Jolla announces the new Jolla Phone with Sailfish OS 5 and a physical privacy

General News
1

It looks kindda like Nokia Lumia phones.

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2

I seems to me they want to offer high-end version and stop relying on Sony, which makes sense, as Sony might stop making phones soon. And C2 is a low-end, low performance product (kind of slow, bad camera, etc.). If it has good camera performance, and maybe video output, so you can add external monitor and keyboard, it could be an interesting option.
I was thinking of purchasing one of supported old Sony models, but didn’t do it so far.

3

Feels like they’re never gonna support use outside the EU at this point.

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4

That phone is surprisingly nice. I’m kind of tempted to waste my money on it. But here’s my complaints:

  • The phone doesn’t run mainline Linux, it uses Android drivers via Halium; also means you can’t just install a different mobile Linux distribution on it
  • Sailfish OS is not open source (sure, some parts of the system are, but the same can be said for macOS or Android)
  • Sailfish OS is a separate ecosystem from “normal” GNU/Linux; it can’t run desktop apps or apps for other mobile Linux distributions, and Sailfish apps can’t be run on desktop Linux or other mobile Linux distributions

So it’s nice if you just want to support a third mobile platform (not Android or iOS), but it isn’t a “Linux phone” in the way most people would expect, it’s kind of its own thing.

5

The unfortunate state of mobile OSes is that, much like web browsers, it’s far too expensive and restrictive for virtually anyone to build a competing product without sacrificing something big. In the case of mobile Linux or even desktop Linux, it cannot compare to Android/iOS in terms of privacy and security. They still don’t support access control nor sandboxing. In addition, does this Jolla phone have MET/MIE? How long is the support window? I believe it’d be highly irresponsible for a security and privacy conscious person to recommend Jolla phones to anybody.