Sailfish OS Today

Guest contributor Tim Evans posted some very useful thoughts on the current state of play with Jolla's Sailfish OS and I thought I would replicate them here, with his permission of course, for broader consumption.

I currently run Sailfish OS on my Sony Xperia XA2 with Sailfish Rokua along with  the actual Jolla Phone and a Sony X running the older Sailfish version. If you are new to Sailfish, then the simple idea is a completely different OS to Android and iOS, with the capability to run Android Apps when you want to - although Sailfish Apps are available - but more on that in a minute.

Jolla (who make Sailfish) used to have their own hardware which was expensive and underpowered, so a few years ago they started putting out Sailfish OS to other hardware. Planet Computers' Gemini and (soon) Cosmo are supported (and some other smaller OEMs) but the biggest OEM by far is Sony and the Xperia X models. Why? Mainly because Sony are one of the few big OEMs that still allow easy 'boot unlocks' (and if you don't know what that is, run for the hills)!

The first Xperia model (the X) got the fist large Beta for Sailfish (which costs 50 Euros for users wanting to use it, to buy a licence from Jolla). I have used that for a while in the past, and it was fine, but it took time for NFC and Fingerprint Scanners to work (if at all, in some cases) and Android API was capped at 4.4 (which essentially means all Android apps top out at KitKat capability).

Then the Sony Xperia XA2 Beta came along with API 8 which is Oreo level - and that is much more powerful. Nearly all Android apps work. Sailfish does not support Google services natively but you can install 'handlers' that will take care of that, making all basic Google functions native in Sailfish.

The big win is Aurora (which you can bring in from F-Droid app store), which is a fully functional Android App store where I can get all the apps Sailfish doesn't support from its own app store (like Facebook, Discord and MeWe, for example).

The Sony Xperia 10 is the latest device to get full Sailfish support. If your interested in Sailfish, you should try it with a Sony Xperia XA2 in my opinion and the Beta (2nd hand XA2 units go for £100 or less and the Beta is around £50. That gets you into a Linux - Mobile OS world that is very different from the 'big two' and since Microsoft packed it's Windows Mobile Bags and jumped on the Android train, it's great to see someone still trying to offer alternatives.