Where to go after Sailfish? (hypothetical)

General
#1

After experiencing the Brave Wlan issue I contemplated what to do if such issues would persist. My current but still hypothetical plan to replace the two sailfish smartphones:

  • 1 used iPhone, probably 11 mini. Don’t like the closed ecosystem but a benefit would be that the banking app would work

  • 1 “free” phone. Not sure what would be best: LineageOS, /e/, postmarketOS, Manjara&Plasma or something else? My current thought is

    • either from murena a refurbished Galaxy S9 with /e/
    • or a pine phone with Manjara Plasma Mobile

My question: does the things above sound reasonable? What would you do, if Sailfish for some reason can no longer serve your needs? Thanks.

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#2

Thanks for the list of ‘alternative’ phone os’es. There’s also Ubuntu touch, I want to add.

In the moment I do some similar considerations, at least for interest and comparison and to have a backup if SFOS may fail some time.

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#3

That’s a sad question. Yet, if I did not have a nearly 10 year old ipadmini, I probably would ask myself the same. The ipadmini is a cellular one, so I use it as a satnav with MagicEarth.Works fine offline, satellite only. I also use it for sharing, because there are so few sharing possibilities in Sailfish. And for reading newspapers. The current Sony devices are too small for reading.
I still hope that Jolla will make Sailfish better usable for non-techies.
My other wish is that devices will become more sustainable with repaceable parts such as batteries.
Third wish: a tablet with Sailfish.
Happy New Year to all!

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#4

I’m using sailfish since 1.0 and are pretty happy. However, there are some drawbacks.
But it’s not usability. I rather miss a few more up-to-date devices, Bluetooth access for Android apps and full use of the camera capabilities.
At the moment we have the problem that the latest supported device is almost out of sale.
I’m not sure where to go. Definitely not Android/Google. I’m running Lineage on a tablet and see the same problems as with Sailfish. Mostly no support of latest devices.
Even if I never wanted, I only see Apple as a future choice.

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#5

If SFOS didn’t serve my needs any more i’d most likely bought an iPhone mini. For the size.

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#6

I’ve had Jolla 1, Sony Xperia X, and Sony Xperia 10 III as my daily driver since summer of 2014, and I have full confidence that Sailfish OS will continue to evolve and suit my needs for yet a long time, but it is an interesting question, and in that case I would buy a Purism Librem 5.

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#7

I have an iPhone - but I am using it no more than 3 times a year, basically for charging and checking for updates. SFOS on the Xperia 10 ii/iii almost completely fills my needs - much better than the iPhone does. The lacking access to files, lacking USB and SDCard support are things that put me off.
Therefore, I would rather use an Android phone. But since the Android support with SFOS is pretty good, there is realy not much that I am missing.

I have some wishes though: Browser needs to be kept up-to-date, Bluetooth access for Android apps should be better, 5G support …

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#8

SFOS was the answer to the question ‘What after N900?’
I believe it still is, as I often read it is the most advanced OS alternative in terms of daily usability.
SFOS 100% fullfills my needs atm. But if I must change, I’d explore deeper the pinephone possibilities.

But… Can yout bank app really not work on SFOS?

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#9

For any reasonable daily smartphone today, basic functionalities are not sufficient. So a modern browsers, a few basic apps to communicate and to browse, are needed.
Currently, there are only a few mature OSes, mainly Android (e os, lineage, etc., They are still the same basically) or its Huawei varient, or an iPhone.
Quite sad to say but besides SailfishOS, neither Ubuntu Touch nor PinePhone or any other Linux phone are ready for anyone beyond hardcore fans or developers.

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#10

Full agree @Kea !

And to sustainability: There are a lot of phones out there that become garbage if Jolla stops to support them although they are full intact.

Jollas tragedy is, that SFOS only generates income for Jolla, if new licences are sold. New licence is for a new device, SFOS for a new device is a bug collection in the beginning. Later, when it’s matured, the device is long expired from market.

If really the lack of income is the cause for the many bugs and the few supported devices, Jolla should hurry to set up a subscription model to be able to satisfy the qualified expections of the most users.

I would jump for joy if I could have a (more or less) bug free SFOS for a service fee of 100 euro a year instead of the one time 50 €.

Sustainability is only possible if the user pays directly for the software development even for old hardware and the software development is not depending on selling new hardware.

Jolla, act now.

7 Likes
#11

I’m set with 10mk3 for another 3-4 years at least.
Really hope that by that time some full Linux phone will be usable (hopeful for PinePhone Pro).

About J I’m pessimistic. It won’t see any help from EU more than keeping it on life-support.
And the current situation can’t drag forever.

#12

If an Android app, with duplicate functionality no less, makes you consider switching then perhaps Android is for you.
If your bank app doesn’t work, consider if you actually need an app and not a webpage, and if you actually do, consider switching bank.

Lineage, /e/, Graphene and the other android distributions are like running a Chrome clone (Brave, Opera, …).
It only treats the symptoms and not the cause.
And furthermore, you start out by by being halfway down the embrace-extend-extinguish pipeline.
If google starts tightening their grip here it is not like they will be able to meaningfully fork - and it is not like the clone-a-chromes have a seat at the standardization table.

So if i had to leave, i’d use some stock Android. I’d not care about with or without google as it matters very little in the long term. But i would get a PinePhone or similar to play with and try to at least contribute something somewhere, hoping that one day i could switch to something that works.

PS. If anyone wants to help port SeaPrint to somewhere, get in touch.

6 Likes
#13

Interesting post, thank you!

Having needed to setup a proper Google-Android phone for work, I was strongly reminded why I don’t want to deal with Google. I got quite upset about how sneakily they tried to get as much data as possible. It may matter little but out of principle I really detest such non-open “spying”.

I considered switching because the Android-Wlan-network didn’t work any more: no Brave, no Threema (, no Organic Map, no NextCloud). With your post, now I think that an old iPhone would probably be best accompanied by a PinePhone, hoping that one day it would become such an easy- peasy experience like e.g. Ubuntu or Pop!_OS on the desktop.

1 Like
#14

Having tried a lot of OS’s myself, I unfortunately always go back to android as it’s most reliable (for me). I have a pinephone, but I don’t think it’s anywhere as usable as sailfish (though it’s certainly enjoyable to play around with). Ubuntu Touch is great, and is a refreshing OS, but it depends what android apps you might need.

My recommendation is picking up something like a Pixel 4 or Pixel 5 (due to their smaller size) and install a custom rom on it without installing GApps. They will continue to be supported with roms through many android updates. The Zenfone 8 and 9 look cool as a “compact” phone, but maybe a bit expensive (you’ll need to look at what their rom availability if you want to de-google the phone). This route will get you a phone that operates really well, has android support, has many rom options for you to try, and gets you somewhat away from google.

#15

It matters to me if I can avoid Google a.m.a.p. and more so in the future.
I know it’s impossible to bypass G totally (see the Google Teller by Bert Hubert) but it gives me satisfaction to try as much as I can (no Google account e.g.) Therefore I will never go to default Android. Murena could be an option, but Sailfish is my favorite since Jolla 1.

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#16

We did a quasi ‘Google exam’ in Paradiso Amsterdam organised by privacy org. Bitsoffreedom. You don’t want to know what Google is doing and what their plans are. One activity is education. Search (in Qwant or Duckduckgo) for ‘How Google took over the classroom’ in NYTimes. How pupils are raised to be users of Google products. It is insane.

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#17

I would probably stop using smartphones altogether, since there are no viable options.

Or maybe i would just pick any phone from the specs and price sweet spot. No matter what operating system. I guess Sailfish OS is the last mobile OS i want to actually think about.

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#18

If you’re considering a Pinephone for a daily driver, I’d look at PMOS. PMOS (Edge) and Phosh make a workable phone. Calls, text, MMS, web, email. All the Linux applications you want – and plenty you don’t.

I’ve used a Pinephone with this config as a daily driver, and it works – mostly. The RF is iffy – at least on my unit. I miss calls sometimes, I drop calls occasionally. But I can text, browse, call, etc. Can I install [random commercial app] on my device? No. If you need [random commercial app] for something critical, don’t consider this option.

You can try many distros totally risk-free on the Pinephone. UBPorts, Sailfish, multiple straight-up Linuxes. It can boot from SD. You can put a 16+ distro sampler on a single SD to try them all. It’s not very expensive, so why not? NB: last time I tried UB Ports and SFOS on Pinephone, call quality varied from inaudible to unacceptable. This may have improved in the last few months, but if not, you’ve been warned.

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#19

Thank you @Kea ,
is there any recording of this event?

i searched the net for privacy.org and was forwarded to epic.org (looks interesting). Is this ok?

Found also bitsoffreedom.nl interesting. It’s the .nl site, the .org site is about horses.

edit: to ‘where to go after SFOS…’ : Nowhere. Keep copies of all installation files of the system and apps on own computer and use the phones (Xperia 10 & Volla) as they are now. Even if everything stays as it is, for me in the moment, it’s not so bad and in general I’m happy with that what SFOS can do. It gives me an option to avoid G**gle directly intruding my life. Everyone should be aware that G* is omnipresent on nearly all webpages and adapt their own behavior when using the i’net. Who doesn’t believe that, should read the source texts of harmless looking webpages, and take care about the anchors there (a href…) to adresses they normally never see on the screen.

In hypothetic case if network provider should sometimes deny my SFOS phone’s access to the network, I’ll use them as pocket computers with all it’s other possibilities they give to me.

I wish Jolla good luck and success!

1 Like
#20

My answer, to me, was to get newer Sailfish phone. Old one now has /e/ and works just fine as controller for one home infrastructure device.

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