Sailfish OS is mobile Linux and can run on smartphones. I didn't personally use it but the website claims it to run on the Sony Xperia 10 II from 2020.
It costs $50, though.
It costs $50, though.
"Sailfish X is currently available in the countries of the European Union, Norway and Switzerland ("Authorized Countries") and the use of our website and services to purchase Sailfish X outside of the Authorized Countries is prohibited."[0]
In practice only the act of buying the actual Sailfish OS license in https://shop.jolla.com needs to be done from the the EU/supported countries. That can be done via a EU VPN and none of the Jolla provided services (RPM repositories needed for system updates, etc.) are geoblocked. I went to Japan with Sailfish OS phone twice with no issues at all.
For reference:
- getting SFOS from outside of EU:
https://together.jolla.com/question/184861/ask-purchase-sail...
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/has-jolla-abandoned-sailors-i...
- stats from the community Sailfish OS software repository showing a lot of traffic from countries outside of the officially supported area
I think it is because of the USA's allowance of trivial patents which act like a trade block.
I have recently installed it on the Xperia 10 II you mention as well use a couple Xperia X devices in the family. Use the Jolla 1 & Jolla C before back when Jolla still manufactured their own devices.
Frankly, before some of the PinePhone distro mature, this is the only really usable Linux distro based independent mobile OS. And it has been available for years, yet people don't seem to be aware of it or seem to ignore it for some reason.
And if you have any questions about Sailfish OS, fire away! :)
Did you take PureOS into account ? It is the Linux OS installed on the Librem 5 phone. https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
And while I agree that the closed source parts are stupid I still think Sailfish OS is a good stepping stone to full open distros and hardware once they reach sufficient maturity.
Also have they resolved the kernel updating issue? All phones which ship with Android 11 or lower are unable to have their kernel updated because each device uses a modified kernel[1]. Phones which ship with Android 12 like the Pixel 6 all use the same Android Common Kernel, so it's enabled Google to guarantee the Pixel 6 will have at least 5 years of kernel and OS updates for the first time in Android's history.
https://jolla.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201440787-What-A...
You can even install microg or full blown Google apps if you really want & are fine with the implications (still less problematic having Google stuff in the emulator than on a native device IMHO).
There have been actually also some attempts to get Anbox running on Sailfish OS as the community ports dont get the Android emulation layer, only officially supported devices.
As for major version kernel update issues - they did not, but I am not really sure it's that problematic in the end.
So basically they base their port on the best kernel version + blob bundle from the Sony open device program at the time, then stick with it. Apparently the way updates of these low level things work on devices originally shipping with Android are too stupid and fragile to make supportable over the air updates possible for Sailfish OS.
They could port the adaptation to newer bundle from the open device program and either mandate re-flashing or support two versions based on different kernels on a single device. Both not very good options imho.
Still, not updating the major kernel version does not mean the Don support the devices or newer rebuild the kernel. All the Xperia devices in the program are still getting OS updates, including security fixes for the kernel. They actually only recently dropped support for their Jolla 1 handset released in 2013.
It's just when you really need the latest kernel features or the most advanced Android emulation layer you might need to get the most recently supported device.
Thats what kept me there for all those years. :)
No idea about the ToF sensor - I woukd guess it could be used unless it nerds some weird Android blobs to function.