Nowadays I’d rather say ‘the used’. 
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I became aware of the Jollaphone when pycage (Martin Grimme), the developer of the music player Music Shelf, reported in the WeTab forum that he would soon be picking up his Jolla1 at a release party in Finland (if I remember correctly).
After various Android and iPhones, I was curious about this Linux smartphone with this new user interface and in 2014 I became the proud owner and user of a Jolla1. I’ve never regretted it. It was cool that the UI was so intentionally different from Android and IOS.
After a short and intensive journey of discovery, I quickly got used to the very different UI.
The Sailfish versions with the 1 in the first place were something special.
Then I got a JollaC and an Xperia X, which I currently still use as my main device.
There is also an XA2 in case I need a newer version of Android support.
But I try to get by without Android apps if possible, which isn’t particularly difficult with the Xperia X with 4.4 ;-)…
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Yes no.1 & 3 for me.
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Interesting. The first Lumia was just a cheapened version of the N9 16GB.
I wonder if the body was the same hard plastic (drilled, not molded iirc) they used for the N9, because that was amazing.
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Yes, it was the same body.
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There’s an important option missing off your poll - I like to own the things that I buy. Smartphones are complicated machines, and often go wrong in some way. If I don’t have admin access to it, and I can’t fix something because I’m actively prevented from doing so by ‘security’ then that’s immensely frustrating. Examples of this are backing up whatever data I like, transferring any data I like to another device, finding out why storage seems to be taken up when the OS doesn’t give any indication nor option to free it without a factory reset, removing/disabling things that the OS doesn’t want me to. I’ve run into all these and more on other OSes and been asked to help with such problems by other people.
I don’t think I should have to jailbreaking nor root a device I’ve paid for and supposedly own just because the developers of the OS and apps upon it are arrogant enough to think that I would never need to fix something that they’ve done badly. The very idea that they would take that away to supposedly make the OS ‘simpler’ is condescending and dishonest. Let your users do what they want, with the provision that they may leave a supported configuration and require a reflash if it gets in too much of a mess.
As far as I know SailfishOS is the only option that provides both this level of condoned ownership plus an environment (with AppSupport) that can provide pretty much all of the functions that I would need in a smartphone nowadays.
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I was in the original queue at Lasipalatsinaukio to get my Jolla device on that rainy day, and what I wanted back then and what I still want is a device to easily communicate with others.
What really hit me back then was how all the different communications protocols (phone, sms, mms, xmpp etc) had been nicely combined into a single coherent view. The actual protocols used were a side issue, the main thing was easily communicating with people.
It’s a bit of a shame how with market fragmentation (cryptosystems encompassing multiple competing protocols, each with their own proprietary client program) this unified communication view has been lost in time, like tears in the rain.
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Its the least annoying of all the OSs. It has its issues but peace of mind is better than convenience.
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Another aspect in my opinion is having a real operating system on your phone: I usually tell people I basically have OpenSUSE on my phone. You have access to the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem, instead of being limited to a set of APIs that Google thinks are good for you.
E.g. I have a script that pulls the university restaurant JSON and throws it onto DBUS to appear on my watch. Try that on Android.
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Having Whisperfish as a Telepathy plugin is still a dream of mine…
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For me I’m not quite sure. Is it the nostalgia? The limited choices and options these days? Or maybe a mix of those and more stuff that I don’t quite understand.
Realistically speaking, there is nothing that sfos can offer me compared to anything else. Being hardware, functionality, features, reliability or anything else and I am heavily inconvenienced when I try to use it as my only device and it fails miserably.
But there is something about it that I enjoy when I use it, or at least keep trying to use it.
Is it potential and hope for what it could have been and/or hope that one day will be?
I have no clue.
All I know is that compared to a modern device it fails in every single way but I still want to use it.
I consider that a huge win 
Just my 2c, form a basic user with a demanding corporate job and a family.
Cheers!
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My journey to Sailfish OS started with a Nokia 3210, followed by the Nokia E71, then Lumia 620, Lumia 1020 (best camera phone of its time) - unfortunately, Microsoft made it unusable through updates (camera and operation speed became slower/worse). I repair Apple/iOS devices professionally. Initially, I found iOS to be innovative and simple, but unfortunately, they have turned it into another Android clone with extra steps (trapped in a golden cage/eco-system), so it’s never an option for me. Then I switched to Android, and after that LineageOS on a Sony XA2. Then testing SFOS on XA2 and was flashed from it. Now i’m a happy Sony XZ2 Compact with SFOS-Community-Port-User.
In hindsight, I don’t regret not starting directly with the Jolla 1. On the other hand, it’s good to have to make these negative experiences first to know what you really need and want.
I have to say that one of the things why I love Sailfish is that it just looks so GOOD. Silica is Super 
This combined with a swipeable OS, it is just NIIIIIIIICE 
In comparison when I look at Android and/or Apple design (I don’t speak of hardware here of course), everything just looks so…dull…meh.
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@MartiMasaKoegx could you amend the poll from @rubdos 's “a real operating system on your phone” and from @abranson 's comment ?
Thank you in advance!
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Depends on your definition of dull. Android’s bright white backgrounds tends to annoy the **** out of me :’-)
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+1 to ‘real OS’ (with privacy + owning-your-own-device being strong runners-up)
basically, i just want root access to a terminal environment that can do everything the UI can do, from low level hardware configuration to userspace application data exports. SFOS is the closest i know of to that on decent hardware.
this is all i really need for my must-have use cases below. if i could actually get these on android, i’d probably switch back so that i could get good network coverage (10III + 10IV + 10V are all missing the main 4G band where i live) and send MMS and have a working camera focus model with all lenses.
- use the same cmdline tools (mostly home automation stuff) on my laptop and phone
- automate backups with purely my own code+servers+networking
- automate reflashing+configuring with a version-controlled set of config scripts (zero manual/ui work…if you dont count clicking devmode+ssh)
- ssh+vnc from my laptop to my phone to do everything with a nice keyboard when im at home.
i used maemo, then meego, then android, then SFOS, then android, and now SFOS again. each time i switched to android, i had to because of telecom changes in the USA. the last time, i used android for like 2 years, and i got (3) working nicely for most apps, and (2) maybe half-working. i never got most of my perl scripts in (1) running on termux or whatever, and while vnc in (4) was ok, i couldn’t do half of what i needed to via ssh, even with root access.
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Did you really check specifications for models build for your region?
I wish IT-security could be a reason, but unfortunately it cannot. The long unsupported Qt version is the principal example, but there are a couple more.
Interestingly after the initial word “security”, this choice solely addresses privacy (not security)! Hence this choice #2 is rather the same as choice #1.
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- Sony Xperia 10III, 10IV, and 10V all have the exact same LTE bands, in all models, in all regions. this is from the sony spec sheet.
- these bands do not include band66, which carries 48% of the LTE traffic of my telecom. (fortunately, my telecom also broadcasts band4, which covers a lot of the most populated areas, but nowhere near as much as the B66 coverage)
it also does not include band 2, which carries 31% of the LTE traffic of my telecom. functionally, this means i lose service if i drive more than hour away from a major city. (bands 12 and 71 are what they use to fill the gaps between B4/B66 and B2, and both of these are also missing) - only one telecom works on sailfish here (T-Mobile in the USA)
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I didn’t want to touch this subject so thank you for bringing it up.
Of course I agree 100%, but I would like to add something here because I believe there is a small misconception regarding privacy and security in some aspects of the OS.
You CAN have security and no privacy, but you CAN’T have privacy without security.
Being less dependent on google or any monopoly is one thing, but that doesn’t automatically mean that you are secure and private.
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