Hello, I noticed there is a lot of questions about the new Jolla phone across various communities and there aren't that many in-depth reviews. The ones that are there often don't mention what it's actually like to use the phone compared to other phones or are glazing it a bit too much and not talking about the drawbacks. So i wanted to write a little review after 3 weeks of using the phone. I will try to mention everything i noticed and maybe i will be a little bit nitpicky. It's probably too long to be honest but yeah, i hope that you can find any information you are curious about and skip through the part that don't interest you. My previous phone has been Sony Xperia 5 III running android, so i will be comparing the Jolla phone experience to that.

First though, let me preface this review by saying that whether you will like the Jolla phone is a lot about your expectations and intended use. If you are familiar with android custom roms, or desktop linux and you are the kind of basement dwelling tinkerer or "I use arch btw" kinda person who doesn't mind figuring out how to make things work, you will probably enjoy the experience. However if you are a "It just works" kind of person, expecting an Apple level of polish and out of the box experience, you will probably be a bit disappointed. This phone shares a lot more with desktop linux than it might seem, it just manages to hide it very well with the polished user interface. Having said that tho, it's not like the device requires a terminal use or anything like that, even though, you can.

Let's look at it in a bit more structured manner tho so:

Hardware

First impressions

When I opened the super cool looking box and took the phone into my hand I was actually surprised how well made and solid the device feels. It's no metal chassis with glass like my Xperia, it's just plastic, yet it feels solidly made and high quality. Nothing creaks and tolerances seem to be tight. It looks unique and feels great in the hand, all the buttons feel nice to use and are nice and clicky. The device is also surprisingly heavy for a plastic device as it has a pretty big battery and a beefy metal mid-frame. Overall the first impressions were great.

Specs

Now the what is on offer here. You get a tool-less tray with two sim card slots and micro SD card slot, meaning no sim card slot is shared with the SD card. You also get a removable back cover with some Pogo pins support, meaning these back covers can do stuff. They included a special blue cover for me for example, and this one has a Jolla logo which lights up on the back. Users can make their own back covers (called the other half) as Jolla has released the specs and Jolla also promises to offer some of their own but right now there aren't any available yet. Under the back cover you get access to the battery, which is held only by a few screws and is easily replaceable. Jolla sells official replacement batteries in their store with more parts hopefully available soon. Phone tear down and repair is done here and isn't too difficult, you basically need just a screwdriver. There is even a iFixit guide.

When it comes to actual specs, you get respectable 8 or 12 GBs of RAM, 256 GB of storage (or 128 GB). That is plenty for SailfishOS and android apps. You also get 5450 mAh Si/C Li-Ion battery which makes this device a two day phone with lighter use.

There are also two rear cameras - 50 Mp wide and 13 Mp ultra wide + 32 Mp selfie camera. All of them are OK HW-wise but are horrible in practice but more on that later. There are stereo speakers here and they are serviceable but not very good, but i wouldn't expect much here anyway, they sound more tiny and distorted compared to my Xperia. Plenty loud though.

When it comes to the display, there is 1080p AMOLED panel here. It has only 90 Hz but is mostly fine otherwise. I think that currently it's not configured correctly though. On my phone, colors feel too deep-fried and oversaturated and the black isn't actually black in low brightness, it's actually kind of yellowish brown. It will probably get fixed in future SW updates though.

The SoC is Mediatek Dimensity 7100 which is a new chip supporting 5G and all that however it's very low end. Smartphones like Honor 600 Lite (350 EUR) use it. It is comparable to chips like Google Tensor 1, which was in Pixel 6 from 2021 or kind of to Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s gen 2 from 2023. So i mean it's not great, considering the price of the device, but it is what it is since Jolla is a small company with limited capabilities. Realistically you will have enough power for everything you need to do on the phone and SailfishOS itself is incredibly lightweight

The Software

Now the most important part about this phone that everyone is curious abut. The SailfishOS. And just to start i have to say it's much more polished and usable than something like Ubuntu Touch or PostmarketOS. So much so that i will compare it to iOS and Android.

Now, this system is like a true Linux. It has a real multitasking, meaning that the app you leave running will actually keep running, like on desktop. It's not like on Android or iOS where what you see is more like the history of opened apps and you can never be sure that the app is actually running in the background and in memory because a system that thinks it's smarter than you is managing these apps and killing them when it thinks they use up too much memory or waste too much battery. When you leave an app running it also means it's actually running. Not paused into some kind of smart paging file or something. This however means that if you close an app it will be closed and you won't get notifications for it as not all apps have background deamons. And there is of course no Google Cloud messaging alternative for SailfishOS apps.

You also get full root access, a terminal and you can run linux commands, you have an access to root and everything. You get a zypper package manager and can install rpm packages (However they have to be made for sailfishOS as it has different dependencies than fedora and similar). I mean if you want you can run terminal processes or some sort of a container with Arch Linux with a full blown desktop environment in it. (It's a shame the phone doesn't support video-out through its USB-C connector for this reason, otherwise you could use it kinda like Continuum or Samsung DEX which was also original idea for MeeGo btw)

UI and gestures

I personally think this OS looks beautiful and i prefer it to the infantile and flat look of android or way too overdone look of liquid glass in iOS. SailfishOS also uses a kind of glassy see through aesthetic but it's much more minimal and tasteful in my opinion. It also let's you customize system colors kind of like materialU can, has a bit of a playful and colorful look and somewhat nostalgic Nokia style icons. It doesn't overwhelm you with information and UI elements and feels very purposeful. Tho sometimes app can feel a bit too minimal like just a background and bunch of text where visual organization could help but most of the time it's a nice fresh change. Most UI elements are organized in a way that they are in your reach and everything is very intuitive.

Now the way this OS works is, that ever since its predecessor, MeeGo, this system has been designed around gestures. It has been designed like this way back in time where iOS and Android still used buttons for navigation. It feels fresh and different but also in some aspects a bit outdated as certain actions can take longer than they would on Android or iOS.

In Sailfish OS there is your home screen where you'd have your widgets on android except here it's empty and serves as a multitasking view as apps that you open and minimize will appear here as little windows. These windows have a functional cover too, that can give you information from the app or let you control it. Calculator app will show the latest results and a stopwatch will show the time and let you pause it straight from the cover without having to open the app. Swiping from the top then brings down the quick toggles, same as in android, except there are no notifications here. Notification live in their own menu on the left or right of the home screen and you get there by swiping left or right from home or just left from the lock-screen. Swipe from the bottom then brings up the app drawer, same as on android.

The app drawer and quick toggles can be opened from anywhere for quick adjustments or app switching, but for multitasking or viewing your notifications you have to come back to your home screen. The developers speak of this design choice as if the OS was your house where apps are different rooms. They say that usually when exiting one room you should go back to your hallway and then enter a different room. It's an interesting concept however in my opinion it's not always the most intuitive and in certain ways this is where the OS kinda shows its age.

The status bar and clock is also located on your home-screen only and when you open an app it disappears to give you more seamless experience. I understand this approach on phones without a notch, however on the new Jolla phone, this space is mostly useless and would be nicer to be able to see the battery status, signal strength or the clock at all times without needing to peak at your home-screen (which you can do by performing the app minimizing gesture partially and holding. You can then go to your home-screen or swipe back to continue using the app)

For the rest of the gestures: Swipe from the edges minimizes the app and swipe from the middle to the left or to the right moves you back or forth through the sub-menus. This works well and is intuitive however it is not as practical as Android's universal back button as SailfishOS needs a dedicated back button for the android apps and for some native apps like the browser. The back gesture in SailfishOS can be a bit confusing too as some apps are designed in a way where swiping right from the middle simply always take you back through the sub-menus while other other apps have their layout designed kind of like a carousel where you move back and forth.

Another gesture which i think is incredibly well done is the context menu. Android used to have a dedicated button for this years back but now same as on iOS you usually need to fish for hamburger menu buttons, typically somewhere at the top corner of the screen (And yeah new android also has those floating buttons for important actions). SailfishOS handles it very elegantly. When there is the context menu available, it shows a thin bar at the top or bottom of your screen in your system highlight color and when you hold down and pull up or down, depending where the context menu is, the bar will extend into a menu with different options and as you keep pulling, different options get highlighted and when you let go the highlighted option gets selected and executed. Very elegant way to do this without reaching into the corner of your screen.

Using the gestures

So how does it feel using the gestures and how does it compare to android and iOS ? Well it's surprisingly well made, intuitive and fluid. You get used to it fast and it feels natural. It's fascinating that MeeGo could do this so many years back and i genuinely think it works better than iOS. However Android has it beat in some ways. I feel like having an universal gesture to move back that is accessible from anywhere is extremely practical. More practical than being able to summon the app drawer from anywhere like SailfishOS does instead. Also being able to view your notifications from anywhere without having to go back to the home-screen is more practical as well.

Another aspect of this is the animations. And i feel like while the animations in SailfishOS are nice, they feel a bit slow and not like they were designed for screens with high refresh rate and rapid actions. Sometimes i want to move through sub-menus fast to reach a function in an app but i feel like i have to wait for animations to finish when highlighting options in context menus and looking at the screen transition to the next sub-menu. Scrolling is also very slow with an option to quickly go down to the bottom. I find the way android and iOS do it better, where the scrolling is sensitive and fast but responsive and lets you stop it fast as well. Another aspect is that i suspect the screen doesn't have as high touch polling rate as other phones i used. Sometimes while typing fast i feel like the system has a bit of a problem to keep up for example.

The apps and functions

When it comes to the apps you get with this phone, all the essentials are here. However the trend seems to be that the apps are all pretty basic. You have a Gallery app, that lets you select pictures, videos, screenshots or Android storage content but won't let you organize your pictures into albums and doesn't recognizes different directories as albums either. You get a notes app that just lets you create text notes with almost no organization or support for checklists, clock app with alarms planning, simple stop watch and timer and no world time, calculator with no history function, and other standard apps like contacts, dialer, voice recorder, document viewer, simple email client, calendar and weather app. A simple file browser is here too but it's hidden in the setting up under storage section.

When it comes to what the OS can do, well all the basics are here but usually the options aren't as rich as in android or iOS. Don't expect fancy widgets or lock-screen customization. You get Ambiences however, which lets you save different profiles you can switch between, changing your wallpaper, system colors (you use dark or light mode this way too), sound profile and ringtones. You can customize your quick toggles and lock-screen to a degree too.

There is a support for hotspot, VPNs, even a Proxy. You get multiple users support and disk Encryption with LUKS. There is a synchronization support for NextCloud, CalDav or even Google mail and contacts and many others. You can set a charging threshold for the battery but there is no advanced battery care system. There also isn't any digital well-being or night-mode. Bluetooth works in a standard way but doesn't support all the protocols or something as it won't for example show you the charge level of your BT headphones. You can use Mice and keyboards, wired and wireless tho. There is no option to share a WiFi connections with QR code, and the location is based on BeaconDB instead of Google's databases. It's pretty reliable but can depend on your area. You can also setup automatic system backups.

Sand-boxing and permissions

The phone also newly supports Sand-boxing and permissions however i can't help but feel like this system is not finished as its current implementation doesn't make sense to me. There is systemd here and also Sandboxing framework called FireJail. I guess all the back-end technical bits are in place but the way it works is weird. Basically when you install an app, it lists all the permissions the app needs and asks you if you accept, kinda like on an android phone. However unlike on an android phone you can't select which permissions you want the app to have, you can only accept all of them or cancel the installation. And once the app is installed you can't change these permissions retroactively in any way. So in the end, technically sand-boxing is there, but the user can't even leverage it properly and it's as if it wasn't there basically. Nothing like taking away the network permissions of an app and granting them again when needed like on GrapheneOS can be done here.

What is also interesting is that the community doesn't seem to be very fond of this system either. A lot of the apps you will download from the official store will just tell you to download the version of the app from open repos or will just kinda not work otherwise. Because the devs still want to keep the OS free and let you do whatever you want with it, you are allowed to install apps that don't use this system and have full root access and all that and most apps you will install from different stores are going to be like that and in the end half of your apps will not use sand-boxing anyway and there is no root manager like Magisk in rooted android or anything like that either. Feels kind of messy and i don't know if the app devs are too lazy or the sand-boxing doesn't give developers enough options and isn't robust enough but it definitely needs more work.

Privacy Switch

Another feature of the phone is the privacy switch. No it's not a hardware kill switch. It's simply a software toggle that you can customize however you want. You can use it just for a silent mode like the switch on the iPhone. Tho when it's turned on, it shows an annoying icon in your status bar. You can set it to turn off microphone, location, Wifi, Bluetooth, Android Appsuport, Silent mode and to Enable VPN or to dim the homescreen. So can't be customized fully for custom actions or apps or even a flashlight. And yeah even tho, when it's turned on and kills your wifi and whatnot, it's a special system state where you can't toggle it back on anywhere in the system unless you turn the switch back off, it's still just a software switch and potentially some kind of software could get around it. It's a nice way to quickly turn off stuff you want turned off in some situations tho.

Android App Support

The support for android apps is a big thing and partially solves the problem of not too many native apps available. The way it works isn't like on Ubuntu touch and others, where you have Waydroid which acts as an container withing an app that you have to open and then navigate a virtual android space and open android apps through there. Android environment is integrated withing the system in an attempt to make it as seamless as possible. Android apps appear in your app drawer and act as if they were native. They appear in your multitasking view as well, same as native apps, and you receive notifications for android apps together with native apps too. They look and act differently, of course, but you don't have to manage any visible container to use them.

SailfishOS gives you the option to use Aurora store and F-droid and also gives you the option to use microG, which is an opensource re-implementation of Google play services and APIs, that many android apps depend on. If you use this and cloud messaging, you technically still use google infrastructure, but it anonymizes you as best as it can. You can install APK files as well. You don't have to use Android app support or microG, it's all voluntary but the option is there and it's the best implementation i have seen so far (on Linux).

Of course not all apps will work, same as with android custom ROMs, if an app checks if the system is OEM or wants integrity checks, it won't work and sometimes an app just crashes or bugs out. It's a bit of a trial and error but most of the apps work in my experience. When it comes to performance, of course it's not as good as if the apps were native. Most apps work just fine, but browsers with a bit more complicated page or apps with a lot of content to scroll through can feel a little bit sluggish. Nothing that would feel like it's limiting the usage of the apps tho. You won't be able to run Oblivion under Winlator in here, however even some games work. I managed to get Brawl Stars running without any issue and with a pretty good frame-rate.

The experience using the phone

The phone feels polished and fresh, using the gestures is intuitive and its miles ahead of other Linux systems you can use on your phone, especially on this relatively powerful hardware (Compared to other Linux phones). However in certain ways it can also feel a bit like a trip to the old days and can be a bit frustrating.

Downsides

Even though android didn't develop too drastically in recent years, it got many quality of life features that you will miss while using the SailfishOS. For example on android you can postpone a notification and quickly reply and you can dismiss it with a swipe to the side. On SailfishOS you have a quick actions and replies as well but there isn't any postponing and apps always show you just the content of the most recent notification. And when you want to dismiss the notification you either have to press and hold and then swipe to the side or press a button and then swipe. If you tried to swipe the notification right away it would conflict with the gesture of moving between the home-screen and notification view. For a similar reason you can't reply to messages quickly in chatting apps like on android by swiping to the side and you have to hold the message and then click reply or if you want to close a running app on the home-screen multitasking view you can't just swipe away, you have to first hold down for a second to get into the mode that closes the apps. The way gestures work here sometimes mean performing an action takes extra steps and time compared to android.

Oh and when it comes to stuff i missed or felt weren't as intuitive as on android, there is a small list. For instance there is no screen recording function and so no way of doing screen sharing in apps and sceenshots are pretty clunky too, there is no button press shortcut, you have to select a screenshot quick toggle which gives you a floating button you have to press to take a screenshot. There is also no auto-fill for password managers so copying your credentials from one is clunky and it's contrasted by it working inside the android apps when you have a password manager as an android app. There is also no clipboard history or editing like on android.

Another thing that annoys me a bit is that the settings for when system actions should make a sound or vibrate aren't granular enough. The vibrations here are pretty harsh and i hate them for the keyboard because when you type fast it makes your phone sound like a women's toy but turning that off means turning it off for all system actions and that means no haptic feedback for selecting an option in the context menu which is in turn nice to have.

The sound settings follow the same thing. There are only two volume sliders - For notifications+calls and for media. So you can't set different volume level for calls, different one for notifications and for alarms and different one for media. One is simply for SMS messages and calls and the other is for all apps. And to make it worse, there is no interactive volume slider like on android and the volume bar has steps of 10 percent which is huge and won't let you choose the volume level comfortably, most often it will be either too quiet or too loud.

There is also no history of notifications and when notifications arrive when the screen is turned on they appear in a bar at the top of your screen, similar to android. This bar however looks so out of place, has a weird white color and doesn't look like it belongs to the rest of the system. Luckily you can change that.

Oh and also why does touching the fingerprint sensor only wake the screen and doesn't unlock the phone straight away. Here you have to touch the fingerprint reader or press the button to wake the phone and then touch the fingerprint reader again to unlock it, another unnecessary step. If i wanted to just look at the lock-screen i could use the double-tap to wake, that the first Jolla phone pioneered. Would be nice to at least have an option to turn this on.

Upsides

But i don't want to just criticize here. There are very cool things here as well of course. One of the strengths of the linux system is that you, the user, hold all the power and can do or change whatever you want and aren't limited to what some tech bro in California let's you do. One thing you can do here is to install mods and system patches that add new functionality or change how the system behaves.

You will need a patch manager that adds an entry into your settings and let's you manage you patches and then you can download and apply these patches. It's almost like back in the good old days of rooted android custom ROMs. This notification bar that looks out of place ? You can download a patch that will make it follow your system ambience. And remember how i said that the status bar and clock only show when on home screen and you have to keep returning there or peaking at it to check it ? Well you can download a patch that compacts the battery icon and percentage into one and lets you put the clock into the status bar and another patch that let's you have the status bar visible in all apps. I wish it was a bit more customizable but it works.

There is a patch letting you add a torch shortcut to the lock-screen or a patch that gives you another menu in app drawer with alphabetical list of your apps and an search option, there is a patch letting you have finer steps in setting your volume too, but it doesn't seem to work for me. And there are many more patches that let you customize your system to your heart's content. Well, if your system version is supported and the patch is being updated, that is.

There is also an option to set the swipe gesture from the left edge that would normally take you to home-screen, to always take you to the notifications screen or peak at it instead, making access to the notification easier from anywhere in the system. It still minimizes the app but saves you one step so it's an improvement and takes it a bit closer to how android handles notification view.

You can also download an app called Muoto and it let's you have responsive calendar and clock app icon, add an AOD (since we have AMOLED screen here) or to add a gesture to quickly switch between two last opened apps. The gesture not as fast as on android, it basically is doing the edge swipe to return home but only halfway and waiting for 0.5 seconds, but it's again an improvement.

My other experiences are more or less pleasant as well. Using the phone is great. There are some native apps for stuff you might need, like Mastodon or Reddit, Signal or Telegram and more and for the rest you can usually just use the android apps. The native apps are often not feature complete but so far i don't really complain. There is even an app for Youtube and Youtube music here. They are a bit slow and are basically a web page wrapper but they work okay and support background playback since this is not android.

And when it comes to banking apps, the ones i use work fine tho the process of setting them up can be a bit finicky. One exception is Revolut app or Unicredit bank app for which i just need to have a secondary phone with official android laying somewhere, sadly.

Some apps that are usually hard to replace can be the keyboard, and yes the default keyboard is pretty basic with not very good autocorrect and not many features. It doesn't even have any emojis. Thankfully there is a fresh port of FUTO keyboard from android which works great. The other app is some sort of a map app and while there are some native map apps that use OpenStreet maps they are pretty ugly and basic. I have no issues using Organic Maps or Osmand for android tho. Or you can download Here WeGo or Maps.com if you want, however Google maps won't work even with microG.

There are native apps for OTP codes, KeePass or loyalty cards and passes. You can set up a device-wide adBlocking with apps that modify your /etc/hosts file, you can have system monitor apps or network scanners, Syncthing and there is a LocalSend app as well. You will have to check five different app stores and forums to discover all these apps and install them tho and some can be just a front-end for a command line tool.

Also i was surprised that there isn't an easy way to unpack RAR files or any simple torrent client and used an android app for those. Using the Android apps also has it's limits though. There is for example no way for the android apps to use the fingerprint scanner which is a pity. To be honest no native apps i use use it. Maybe it's because it's new but so far it's used just to unlock the phone.

The Bluetooth support in android apps is also new and is still in Beta. And it mostly works and even let's android apps to take over the pairing process. But it's not a save-all solution, it has it's limits. For example i can pair my Bluetooth headphones and use them just fine (even tho i suspect SailfishOS doesn't have the best audio codecs and the quality isn't the best) but when i tried using the android app for these headphones that let's me change equalizer profiles or ANC levels, i wasn't able to. The app didn't have an access to the paired devices and never recognized the connected headphones.

Sadly tho back to negatives, two things are a big problem that i want to mention specifically:

The Browser

The browser is a pretty important app that i use daily and well, the browser here is just terrible. Even though it has a nice interface, it's barely usable. It uses an outdated Gecko engine and doesn't have extension support and i am not sure whether it doesn't have hardware acceleration or it lacks some magical optimizations that other modern phones have but it's just so bad. It's slow and if the website is even slightly complicated, has lots of pictures or a bit richer CSS, it lags really badly. Pages like e-shops with long lists of products with filters and a lot of images are painful to navigate and modern websites with a lot of effects and interactive elements straight up break and are unusable.

Browsers for android running in the app support container have much better performance than this native one even though they aren't as snappy as one would hope for but that's because they are running in a virtual container. This is an issue that in my opinion is pretty bad and needs to be addressed fast. There is one more browser i could find, called Atlantic which apparently runs on Safari engine. And it runs a bit better when it works and supports ad-blocking and JavaScript blocking. More often than not though, it seems unstable and can crash or websites don't work properly with it.

The Camera

This is another big problem that Jolla is aware of and is apparently working on. But i mean the camera is just incredibly bad. Not only is it basic and lacks a lot of features but it also just takes really bad pictures.

And i mean don't get me wrong, i don't expect a flagship performance from this phone. I am even a person that isn't a fan of how modern phones take pics with all the filters and AI that make them look artificial and fake. But this isn't like how my Xperia takes pics - All in camera with minimal retouching. This is just, well, bad. The colors are all over the place, it takes pictures that are way too cold and it has blue tone to it. It also takes several seconds before it takes a picture after you press the button. It doesn't have any basic HDR or anything of course. And the color profile and performance differs between the sensors.

And i mean during good light conditions and if you are patient it can take serviceable pics. Not color accurate but serviceable. During not so ideal conditions it's just unusable tho. This is just so bad that even if Samsung released it in the year of 2013, in the time of the first smartphones and all, the customers would throw it on their heads and it would be a huge scandal, let alone today. I know I know, Jolla is a small company with limited resources and i don't want to be too harsh on them. Not like anyone expects this to be a camera phone anyway. But at the current state the camera is really horrible.

Conclusion

So who is this phone actually for ? Well as you can guess it's definitely not a phone for everyone. I mean it's a community effort by a small Finnish company that sells the phones as pre-orders in batches. And it runs an exotic Linux based system.

So normies who expect Samsung or iOS level polish out of the box and all the bells and whistles will be probably disappointed. But this device isn't intended for people like that. It's intended for privacy enthusiasts.

And for those, how does it stand compared to something like a Pixel running GrapheneOS or Fairphone running /e/OS ? Well, if you are looking at it strictly pragmatically and practically, when it comes to the features and what the phone can do, well, there is no reason to beat around the bush. Android is now so mature and optimized for phone HW and offers so many features and apps that simply put, anything you need to do on your phone, android can just do better and faster and gives you more options. SailfishOS doesn't necessarily offer any advantage in day-to-day use of your phone.

There is a large selection from Pixels going for cheap ones to foldables and if you want a true flagship experience you can wait for the Motorolas that will support GrapheneOS. And GrapheneOS is currently the most secure phone OS you can have that can do stuff no other android custom ROM can do.

And if you don't need that you can still get a Fairphone, the newest one is cheaper or i mean almost the same price as the Jolla Phone and it offers a better chip, usable cameras and is designed to last as long as possible and be as repairable as possible. It's also made by an European company and has all those fair certifications.

The Jolla phone however offers something that the other phones don't - It's running an independent OS which isn't just a fun but impractical project, it's a well made, well polished alternative that is fully daily-drivable and actually looks great and modern and feels good to use. And I mean Graphene foundation can poke subtle insults at Jolla online but in the end they are still depended on the good will of Google and Jolla isn't. And the phone is also assembled in Europe by Nokia deserters.

What does this mean for you though ? It means that Jolla phone is for you if you are a Geek or Tinkerer who wants something unique to play with or If you can see the growing monopoly of Google, their attempts to close down the android ecosystem and can feel Orwell's work come to life in front of your eyes. If you want to support a true alternative that possibly has a chance, then this is your bet. Another reason might be the data sovereignty and the fear of the fact that all the big Tech companies which have increasingly more power over us are based in the US and can potentially have a very negative impact on you and you you'd rather support European tech projects.

In other words you either need to be a bit of an activist or a tech enthusiast to appreciate this phone but if you are, there is probably no better choice. If you are none of these things however, and you are "just" a privacy conscious person or not even that, then there isn't really much of a reason to bother.

BTW no AI touched this wall of text.

TLDR:

Jolla Phone is pretty awesome and considering it's running Linux, it's surprisingly good looking and well polished and is absolutely daily-drivable. There are things that are unfinished tho, like Sand-boxing that doesn't feel like it's doing anything, the horrible camera or laggy native browser. And of course it's still Linux. It doesn't offer you much more than android in day-to-day use and in many ways actually lacks a lot of quality of life improvements or makes stuff more difficult to do than android. However the fact it got so far and i am even comparing it to android and iOS is an incredible feat and if you care about alternatives to the established monopolies or European projects or just cool tech, this is basically your only option like this.

This time it's about a new update to the camera.

In case anyone missed it, there's a new camera app that just fixes almost all the issues with the Jolla camera software. Just on the 1X so far.

https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/next-g...

Rawfish git. https://github.com/Logic-gate/RAWfish¨

And another app giving intuitive image processing and RAW support.

Fiat Imago: https://github.com/munksh/FiatImago/r...

Fiat suite of apps: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/fiat-a...

Quite funny (or sad) that almost the first thing you see is this warning about the internal browser being old and unsupported or whatever.

The link leading from release changenotes lands in this community forum page.

This includes the browser in 5.2.0.18

I'm considering to order a Jolla phone but my online bank requires use of it's app for mfa and other stuff.

Does anybody knows if it's compliant with sailfish OS?

Hello,

Does anyone use the new jolla phone in Norway? If so, did you play tax when importing? I want to know that before I place an order.

Hi, I’ve been offered a brand-new Jolla Phone 2 (white model) from the initial backer batch; it’s unopened and comes with the invoice.

Is it known whether the white model suffered from the dust-in-the-lens issue?

Will the Jolla team honor the warranty if I run into any problems, given that I have the invoice?

It’s one of the first 2,000 units—the white model—though I don’t know if there are any issues associated with being among the initial batch

Hello,

I was supposed to finalize my second payment today but I did not receive any email from the shop so far. The shop says my payment is overdue and there's no way for me to proceed.

I was looking at the forum but it seems there is no clear guide from the Jolla team, apart from the fact they suggested to finalize payment by the 20th of September.

Now, today is Sunday and I guess the Jolla team was aware of it when they fixed this deadline, also considering payments are not usually processed on Sundays.

But does anyone know anything about how the final payment will be managed?

Anyone else in the same situation?

I didn't pre-order a case or a screen protector; will I be able to buy them before paying the full price for the Jolla Phone 2?

So I just got JP2 in my hand and (as a Japanese speaker) I installed Japanese keyboard with anthy from openrepos. It works perfectly on my C2 phone but it does not on JP2. Does anyone have some easy fix?

Hurray .. Today I received the info that my batch 3 order has been shipped !

#93XX

- Jolla Phone protective cover (Transparent)

- Jolla Phone screen protector (Normal glass)

- Jolla Phone extra back cover (Kaamos Black)

- Jolla Phone Batch #3 (The Orange)

Excited ....

Hi everyone,

I am looking to buy the limited edition Inari Blue Special TOH (The Other Half) back cover for the new Jolla Phone (2026).

If you received one but don’t plan on using it, or if you have a spare that you are willing to part with, please let me know!

• Condition: Preferably new / mint condition, but minor signs of use are okay.
• Price: Name your price (open to reasonable offers).
• Shipping: Willing to cover international shipping to Netherlands (or Poland). I can pay via PayPal (Goods & Services) or any other secure method preferred by the community.

Please contact me by e-mail: [collecter@fejm.pl](mailto:collecter@fejm.pl)

I have a question. With jolla being linux, is there some way to get the desktop steam version on the phone and play games with controller from like steam big picture mode?
I use Steam link like everyday but would be cool to be able to turn the phone "into a steamdeck" on planes and stuff when there is no internet.
If it isnt possible then why not?

I really want to support the project and for it to succeed, but something like this that is obvious after 1 minute of having the phone out of its box is just... Well, for a lack of a better word, disappointing.

After paying the £90 import tax requested by Royal Mail (ef-yu brexit!), I received my unit yesterday. I was in Batch #2, pre-ordered in December 2025.

During the setup, I was unable to connect to wifi and was told "WLAN adapter not available". I thought Jolla had sent me a faulty unit, or an unfinished prototype haha.

I had already made a reddit post to ask about it, before remembering to google and finding out it's a common issue. You just need to skip the rest of the setup process, go to Settings, reset the phone, and resume the setup.

The last pic shows my original Jolla phone from 2013/14, which I used for less than a year before switching to Lumia/WP7.

I've installed the available android stores, but will wait till the weekend to test all my essential android apps.

I cannot wait to get my hands dirty.

In my case: Delivery is to Sweden.

Had to try flashing it while still waiting for my new Jolla.

Cameras and GPS do not work. Cameras are dosabled by Jolla because the implementation caused freezing to my knowledge. Also, this is the Sony Xperia 10 V, which Jolla recommends flashing from Android 13 or 14, but mine was flashed from Android 15.

Other than those things, it looks and feels way better than the Jolla C2 which has way worse screen and cpu.

First update failed for some reason bit trying again, it updated successfully via OTA.

Have you done this to any Sony devices?

I'd like to use the phone as a pc. Is it possible to use the jolla phone with a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse?

When I brainstorming ideas to the jolla phone 2026 I'm thinked many thinks, first I thinked about the second screen with small linux written on texas instruments launchpad or other texas instruments pcb script for ham and lora radio and surface analyser screen, the second think is popular on sailfish os forum the dac? (But in my version from raspberry pi or arduino but I don't know what pi or arduino model is great) the third think is to build the tohkbd keyboard from phase 1, to phase 2, but i need to modify this because, the case is too small with my jolla phone 2026 and the two cameras and the lamp are at other positions, can you modify this pcb project and send then back or do you have any ideas?

Any Finnish Jolla-owners here? Does anyone have experience about the most common android apps and how well they work in Sailfish?

Apps like Nordea/Nordea ID (or any other banking-apps), HSL-travelcard, mobilepay, VR matkalla-app?

I'm excited about my oncoming Jolla, but also a bit concerned about the inconveniences that might follow since our society is so reliant on different apps.

Personally I would choose cold hard cash and landlines in an app-free world, but that might not be an option so in order to partake in the functions of society I'd also like to be able to use these basic services without extra hassle.

Are there any new Jolla users from Finland here? I'm wondering if the following apps work: S-Pankki, Danske Bank and Danske Bank ID?

I used a service called Shippn that has a forwarder in Finland. The service worked great. I would definitely use them again, if needed. I was in the 6300s for order number. Calls, SMS, and data work with a T-Mobile SIM (Light Speed) on US Mobile, although it says it is a 4G connection. Download speed from speed test was over 100 mbps, so very functional. This is a physical SIM that I have used in other devices. This is it next to a Pixel 7, so it's not a small phone.