User reports - Sailfish X

answered 2017-10-21 17:02:43 +0300

Mack_
21 ●2 ●2 ●5

When you turn of your phone and restart, do you have a text: "your device has been ulocked and cant be trusted"

answered 2017-10-21 19:39:13 +0300

dysko
566 ●11 ●16 ●18

is it only me or we are missing 16GB of space? Device has 32 GB but i am seeing only 16.

answered 2017-10-24 06:53:59 +0300

apo
123 ●4 ●5 ●10

Default Browser is not able to render more advanced pages. Volvooceanrace.com/tracker is an example. A port of Firefox would be perfect.

The themes are pretty much unnecessary. Just geeky looking stuff without any real function. At least it could be placed in the side panel in favor for the options and status going to the top, like android/iOS.

Basic shortcuts should stay in the same place. Apps move around in the apps menu constantly. No muscle memory possible.

Android environment is absolutely great for a future transiston-phase I won't start yet due to the stated issues above.

Price is very high for newbies.

Looking forward to support this project with buying future releases of the OS anyway.

answered 2017-10-28 14:31:56 +0300

dizzi90
31 ●1 ●2 ●6

With regard to flashing I had two issues which cost me a lot of time.

1. Installing the fastboot driver was not straight forward, because it wasn't signed.
2. Flashing appeared to fail with Sony logo bootloop, but this was due to Sailfish not booting with the formatted SD card still being in the device.

http://technicalecstasyblog.blogspot.com/2017/10/experiences-installing-sailfish-x.html

This is my first time using Sailfish. The camera is not as good as when I was using android, but it's passable. In android I would just click the camera button from the lock screen and it would go straight into the camera app, which I miss. When you want to take a pic, you want to get to it quickly.

There is an issue with scrolling in Sailbook, which the dev says is due to sailfish x adaption. Details here

Aliendalvik is awesome. Without it I would definitely not have made the switch. There are quite a few apps that create pop ups in-app complaining about the lack og Google Play Services though, which is a pain. With the exception of Apple Music I've not seen any apps that cannot be used in aliendalvik. That is most likely because I am still exploring Sailfish and therefore try to solve things with sailfish apps before I surrender to using android.

I really enjoy the fact that you can expand the messages app with libpurple. I'm using the facebook messenger one, but it's a little buggy. I keep getting duplicate messages that have not been marked as read in facebook and therefore get sent to me again. So I've had to have the messenger app in aliendalvik as well which I use to mark the messages as read to not get spammed. I'm guessing that is more about facebook not being transparent about how their services operate than anything to do with Sailfish.

Typing is something which seems to be a lot slower in Sailfish. Probably largely less good predictions because Sailfish has less data on typing habits. I'd like to see something like Fleksy or SwiftKey on android. Not sure how it's best solved while being sensitive to privacy concerns.

I've not had much luck using media-buttons on my headset (wired). I have a Bose QC25 with both the android style buttons and apple ones. From my searching I've found that apple is the one that is supposed to be compatible with MPRIS. Volume buttons work fine, but play and pause I've not been able to use more than a couple of times. More experimentation is needed to pin down the issue.

answered 2017-10-29 23:11:20 +0300

White
361 ●8 ●12 ●17

updated 2017-10-30 09:12:42 +0300

My experience. I have Lumia 950 XL and iPhone 7 Plus and both phones are very interesting to use and to test. Of course i want to compare new device with Sailfish OS. Earlier i tried Jolla 1, but due to weaknesses in hardware (especially display) i sell it. But (!) Sailfish OS was in my mind. So, 1 week ago i bought Sony Xperia X 5121 and SailfishOS X for it. Flashing was very smooth for me and i didnt get any issues with it. First impressions - brilliant interface, everything is logical and easy to find. Sony hardware is enough fast, screen is bright and have very nice colors (not like Retina display on my iPhone 7 Plus, but close to it). System interface works just fine and i didnt get any troubles with native apps (except some weird lags with mail app, lags in browser and some page scaling problems, but all of those problems were already discussed in forums). I'm trying to use native apps for my everyday task, but if i can't find it i'm using Play market to download such apps.

Anyway, i think, that it is very flexible to use several sources for downloading the software. In common - Xperia X and Sailfish OS X - best solution for enthusiasts and IT geeks, who tierd from Android or IOS with they greedy policy. In a few days Xperia X will be my main smartphone and 7 Plus will be as a second one.

But, guys, all of us shoul understand, that our community is too small yet. Resources, that Jolla have is also not very large. And that is why developement, bug fixes and features releases are very slow. And slow releases - slow people reaction, who want to buy, but they need working finctuions. Not all of them wants to use two smartphones to combine functionality. So, Jolla, Please, try to do your best for us and for your own future.

And one more for Jolla. Sometimes you should think not like engineers or programmers. Think like users. Users want to use camera, BT, Wi-Fi and those features SHOULD work out of the box. By default. In our case, camera, for example, works very slow, always losts focus, killing colors and sometimes geometry. You SHOUL fix such bugs BEFORE you launchung your OS over the world. Even geeks desiers working smartphone.

Positive: New hardware with potential for heavy apps; Nice performance and usability; Good Android compatibility -> large amount of apps; Secutity and privacy;

Negative: Small range of supported phones; Horrible camera app -> there is no sence to use it for photography; Issues with default browser and mail client app (speed, troubles with SSL certificates) Unknown perspective for future native apps;

answered 2017-10-30 11:08:46 +0300

Pekka
281 ●5 ●8 ●15

updated 2017-10-30 11:11:19 +0300

My eXperiences

• How is the performance in general. Is there a significant difference to Jolla C?

Happy with performance. More responsive than Jolla1

• How is your experience with bluetooth connection still in beta?

Did not got my BT headset to work. Shows only MAC for devices, no names.

• How much time is needed to flash the phone?

Had bootlocked Experia and took good 2 hours to get it working. Mostly due to W10 and non-signed drivers and poor non-up-to-date instructions from Sony. Not for beginners for sure.

• Is the camera working fast? Can you post some pictures to let us see the quality ?

Camera seems responsible, had not took many pictures but was disappointed it's features. Thats 10 years behind others. One of the reasons to take the Sony was quality it's camera, but the app.. <sigh>.</sigh>

Have had no hickups after installation, only the first boot got stuck and gave me the wtf moment.

MISSING: Wifi hotspot. Not visible nor usable. Have to swap between Jolla1 and X because of this. This is a pain for me.

..also lost some apps that rely on Google services but yes I know, this is a trade-off and that's the reason having Jolla in a first place.

And Exchange is not syncing always. Luckily Outlook client is available.

In generally, happy with it and will be supporting in future too. Just fix the Hotspot ;)

answered 2017-11-02 13:32:00 +0300

femtopeta
1406 ●20 ●30 ●34

http://reinblau.de/

Could somebody check if changing MAC address works on Xperia/Sailfish X?

That would mean

ifconfig wlan0 hw ether XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

really changes the address after next "up" command.

In Jolla 1 the command didn't produce an error, but didn't change the MAC either. Apparently due to the fact that the binary blob driver wasn't capable or couldn't be addressed properly. On rooted Android phones changing MAC address usually works.

Sorry for hijacking this thread with a question, but I thought it would be the best location for the info.

answered 2017-11-03 22:48:45 +0300

ToniR
191 ●3 ●4 ●9

updated 2017-11-26 22:41:03 +0300

My main issue so far: Call on speaker volume. Ringtones can be incredibly loud, but for some reason if I transfer call to speakerphone, even maximum volume is very low, to the point of being essentially unusable, as any background noise will just make it inlegible.

Fingerprint reader would be very nice to have.

Internet sharing would be nice too.

Bluetooth still seems a bit off. I could connect all my devices (two headphones, two cars) fine originally and some time after that, but just few days ago phone wouldn't connect to one headset anymore. Just showed "connected" for few seconds, then indication vanished and .. nothing. Headset never reported connection being established. Not even full power cycle (of phone, or headset) restored it, same issue continued after that. Phone didn't connect to either cars BT automatically after this, but there at least manually started connect worked (for one car, don't know of the other). Haven't tested much more of this though.

Edit: Apparently headset issue was due to somehow corrupted pairing. Removing and re-pairing eventually fixed it and now everything works as expected again.

Edit2: When using Bluetooth headset, I can answer calls just fine, but when initiating call (through phone UI and not headset buttons), it will use phone speaker/mic only; headset isn't even shown an option although it is connected. So far I've noticed this only with one headset (fairly old Jabra 620s), but that's mainly because I don't often start calls when using headsets anyway.

answered 2017-11-04 20:13:30 +0300

Terr-E
21 ●4

updated 2017-11-04 20:21:59 +0300

Allright, basic info; I ordered my Xperia X a week ago and did the actual flash last Thursday. Some minor disclaimer; I work as a System Administrator, so I might have an edge over the average smartphone buyer. A lot of people here seem tech minded enough that this advantage is negligible though.

How is the performance in general. Is there a significant difference to Jolla C?

Performance in UI and UX seem on par with what I'd expect from a mid-range phone nowadays. Sleek and smooth. This is my first Sailfish hands-on experience, so I can't really compare to the other Jolla devices. My main phone is (still) the Nokia N9 [1], and before that I used an N900. Compared to the N9 I notice slightly less stutter when swiping through screens, although it's rarely ever annoyingly stutter-y on either.

How is your experience with bluetooth connection still in beta?

Bluetooth seem to work just fine, so far. Connecting to my N9, my Dell Lattitude 7440 (running Kubuntu) and my Mac Mini and transferring files with no problems.

How much time is needed to flash the phone?

Using my Lattitude with Kubuntu 16.04 I followed the instructions here: https://jolla.com/sailfishx-linux-instructions/ I did step 1 - 3 on Tuesday, and step 4 - 6 on Thursday. Everything went pretty smooth, although I am of the opinion that the "Note" and "Note #2" on step 4 should been actual steps in the instructions, and the Sony Vendor binary image should definitively be mentioned in the "What you need to begin" section.

Taking it nice and easy, not wanting to brick my brand new phone, the entire process took me about 2 - 3 hours. If I got another dozen or so phones to get the routine down pat, I could probably do it in 1.5 - 2 hours or less, depending on the speed of the updates and such, and whether "waiting on"-time is counted.

I was pleasantly surprised on how effortlessly it all went just following the instructions, although if this is ever going to succeed as a mainstream commercial product I would still recommend a GUI tool to be made which incorporates most, if not all of these steps, including automatically fetching all the necessary binaries, or sell devices ready-flashed.

Is the camera working fast? Can you post some pictures to let us see the quality ?

The camera seems to work fine, except from the already established points of the hardware button not working as designed (no focus on half-press) and resulting loss of sharpness. I haven't really spent much time with the camera due to have to work during the daytime, but I'll try and get some pictures up in the next couple of days, time and sunlight permitting.

[1] Edit - I am still using my N9 as I was disappointed to not be able to easily import my contacts from my N9 to my Sailfish X. The import function did not support any option that allowed me to select my N9, nor was there a "generic" Bluetooth option. Also the "People" app in Sailfish lacks a number of fields that the "Contacts" on my N9 has, so even when transferring vCards over Bluetooth file transfer, information was lost. This is, for now, a blocker in moving over completely to the Sailfish X.

answered 2017-11-19 00:01:34 +0300

Desmo
931 ●6 ●14 ●16

After a month here are my observations.

First the good...

• Beautiful OS and simple to use/navigateList item
• able to hack and make changes
• the few devs we do have are a god send and have created some nice apps for users. Without them this platform would be completely dead and useless TO USERS...Jolla's business plans however are not consumer user based so it really doesn't matter.

Now the bad...

1. Exchange is basic and not conducive if you use your mobile for business purposes. When forwarding a mail that has images in the body those images are not forwarded. You can not answer calendar appointment requests nor can you send calendar appointments to your colleagues. Every 4-5 days the Exchange client just stops updating and the only way to fix it is to delete your account and set it up again. I use the Android app Nine for emails and it's more than enough for my needs.
2. Camera doesn't work as it should...I use the camera not for taking random pictures of nonsense but to take pictures of receipts for my expense reports. If you're not under a bright light forget about decent, in focus pictures.
3. As I said, god bless the devs we have but the official store is a desert. After 5 yrs that SF still has fewer apps than the N9 did after only one year is a disaster. The Maemo crowd here says everything is just fine but anyone with business sense knows otherwise. Without a vibrant ecosystem the platform will go nowhere...not because I say so but because it's just the way it is.

Would I recommend the phone and OS to another user? To another Linux nerd sure I would. To a normal user not a chance in hell. The phone works in basic things and is fun to use but for the most part it is just a linux play toy like the Nokia N tablets before it. I always keep my old Android phone in my backpack, fully charged just in case.