Sailfish OS - Jolla C2: First impressions
I am writing this blog post after trying a newly bought C2 Jolla phone with Sailfish OS installed. The post will review the hardware and the software user experience. I am using the phone for half a week now with no previous experience on SailfishOS, but with experience of Android and iOS.
TL;DR
The C2 (Community Edition) is a fine phone with an excellent price and performance ratio. It is an alternative for those looking for something different than Android or iOS. The user interface (GUI) is very intuitive, although it is different to both Android and iOS user experience. The C2 is the reference phone for SailfishOS, so I expect every feature/function of SailfishOS to be working on this phone. Also, there is a compability mode, which allows any Android app installation very easily. Unfortunately, the phone/OS still has some bugs, which might requires some technical understanding and, therefore, I cannot recommend the OS to any non-tec-at-all person. If interested in new stuff and able to use another design or fix stuff on your own trough reading stuff on the internet and clicking buttons accordingly, this phone is fine for yourself. I will post further experience blog entries and keep you updated.
Unboxing
The shipment took very long. It was shipped via the standard procedure and it took about three weeks in total to get from Finland to Austria, but also a week and a half to get to the postoffice from the point of buying and paying for it. When it arrived, I got a very neat small parcel. The perfect size for a phone, and not to be compared with the meter long parcels you get from Amazon. The parcel included a (very stylish) box, easy to open, including the phone, the opened for the SIM card slot, and a letter. There was no charger or any other electronic within, which is fine, because it requires a USB-C cable to charge it; which, very likely, you already have. I was totally fine with that, in fact I really enjoyed it. If you choose to also purchase the screen foil and the case, these are included of course.
Hardware
The phone looks fine and well designed overall. The hardware specs are sufficient (I guess). Sometimes the phone laggs, but this may come from the software as well (read more about this later on). It fits perfectly into your hand. Although the phone is quite large, you do not need to press buttons or similar at the top of the screen; most of the controls are controlable from the bottom of the screen (I will write about this later). The protective case might need an improvement. The on/off button has no protection. The case only provides a hole, here while it has protection for the volume buttons. Also, the hole for the charger is quite slim. So you might need a slim cable for that. Speaking of charging: The phone is able to get charged without turning on. I'm loving it.
Setup
When turning on the phone for the first time, SailfishOS guides you through the process very well. There is a tutorial which explains the system, the controls, the design, and everything. This tutorial is an application which can be started anytime again. This tutorial is very userfriendly and designed well. Attention! When setting up the phone, it asks for a WLAN to update stuff. You might skip this. If you connect your phone to a WLAN with a captive portal during the setup process, you might end up in a nasty bug. Clicking and pressing buttons like a maniac might solve this problem. This only applies to captive portals during the setup process. SailfishOS offers an Android compability mode. This mode, and the Android app stores (Aurora Store - Playstore imitation; F-Droid - Playstore alternative) are installed via a simple selection during the setup. The installation and deinstallation is also possible afterwards.
Android Compability
SailfishOS offers an Android Compability. This means that you can install any Android App (at least all apps, that I have tested) and run them on your SailfishOS phone. Sailfish offers two app stores out of the box: Aurora Store and F-Droid. Both of them need to be updated, and stuff needs to be accepted before any other Android app could be downloaded. This means that, e.g. all of the used Android messenger applications might be installed and work (e.g.: Signal, and Matrix clients), although there are mostly SailfishOS native applications (e.g.: Whisperfish - Signal, Sailtrix and Hydrogen - Matrix client, Fernschreiber - Telegram, Sailcord - Discord, Nextcloud Talk, Mattermost, Piepmatz - Twitter, Prostogram - Instagram, Tooter - Mastodon, Whatsup - Whatsapp, etc.).
Controls
The controls for SailfishOS differ to those of Android and iOS. They differ, thats why the tutorial is recommended, but they are very intuitive. The design of the controls enable you to configure all items with one hand, respectively the thumb, and only requires you to click on buttons on the top of the screen for a final cancellation or submittion of the item (e.g. contacts entry). Therefore you cannot cancel or submit by mistake and you can edit entries very handy. Moving to and from sub menus only requires you to swift left or right, depending on where you wanna go. An alarm is configured by selecting the position of the clockhand. No more endless scrolling of numbers. And yes, it requires you to be able to read an analogous clock. I really hope, that this should not be a problem. Any selections in a menu (e.g.: settings, about, etc.) is located on the top of the screen, but is controlled by the thumb on the button. So your thumb does not position itself over menu buttons that you want to read. I love it. Unfortunately, this is the only disadvantage, a Swipe keyboard is missing.
Online Accounts
SailfishOS come with a great number of out-of-the-box available online accounts. It includes standard aligned services like IMAP/POP email, Cal/Card/WebDAV and XMPP, and goes on to Google, Nextcloud, Dropbox, etc. Jolla (the manufacturer of SailfishOS) also delivers an M$ Exchange compability application (which I deactivated due to the lack of need).
SailfishOS App Support and external Repositories - Appstores
SailfishOS comes with the Jolla store preinstalled. This store requires an account to be able to download stuff. Also, it has only a few applications to offer. There are other repositories/app stores (Sailfish:Chum, OpenRepos, etc.), that are run by the community and offer a much larger application variety, but the need to be installed manually (not from the Jolla store), including enabling the option to "Allow untrusted software". This makes first time installation quite user unfriendly. Installing an external app store introduces you to a much broader application variety.
Utilities
SailfishOS offers some very neat utilities, that I present now.
Call Recording
SailfishOS enables you to 1.) manually and 2.) automatically record every call and store it locally on the phone. This might come in handy when calling a service desk.
VPN
SailfishOS offers VPN functionality out-of-the-box (L2TP, OpenConnect, OpenVPN, PPTP, VPNC), and other VPN options via an additional application (e.g.: Tailscale).
Multi-User
Also, it supports multi user. You can create multiple users to use the phone. I have not tried it yet, so no detailed report about that.
Silence Alarms/Calls
When your phone is on the table, display up, you might silence alarms and calls by simply flipping your phone face down. This will not cause the alarm to stop or the call to end, but it simply turns of the sound of the ringing.
Module Restarts
You may restart single modules (e.g.: audio, keyboard, network, etc.) when they are buggy or unresponsive. You need to press a simple button in settings for that.
Price and Support
The price of the phone is quite low (~280€). It comes with a one year license of SailfishOS, which means you get updates on your OS. You can choose to extend the support and therefore updates by renewing your license every year (~30€/year). You have the freedom of prolonging your support with that kind of payment. There are no official numbers of users of the OS, but some of the essential applications have a download counter of ~75000 - 80000 downloads. If you do the math, there is a number of ~2.3M € of license payment per year. This is a number a company may live on and provide constant level of support over the years. As a reference: The C1 (the first community phone) was released 2013 and got supported until 2020. The C2 was released 2025.
Summary
The C2 with SailfishOS is a neat alternative for Android and iOS. It is (like Android) a Linux based phone, thats why the compability might be quite easy. Still there are some bugs, like seldom, random closure of applications, the lack of mobile network connectivity for Android applications, and seldom, random application start denials, so that I cannot recommend the phone to any non-technical person. I need to investigate this further .This is not the phone you give your parents! Although if you are eager to experiment with a new experience (and support a European OS development), this phone might be the right one for you. The phone, the OS, and the applications are 1.) stable enough, 2.) and functionally complete to enable a working phone for a tech person.
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Last update: 2025-03-25