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Comment by zepearl | Hacker News Reader

I'm using Sailfish OS on an Xperia X since when it became available. My main reason to migrate from Android was "battery life" which was confirmed (battery now lasts ~5 days instead of the usual 2-3), but the OS has a lot of small and bigger bugs (e.g. carrier selection, 2G/3G/4G priority, stuck data comm for Android apps) and missing features (notoriously: tethering/wlan access point, bluetooth) that do not currently make it a valid alternative for a normal user if compared to the other operating systems. Version 2.1.4 beta is available (https://blog.jolla.com/sailfish-os-2-1-4-now-available-early...) which might fix many bugs and deliver some key features, but the date for the final release has not been published (and I'm too scared to brick my phone by installing the beta).

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Ubports, the community fork of Ubuntu Touch is still going strong. https://ubports.com/

Strong may be exagerrated. Its progressing but its far from providing a good enough experience even when it comes to basic stuff like email and browsing.

The website isn't throwing a 404 error, yet.

A happy Xperia X + Sailfish OS user here (v 2.1.4.14). I believe the points below apply well before 2.1.4. My only gripe is old browser engine; for now I end up opening some apps via Android Firefox (59), with decent performance.

>tethering USB tethering requires manual installation of a Sailfish package via CLI >wlanaccess point works out of the box >bluetooth works out of the box: A2DP, file & contact transfer, perhaps more I haven't tested yet. Works just fine old Nokia headphones, and with Roidmi via the Android app.

Those missing features do exist on the Jolla1 so it should work on the Xperia soon enough.

Only issue I had is some apps not working.. but none important.

Would not surprise me that if you replaced the Google blob with MiniG that battery life would improve on Android.

I keep seeing report after report that Play Services in particular can be a real drain.

>MiniG

What is this? I tried searching for it, but got nothing useful. Only things related to crypto mining, and other unrelated nonsense.

It sounds interesting.

Probably referring to this: https://github.com/opengapps/opengapps/wiki/Mini-Package

I think they meant microG, which is a project that aims to replace Google Play Services with its own, API-compatible implementation.

https://microg.org/

I think op means micro-g

Soo on Android many non basic features are enabled through Play Services. It is basically a huge library from Google that auto updates itself.

Chromecast is a good example of a feature delivered entirely through play services.

Google login also works that way.

Many apps leverage Play Services in some way. It is common to check your play services version at startup and ask the user to update them if they are out of date compared to what your app targets.

Micro-g reproduces the Play Services API and tries to deliver an open source equivalent to some of its features.

I don't really buy the argument that Play Services nullifies AOSP in any way but it is interesting to see another alternative (amazon also has a similar project) that is open source.

That seems probable but also misleading.

Play Services is choke full of features, so it tends to be very high in the battery useage list.

Replacing it with MiniG that uses the same API with way less features can only decrease battery consumption.

Im using Sailfish on the Sony Xperia as my daily driver. Most android apps I care about work. But it isn't 100% convenient.

What's the status of the browser? Before it was stuck with ancient Gecko, because IPC embedlite project basically died. What are they doing now about it? I wish they'd take something like Servo and browser.html for these purposes.

During the last community meeting there was talk that the browser engine is getting updated, but no more details than that:

http://merproject.org/meetings/mer-meeting/2018/mer-meeting....

Interesting. I hope they'll figure something out with Gecko or Servo, instead of simply switching to Blink.

Latest Firefox Mobile LTS release still works on Jolla’s ancient Android version (through the Alien Dalvik compatibility layer). You can install it from F-Droid.

Wow, that's impressive. I wouldn't have guessed an app as complex as Firefox would work on Jolla's compatibility layer.

The Android compatibility layer is actually Alien Dalvik developed by Myriad. It is mostly used on set-top boxes for TVs. Jolla just licensed it for their phones. As far as I know, even on the latest Sailfish X, Alien Dalvik only supports the API level of Android 4.4 (2013).

It's really weird that supposedly open source Android runtime is so hard to actually run on proper Linux.

Not really. We can't run some Linux software on BSD either. (eg. Gnome, because it depends on systemd, which depends on Linux-specific features).

The latest non-LTS release works too.

Firefox is not available on fdroid anymore. There's a fork called Fennec that brings it into line with fdroid policy. There's also Icecat.

To get Firefox without being forced into a Google account use Yalp installer.

Firefox Klar, which is an official Mozilla project, is available on F-Droid. There's some added content blocking stuff but otherwise it's just Firefox.

Klar/Focus is a completely different thing from normal Firefox, it's a Webview wrapper with very limited feature set (no tabs, no sync, no bookmarks, no extensions, etc).

What does the OS natively support? Does it have SMS, email, and a browser? Maps?

Yes, Sailfish has SMS and e-mail support. For maps, you can install OSMAnd through the Android compatibility layer and get the same maps goodness as on any Android phone.

* SMS - yes

* Email - yes

* Browser - yes -- the official one browser is based on [an outdated] Gecko engine. Unofficial browsers based on QtWebkit.

* Maps - yes -- the official solution these days is HERE Maps (this requires Android support which is available on Jolla-supported devices). There are several other Map solutions available through OpenRepos (a popular 3rd party repository for Maemo/Meego/SailfishOS software).

While the app ecosystem can in no way compete with the number of apps available in Android or iOS -- if you use your mobile for web-browsing, music, podcasts, weather, timers, etc. it's sufficient.

Calling HERE "officially supported" is a stretch. It's a downright painful to use app running in the android container.

The official browser is actually Webkit based. I believe Maemo was the last OS in that lineage to use a Gecko browser (microB).

The official browser for SailfishOS is Gecko-based. The SailfishOS browser source code is FOSS, so we can see for ourselves, from https://github.com/sailfishos/sailfish-browser :

> Sailfish Browser uses Sailfish Silica Qt components for the browser chrome and gecko engine with embedlite Qt5 binding.

Oh, huh. I suppose I was mistaken. Thanks for clarifying that!

> Maps - yes -- the official solution these days is HERE Maps (this requires Android support which is available on Jolla-supported devices).

Do they still provide offline map updates? I have a Nokia N9 and several other Symbian based Nokia phones, but there appear to be no updates to the offline map data.

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