Who's responsible for updating 3rd party phones sold with SailfishOS?
asked 2016-06-30 12:14:19 +0200
As many companies have recently announced that they'll release official SailfishOS support for (some of) their phones I'm interested in knowing who's responsible for the software updates.
If I buy a Fairphone, a Turing Phone, a phone from Mi Phone or an Oysters phone with Sailfish preinstalled I don't want to be left in the cold after 9 months software wise as it's not uncommon for me to keep a phone for two years.
I know that the current version of SailfishOS (2.x) is designed to run on different Android adoptions and Linux kernel releases. If a phone runs SailfishOS 2.x will it then per default get updates from the main release repository or do Jolla/the phone company need to do some individual testing per device?
When times goes by and new versions of SailfishOS is going to be released (eg. 2.1, 2.5 or 3.0) will it then be the phone company or Jolla itself which are responsible for new updates for a specific device?
I'm asking because I find this to be a major concern. Outdated phones will not only lead to platform fragmentation (as known in the Android world) but will also harm the brand and user experience of SailfishOS.
The main goal of a phone company is to sell as many devices as possible but for this to happen a good user experience (up-to-date software) is essential for the customer to be loyal and "come back" to the company.
Personally I would choose a more expensive device if I know that software updates are guaranteed for a reasonable amount of time.
I upvoted your question. Despite that, I want put emphasize on the circumstance that you can't buy as private person SailfishOS or an officiall Support-Contract from Jolla. The rationale behind this is, no standard like "IBM-PC" (Thank you IBM!) exists for Smartphones. You can buy a smartphone which comes pre-installed with SailfishOS (at least Jolla and Jolla-C/Aquafish) and therefore the manufacturer who produced the device is responsible.
hoschi ( 2016-06-30 14:17:08 +0200 )editI'm fully aware of that and I think my post clearly states that I talk about devices with SailfishOS preinstalled prior to purchase :)
Louis ( 2016-06-30 14:36:21 +0200 )editAnd that's fine. I think especially Fairphone triggered me, because it currently ships only officially with Android.
hoschi ( 2016-06-30 14:41:57 +0200 )editHave you seen that on twitter they are making a poll if you would buy a Fairphone 2 with Sailfish OS? You can vote here:
https://twitter.com/fairphone/status/748518011854786562
thomas.goertz ( 2016-06-30 18:59:21 +0200 )editIMO, there will be as like as Android or WP. Jolla's devs will publish updated version of SFOS, and 3rd party manufacturer will perform neccessary optimisations or modifications prior to release
iKeivs ( 2016-07-04 17:18:45 +0200 )edit