I watched a review on youtube, basically the phone is great for enthusiasts, nothing more, it is overall slow and you have to disable android apps , wifi and bluetooth to have a 0,6% / hour standby battery drain. Celluar and bluetooth is not stable while using android apps.
I congratulate you.
Have fun!
Have you tried Whisperfish, the unofficial Signal client? I’m curious how good it is nowadays. Back when I tried it, I believe voice and video calls either weren’t implemented or broken.
Please report on what the 2025 Sailfish experience is like.
I’ve really been thinking of one of these.
Sailfish has the best user interface out of all the mobile distros imo.
my first smartphone was the original Jolla. It was a huge dissapointement in UX for me when I retired that phone and got a common android one afterwards. Dearly miss it still.
Who manufactures these, out of curiosity?
Looks like a company called Reeder from Turkey. The Sailfish OS is from Finland.
Reeder is not known for their quality. Or for their truthfulness, for that matter.
A couple years back Reeder has caught red handed with fake cameras (3 “cameras” on the back, but actually only one camera inside) on devices. They have first rejected it, then scrubbed their marketing collateral about it being a three-camera phone.
Most of Turkish cell producers sell shit stuff.
Jolla is still around? Still awaiting my jolla tablet.
What brand? I can see all the letters but none of them mean anything to me.
Regardless, congrats! Good call.
JOLLA
subscribed
Your purchase includes a 12-month Sailfish OS full license subscription
Didn’t expect a Linux phone to be the first subscription based OS. Makes for a total cost of ownership of ~600€ if you keep the device for 5 years. (299+4.99×12×5)
I don’t mind paying because it costs money to hire developers to write the code. You can use Postmarket OS, Ubuntu Touch and Mobian instead.
The real criticism is that the user interface isn’t open-source.
Just wondering, why wouldn’t you want to run Android? AOSP is fully open source, google free, and runs on linux anyways, these other OSs are just bound to be buggier…
Android is fucking garbage, I’d rather use Windows. Unfortunately, other mobile OSes are somehow even worse.
Android is worse than windows?
For anyone considering it, I find this information particularly noteworthy:
Price and availability Price: €299 (including Finland VAT 25.5%), with your local VAT applied at checkout.
Additional information
Your purchase includes a 12-month Sailfish OS full license subscription valued at €59.88 (€4.99/month), granting access to all releases, commercial components, and feature upgrades. After the first year, you can choose to continue your subscription and support Sailfish OS development further. Even without renewal, your device will continue to function, but future software updates and commercial component upgrades will not be available.
Source: https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone
So the OS requires a subscription to get security updates. That’s no fun
Might be a case of bad wording, as far as I know they are obliged to provide 5 years of updates (if they want to sell in EU).
Most of the cheap Androids I’ve had got maybe 1 free update and then nothing ever again. Even if I wanted to pay.
but it’s easy to calculate and compare with other offers. it does not stop working without subscription, which is the case with many other subscription models. actually I think it’s reasonable, as it also provides an incentive to continue supporting old models to the company and properly reflects the economic facts surrounding the product.
like, if you buy Samsung or whatever, this cost is also part of the price. if you lose or brick your phone, you still paid for updates you’ll never have the chance to install.
but of course it’s important info one should be aware of when buying this phone
And that’s the story of how I decided against Sailfish.
On my end, I picked up my first smartphone, an iPhone 16e. Hopefully Apple would be at least neutral in whatever conflict comes, or someone figures out how to jailbreak iPhones to access the world.
The way I figure, I will need something better than a $20 flip phone if I aid against the Trump Regime. Linux phones might not support European banks, which may be important.
Didn’t Jolla locked their phone’s bootloader?, and you have to pay them if you forgot your password and need to factory reset?
