could assist the GPS myself when I know where I am.

OTOH, the fact that I’m not relying on network availability for both positioning and data, I can navigate a lot further off the beaten path than my wife’s iPhone – as long as I don’t turn off the GPS in the middle of the trip and lose my fix. Apple’s assumption of always-available cell service can be a liability at times.