Yet another thread to Sailfish OS
The FP2 community created a great post on how to install the current alpha Sailfish OS on the FP2. Some people already did that, and posted their experiences here. However, the thread is closed, and the moderators think it would be confusing to re-open and continue there (as the thread went a long way, covering many issues before getting to experiences), which is why it might be better to start a new thread on experiences with Sailfish on FP2. So here we go …
I have tried Sailfish OS for a couple of days and I have to say, I really liked what I experienced.
From using it is seems clear to me that currently it is more a preview, as some (at least for me) important things didn’t work, particularly the dual SIM support, which is important for me.
Anyhow, I think the “feel” of OS is pretty nice. I found it quite intuitive, just a few hours of usage and one gets around pretty well. A little ambiguous I felt about the fact that the GUI is quite coherent over different apps and the OS itself. While this is nice and provides a feeling that the overall user experience is less fragmented (than in Android, for example), it is also something one might need to get used, as sometimes I really had to think am I now typing an email or a text … Anyhow, in general I liked the consistency of the GUI. Apart from that I really liked that carddav & caldav are natively supported. Also a couple of apps I need where available from the jolla store (e.g. owncloud sync, mpd client, kodi client, …), so basically also with the available apps I think I could live. Only thing missing I think would be Signal, but I read that that’s in the pipe.
The installation as described in the WIKI worked flawlessly for me, so the installation already is quite easy and straightforward.
What I also was positively surprised is how fast it boots compared to Android, really nice!
If dual SIM and camera would have worked, I probably wouldn’t have switched back to Android for now. But here we go with things that so far (for me) didn’t work.
It already states on the developer site that dual SIM & exchange mail won’t (the latter I need for my work). Moreover for the camera did not work (I figured now, this is due to installing SF on top of FPOS 1.2.8). Also adaptive brightness did not work (and turned the screen black when activated). Proximity sensor during calls did work though (cause it’s stated in the developer notes it may not). Some of the known bugs from FP-OS I experienced to some extend: The glitching display was only visible in the webbrowser. The “flickering display under low brightness” issue seems almost gone, only under very low brightness I could experience it.
So, to summarize: I really liked what I experienced, but for me it is not yet ready. I think the devs did a great job and I am very much looking forward for a more functional version, or maybe even a commercial version with Alien Dalvik, Microsoft exchange etc. I think for me it really may be a welcome alternative to Android.