A $150 Linux Phone with Android App Support? Sony XA2 & Sailfish OS X

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[perzval]

Sony's doing something interesting, I wonder if it'll be able to start a new trend of open phones where manufactures just make the hardware - exactly like with PC parts

[horatiumarasescu]

Bought a used XA2 for 80€ mint condition. Flashed SailfishOS on it, love it. However, after a few months I upgraded to a used Xperia 10 II and flashed SailfishOS also on it.
Now, that phone is my second daily driver along with a Pixel 4 a running CalyxOS.
@Wolfgang, you made me buy new things and try different OSs.

[cortez]

the reason why Sailfish OS Developers Pick Sony Devices Because Sony is Open Source and Developer Friendly

[crazymonkeyVII]

As a former sailfish user I can warmly recommend it, and it's great to see it getting some well deserved attention. My current phone is kinda broken which is why I don't wanna void the warranty, but next phone I buy I'll go back. The time that one can spend on android playing games and watching unnecessary ads is ridiculous.

[horatiumarasescu]

Seeing Louis Rossman on Wolfgang's Sailfish OS phone made my day

[callmebigpapa]

I have used Ubuntu Touch as a daily and really like the interface and found it easy to use only didn't switch permanently due to some 2fa apps I needed, but I will as soon as it is possible. I run this on the reference Nexus 5. Cost was about $40 USD for the phone. Really happy with it. Thanks for posting this great video and in general increasing Linux on phone awareness!

[rainerehrlich]

The XA2 Ultra has been my daily driver for the last two years. I am really happy with it. Of course you should know that even though it runs Android Apps it doesn't come with the google services (which makes it attractive to most of the buyers, I guess). So Many but not every Android App will run flawlessly.

[jozsefizsak]

Nobody wanted Sailfish more than I did after falling in love with the Nokia N9, my favorite phone ever. (I had to import one from China and reflash it.) Jolla has ignored North America from day one, although they took my money for the stillborn tablet. After the Sony partnership that finally included models that would run here, they refused to sell the OS to Canadians with no explanation. I finally just gave up over a year ago. Considering the OS license was an annual purchase, it didn't seem worth it to keep fighting when they didn't want my money. They still owe me $150 from the tablet debacle but heaven forbid returning it in the form of a Sailfish download! They're not very professional and it's truly sad.

[VictorYarema]

I was looking for some "independent" smartphone for like a 4 or 5 years. I didn't have a time to make a proper research. I finally got here now. Thank you so much such sober analysis of existing GNU+Linux phone(s).

[frykauf]

Thanks for reviewing Sailfish, I was really wondering how it’s going.

[ShinryuuTAS]

I used to have original Jolla when it got released. It lasted several years of use. Still one of my favorite operating systems you see in phones. My friend also runs Sailfish X (if I remember correctly) on his Sony Xperia phone. I'd love to see this getting more matured in the future.

[oj]

I've been daily driving the pocophone f1 with lineage OS for over a year now and f-droid + termux have everything I need. It's obviously still android, but at least without any tracking from Google (hopefully).

[NetStacker]

7:38 Loving the MacOS on ThinkPad look along with SailFish OS X.

Great video, really got me thinking back to the days of tinkering with 4.4 on my Galaxy Tab 4 overclocking & customising ROM's.

Recently been just using Termux on my S8, running emulated arch, alpine & ubuntu (mainly just for lols & general ARM-compatibility tests, not performance haha).

SailFish looks amazing though, refreshingly unique. Miss the design of my XA2 as well, this video might have convinced me to go back to Sony!

[WedgeStratos]

SFOS XA2 user for nearly 2 years now, and it's a solid contender. Still not efficient, I have crashes every now and then, but with microG, most of my app gap issues are solved, Play services aren't lost fully, and native apps are getting better with each day, which is impressive. My biggest complaint with SFOS is its keyboard. Despite having great QoL features like the paste bar, there's this insufferable thing with the positioning of the bottom row: symbol, comma, space, period and enter keys are all nearly the same size, and it's.common.to, do.this, stuff.all.the time in your messages. Unfortunately, coderus hasn't released an updated patchmanager yet so my preferred large spacebar patch has been stuck in limbo for 3 months now since I updated to SFOS 4.

Better news is, the Xperia 10 ii was just announced as supporting SFOS, with an X license coming soon for the Android support, so we're future-proofed for now on a new phone.

[c-]

That Tokio Ghoul meme got me, your videos are so good, thanks for uploading

[zdanee]

Man, rocking a Nokia N900 in 2010 was truly the golden years, a true honest-to-God linux smartphone in my pocket...

[hazmatt_]

The UI for sailfish OS reminds me a lot of Blackberry 10 tbh. The home panel, the gesture controls, Very interesting!

[mright]

In Europe we also have /e/os from esolutions. Pre-installed.
Very nice.
My son uses Sailfish on the X, also very nice. Love it.
But also love my FP3 with /e/os

[semaJ]

Thanks for that. Informative especially your ideas about the possible future of a closed OS.

[FunnyHacks]

I'm using sailfish OS as my daily driver. I highly recommend checking out which phones sailfish supports from the Jolla shop before taking action. For example, I'm using the XA2 *PLUS*, which is still a budget phone from a couple of years shop, but is higher spec'd (eg twice the RAM (6GB)) and not much more expensive than the one shown here. It also doesn't have the performance issues the Wolfgang was having.

Updates are regular (~3 months). They finally dropped support for their first phone a couple of months ago. That was something like 7 years of updates. Try finding an android or iOS phone that is officially supported, and usable that long.