[Official Announcement] Introducing Sailfish X

asked 2017-08-25 17:14:16 +0300

4624 ●36 ●37 ●35

moderator

updated 2017-10-10 14:35:10 +0300

After months of development and hard work, we finally are ready to announce the details of our Sailfish OS on Sony Xperia X project, called Sailfish X!

As you know, this is our first port of Sailfish OS to a 64-bit ARM architecture based device which introduced its own challenges regarding compatibility and ease of progress. Our engineers did however plow through the challenges and made a daily usable device out of the Sony Xperia X powered by Sailfish OS!

Sales day is getting closer

Here is everything we have in place now regarding Sailfish X:

Sales start date: October 4th, 2017
Product - what you will get:
Sailfish OS image to flash to your Xperia device - our target is to have the downloadable image ready by October 11
Android support, predictive text input, and MS exchange support as downloads from Jolla Store to your device
SW updates for one year, after which a continuation program will follow
Clear instructions and support for downloads & installation
Jolla Customer Care service
Availability: EU, Norway, Switzerland; US & CA to be confirmed
Price: 49,90€ (including VAT)

For the all the pioneers of the Sailfish Community Device Program, we also wanna offer a discount for the purchase of Sailfish X thanks to your continued support and passion. More information on that will follow soon.

For more information, please read our latest blog post.

Cheers, James Noori

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Comments

15

Thanks for all the work, a little longer of a wait but dates are great to have! Great work to the community, looking forward to moving over to it in the near future!

marxistvegan ( 2017-08-25 17:32:37 +0300 )edit

9

This is great news. I am happy to volunteer installing SailfishX from a Windows 10 pc, and write instructions how to do it. Can I have it now already? ;)

rob_kouw ( 2017-08-25 17:33:12 +0300 )edit

3

Hi,

This look good ! Are you planning to provide devices to independent reviewers, so that we can get a feeling of what we can expect from sailfishOS on this device ? Reading a claim from Jolla company that you "made a daily usable device out of the Sony Xperia X powered by Sailfish OS" is not really the same as getting a review from an independant youtuber (or other media) explaining what works, how responsive the UI is, how well android apps work, etc.

vbregier ( 2017-08-25 17:41:42 +0300 )edit

40

"SW updates for one year, after which a continuation program will follow"

Part of the appeal of jolla/sailfish community devices is that you get updates for a long time. The J1 i have still gets updates. Could you be a bit more clear regarding this?

ApB ( 2017-08-25 17:46:42 +0300 )edit

4

@ApB I guess @James meant that the price only includes yearly updates and you'll have to pay for them afterward. Please correct me if I'm wrong :)

Aldrog ( 2017-08-25 18:03:57 +0300 )edit

6

answered 2017-08-27 08:51:34 +0300

Jens2017
741 ●12 ●15 ●17

Absolutely great! I wish Jolla the best for the future!

Using the backup data of the older Jolla devices should be possible I suppose? Just in order to continue using all SMS and further data easily.

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20

answered 2017-08-26 17:50:39 +0300

Tajo
341 ●3 ●4 ●9

In Principle, would a Sailfish/Android dual booting be possible?

While Jolla should never officially support it - would it be possible to dual boot Android/Sailfish after juggling with the partitions a bit? I don't know the ARM/Cellphone ISA nearly well enough, but a Raspberry Pi can be dual booted.

That might be of interest for those of us who read "[I]n the beginning you do need to have a Linux PC and be somewhat familiar with command line tools to install Sailfish OS on your Xperia device." and think "sounds like fun!".

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Comments

1

Why not official support? It would be a great feature to be able to access Google Play apps on the same device.

pellen ( 2017-09-18 12:32:40 +0300 )edit

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KhayAnn ( 2020-09-01 10:53:35 +0300 )edit

I agree with the above. You must be able to assess all the respective variables then make the decision.

caroltiger ( 2020-09-24 02:22:30 +0300 )edit

19

answered 2017-08-26 10:56:15 +0300

OL
601 ●10 ●15 ●14

Will a Sony Xperia X running Sailfish X be able to enter Google Play Store? I am an ordinary user of smartphones. I was one of "the first one's" (still got the T-shirt) but I had to quit my Jolla 1 because of the lack of apps - or more precisely - because I couldn't enter Play Store. I am not able to "hack" my device. In my country (Denmark) there is a big number of essential app's (e.g. Health Care, School, eduacation, banking, credit-cards etc.) which are only accessible through Play-store (and I store) - This is a unfair situation for alternative OS'es. I have sent a complaint to the EU-commissiononry of Competition regarding Google misusing their de facto monopol on the app-store-market, by rejecting users of non-android devices (Sailfish, Tizen etc.) to enter the Play-store. It's like a supermarket rejecting customers because of the colour of their shoppingbags. I have also sent messages to several Danish institutions and Banks suggesting they could introduce their android apps on the app-store of Amazon or directly frem their homepages. But I haven't got any answers. So: This unfair situation on the app-market is a fact. As an ordinary user of smartphones it is essential to me to have acces to the major apps, i.e. Google Play Store. This leads to my initial question: Will a Sony Xperia X running Sailfish X be able to enter Google Play Store?

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Comments

8

If you need the playstore you are better of with an android phone.

ApB ( 2017-08-26 11:16:23 +0300 )edit

5

Yeah if you really rely more than 80% on Android Apps, SailfishOS might not be the right choice for you.

In general official play store support needs play service support and google licenses this only to pure android and not android compatibility layers or such. If you only need the access to the playstore and not the playservices then of course the easiest solution would be using the yalp store (available via f-droid anothter android store that you can download as apk from their homepage).

leszek ( 2017-08-26 11:25:40 +0300 )edit

7

@OL excellent idea reaching out to government levels. I will look into taking action in the same direction for Estonia. Hopefully it spreads.

In the meanwhile, I successfully got Google Play going on J1 back in the day, and it has stayed working ever since. My FP2 doesn't have Dalvik yet, so it hasn't been an issue there.

lkraav ( 2017-08-26 13:13:40 +0300 )edit

11

There is possible to install YALP. (Open Source Implementation of the Google Playstore). In Yalp you will find all the apps, which are in the Google PlayStore, and you can download them, without having you own google account. But Apps, which are required to use Google Services will not work. I know, in Sweden / Denmark many people are forced to use Android or IOS, because Banking Apps are using Google or Apple Services and wont run withou them. Unfortunately, if you can't live without this Apps its better to have one separate device only for this apps, or use an Android / Apple Smartphone....

ExPLIT ( 2017-08-27 01:51:41 +0300 )edit

@ExPLIT: The situation is the same in Finland, too.

jovirkku ( 2017-08-28 11:02:01 +0300 )edit

14

answered 2017-08-25 22:48:39 +0300

leszek
10282 ●101 ●145 ●150

updated 2017-08-25 22:49:41 +0300

Shipping a beta version is a mistake! I don't want to buy a beta version without bluetooth or fingerprint support if it is not even clear if those are ever supported. (even though I don't need the fingerprint much I would guess) It feels wrong after all this time (from the first Jolla version on) to still buy a beta version. There is not even a guarantee bluetooth or fingerprint or other sensor stuff will work for the paid money in the 1 year software support.

As much as I like the idea for a paid software model even one that guarantees me 1 more year of updates for that device it is a dissappointment that we will get a beta version with not only missing full hardware support but also potential software issues like lags and hickups.

Will it be possible to buy "SailfishOS X" as final version (with full hardware support and without laggy UI) in the future or is buying "early access" beta usage the only option here?

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Comments

7

I think it will be manaed. As I bought Jolla 1 Phone back in 2013 SailfishOS was also beta. So i see no big problem.

ExPLIT ( 2017-08-25 23:05:58 +0300 )edit

14

We now have 2017 - 5 years later - Jolla needs to ship products now and not behave like a startup that just started off with making business.

In all honesty this smells like another PR Desaster for Jolla. The announcement is again not clear about the BT support, Fingerprint and other sensors. As I know Jolla I expect them to add BT, Fingerprint and other sensors support maybe even this year or starting next year with an update. Though one little sentence like "We will work on providing Bluetooth, Fingerprint and missing sensor support within the 1 year support." would be better than what they announced now. But thats just meddling in details here.
I am just surprised that no one at Jolla noticed that this might be an issue to many potential customers. And again shipping a beta version is fine for Jolla as a startup in 2013. But now in 2017 from a sole marketing perspective I don't think it is a good idea to announce the shipment of a beta version. And me personally I am also not very happy to pay for a beta version again. (as I said already) The "daily usable device" for example is not written at all in the announcement on the blog post like it is here.

leszek ( 2017-08-25 23:20:56 +0300 )edit

3

Post your questions in the next Community meeting. Its probably what is needed to clarify all the issues that came with the announcement.

ApB ( 2017-08-25 23:28:22 +0300 )edit

4

Not sure if you caught this but they're opening up the build directions so the Community can build their own images next week. This means the community will be able to chew on this for nearly two months before the initial date of release. Bluetooth is likely to be solved long before then.

one_with_linux ( 2017-08-26 16:06:42 +0300 )edit

1

@one_with_linux I did not caught this :P From where do you have that information? And mostly why is this not written in the blog post (as it is a potentially very important information)

leszek ( 2017-08-26 16:09:49 +0300 )edit

5

answered 2017-08-25 22:42:48 +0300

mattl
451 ●5 ●9 ●11

At the moment I am not interested for paying for Sailfish OS that amount for a year with its current state, one time payment might be ok. I will continue to run Jolla 1 as my secondary/backup phone. But lack of official apps for major streaming services, messaging apps and so on is a problem, I cant name a single app for my jolla that is native from service provider. I find it cumbersome to have a need for android support to be able use common everyday apps. All so paying full price for phone(with os), paying for a different os, then flashing it my self and then if problems arise trying to get that solved with two customer service (jolla and phones seller) is something that doesn't appeal to me.

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8

You are triggering several problems: 1) Major apps or developer only tend to jump on OS with a significant volume of users. Thats not the case for Jolla. Thats the reason they are relying on android support which is in my opinion the right thing to do until they get more users on they system. 2) Jolly is pretty small company with financial issues in the past because they tried to jump on the hardware business which is challenging which not sufficient byers / volume (economies of scale). So they did the right thing to lean on software development and cut the hardware business. I think for such a small company they did pretty well in such a challenging market (licensing partners in Russia and China and more to come). For us as user we need to consider that nothing is for free. With Google we are also getting charged not with € but with our personal data or advertisement. Jolla needs to generate revenues in order to keep they business alive. I am willing to pay for software in order to prevent advertisement or personal data extraction. I am also paying for my email account for example because I am not willing to let google read all my emails. No service is for free (expect open source :) ). The more users are supporting Jolla and paying for software they deliver the more resource Jolla get and can push they system to the next level. 3) It is true that Sailfish OS is not as mature as IOS or Android. But please consider the company size. As I said I think they did pretty well - the OS is really good. I think we need to be patient. Jolla is not Apple they are relying on us and the community. We need to support each other in order to get an alternative to those big companies! :)

Imothep ( 2017-08-25 23:06:41 +0300 )edit

8

For me its OK. I"m fine to pay 50 EUR for SailfishOS, which is running on good HW. Lot of Sailfish Community Members are Linux geeks and i see no problem to start with a beta Version, which willbe update afterwards. For me its better than use Android or IOS.

ExPLIT ( 2017-08-25 23:08:22 +0300 )edit

1

I will also stick with my Jolla C for now, but for a different reason --- I currently use (1) dual SIM and (2) Bluetooth. I will be happy to pay my 50E once those two features work.

Federico ( 2017-08-25 23:25:37 +0300 )edit

3

Can I buy phone with the dual SIM option but only use a single SIM (wait until Jolle adapts to dual SIM once and for all) ?

manu007 ( 2017-08-26 11:56:44 +0300 )edit

@manu007 It has been stated lots of times. The only phone that is guaranteed to work with this version is the single-sim Xperia X F5121.

Giacomo Di Giacomo ( 2017-08-28 09:36:56 +0300 )edit

9

answered 2017-08-25 21:31:50 +0300

xneo

1103 ●17 ●33 ●33

http://eric-schmidt.org/

This is really good news... As mentioned before there are some users that might not be familiar in using Linux. To those users I would offer my help to flash their devices as I am a Linux user. I do live next to Frankfurt in Germany. If I could help just let me know.

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1

I am also a Linux User. Maybe it is a great idea to show non-Linux-user via video how to do that?! I think it is easy to set up a virtual machine (virtualbox) with any easy to install Linux a la ubuntu & co. Afterwards the instructions from Jolla should help to get the install successfully done.

Imothep ( 2017-08-25 22:37:33 +0300 )edit

Maybe I'll need your help, Im livin close to Koblenz. We'll see that in a few months :)

NuklearFart ( 2017-08-25 23:11:27 +0300 )edit

3

I think as a normal windows user with no further IT experience maybe it could be frustrating to get used to virtualbox. I am sure hardcore users can't understand because they are far beyond... On the other hand this crazy console stuff that you for sure would not understand if you face it the first time. What if you get into errors that you don't understand... In my humble opinion pointing to virtualbox is not a good option... So maybe the community can get closer together by helping each other...

@NuklearFart: Tell me if you need help. Maybe we plan a community meeting as a "Flashing Party"

xneo ( 2017-08-26 00:05:02 +0300 )edit

what if one linux mage creates a SailfishX flashing Docker container? ;)

it just have to be started by others and voila, magic happened, flasing is done...

zlutor ( 2017-08-27 18:07:36 +0300 )edit

I have used Linux a time or two but still not as familiar as I need to be. John of Demolition Dayton OH and Excavation Contractor Toledo OH

Thisisthebass ( 2020-05-17 03:07:56 +0300 )edit

25

answered 2017-08-25 20:16:34 +0300

ghling

4414 ●58 ●89 ●96

updated 2017-08-25 20:17:54 +0300

Hi James, Thank you very much for the announcement. It's great having so much more details and a release this close. Could you please clarify the "SW updates for one year, after which a continuation program will follow" thing? The way I understand it, you get 1 year of updates for your 50€ and then have to pay again for further ones (most likely some kind of subscription!?). Is this correct? Can you give us a rough estimate how much this subscription will be (like 10€ / year or another 50€ / year or ...)?

Thanks again for the clarification.

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Comments

13

I actually like the idea of a subscription. We need to face the facts that in the absence of a HW business Jolla is only able to make money through licensing fees. So why not go subscription-based and then have the assurance that you get updates as long as you pay for them?

sidv ( 2017-08-25 20:19:20 +0300 )edit

19

Totally agree! This is how they business model works. Otherwise they got no revenues. I am totally fine with that. Better than paying with your data... :-)

Imothep ( 2017-08-25 20:47:53 +0300 )edit

5

For software sales, this is a very common offer. If someone does not agree, he should switch back to microsoft. There you pay more often.

chris_bavaria ( 2017-08-25 22:30:49 +0300 )edit

8

Maybe they should transform the Jolla store into an actual store and get money from sales there? IMHO that would be better than payed updates (and nobody would be forced to use outdated / insecure software when low on money).

Also how does this align with the open source strategy? Right now I fear they won't open source any more software as that would allow users to get updates for free.

V10lator ( 2017-08-26 22:18:49 +0300 )edit

4

Hello, and thank you for commenting.

Well, that is one detail that is yet to be fully decided and announced. Our statement means that you will receive software updates within a year from sales start date. What happens after that is yet to be announced but don't you worry, you won't be left deserted of course. Plus, it's also worth noting that the 50 Euros that you are paying is also licensing fees for Android support, MS exchange and Predictive text input.

James ( 2017-08-29 13:28:50 +0300 )edit

8

answered 2017-08-25 19:51:36 +0300

dmelamet

1146 ●18 ●22 ●25

Hi! I was looking forward to getting Sailfish again, but, alas, this project is limited to some countries! I live in Argentina and wonder if I am going to be able to buy the OS sometime soon...

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Comments

4

You're not the only one bro, I'm from Paraguay and I was waiting for the announce... Disappointed about the availability... Perhaps, I think that if you have someone in EU country he could buy for you? I will do that because I bought a Xperia X for installing Sailfish OS

meloferz ( 2017-08-25 20:05:54 +0300 )edit

I bought the X, too... But I dont have anybody in the EU. So I will probably be selling it.

dmelamet ( 2017-08-25 20:21:25 +0300 )edit

8

Should not be a problem to sell something immaterial like an OS worldwide. Just saying.

dmelamet ( 2017-08-25 20:32:57 +0300 )edit

1

I think the same... But well... It will be a community port soon, maybe someone else port Anbox to our Xperia X and we will have Sailfish OS and Android support for free 🤗

meloferz ( 2017-08-25 20:47:42 +0300 )edit

(As taken away)

N9Sailfish ( 2017-08-25 20:47:45 +0300 )edit

1

answered 2017-08-25 19:06:22 +0300

Kalatti

597 ●39 ●46 ●55

Thank you very much for making this community great.

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Comments

1

Hej Vattuvarg, thanks. Thus from where do we get instructions for this? How high memory? Does a simple usb memory stick suit for as the usb memory?

N9Sailfish ( 2017-08-25 19:13:34 +0300 )edit

1

Yes, any USB memory stick will do. Just remember that some linux distributions are larger than others. I use 4, 8 or 16 GB memory sticks for my Mageia 6 Live systems. But there are other live linux distributions that are smaller. Some are much smaller.

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_Media#Dump_Mageia_ISO_on_a_USB_flash_drive

vattuvarg ( 2017-08-25 21:18:20 +0300 )edit

4

answered 2017-08-25 18:51:49 +0300

N9Sailfish

2146 ●42 ●61 ●60

Very nice indeed. Thank you! But was it mentioned above that PC with Linux is needed? There has to be also an option with PC Win 10 etc .....

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Comments

13

Who needs this? :)

Stefanix ( 2017-08-25 18:56:20 +0300 )edit

2

I guess the problem is the focus Jolla in this case. But nothing might stop the community from providing such tools.

tortoisedoc ( 2017-08-25 18:58:25 +0300 )edit

21

A live linux distribution running from a USB memory would probably be enough. ...and would not require an installation.

vattuvarg ( 2017-08-25 19:02:01 +0300 )edit

3

Assuming you know your way around Linux. Then however, who else using Jolla does not know their way around Linux?

tortoisedoc ( 2017-08-25 19:15:54 +0300 )edit

7

Should be possible to make a live CD/image with just the tools needed to flash the phone. So that may be another viable route.

sidv ( 2017-08-25 20:18:19 +0300 )edit

[Official Announcement] Introducing Sailfish X

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