alt Hacker NewsJolla Phone (October 2026)
Comments
Personal experience with Jolla: I bought their first mobile (still have it somewhere) that would be a "Linux Phone that run android app". Wanted to support it and was ready to expect some bugs but it did not work all. No support at all, most of android app did not work. The OS was not finished that it was already obsolete. And now there are doing it again like the first one never existed. I have zero trust in this company
Went from iPhone (with PostMarketOS on PinePhones as tests) to /e/OS on a CMF Nothing installed by Murena to GrapheneOS on 2nd hand Pixel 8.
I'm not advocating any of those specifically but I do recommend you take whatever step you are comfortable with to a saner mobile technology lifestyle.
IMHO it's a worthwhile learning journey that is probably less challenging and more empowering than you can imagine.
Careful with preordering, they seem to ignore requests to cancel & the community is rather hostile to any form of criticism
I bought and used sailfish on a Sony phone (also had a second one), with my work issued SIM card for mainly calling as a test, it also had a few popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and whatnot, maybe for 5 years, but got tired of the interface and apps mediocrity. On a personal phone after several years and several mediocre android phones that had to be switched way too often for my tastes I switched to an iPhone. And as I expected cause had a Mac 20 years ago, despite using Linux for all these years, God what a pleasure to use an iPhone. But anyway got tired of that sailfish phone and replaced it with an older pixel + graphene, not as huge as iPhone but still much better than the sailfish os, in both app support and interface. If you ask me this are the only tho decent phones now an iPhone or graphene. That Sony is running murena now I think cause it’s on the table getting an update once in a while.
750 USD? I like the idea. And appreciate all the people who support such products, so phones are getting cheaper. But no way I'm getting it for over $150. It looks really cheap, and the marketing is bad, honestly. I think these corporations have spoiled me, and I was really looking for huuuuge wow effect for $750, but it's just a Linux phone.
Funnily enough, the privacy subreddit has banned all mentions of alternative phone operating systems.
Have they unlocked the bootloader? Can I install a different OS on it?
I ordered two in the September batch, which was way less expensive.
Jolla phones are fine. I have friends who use it every day. Happy to support them all the best I can.
—— Sent from my iPhone 17 Pro
I'm getting Nokia N9 MeeGo vibes from this. Also reminded me of the tablet debacle which I suppose is ancient history at this point..
I gave them money once on Kickstarter. Never got anything and they held my money hostage for years.
I'm never ever, ever buying anything from Jolla. They can go out of business for all I care.
I got first Jolla Phone ages ago, wanted to love it but in the end I disliked it bebause of gesture-oriented UI (it simply didn't 'click' for me and was annoying to use in the long run).
Right now I'm more excited about PostmarketOS which seems to be more vanilla Linux with more approachable UI…
I like the idea of these new phones that might be a bit more privacy centered, and even with some different OSes but I think the biggest problem for a lot of adoption is the compatibility with things like banking apps, 2fa etc. It makes it quite an impossible daily driver thanks to some strange rules.
I hope Ubuntu Touch has native support for this, as it's a great OS with massive potential and active community.
> European alternative
What about the regulatory side where all of Europe is starting to require stock Android or iOS to even have an ID card?
Who designed such ridiculous camera bump? It would be a really nice device, if only it had a flat backside.
Does it work with US networks?
If this Sailfish phone is 700 and Commodore's is 500, I know which Sailfish device I can pay attention to.
I wonder if humanity will ever go back to Nokia times small phones. If this phone was 50% smaller, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I don't want to carry these huge bricks anymore.
Ship to the US with GrapheneOS and I'll be first in line :)
Does anyone know when they'll sell their company and product to russia again?
Another almost good phone without a mini jack :( User-replaceable battery, SD card port, mini jack, touchscreen that works consistently. Do I really ask for that much?
Google is so anti open it's the new Microsoft. I hope for a day when my phone runs nixos with Qt apps. Qt is so much better than java that I'm sure I'll be able to make do in 4gb what android takes 16gb for.
In the era of hallucinated apps, this doesn't even seen like an imaginary wishful scenario.
I hope it eats you if you don't wear your Christmas clothes
Is there anybody out there making a thin client device that runs almost everything remotely?
Basically a screen, battery and LTE chip with microSD storage for times
The way most people use phones are functionally useless without internet, so thats already a critical requirement and having the “phone” part of it you can do with 5c of hardware and free software.
does this have some weird ad tech? It turns white screen on me.
> 99€ down payment to lock your October delivery
...
[dead]
I still can't take a device with a mid-range Mediatek seriously. Probably from my XDA days, where just its presence meant locked bootloaders and no kernel sources.
Congrats on selling them but "assembled in EU" can't be the main selling point.
Their branding & website looks like a generic fake shop that was created in 30 mins for testing or scamming
Wanted to mention that Sailfish has a lot of closed-source components, especially UI-related, despite the overall marketing/"vibe" making it look very open. If anything, AOSP (Android) is more open than Sailfish. I don't think this has changed with Sailfish 5, see e.g.:
- https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-os-clarifying-claims...
- https://docs.sailfishos.org/Develop/Open_Source/