RetroFedJolla Phone 2 & Sailfish OS: A Real Third Option
GotExxhttps://makertube.net/videos/watch/c0a25429-d72a-457a-9dce-2fa534ebc65b
Share on Mastodon
Share on Reddit
Share on WhatsApp51 Comments
Comments from other communities
I find it impressive how negative people tend to be because something is not pure enough, they talk it down even much more than the duopoly systems. Yes, Sailfish OS has some closed source UI parts, and you can’t just install desktop programs outside of the cli without running into problems. But running desktop programs, not optimised for mobile use are a terrible experience to begin with. This is a mobile device, not a desktop. If you disagree with that and want a desktop on your phone, there are options for you too, Sailfish OS isn’t it though.
That said, what surprised me most is how much I am in the terminal on the phone and enjoying it. You’d certainly not going to have that kind of experience on an Android, also not on a degoogled one.
For everyone interested here is the official product page: https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-october-2026
the 8GB/128GB version costs 649€
Pretty expensive for a Linux phone that does not allow running most Linux apps.
A Fairphone costs 549 € (100 euros less), for that you get 256 GB of storage, better specs, repairability and a wider range of mobile Linux distros to choose from.
Thema advertising it as a Linux Phone is misleading imho. They should focus on advertising it as an alternative to Android/iOS with optional Android App support.
But from a Hardware point of view you are right. It is not a flagship device. In regards to repairability at least the battery can be replaced.
Replaceable Battery is just the legal minimum for the EU.
I prefer repairability, we’ve got too much trash already and the planet isn’t in a good state.
Not necessarily for Smartphones and Tablets. There is an exception:
manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives may provide the battery or batteries referred to in point (i)(a) only to professional repairers if manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives ensure that the following requirements are met:
(a) after 500 full charge cycles the battery has, in a fully charged state, a remaining capacity of at least 83 % of the rated capacity;
(b) the battery endurance in cycles achieves a minimum of 1 000 full charge cycles and after 1 000 full charge cycles the battery has, in a fully charged state, a remaining capacity of at least 80 % of the rated capacity;
See: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32023R1670
So If this requirements are met it does not need to be easily replacable by the End-User. Don’t know If they can achieve that.
What is so bad about the repairability of the Jolla Phone? You can have a look at the teardown on ifixit. Seems pretty straight forward and modular. Sure, Fairphone is yet better, not so much because it is so much easier to take apart but because of how extensive their replacement part store is.
Then get a Fairphone, that said, most of the people who have purchased the Jolla Phone have gotten 256 GB for 500-580 EUR. I personally got it for 580 EUR.
Which one of those Linux distros on Fairphone is as daily driveable as a phone as Sailfish OS?
You know just as well as me that a phone is daily drivable if it does what you need, which is highly subjective.
I personally have used phones that wouldn’t work at all for most.
There are several options and people should look things up themselves and make sure the things that are important to them are supported.
I cannot give you an easy, simple, short answer in a single post, but we could discuss this in audio for many hours, easily. Sometimes simple answers do not work.
How does it compare with the Murena gs6?
Left as CenterAre there any reviews available for the Murena?
Not really, I am trying to find any sort of feedback about this phone. Might buy it and post a layman’s review…
inariIt being proprietary is a nonstarter for me
Also, no mainline kernel support. Pretty sure it’d be easy to do for Jolla (even I manage to do some mainlining work and I don’t sell phones).
This means it’ll be a security nightmare at some point, just like any other phone.
Plus the specific app format. You cannot install the many nice GNOME apps, KDE apps and others that already exist.
I do have a SailfishOS phone for testing, but to make it even a bit useful I’d have to use AppSupport, which is Android in a container with a proprietary wrapper. There are barely any apps, they should leverage the power of the many mobile Linux apps that exist. I’d rather have some apps with a UI that looks different to the rest than not having what I need.
This is what really makes it a non-starter for me. Also, if there was a mainline kernel, I could just install any other distro I want instead.
I’m still waiting for a somewhat modern phone with a fully functional mainline kernel.
The app format lock in sounds crazy to me. How does it stop you from running other apps? Does it not have a terminal? Does it not give you sudo? Does it refuse to run any executables, or is it about the ui toolkit?
Sorry for the barrage, that sounded outrageous
They just have their own format using their owm SailfishOS-specific UI libraries. Their apps don’t work elsewhere without patching, there’s no Flatpak and they only have SailfishOS apps in the repo.
Sure, you can write your own apps, but I prefer using what’s already there.
There is no lock in, there are merely incompatibilities. You can install sudo, but by default there is devel-su which is pretty much the same thing. You can install rpms and if you don’t like pkcon you can install zypper as package manager. As long as you stay within the terminal emulator things tend to work.
There is a misunderstanding that desktop programs would be such a great boon for a mobile phone. But mobile phones suck with desktop UI. You need a mobile UI for it to make sense and that is exactly where incompatibilities are coming from.
I installed a community port of the qt6 based KDE plasma browser Angelfish for example and it is running just fine on Sailfish OS.
Sailfish OS can run on mainline kernel. The Jolla Phone does not run a mainline kernel because it consists of off the shelf phone components and those are for Android phones outside of the world of iOS.
Mainlining is anything but easy if you aim is a functioning daily driver and not a tinker project, especially in a team as small as Jolla’s with so many more urgent tasks.
PS: Angelfish runs just fine on my Jolla Phone.
“more urgent tasks”
Jolla could just mainline and open source and they’d get more developer power, the devs just prefer devices that are more open
Also, I’m mainlining stuff myself, without being a phone company. Surely they’d have a much easier time.
The kernel depends on the hardware. Trying to get hardware with mainline kernel support is hard and expensive. Mainlining isn’t the trivial task you make it out to be, otherwise postmarket would not struggle that much. Or tell me which device just works with postmarket OS?
Sailfish OS can work with mainline Linux kernels, it has been ported to the Pine Phone for example.
It is not trivial, it can be. The company designing the phone can choose components with mainline kernel support over others.
If you choose an SoC with decent support and, for example, a vibration module or modem with decent mainline support, you just have to write a device tree.
If you build a phone, you know what regulators exist, what voltages they have and where they connect.
It’s not the type of reverse engineering I have to do myself, the phone company knows their own device.
And even if they task another company to do it, they can just write in their contract “provide us with the following” and they get what they need.
It’s a lot easier for a phone company than for people doing it in their spare time by reverse engineering things.
Yes, you can choose components and then you get something like the Pinephone. Do I really need to go on why there are substantial downsides connected to that?dann können Of course, if you sell 10 mio phones things get easier but that is ou of reach for any such project by a long shot.
Or which mainline Linux phone with acceptable hardware am I unaware of?
SunshineWhat’s a good non-proprietary option?
I’m personally more interested in following the development of postmarketOS, the only non-proprietary project that does not rely on Google/Android, though it’s not yet production ready for the average user in most cases.
Finally got to viewing this. Great review. Always loved sailfish ever since I had my N9 (with its predecessor Meego.)
Best UI hands down. I would love to get this if it worked stateside.
FarooqThe road to perfection is step by step. And sometimes you have two terrible choices, and you have to choose the one which is less bad.
AdmetusGosh, preorders went almost 500% of funding goal.
nocturneAs someone who lost their money backing the jolla tablet, I would never back anything from them again. If I could buy a phone and have it ship right away I would give it a try.
macnielOnce my fairphone 5 breaks I’ll consider jollaphone as my next phone… so its gonna be some several years ^^
ANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86
Proprietary OS. Idc if it is “Linux”. Android is Linux, and AOSP is open source. Why use a proprietary Linux distro over something like GrapheneOS which is fully free and open source software. I don’t think any person who cares about their privacy should use SailfishOS. It really seems like privacy-washing and OSS-washing. I say kick proprietary Linux distros out of the community.
Oh shut up.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Everytime something took a step in the right direction the past two decades in open source, someone started throwing toenails around, scaring off people.
And while you throw ”proprietary” around with the toenails, you are the one here telling people to throw money at Google to buy a pixel. At least put your money where your mouth is and buy libre hardware.
Agreed, annoying how much people are moving the goalpost for this thing. It’s an actually usable alternative to android and ios, with hardware features literally voted by the community. It’s not perfect, but it’s actually viable, with features people actually wanted.
nice to see GrapheneOS getting the kudos they deserve.
The Graphene team are probably fantastic people.
The toenail-slingers are usually not writing that much code.
Buying a used pixel on eBay doesn’t give Google any money. I agree with the rest of you point but I think it’s facetious to act like you have no option but to pay Google directly to get a pixel.
Second hand market also drives demand.
Ubuntu, Android… even they have proprietary parts. That’s the business. SailfishOS does too, but only a small part (~20%) is proprietary, like some UI components and hardware drivers. It’s not fully closed, just a pragmatic mix to work on real devices. So yes, you gotta pay the Jolla team.
No, you misunderstood me I think. I’m happy to throw money at Jolla, and I have done so.
I’m not impressed about people complaining that Sailfish is ”proprietary” while handing money over to Google.
My answer is along the same lines as yours 😉
Deleted by author
Another GrapheneOS fanboy 😞
I just want to buy this how can I in America
I’d be very careful about ordering something designed for another continent’s cell network.
Absolutely! There is also a forum thread that discusses this topic: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/would-the-new-2026-jolla-phone-work-in-the-us/30366
Obviously you can use a parcel forwarding package https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/potential-us-customers-for-new-jolla-phone/30640/1
Depending on what you value and expect from a “more” private device than the main hardware brands and their software these are not particularly secure physically, and to some extent via software. It’s somewhere between pixel flavor of Android and grapheneos. Steps in the right direction. I will be watching for future versions especially as they come to be viable in the US.
Little reading on what I’m referring without a deep (and albeit opinionated) dive by the graphene team on the hardware, and similar but done by other teams for sailfish specifically.
https://hivesecurity.gitlab.io/blog/jolla-phone-privacy-threat-model-2026/
Edit: That is opinionated as in the architectural decisions and trade offs made to reach a certain level of protection not as in bias or “opinions”. Aka software usage of opinionated in the way that a framework might be.
Edit Two: Listed graphene as the high end of security for our current offerings in the consumer space that are still considered full featured smart phones. iOS is also a contender, but they aren’t as concerned with privacy as grapheneos is. They are a business first. Privacy for them while it does exist is a means to an end. Marketing doing it’s thing.
The alternative is FairPhone and e/OS (OpenSource)