OK here's my review after some testing:

Unlocking the bootloader and flashing Sailfish worked flawlessly after I struggled a little bit with the two different boot modes of the Xperia. The new message booting the device that the bootloader is unlocked is really annoying.

I inserted the SD card from my Jolla 1 and restored the backup with no problems.

The UI response is fast and multitasking many programs is clearly better now thanks to the 3GB RAM.

I tested Bluetooth with lots of different units and profiles. The only device I found not working was my car don't play music with A2DP.
Interestingly HFP works. But this problem I also got with the latest firmware versions of the Jolla 1.
WLAN on both bands work but using static networks the first time fails to connect. But again the Jolla 1 has similar problems.

Telephony functions like voice calls, SMS, MMS, and 4G work out of the box. Only tethering is not working as expected.
The build in browser is fast enough for me but here's surly some room for improvement.

Alien Dalvik seems to have a little better compatibility compared to Jolla 1. I successfully used some programs which have flaws on the old Jolla like a new Here map.

As for many people the camera seem to be an important feature I took a walk and some photos:

http://www.sbock.net/upload/Sailfish Picture 1.jpg
http://www.sbock.net/upload/Sailfish Picture 2.jpg
http://www.sbock.net/upload/Sailfish Picture 3.jpg
http://www.sbock.net/upload/Sailfish Picture 4.jpg

Too bad the sky was very overcast but personally I'm quite pleased with the result. Clearly extremely better than Jolla 1 but of course this is no real achievement ;-)


TL;DR: I'm happy with the hardware and the current state of the software. Good job Jolla team!

Okay, so we've excluded a "fake" card.

Oops, sorry. As you're playing around with a slightly beta OS, and using parted I kind of assumed you were fluent in linux.
Sorry, my bad !

The thing that interests me is something like :

/dev/mmcblk1p1 on /media/sdcard/<some long hexdecimal string> type ext4


(an easy way would be to pipe, to connect to another command like grep that can filter : "mount | grep mmc")

That would be a sign that at least the system is trying to mount it.

In linux, devices on the SD/MMC bus tend to show as /dev/mmcblk<n>
where n is the device.
On sailfish device, mmcblk0 is the embed flash "eMMC" that contains the system (the 32 GB of the Xperia X), and mmcblk1 is the microSDHC / microSDXC card.
mmcblk1p1 is the device as which the first partition (p1) shows up.

For some weird reason, the service in charge of automatically starting the mount didn't start.
(On Sailfish X, sd-mount is the service in charge of mounting stuff plugged in)

("systemctl | grep mmc" can help to filter)

First something, extremely useful : in bash (the shell on which you're typing commands) "tab" key auto-completes. (or if there are more choice, advances to the point where there are more choices, and the next tab displays you a list of possible commands). That's really useful, because paths like "/dev/mmcblk1p1" would otherwise be easy to mistype.

"devel-su" : sailfish x specific way to as root. It will ask your password (again), and the the prompt will change from 'nemo' (the default user) to 'root' (the admin).

then :
"mount /dev/mmcblk1p1 /mnt/sdcard/"

check for any error message.
check also the system log : still as root, "journalctl --since '5 min ago' "

other useful stuff (all need root, because all need direct access to the blocks on the device) :

"blkid /dev/mmcblk1"
gives info about what it detects on the raw card (should detect your partition table)

"blkid /dev/mmcblk1p1"
tries to detect the 1st partition

"lsblk" (list all the known block device) or "lsblk /dev/mmcblk1" (only the partitions on your card).

"fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk1p1".

Whenever a command displays an error message instead of what you would expect, remember to peak in journalctl (still as root)



journalctl and systemctl use a list display mode similar to "less" when they have a giant list that goes beyond the content of your screen.
You can scroll and pageup/down, and the "/" key brings a search box.
you can type "/mmc"+enter to search for the first occurence of the string, then "n" or "N" to go to next / and previous match.

another possibility is to open a second putty session and have
again as root ("devel-su") "journalctl --follow" running an constantly display new log message as they come by.

Small possible hack, if actually you hate Sailfish X that much and long for your N900 that much :
Run WhatsApp on alien-dalvik on the Xperia.
On the N900, browse to web.whatsapp.com
Follow the onscreen instruction to connect your N900's browser to the WhatsApp running on you Xperia.

Voila, you have WhatsApp on your N900 (keep the Xperia plugged in the charger, though : web.whatsapp.com needs constant connection to WhatsApp and the Xperia going to deep sleep would break the connection).

For a video tutorial look for "how too hack your boyfriend/girlfriend whatsapp" on youtube there are dozens of videos (WTF, internet ? Is stalking your significant other to check if they cheat the only use you've found with that function ? What's wrong with you, internet ?)

Ouch, I almost got hit by a low flying pig...

...almost.

(So basically, you're giving money to Jolla so they can give you your money ? :-P )

Thanks for all the insult.

Good idea My N8 serves that purpouse and once rescued a card that was not even formatable on my main linux machine
But yeah, i guess Nokia employed a Jolla size team only for that feature on symbian back then...

Yes, to me and others.

Installation went pretty easy but the guide was terrible

Played around with it and it’s like going back 3 years in time. Coming from top notch android and iOS hw and software. Most of the things in OS works, but not as users expects. Bluetooth works for me, but auto connect and interaction with headsets don’t.

Browser scrolling is like bad as always on long pages as Jolla blog.

Sony hw is OK. But screen and interaction with it, mostly browser is very bad. Cam is not great either.

That said all these things was expected since I have a jPhone 1. And compared to that. This is much smoother.

Most of my usecases takes much more to execute with sailfish and too many is simply not available as a services.

But in the end, it’s better than nothing. I will use it during the day and see what is working on this tiny screen.

Anyone knows if the led is working with calls, mails, messages?

Had run both (community and official) about equal period (24 hours) as a main phone (can't use SailfishX in everyday use yet, as I need internet connection sharing through wifi) and the result is similar to yours.
When wifi was used with community port, the battery charge decreased quite quicly, but using 4G connection the battery life was really good.
When official build was used, then leaving it overnight (4G on, 8 hours) the charge went down from 13% to 4% and after the alarm sounded, it was 3%.

Don't get my wrong : the "WTF Internet ?!" insulting part was toward the youtubers' obsession with stalking significant others on ground of paranoia.
Definitely not to you.

I think you have every right to hate Sailfish X personnally (every one has different tastest) and if indeed WhatsApp is the only thing holding you back from going back to your previous smartphone, the web.whatsapp.com webapp looks like a valid solution to me.
(It was initially geared toward desktop users to address the lack of native desktop clients, but could adresse any machine with no native client and a decent browser).

Small question for a precision :
- With Alien-Dalvik turned on, or not ?