So what. What do you expect from "SFOS 3.0"?
With the pace of the last 4 years I learned not to expect anything. Helps against disappointment

We should be happy with at least kernel and security updates. And here and there some tweaking of the system and some new features (e.g. VPN).

Support for New Sony device

With XZ3 Compact being just around the corner (Aug.30) and Sony still struggling with XZ2 Compact bootloader update release, Jolla could as well jump right on fresh XZ3C after XA2 release.

PS If Sony will make it 'open' quick, unlike XZ2*

Seriously??? You expect Jolla to support for a brand new device? You must be kidding yourself. They did not start supporting the previous one until it was already out of production.

Well... I was looking for a really alternative for Android as iOS never was an option for me... Following Jolla since first announcement on the Slush of 2012 showing the Sailfish OS demo on the n950...
Bought the Xperia X specially for try and support Jolla, well... Good but not for a full replacement of android, so went back and waited for updates... Months spend and there was not a really improvement, so I sold my Xperia X and bought the XA2 waiting the Sailfish OS 3, as a lot of promises was made for that and also a upgrade for the android layer... Until now... No 2.2.1 update... We are not far for the ending of Q3... So, after 6 years I'm starting to not justify Jolla and be disappointed with the company... Even the Jala phone is not getting Sailfish... Difficult to trust Jolla on this stage and even with no refund for people that trusted Jolla with the tablet and tried to support them

Enviado desde mi H3123 mediante Tapatalk

Jolla was relatively good in keeping promissed deadlines this year. They even realeased the fingerprint sensor support for Xperia X one update ahead plan.

Being an early adopter is always a really joyful but risky and expensive hobby. Learning from previous experiences I bought my N9, J1 and Sony X after 1-2 years into production. Was never disappointed and never felt I was lied to. Skipped AquaFish for same reason as it turned out to be no real upgrade to J1.


OFF:
Similar goes for cars: Just buy a new car just before facelift for relatively best possible quality.
For reference nowadays usually car models have a cycle of generation1 (1.5-2 years) >> gen1facelift (1.5-2 y) >> generation2 >> ...
where at the end of ever phase early errors get ironed out and for facelift some cost reduction comes with trying to change to some cheaper components or cheaper suppliers.

After a few weeks on the Sony Xperia X, I concluded the following (warning, a lot of repeating of old comments):

If I had no other phone I would be happy with Sailfish X + Xperia X combo.
Camera quality is good enough and colour makes up for the lack of sharpness.
Post treatment will get you a lot of detail out of the pictures which normally Sony software would do for you.

The display of the Sony Xperia is gorgeous,
the form factor of the phone excellent, the build quality is as good as it gets on modern phones (no glass back waiting to break and embarrass the owner on first wrong move).

The price / quality unbeaten (paid 80 Euro, thanks to the ever upgrade hunger of the Android crowd)

However, the OS is still setting it back though. I don't need many "apps" but some essentials like Spotify have been abandoned already.

The swipe only, buttonless interface is supposed to be the very aspect that should attract the people tired of Android / iOS but I hate to admit that returning to Android felt like a big increase in productivity and I can't find any reason to recommend it except from it being European and not Google.

While Sailfish may be a descendendent of Harmattan on the Nokia N9 and the most excellent Maemo OS on the N900, the current Sailfish version 2.0 does not have the intuitive feel both of the predecessors had.
I find myself swiping around and having to re-think of what I needed to do again, instead of just go there without thinking and get it done.
I am not digging into details, as I suppose after Intex adventure, 3.0 will fix the interface.

Previously only IOS could give me this feeling of getting lost. Combine it with the usual frustrations of using display only phones (copy paste struggles, typing inserting "." at every word instead of spaces..)

I also stop believing in this independent OS story.
It is clear that at some point a prospect licensing account told Jolla to make the Sailfish OS 2.0 this very way , if not no deal. That is the only way I can explain the lack of flow in the interface: itt has been Androidified since version 1.0..
The remorse timer button, the disappearance of excellent swipe actions on minimized apps, the not live aspect of minimized app icons turning them in fact in homepage shortcuts..etc.. Add on top of this the "themes" showing up instead of the actions that would have deserved to be in front.

Next to the superiour interface that is not there, the Jolla OS is inexplicably lacking the other aspect that could make it great to use:
Integration of key services. We are so far from the days where we could tick a few dots in a unified, clean inteface: online with Yahoo, offline with Skype, online with SIP... done!

There is only facebook and that is about it, ok maybe drop box etc.. No flickr, no Skype, no alternatives to those that may people move from Skype , Google, etc.. to the more friendly alternatives. Jolla fails to motivate possible partners to work together on integrating their service and make one ellegant smaprthone OS to attract everyone who has no affiliation to Android.
There are no sign of obvious telecom/ privacy / security partnerships as for example I can't even use the Swiss based Wire secure messenger due to outdated Android compatibility. Soon even the Discogs application will stop working on this.
No SIP integration. In a phone. How is this even possible? A phone is no longer about calling?
Yes, since many years it has been proven the feature is there righ for command prompt experiment users..
Ok enough said, I have to think about my blood pressure, it is not worth it after all thos years.
Time to sell that Jolla 1.
I suppose something positive to say is that the good people at Jolla thought about VPN functionality.
Looking out for the next version without high hopes because let's be frank, when all we look out of is upgrade of Android compatibility layer to run a secure phone call to at least 1 or 2 non nerd, non expert users, the future does look not too bright for the alternative Phone OS.

Which is entirely fine by me. I'm already very happy with the phone as it is, and Jolla has promised to update the Android system, which could potentially solve the last few bugs in the few critical non-native apps I need (mostly banking 2-Factor stuff).

I'm lucky, I tend to use youtube for my music streaming needs !
:-D


It's funny because I have the exact opposite experience.
My first smartphone (until then I was using dumbphone + PDA combos) was Palm Pre running webOS.
webOS was touted as heavily gesture-oriented (and geared toward multi-tasking) though at the time I didn't understand why.
It's only afterward when I started playing with other people's phones that I understood the whole deal - I found iOS and Android very clunky.

I switched to Sailfish very naturally coming from one gesture- heavy OS to another.
(Though I'm still missing the "hand of cards" metaphor for handling multi-tabs. Sailfish has a nice "grid of cards approach" which handles multiple apps nicely, but only the window level, not the tab level).

Android and iOS still feel "clunky" to me.
(Maybe because I tend to jump multi-tasking around ?)

I totally see your pain with typing, like e.g. "."
I personally solved it by having a foldable bluetooth keyboard for more intense typing session (e.g.: when chatting a lot).


you can resurect the swipe actions using a patch.

(which in itself is one of the things I like back with PalmOS and webOS and now with Sailfish : community of hacker and tons of patching and customisation)

Also patchable to show quick-actions instead.


Skype has mostly finished transitioning to their webapp-interface.
Meaning that plugins like SkypeWeb relying on the web API instead of some native library should be the way to go.
(I use this on my desktop).
Of course, somebody has ported it to Sailfish, though I haven't tested that one.
(and I think it doesn't support voice/video calling yet).

Regarding alternative:
telegram, openwhisper, matix, facebook and (most importantly in my professionnal setting) slack have all (separated, non-integrated) native apps on Sailfish.

(But saddly not integrated into a single messaging interface, due to each network having their own weird peculiarities).

WhatsApp is about the only network currently not working as native app on Sailfish, mostly due to the devs being extremely aggressive against 3rd party clients.

And if you need the original, android applications work too : Skype Lite works including voice calls (and has a slightly lower foot print than Skype classic), Facebook Messenger works too (and also has a Lite alternative), same for WhatsApp.

(Wire *has actually* been reported to work on the 4.4 kitkat compatibility layer that comes with Sailfish X, but I don't use that)

And saddly it's going to take some time until Sailfish is big enough for partners to consider worthwhile to put effort into native Sailfish apps.
For now we have to rely on community efforts, and thus native support relies on :
- the service having publicly documented APIs, or at least not actively throwing lawyers at any attempt to reverse engineer (WhatsApp, I'm looking at you !)
- community devs having an interest into developing the app.

Saddly, yes, again. Appart from a few Sailfish X licenses sold here and there, most of the money that Jolla is getting comes from a couple of carriers that wants Sailfish on their flagphone.
i.e.: company that aren't interested into VoIP at all.
So Jolla doesn't receive any significant budget to develop VoIP.

So for now, VoIP is mostly a community effort, though that has already generated all the necessary backend bits (the sophia-sip and telepathy-rakia that you mention on the command-line).

Also, as some carrier are introducing "Wifi Call" (basically, official carrier-sanctioned SIP), interests might change and Jolla could receive more resources to help finish polishing this in the future.

Regarding what is more intuitive - buttons or swipes... It is yet another example of folks conflating 'intuitive' with 'familiar'.

As far as I am concerned, either approach can work if the rest of the UI is designed well.

Everyone has an example, here is mine. My other half had been using an old Nokia candybar, like everyone else.
In 2009, I gave her her first smartphone, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It took her a while to get used to the screen only interface, but with the help of the stylus, she mastered it. But still used it only as a phone and camera, not for any 'smart' stuff, like reading emails.
In 2014, I gave her a Jolla. She never really warmed up to it. For the first three years I saw it mostly laying on the shelf, unused. But about 2 yars ago she started taking it with her and using it for emails and occasionally browsing. Still using the 5800 as her primary phone.
She had been moaning about the deficiencies of Jolla and Sailfish ever since she picked it up. No social cr@p, even Slackfish mostly unusable. Her friend had an iPhone and praised it to heavens and, as is usually the case with a bad master blaming the tools, she assumed that an iPhone would automatically solve all her problems and satisfy all her needs. Well, tough. There is no way I could afford a grand (slang for a thousand pounds) for a new iPhone and I was not going to get her a used one for birthday, so I got her an Android. Not a flagship but a very decent mid-range.
And here comes the rub. I constantly see her struggling with it, trying to use swipes to do stuff