Xperia 1 IV, 5 IV and 10 IV support

Devices
#145

For an average Xperia 10 III owner, in most cases only 1 year old or less, neither the 10 IV nor the 10 V offer anything worth paying several hundred Euros for. They even look the same. The 10 V’s improved camera won’t be of much use just like 10 III’s camera still isn’t (and won’t be until Jolla cracks the Camera2 API). Other than that, I can’t see any other possible benefits of upgrading. I like 10 V’s stereo speaker, but I won’t shell out hundreds of Euros just for that.

So, my opinion is entirely objective, based solely on what I think would be the best for the development of SFOS, and NOT because I need or want to upgrade to either of those models, because I DO NOT.

“Out there already”? “Out there” it was a year ago, and now it is just about to disappear from the stores, just like the 10 III did shortly after 10 IV’s announcement last year. Very soon it’ll be hard to reach first hand.

If so then SFOS will remain an OS for mostly second hand / outlet / closeout devices, as the 10 IV port will - once again - come out only when the 10 IV stops shipping, and so will then the 10 V port. In such case, I’m afraid that we should not expect SFOS to ever expand beyond that nice but niche group of geeks originating from Maemo times.

2 Likes
#146

Picking a related thread somewhat at random…
There are now lots of “murray” repos on Sailfish OS Adaptation Repositories · GitHub
(That’s the codename for Xperia 10 IV)

8 Likes
#147

Well, so they clearly remain faithful to their tradition of always supporting the just-being-replaced model, and holding on with officially announcing it until it starts disappearing from stores. Following this pattern, the 10 V will get support sometime in mid 2024 or so. I will stick with my 10 III then.

1 Like
#148

Hopefully that will end the endless spam of ‘if I was a CEO of Jolla’ blogposts

6 Likes
#149

It probably will, because it shows that Jolla don’t care about such opinions, anyway, so why bother.

#150

Here is the question and answer about the 10 IV in the Community Meeting. If anyone is able with ports and wants a 10 IV there is an opportunity to help out.

The question:
Will Xperia 10 IV receive an official port?

  • This topic has been brought up before.
  • It would just be good to know if there are any news on
    what the next supported device will be.
  • Is it plausable, possible or probable that the Xperia
    10 IV will reveive an official port?
  • Is there a designated place on the forum or elsewhere
    where one can find information about this, or could such a place be
    created?
  • I know of quite a few people who have a 10IV and are
    waiting to install Sailfish on it.
  • Should we just wait for any news to be published on
    the blog?
  • Thanks!

The Answer

7 Likes
#151

I’m in the “wish there was anything I could do except run a beta release”, and so are probably many others, but with the vocal crowd here - any takers?

Has anyone checked out what Jolla’s provided so far to see what’s still needed to make this a thing?

I’d hate for this port and the idea of supporting any new hardware to disappear into nothingness because someone could lend a helping hand but didn’t.

Let me know if there’s a beta to try out and where you want the bug reports! I have that spare phone lying around…

4 Likes
#152

This far no one has grabbed the opportunity, it seems. I would love to have this port as well. I have the phone and no use for it unless there is a Sailfish port. I’ll see how long before I have to sell it.

2 Likes
#153

Is anyone from Jolla reading this, btw?

I do sort of wonder what kind of money they make on selling licenses for a new phone model. It doesn’t necessarily amount to very much per se, but the sentiment seems like some people (like me) bought the device blind (which is no one’s fault but ours) wishing for a port.

If someone has sentiment comparisons to other phones, that would be great to see, but if this is the most popular demand it really sends a bad signal from Jolla to completely disregard it, and an unfortunate signal from the community about its capability to pitch in.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t even know if everything is laid out in a way for even a n00b to start working, and maybe there are resources available, from documentation to helpful maintainers of community ports.

Is Jolla now maintaining a holding pattern in wait for community participation? I really hope not.

2 Likes
#154

There’s also this, but who knows if it’s true?

5 Likes
#155

That would be so sad

2 Likes
#156

Please keep in mind how limited Jolla’s ressources are (25 employees?) plus that far too few are using any newly ported device. This means that Jolla must rely on contributions from the community.
And I wish I could contribute. Which makes me think if it was possible to dediicate small and easy tasks to the community - tasks that could be performed by a noob like me and that nevertheless help saving ressources at Jolla’s side. However, I have no clue tasks that could be.

1 Like
#157

Let’s keep fingers crossed

1 Like
#158

Right now it seems Jolla has other things to think about - to keep the company afloat at all. There have been problems before and they have come out of it. But a port might not be at the top of their priorities.

Still hoping for a port for Xperia 10 IV

2 Likes
#159

You can help translate SFOS to your language, head over to #localisation. I have been translating SFOS to Norwegian since version 2.1 (about late 2016).

3 Likes
#160

There’s no reason to believe that’s not true, even though the original source is behind a paywall which makes confirmation harder.

Anything can happen in that situation. The company can be saved but the product offerings can be better or worse for us who just want to use Sailfish on our phones, or maybe the company can’t be saved etc.

One has to think if a major restructuring of the company, or something else that would suck, could lead to opening all the stack to the community. Maybe that could be beneficial for ports, but it could also mean Sailfish died with the last release. Who knows.

That should not prevent someone able to contribute to a port from contributing - the tech is not dead yet!

2 Likes
#161

That’s what I did already (only tiny bits though)

What I mean was some dedicated logging in certain situations or under defined circumstances for bug tracking, for instance.

#162

You can contribute to the Bug Coordination Team’s efforts.

Try to keep bug report quality high, try to reproduce bugs, etc.

#163

You can contribute to the Bug Coordination Team’s efforts.

This got me thinking, is there (or where is) a document for running those Sailfish OS Adaptation Repositories · GitHub repos on a phone?

At this point it doesn’t seem logical that Jolla would keep things much under wraps, as I think most of us would pay for Android support and generally not having to run a cobbled-up diy installation!

This shouldn’t permanently brick the phone anyway; you can always reinstall Android on it if you wanna.

Would something as simple as instructions help us help you? I for one am ready to temporarily sacrifice my phone just to see what happens!

#164

What do you mean, running adaptation repos on a phone?

These are source code (and sometimes binary) repositories to build OS images to be flashed.

You can study the porting docs here:

…and if you succeed in building an image, you can try running it on a phone.