Chapter 10 - picking up the ungoogled thread again with Sailfish OS

March 2026

I have finally managed to pick up the ball that I “fumbled” when I dropped my Volla 22 phone off the motorbike and it got promptly run over by the car behind. It was a technically very interesting phone with dual-boot into degoogled android which I had got running pretty well using as much f-droid as possible and also with ubuntu touch as an alternative start option.

devenirgris.com

I had been eyeing up an iphone for a while mainly because the camera seems to be very good …

The screen had been thoroughly squashed and although the electronics seemed to have survived, I couldn’t source a new screen so the phone had to retire to a shelf in my office. The project was on pause. In the meantime I have been using a slightly elderly iPhone 12 pro max which has been (and still is) solid and has an excellent camera which I have come to value greatly.

I had also started another ubuntu touch project in the meantime with a Oneplus 6 which, although looking initially promising, collapsed when I more or less bricked the phone moving between postmarket OS and ubuntu touch. This also landed on the afore-mentioned “shelf of stationary projects” in my office.

devenirgris.com

After my last post thinking about ways to deal with the current world situation and, in particular, developments in the USA… -> Ubuntu Touch

Starting the Sailfish OS project:

Some time in October I think it was I decided that it might well be a good time in world history to get hold of a reasonably secure and “smaller-tech” mobile phone in order to be a bit less dependent on the current major players. I had experimented briefly with Sailfish OS on a Sony Xperia some years ago and also as a third boot option on the volla 22 and had been impressed. Perusing the Jolla website I got caught on the C2 community phone and spontaneously bought one. Time went by, I forgot about it then remembered in January and wrote to Jolla. Nothing came back but about a week ago I got a shipping notification and on friday the parcel arrived.

A few unboxing photos:

I did briefly entertain the idea of doing an unboxing video but decided against it as too much effort and also somehow a bit pointless but maybe that’s me being an old git. I did take a few photos with the trusty old iPhone so here is a small unboxing gallery:

First impressions and setup were very smooth and polished. I put in my spare SIM and a 512GB MicroSD card. With android support activated you can use the Aurora and F-Droid stores as well as the Jolla store for native apps so a huge amount of choice. As someone coming from ungoogled android and various custom ROMs it felt familiar and has been so far a very pleasing experience. I am still setting things up and installing OSM and attaching my Nextcloud. I am not rushing it and will gather further impressions in the coming weeks. If you only have experienced stock google or apple ecosystems so far it might come over as a bit of a learning curve but certainly nowhere near as rude a shock as ubuntu touch could be so…

Small update with screenshots from the first few days:

I am really happy to have my Firefox and Vivaldi browsers as well as some definite old favourites like Tiny Weather, Tusky and OSM and, of course, VLC 🙂 . The whole experience has, so far, been very relaxed and cool.

Next small update:

I’ve had the C2 running now alongside my main phone for at least two weeks now and am still very happy with it. The app tray has slowly grown and developed and have gathered various old f-droid faves. A lot of android apps work very well within sailfish os. It does get more difficult with apps like gadgetbridge because, most probably, not running natively and access to bluetooth pairing does not work smoothly.

Admittedly though, I am quite pleased to have various small, compact apps like AllRadio2 which is a sailfish native app with which I can listen to BBC Radio4 without fiddling about with geofences, vpn’s etc great work there!

I hooked up Joplin to work now on all my various machines (Fedora, ElementaryOS laptop, iPhone, SailPhone) using my Nextcloud so that’s all fine.

Am still on the lookout for a wordprocessor or office app but I suppose a text editor will do for the time being.

I am also thinking about trying my Garmin Smartphone Link solution on the Sailfish OS phone but need to get the motorbike up and running first. It’s still freezing here at night and in the morning so haven’t got the battery back in yet.

devenirgris.com

… BUT no amount of fiddling about or reinstalling, resetting or various other methods could persuade the Garmin Smartphone Link app to work without Google background services…

There are moments where the android app support layer feels a bit drowsy but, to be honest, I think it depends what you are used to and it’s not hanging up just a bit undecided.