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.
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
And that’s the story of how I decided against Sailfish.
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
For the last year I’ve used a Moto G Play. Purchase price was $70. No subscription fees and I put it on provider I want. I realized I was overcomplicating phones a a few years back. I used to have a flagship phone every 2-3 years. Eventually I realized I’m not doing anything on it that requires more. A 50 megapixel camera is more than I need. ive tried mobile gaming but it isn’t for me, and I even still never had issues running things like Lords Mobile or what not. What are we doing that requires more than texting, video, Bluetooth, cameras and a flashlight?
that’s perfectly fine of course, and I did not evaluate OPs phone, the price or anything beyond the subscription model as such.
actually makes me reconsider my phone choices… I’m currently on pixel, but hardly use any features besides ‘good camera’ and a bunch of apps that might require Google (banking mainly)
I went from a pixel 5 to this, an learned a 3 Sec and wait time is nothing. I can’t do anything on this phone you can do, but load a video game slower. I don’t know a single game worth playing on a phone. And I’m a IT geek. My battery lasts 1.5,x as long, because my CPU/,GPU doesnt eat it
see, that’s the difference between us. I’m an absolute gamer with 14.000 played games on my phone . I’ll check the hardware requirement of [li]chess and will consider 😃
Name 1 I can’t defeat you at. I’ll join and best you on a $70 phone vs. $1400 phone easy l. It’s sale tactics
I read that a lot of people just buy 1 month every few months to get updates.
I’d not be surprised if they stopped allowing this, as it clearly is a loophole… guess it depends on how many people do this.
in what way is it a loophole? that is how All subscriptions should be treated when there are no fees for starting the subscription (car insurance comes to mind).
maybe I’m just used to the practices in my field if business. if you don’t pay for your enterprise firewall support, and then want to update, you’d have to back pay the missed months at least…
But why if the customer didn’t need any support and didn’t cause any cost on your side? In B2B you are often mostly paying for the actual customer support, no?
How is it fair to not need any support and then have to pay for past months of smooth operation to get (security?) updates?
Edit: I get that further development and keeping products secure isn’t free, but why not make it e.g. a 6/12 month subscription then? That way you can’t just pay for a single month to get your issue resolved/software updated but also don’t need to pay for the past.
Most of the cheap Androids I’ve had got maybe 1 free update and then nothing ever again. Even if I wanted to pay.
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).
Can you just buy a single month, get updates, then leave it be another year? Not sure the contract allows single months.
Yes? What do you mean?
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.
Is it just me or is that camera on crooked
The nested comment above yours was how this company has pasted fake cameras to the back of their phones 😅
deleted by creator
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.
the very page you’ve linked to lists what features are and aren’t implemented
Ah thanks, I overlooked that. I’d still like to hear though what the actual UX is like nowadays.
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…
As far as I know, AOSP is largely maintained by Google. Without the Google Play Services you lose key functionalities such as notification service or the ability to use home banking apps.
While alternative play services such as microG exist, in my personal experience they are buggy as hell. My banking apps continued not to work and notifications were often delayed by several hours.
I’d love a real opensource linux alternative driven by the community without a big tech dictating what goes in or not. We’re not there yet but it’s cool to see people trying.
Will online banking services work on whatever OS this device in the OP uses? It seems pretty unlikely.
Where I am, most banking apps are actually indifferent to Google. Because you know what else doesn’t have Google services besides custom ROMs? Chinese phones like Huawei!
AOSP is a huge set of unknown. Despite it’s Linux, it’s not like my Arch where I can contribute to the OS. There are arbitrary security measures against the user protecting the device maker, not the user. Where’s my sudo command, where’s my terminal?
Android is fucking garbage, I’d rather use Windows. Unfortunately, other mobile OSes are somehow even worse.
Android is worse than windows?
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.
I congratulate you.
Jolla is still around? Still awaiting my jolla tablet.
I got stung in the same crowd funding disaster. In the wake if it I moved away from using sailfish as a daily driver but I’ve just bought one of these (in pic from OP) and it’s really nice. I’m away at the minute but when I get back I’ll be using it as a daily, with an android phone as a WiFi tablet for banking and the stuff that needs a “real” android device*.
*I.e doesn’t run on the android emulator that comes built in.
I was one of lucky few that got half of my pledge returned, but two weeks later they reversed it.
Sooo, how is it? Does everything work? Do you like it?
Sailfish OS ? Let me know how the User-Experience (AKA “UX”) is
I kind of want one. I don’t need it. But i kinda want it.
So how’s it been?
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.
Didn’t Jolla locked their phone’s bootloader?, and you have to pay them if you forgot your password and need to factory reset?
Um no? And why the Upvotes?
Yes, Jolla didlock the bootloader by default. Why? To prevent an attacker from circumventing the lockcode.
Did they do it to take away freedom from users? No. You can unlock it yourself at any time, of couse you need to unlock your phone for that.
Do they make you pay for it? No they even provide instructions for unlocking!
