Will Bluetooth ever work in Aliendalvik (aka AAS)?

Also won’t be possible for me to connect to my electric scooter, or my Meta Raybans (Meta View), or my watch (CMF Watch app)…or my earbuds for configuration of some EQ settings (Nothing X).

This is one of the many things Jolla should have prioritized for years now :\

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I think people buying closed hardware should really invest into making this work: Bumble bluetooth support?

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What should be a priority is not buying defective-by-design devices that can only be operated by using some manufacturers crappy proprietary software and protocols.

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Yes and I also wish there was unicorns, the world was all united and at peace, and we didn’t have to worry about things like hunger and greed. But it turns out, people exist in the real world and we should minimize user friction when they try to do at this point not very interesting and pretty normal tasks which are done over bluetooth nowadays, with devices.

Not going to debate with you on purchase decisions on devices that work perfectly fine with other mobile operating systems. Most would just switch back to any other phone running an OS from the duopoly. I’d like to see Sailfish OS be just as viable of an option for 2024 tasks, not the 2016 tasks from the last time I used it.

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“Well, this 40.000 euro car looks really nice and has everything I’m looking for… But it doesn’t support my 400 euro phone, so I won’t buy it.”

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Try “but it requires a closed app that is not guaranteed to work as long as the car” and the equation changes quite a bit.

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The real problem doesn’t seem to be the functionality of Bluetooth in Aliendalvik, but people expecting to have it both ways in a mobile OS that doesn’t even pretend to want to be a third player in the duopoly that people here are trying to avoid.

Basically what you’re asking: If that biological supermarket is as good as you say it is when it comes to food, then why can’t I get my Big Mac there?!

What I’d recommend is to make more good choices similar to your choice for Sailfish OS, and you’ll see that they work together well more often than not.

Personally I actively avoid closed stuff, and there was only one occasion on which I’ve missed full Bluetooth support in Aliendalvik: My Bangle.js 2 smartwatch wants to connect via web bluetooth which I couldn’t get to work on SFOS;
This was quickly fixed using my Linux PC instead of my phone… the advantage of the open nature of the Bangle.js 2 is that I wasn’t limited to using an unsupported app or protocol on my phone; in fact I wasn’t even limited to my phone at all.

I agree it isn’t always easy or even possible, there’s a long rocky road ahead, but we’ve got to make the best of it :blush:

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For me the problem is that Jolla has never said that Bluetooth will never work in AppSupport, only that it is difficult. So I would like to know if there are any plans or do I have to consider carrying two devices (or one…).

It is quite easy. This is known to jolla long enough and it had no priority to implement it.
If there is nothing what changes the reasoning it is highly unlikely that it will come. A reason could be something like Mercedes wants it or you pay for the developers. :wink:

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Of course, I don’t think anyone here disagrees with that, but (as this discussion was about cars requiring Android apps with Bluetooth to do some things remotely) people won’t go for a different car because their phone doesn’t support it. If anything, it will be the other way around: they’ll buy the car they want and then get a new phone. If you buy something that costs tens of thousands of euros and will require several thousand more in upkeep, you’ll want to make use of every feature as much as you can, and if your phone doesn’t let you do that, your phone becomes the problem.

There are no ‘Linux cars’ that will work better with Sailfish, either.

This is part of that long rocky road ahead that I mentioned.
Only with DIY builds is it possible getting your own infotainment system to do exactly what you want; sure there are “Linux cars” but for the time being and foreseeable future they are limited to apps from Android and iOS as well.

I don’t own a “smart” car, my current cars infotainment system is strictly offline, the only interaction with my phone it has is through Bluetooth for carkit purposes, which does work natively in Sailfish OS.
If I did own a “smart” car I’d rather manually heat it up before leaving rather than installing an Android app and agree to a EULA and privacy policy and setup an account for that purpose.

But I agree it’s a big issue that I might see in reverse compared to you: not SFOS offering Bluetooth in Android, but cars only being able to be remotely interacted with by means of closed source privacy invading crap.
It’s like a PC and the only OS you can choose is ChromeOS :cold_sweat:

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Except…even if these devices had open source or third-party applications written for Android, like my scooter has (ScooterHacking app), one still wouldn’t be able to connect because of the lack of Bluetooth support. Closed source or not isn’t relevant here. Not sure why you’re so hell bent on it being some “closed source (closed stuff in your words), super evil EULA heavy privacy invasive” thing when it’s just as simple as Bluetooth being the standard method for communication.

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Apologies I don’t think I was making myself clear with my last post, wrote it in a hurry. :blush:
What I meant was that I find it a shame that we’re being forced to rely on apps (often privacy invading to boot) to interface with our hardware, whereas I’d want there to be some sort of an open and more compatible solution.

Basically: SFOS supports WiFi and Bluetooth, but so many devices require an app that won’t allow SFOS to interact with it, whereas if the hardware (car/scooter/locker/etc.) had supported something like HTML5, not just SFOS but also Ubuntu Touch or pretty much anything else would be able to interface with it.

So in short, I’m with you on hoping Aliendalvik will get full BT support soon, just against that being necessary for you to interface with your hardware in the first place.

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As much as i always choose my devices based on the grade of freedom (as in freedom, not in beer) they give me, i do actually feel jolla should prioritize this, together with nfc payments

Lots of times i see my friends doing bike sharing or paying with nfc, and as much as we hate and it’s absolutely wrong to force people to use an app for something, it has to be supported, as it would drive away new potential customers, cause as said, people won’t change car, will change phone (a friend of mine long time ago decided to buy an iphone and had his pc on fedora under my suggestion. I told him not to buy it cause it would have had surely problems with syncing, so what he did?he bought the iphone and returned to windows straight away, as in his view linux was an interference between him and his iphone)

Again, is it right?absolutely not, but it has to be there for potential new customers (and we already know jolla is not sustainable with our numbers)

And anyway, if sailfish does not at least try to be the third contender, what they are aiming for?an excercise of style like gnome shell mobile or plasma mobile?

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I think a good first step would be to make the Bluetooth function available exclusively for either Sailfish or Android.
So that Bluetooth works either only in SFOS or only in Android.
That should be relatively easy to implement.

I can think of a simpler POC. Let sailfishos use the built-in bluetooth adapter and Android a second bluetooth adapter.

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Yes, I think this is the main point. I can see that topics have to be addressed in an unclear manner when it’s still too early to be definitive on it, but this topic has been addressed unclear for many years now.
So I really wished for one of the following statements: a) “we’ll never implement it as long as it’s not needed by one of our commercial customers, or we win a million in a local lottery”, b) “we plan to build some fake abstraction layer between sailfish and aliendalvik to make it possible with the stack similar to as it is now.”, c) “we will switch away from bluez over time and use one of the stacks android can handle for sailfish as well”, d) “we will support the 2-HW-device option over time”.
Right now it feels too much like e) “we do not talk about it.”. :slight_smile:

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Why don’t you ask them in a Community meeting?

thought about that, saw some asks in that direction before that, so wonder if it would help, but might try :slight_smile:

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I had a parcel hostage in a parcel locker. First thought was to flash my old Sailfish phones to Android. They were Android versions 9 and 10 (XA something and X10 something). Everything seemed to be fine but the app would not work. Finally I had to take one of my children’s tablets to the locker to open it.

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