Sailfish floats v3.4 'Pallas-Yllästunturi', its latest Jolla good reason for itchy-fingered Android and Apple swervers

Jolla has refreshed Sailfish, the Linux-based mobile operating system designed for those seeking to escape the clutches of Android and iOS. The latest update – version 3.4 – was named after the Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park in Lapland, located north of the Arctic Circle. Jolla has overhauled the browser, added experimental …

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite happy with Sailfish

I run Sailfish on my second phone, for purely business purposes. It's a Sony Experia XA2 dual Sim and it works a charm. My main phone runs iOS and for my second phone I wanted something different. I'm staying as far away from Google as possible (especially for business) so an Android phone was out of the question. For the same reason I don't run the Android layer on Sailfish, although that seems to work pretty well judging from other people's responses.

For a daily driver for business purposes I'd say it runs pretty well. Email, contact and calendar sync with Exchange works well, fingerprint recognition and camera work well. I was skeptical about the dual SIM but that works fine too. The browser is a bit sluggish but it sounds as if that is improved with this update.

If you want/need a second phone and want to escape the iOS/Android duopoly I can recommend Sailfish.

[Shadow Systems]

Re: Quite happy with Sailfish

I'll go do some internet searches to find out if there's information about Sailfish accessibility, but can you as a current user of a device equipped with it determine if it contains a screen reader function & if so how well it works?

I would love a non Apple/Google phone but am stymied by the requirement of the screen reader function (reading menus aloud, reading text messages, echoing key presses for the calculator, etc) in order to use the device at all.

Thank you in advance for any data you can share.

[llelectronics]

Re: Quite happy with Sailfish

This is something SailfishOS needs to improve upon still. Accessibility is still lacking.

There is currently no screen reader available.

[Shadow Systems]

Re: Quite happy with Sailfish

Thank you for that info. I was unable to find any results that answered my question & was getting frustrated. I feel a smidgeon better now that I know that (no answer) was essentially a rather glaring "no".

*Hands you a pint in gratitude*

Drink up with my thanks.

[Ken 16]

Re: Quite happy with Sailfish

I tend to do something similar, with my 'work' phone being deliberately awkward to install frivolous apps on. I've gone through Bada to BB10 to Windows 10 phone. Maybe Sailfish will be next.

[Rilik]

A praise to Jolla and sailfish for bringing something new to the table and for fighting the duopoly.

I owned a Jolla 1 for four years. Although far from ground breaking, the device was pretty fine with the possibility to install hw modules.

That was not the only idea far ahead of its time: the whole os was gesture based from the start, with nifty ux features such as "release to activate buttons" and remorse timers, something still absent nowadays in the major mobile OSes.

I guess the lack of hw support, the already huge dominance of Android and ios and the steep curve to develop apps (c++/qml) made the rest.

Still,what they did with such a small team is remarkable. Glad to see the dream living on.

[wyatt]

Likewise, I had a J1 until I lost it in a Taxi in Spain one holiday. It worked well, started to slow down towards the end but was still perfectly usable.

I currently use Android, when my current phone finally gives up on security updates (probably already happened!) I may consider putting Sailfish on it, not sure I'd do it with a primary device though.

[bitwise]

Taxis eat Jollas ?

Lost mine in a Taxi in Taiwan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Taxis eat Jollas ?

I was a taxi driver for about 5 years, during that time I managed to return all but one from about +20 phones, what sort of surprised me was that they all belonged to men.

[T. F. M. Reader]

Re: Taxis eat Jollas ?

what sort of surprised me was that they all belonged to men.

Why did it surprise you? Women tend to keep their phones in their handbags, and they are highly unlikely to forget a handbag, aren't they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Taxis eat Jollas ?

I was sort of surprised that it was so obvious, and I sort of think that expresed this way might sort of have some men think about it.

One other thing that sort of surprised me is that there are people who refuse to take the receipt.

One particular guy comes to my mind who first refused to take it and then outside of the taxi kocked on the window and said something like - so give me that f-king thing then.

Half an hour later he phoned asking me if perhps his car keys was in the car. And, yes indeed, there they where pushed under the front seat neetly.. So I returned and now he took the receipt, now for no good reason perhaps.

Most customers are decent and most drivers too, and there is a difference in different countries. These days I would suggest you always agree on a about price in advance and newer use a taxi wthout a proper taxi meter.

And I know this text is rather late for a topic regarding Sailfish.

[IGotOut]

Re: Taxis eat Jollas ?

"what sort of surprised me was that they all belonged to men"

Women tend to have bags, men to have pockets.

Bigger the phone, the easier it falls out.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Likewise, I had a J1 until I lost it in a Taxi in Spain one holiday. It worked well, started to slow down towards the end but was still perfectly usable.

Still got my J1 and re-flashed it back to original firmware after acquiring an Xperia. Going back was almost a revelation: the original UI was much snappier and nicer looking. I much prefer he original remorse timer animation.

Also tap to wake was a feature I used a lot just to see the lock screen info.

[werdsmith]

Superb, version 3.4.0.24, yet another update for the Planet Gemini.

Very well supported by Jolla, the Gemini is the best of the Planet pocket rockets especially when running Sailfish exclusively.

[tonique]

My next suggestion for a Sailfish codename taken from national parks is "Syöte". Can't go much more difficult for non-Finns to pronounce. What's more, the word "syöte" happens to mean 'input'.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Engages linguistics nerd mode).

Finnish makes a clear distinction between front and back vowels, as indicated by the ö which is a front vowel. The y is also a front vowel in Finnish (ü in others such as German), while the equivalent back vowel is u. Vowel harmony means all vowels in a word are consistently front or back vowels. While this may sound complex, the rules are actually straightforward and unlike English the language has very few exceptions to the rules. So if you know the difference between front and back vowels (the a in cat and car for example) then pronunciation is simple.

[IGotOut]

Not really it will be pronounced Coyote, much to the Finns annoyance.

[To Mars in Man Bras!]

Availability?

I was under the impression that SailfishOS only ran on phones specially built for it. But people in the comments are mentioning running it on different [originally Android] phones. So, is there actually a repo of SailfishOS downloads for compatible devices somewhere, that can be flashed with Sailfish?

All's I can find on their website are lots of hipster 'calls to action' and sliding in and out photographs, which is all very pretty but there's nothing I can see that actually tells me how to get my hands on the damned OS.

[llelectronics]

Re: Availability?

There is SailfishX which is officially SailfishOS supported ROMs for Sony Xperia X, XA2 and 10 series of devices. See more information here: https://jolla.com/sailfishx/

There is a free version and a paid version. The paid version grants you updates and access to the Android App Support aswell as text correction and Microsoft Exchange support.

There are also ports done by the community for other devices. The best working ones are done by the verdanditeam: https://verdanditeam.com/

You can find more on forums like xda-developers and so on. There was also a libhybris mer list about ports but the website is currently offline

[To Mars in Man Bras!]

Re: Availability?

Ah. OK. Thanks for the info.

So the list of supported non-Jolla devices is basically Sony Xperias. No tinkering fun for me then. My old banger, for playing about flashing stuff on, is an HTC M8