Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
commerce.jolla.com
commerce.jolla.com
Apropos of the fact that nobody ever shows the actual OS, I did do a video showing the actual OS, if anyone wants to see it being used.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pMfezSulhw
To me this is way ahead of iOS/Android, the native browser sucks, and it requires some massaging to get everything running smoothly, but the UX is second to none. That fact well supported by how many features have been copied by Apple/Google over the years.
Don't buy if this is your main goal.
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/q-enable-external-keyboard-mo...
I only jumped into Android after my Symbian phone died, and by then Symbian Belle, with QT and PIPS (PIPS Is POSIX on Symbian OS), it was already shapping great.
That Burning Memo was really a downer.
Edit: Wow, I tried to be discrete and not mention him by name but I notice every time I mention Steven Sinofsky was close to Epstein I get downvoted a lot here. Look at this one I found searching for "elop" for example: https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA006576...
Nevertheless, apparently without any hidden agendas, Stephen Elop destroyed a legendary company and lost thousands of dedicated and competent people their jobs.
– they dropped production – at least they are not in Epstein files, like some other people
– they drove over speed limit! - at least they are not in Epstein files
But more importantly, we need an alternative to two big tech companies who are cranking the enshittification dial right up while also remaining under a particular country's laws.
The "whatever you wish" seems to indicate that this is a regular switch that can be configured to turn off certain functionality. Is that true?
I was hoping for a solution that physically disconnects the microphone/cameras/etc, or at least acts at some lower level than the OS. But if it's flexible and configurable then it sadly doesn't look as secure.
That seems like a neat idea, but IMO I wouldn't trust the software-controlled half of it, so I'd end up only using the non-configurable physical portion of it.
edit: I want this phone, I have reserved a slot in the coming batch.
Just posing as an average Joe here, someone who does not host their own storage, calendar, contacts, phone tracking, remote wipe, the "free" features Google and Apple are known for on their phones.
Let us clarify here as it is very different indeed.
The Jolla C2 Community Phone is done in collaboration with Reeder, who is the HW vendor. This means Reeder sources the components, plans the production and does the manufacturing in Turkey. Jolla provides the complete software stack (Sailfish OS) which is installed by Reeder in the manufacturing.
In the new Jolla Phone everything is different. Jolla is the vendor, has designed the product itself, done the component sourcing and pays directly to the component vendors. We control the pipeline. Further, we have secured our position for the initial memory batch with advance purchase.
Also, to be clear: Reeder has no involvement in the new Jolla Phone.
Thank you for asking, very good points to clarify!
Pointing out that they still rely on Android drivers for booting the thing is a little tone-deaf from my perspective when they're basically choosing a different path towards a similar goal to Purism and other alternative mobile vendors: higher availability of non Google, non Apple mobile devices. Perfect is the enemy of good and all that. And like I explained the reason for their choice is not nefarious but a pragmatic one.
What I do care about is that my phone isn’t going to run into obsolescence a few years down the road (due to hard kernel forks and YOLO’ed device drivers that are not going to be updated for newer kernels).
I can't find recent demos of the phone, everything is a few years old on YouTube now, and I know the device is still in development.
How usable the browser and camera are ?
Can you get a full day of battery ?
Camera: https://social.librem.one/@dos/tagged/shotonlibrem5
Battery: I unplugged it from the charger 10 hours ago, it's currently at 55%. Typically it's up to 22 hours when suspended, up to 12 hours when idling without suspend and about 3-5 hours of active use depending on what you're doing. Could be better, but can be worked with.
This isn't for people with a consumer mindset. It’s for people who want a Linux computer in their pocket, more privacy, and still want to run some Android apps.
There are no longer any cellular chipset vendors based in Europe, afaik, so there's really no alternative. It's also hard to see how they will ever again be one.
What else use main line kernel without blob ?
https://sailfishos.wiki/books/compatibility-list-of-android-...
Smartphone apps have unfortunately become a hard requirement for basic day-to-day activities. Most companies offer them only for iOS and Android.
If your smartphone can't run the vast majority of apps, it is basically dead on arrival. Nobody is going to buy it when they need to carry another phone anyways.
The only way around this is either emulation (which Google is trying very hard to sabotage) or heavy-handed regulation forcing app developers to also support niche platforms. I don't think either option is likely to work.
should work for banking and governmental applications, especially as those should already have the workflow in place to support niche platforms.
Stopping those users without a trusted authority deciding which electron-wrapped websites are genuine is an unsolved problem, I think.
The apps don't just do that though; they call into and use an awful lot of the system APIs for user tracking / semi-native experience / biometrics and probably a whole host of other things. Its the incompatibility in these that drags compatibility.
Both can be true. Many (most?) online banking apps are just shitty wrapped javascript, that also uses an awful lot of system APIs.
I'm using a couple of different banks, and not a single one has anything close to a native app. Because how nice would that be? Responsive interface (since it doesn't need to load every single view from the server), instant search over your transactions (since the DB can be cached locally), instant access to all the PDFs in your inbox... but no.
I've never owned a smartphone in my life and are not planning on getting one, and I'm going through life just fine.
In Poland we have a rather well-functioning digital services platform. Tho, two weeks ago news outlets raised a small tantrum that our digital identity wallet application may be non-compliant with the upcoming EU standards. But as for now, once you log into the application (there are few ways - ID card with chip, 3rd party login by bank and so on), the session is kept for a year. After that's done you can log on desktops by QR code or pass data from app to app.
mObywatel app tries to include all the essentials: from digital ID copy (identity confirm, validation for you and someone else) your DNI-equivalent protection (won't allow to process your personal information in some cases). There's healthcare services handling (prescriptions, but we also have a dedicated app), inbox/outbox for official matters, payments and taxes, section for car and vehicles (penalty points, accident reporting), environment (reporting accidents, air quality, flood alerts) and travel (rail tickets wallet, tips and warning for traveling destinations - atm it shows that Spain is on 4th level terrorist threat). Tbh, it's way better than used to be few years ago with complex login flow that could break midway.
It's all convenient stuff but older generations are already digitally marginalized and we may indeed head into the future where we won't be able to do anything without a smartphone, in both real and digital life.
Of course they cannot answer this in the FAQ, because they have no insight into how thousands of different banks and other third parties will make their decisions on which devices to allow.
So long as a service is being provided identically on a mobile website as it is in a native app, you can pin that website and get just the same experience without needing a native app.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anttisaarnio_just-incredible-...
I would say the same for global south. I am a US citizen, but the rest of the world is crazy to depend so much on US and China.
The phone looks good. I have looked at GrapheneOS, but not Jolla.
Oh the joy, of being able to back it up with restic, integrate my email, text and script based workflows, and have total control of the ports and software that runs on the device. That would be amazing!
This is coming from someone who has for the longest time been invested in Apple and the Apple Ecosystem. I adored the ease of integration of everything. The amazing synergy between their designers, and their engineers. I never really minded that things came later to the Apple Ecosystem. It just worked. And it was great.
But the golden statue, the absolute pathetic DMA attitude from Apple. It started to get to me. And I am trying to now get out of that Apple Ecosystem.
I don't think it'll be smooth. I think the process will be painful as I try to work around some of the limitations. No NFC payments will be my biggest painpoint as an ADHD addled man who forgets his wallet at least 3x a week. But it's worth trying. And it's worth supporting alternatives.
Chat Control is a proposal. The other two above are established regulations on either side of the Atlantic.
It works both ways.
Possibly the best per storage RAM price on the market right now!
Sailfish: https://github.com/sailfishos Android layer: https://github.com/libhybris/libhybris
Proprietary is not necessarily bad.
I guess this is a descendent of my 16 year old Nokia N900, and probably the best phone I had. It ran the Maemo operating system, and its UI was a forerunner to a lot of what is current. It also had a built in, full, terminal.
There was a community poll and I believe a headphone jack was the second-most requested feature after a MicroSD slot.
I appreciate they have to draw a line under the feature set somewhere, however the cost of an audio jack is literal pennies and I'm quite sure the PCB designers could have squeezed it in somewhere.
As someone who has no interest in wireless accessories it makes me unwilling to buy the phone.
as for using an adapter, it's one extra thing to carry and also difficult to charge with simultaneously
This works wonderfully in quiet environments. But the moment you have any significant background noise, and need noise-cancelling headphones, this ends up being useless because no headsets do noise cancelling over a headphone jack - only internal batteries or USB connectivity.
Even with those rare wired-optional headsets that accept headphone cords, the noise cancelling functionality gets shut off the moment you plug the headphone jack in.
So having yet another 100th FOSS linux phone that won't run those apps is pointless until apps for these phones are shipped with feature parity, and they probably won't get shipped until these phones reach some critical mass adoption, and they won't get critical mass adoption because they don't run the popular apps.
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/banking-apps-on-sailfish-os/1...
We need native apps that pass attestation out of the box for that phone/OS, not relying on hacks that may or may not work in the future.
This is not good UX and it poisons the well if you push users to a new platform then they discover some apps don't work as you promised.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_SecurID#March_2011_system_...
The European PSD2 directive mandates that the 2FA scheme must let the user see what they’re about to sign. At the very least, that includes the amount and part of the recipient’s IBAN. FIDO2 doesn’t have that.
It’s the reason I own a device that looks like this [0]. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to transfer money at all due to the lack of banking apps that work on Linux phones.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Authentication_Program
yes, stay away and don't help jolla do anything. they are charlatans.
Benefits: they would skyrocket in popularity and code quality without increasing the team and maintenance cost.
This way I would contribute to it with my money and time!
[1] https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/jolla-phone-update-lights-on-...
The original iPhone SE was the last time I enjoyed a phone’s design.
I do sometimes use the video for remote meetings but I don't care about picture quality for those.
The world premiere of the European Phone
https://jolla.com/content/uploads/2026/03/Jolla_Phone_PressR...
Jolla produces software, SailfishOS. The hardware for this phone is sourced from third party vendors and then assembled and sold by Jolla.
So it also comes down to what kind of OS you want. I find SailfishOS interesting, but I also really like the hardware of the Fairphone.
IMO there's a paradox with these privacy-focused mobile solutions. Just as with the expensive flagship corporate devices, the massive price tags suggest an assumption that we are doing all our computing on mobile. That's now the case for most normies. But for anyone who really cares about their privacy (not to mention sanity), there's a better solution available: repatriate most of one's computing to a laptop. At which point all these mobile devices become unjustifiably expensive. Hence the paradox.
PS: downvoting a reasoned opinion, apart from being lazy and toxic in any community, does not constitute a rebuttal.
Remember when you could buy EU made Nokias, Siemens and Ericssons? Even the chargers were made in Finland back then.
For those that care, search the news for strikes or layoffs, around the time iOS/Android were taking off.
And people love to blame MS but Nokia was a sinking ship already by that point. MS was just a new captain added to steer the Titanic but the same fate was inevitable, as its home grown MeeGo/Maemo platform arrived too late and to too little adoption to stand a chance against the already established iOS and Android platforms who were throwing infinity money on becoming the undisputed mobile duopoly platforms, selling 10x as many devices as Nokia was selling Maemo N900s. It was already over for Nokia by that point same as it was for Blackberry. Nokia's own engineers admitted this the moment they got to play with the first iPhone at their Espoo HQ.
That's like blaming a drunk driver for hitting a guy that previously shot himself in the head.
Nothing MS could have done would have changed that fate for the better. WHat did people expect MS to have done?
BTW, we're still waiting on the Nokia insider details you were mentioning before.
Nokia is still pretty much around, and owns where UNIX was born in case you missed that part of history.
While we had issues, the burning memo platform was the killer for the third party developer ecosystem, just coming around the hill to move from classical Symbian into Qt/PIPS, in a UNIX culture, to be told to go Windows.
Secondly, you keep bringing up Stephen Elop's "burning memo" several times in this thread as the root cause of Nokia's failure, but when i use my google-fu to go back to the world of 2011, I see that Symbian had fallen to 31% market share from 44% the previous year and Maemo/Meego had a <1% market share, so it's clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together than Symbian was in freefall and irredeemable against iOS and Android, and loosing them money, and Maemo/Meego was far too late to the party with an insignificant market share to rise up against iOS and Android, also loosing them money. So given this obvious loose-money loose-money situation Nokia was in, why wasn't the "burning memo" to stop the bleed, the right choice at the time?
People say this was the wrong solution, but nobody ever says what the right solution was. Maybe because they don't have a better solution, and burning it was the only right one. So you're probably looking at the unsalvageable past through rose tinted glasses.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-01-17/germany-r...
Followed by a couple of years later,
https://balkaninsight.com/2011/09/30/nokia-leaves-romania-in...
Or I might suggest reading stuff like https://yle.fi/a/3-6886400
The rest, think whatever you feel like.
Why are you sharing links to things I already said I knew? I was was asking if you can share things that aren't on google.
All that shows how EU and Nokia moved manufacturing out of the EU out of greed and mismanagement. And now people ask why phones made in the EU cost crazy money.
>Or I might suggest reading stuff like https://yle.fi/a/3-6886400
Wow, the ex-CEO of Nokia said that "the thing that failed was a bad idea", wow hindsight 20/20, most genious CEO ever. Now if mister Megamind CEO here could tell us what would have been the alternative better things Nokia should have done instead, in order to NOT fail, that would actually be interesting.
MS actually prolonged Nokia's existence, since only they had the cash to burn on the impossible mission of catching up with Google and Apple ecosystem, while Nokia alone could not sustain those losses by itself.
Well please go on, spill the tea, don't leave us hanging. This would be very interesting to hear.
>For those that care, search the news for strikes or layoffs, around the time iOS/Android were taking off.
Well, according to my google-fu, the factory closures from Finland and germany were relocated to Hungary and Romania, so still EU, therefore the EU could have maintained a domestic phone manufacturing sector in its lowest cost countries as well, if they had kept those fabs and not close them down as well to move everything to china.
Everything about this screams of corporate greed and mismanagement on Nokia's part, way before Microsoft entered the picture.
Cameras:
The primary back camera will feature Sony IMX766 AF 50MP sensor module, known for its quality and performance within the price range
The secondary back camera will be a 13MP ultrawide AF Sony IMX214
Front camera is set to be a 32MP wide lens FF Sony IMX616
I believe the phone is designed around feedback for customers/potential customers. Which tells me that other people have very different phone usage from my own. I would have asked for a much smaller phone and a €200 price tag. The processor and even a shitty camera doesn't really bother me. I just want a cheap phone that can run like five apps (sadly one is the type that won't work, i.e. payments), and not run Android or iOS.
https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices#Community
you can certainly buy some of the supported smaller devices (e.g. Pixel 3a) and change battery for new
sadly basically nothing newer than 2020
Yes they do ship phones !
Everyone is stuck on the 2015 tablet failure.
It is absolutely not. More than misleading title.
People are jumping on this "EU sovereignty" thing band-wagon and milking it for all it's worth.
Could you elaborate? Just disagreeing without explaining why doesn’t contribute to the discussion.
Uhhhh… so why isn’t that final price stated, even provisionally?
I mean, if it’s going to be a 300€ phone, imma gonna bite. But if it’s going to be a 500+€ phone, I am going to want to know ahead of time. I don’t like surprises where cost is concerned. Leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.
Also, as an italian, Jolla reminds me a lot of the word "Ciolla", which you can only guess what it's a slang for. That doesn't help.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/11/16/disney-renamed-...
But it wouldn’t justify other countries. Apparently it’s a trademark thing:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=04d0b34d-efdb...
It's running a custom Wayland compositor and UI.
Still use all the Linux stack you expect (GCC, Wayland, SystemD, Pulseaudio, RPMs, Dbus ...)
It was to be expected that a lot of corps will want to milk the term "EU sovereignty" and good willed naive people who don't look inside the packaging.
To be fair, the Jolla tablet was in 2015, more than 10 years ago. Most probably, many of the people working at Jolla are not the same as then. Also, if you read carefully all the announcements and communication from Jolla, you can easily see they have learned from that crowdfunding affair. This is not the same offer, not in a long mile.
That we know of. We live in interesting times. I wish they were more forward with how they've made it so they're protected against such interference.