cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/48809351

YT desc: First impressions of the Finnish phone company Jolla's new phone running SailfishOS, a Linux distribution with the ability to run Android applications on the device.

Looks like the viewer hasnt used the os before which makes for a bit more interesting pov

I am pretty hyped for mine

Sad that it only ships within EU :(

I have one on order using a local freight redirection service - which ships from my non-supported country via the UK.
(Last time I did that was for the Original One Plus One - always a bit nerve wracking)

You can use a ship forward service, unlike for example Framework, Jolla does not appear to bother about that.

If you are in the US, there has been a first report about usability with an American carrier on forum.sailfishos.org

This video convinced me to order one. I'm a longer linux user and feel pretty comfortable with using it. So if someone like him that isn't as familiar with linux is happy with it, then i should be happy.

Any trustworthy freights forwarding service that you know of? That's something I've never tried before.

How is the open-sourcing of their previously closed main UI components going? IMHO before that isn't completed this is a complete non-starter.

Then look somewhere else.

There has been meaningful progress with many of the core apps. The camera app has been fully open sourced and the weather app too and if I am not mistaken also Notes and Gallery. Most of the system has been open source anyway. It is primarily the UI that isn't and there has been no sign of that changing in the near future.

Pretty happy with mine so far and I am also new to Sailfish.

I enjoy having finally a terminal on my phone but also the very unique UI. More than I expected, actually.

I'm not sure how to do this with Canada.

Also, I want to avoid paying taxes twice. Once in the origin country of purchase, and another to my destination country (Canada).

Yeah definitely a hurdle. The exchange rate here also doesn’t help. Part of my decision to go ahead was to treat it a bit like a kickstarter to get it over the line. Hopefully will open up in future.

Not sure of any international providers unfortunately.

Completely agree.

Plus the fact that they can't run regular Linux apps liks others, for example Mobian, PostnarketOS, Maemo Leste, even UBPorts to some degree.

Also, without mainline kernel support, it will not get updates for very long. And then when an application requires a newer kernel, you cannot run it. Of course security will be the main issue by then.

I finally want to see them selling phones with mainline kernel support. They're mostly doing great work, but I don't want to buy another phone that'll be e-waste not too far in the future, simply because it can no longer be updated. We've got a planet to save, after all.

What I do appreciate: XMPP built into the system, well integrated.

But still no OMEMO support. No other app available for that. I cannot simply install Dino on SailfishOS.

I do have a SailfishOS phone, it mostly lives in my drawer, as there are too many things that keep me from using it, unfortunately.

EDIT: Not really a fan of Flatpak, but it'd certainly help with software availability and I do hope they will add it.

I don't know the details but I woukd recommend using a service in the EU, that removes any double tariffs. I would think that you only pay VAT in that country. The ship forward service isn't selling you the product, it is merely shipping you the product you already own. At least that's how I understood it.

Does it implement verified boot? It's kinda an important functionality, that's missing on the Sony devices.

The bootloader is locked by default. I am not sure if "verified boot" is something different from that. In developer mode the boot loader can be unlocked.

Well, it probably has verified boot then. I see no. reason for a bootloader lock to exist without that.

Verified boot is a technology like Secure boot/Android Verified Boot, which prevents the device from running binaries with unknown signatures (they can also be specified in Secure boot and on certain android devices (see: Graphene OS, VBRoot)). While it only works for the kernel on Linux and Windows, the Android VB is way more secure, since it also verifies some system applications (also see Graphene OS).

The tech is better than just locked BL, because it also protects the device from kernel level malware, not just evil maid.

It's really interesting.

Edit: Also, thanks for the info. I'll wait until the price settles on the used market before buying one (but I doubt it will since it's a low volume device).

Eh, there's more apps than on the UBports. But you still have the app support (for some reason, it's not available on the unofficial devices(why?)).

Who knows. It is certainly low volume but some who buy it with wrong expectations might bring it to the used market very soon, at least in certain numbers. The question is how much demand will be there, possibly more than supply.

Absolutely, it's also an accessibility and UX problem.

The fonts they use are too thin and frequently semitransparent (!) over a blurred and/or gradient background. So you end up with a thin light grey font on a darker grey, visually cluttered background. Unreadable if you have the slightest sight issues or if you're out in sunlight.

I was an early adopter (first batch of their first phone) and posted issues to their tracker about their font problems already 12 years ago. They never acknowledged this.

We can't fix the proprietary UI even if we knew how. The best you can do is splice your own font into the system, but that broke a bunch of UI elements when I tried. The video doesn't show it clearly, but from what I saw it looks like the situation is still as bad as it was. Back then I ended up mostly using Android apps because they didn't have that problem, they rendered with some halfway decent Roboto. If I'm just using Android apps, I don't need to buy a Jolla phone.

For a mobile phone in 2026, you need someone doing proper UX and you should have the bare minimum of accessibility features. Other systems have screen readers and voice navigation built in, etc. Sorry for the rant, it pisses me off to no end that we can't have a decent European phone and Jolla is our best chance. Maybe one day Plasma Mobile will run on more things...

AppSupport is proprietary, I'd just use Waydroid. No artificial limtation and licence requirements there.