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Comment by MrDrMcCoy | Hacker News Reader

I would seriously consider SailfishOS if it shipped on decent (recent) hardware that was available in the US. The last good experience I had with it was on the Xperia XA2, but that hardware was turned into ewaste by the VoLTE requirements of US carriers. Although they claim to run on more recent Xperia phones, they don't have full hardware support, and aren't on the most recent models. If I'm going to pay for a phone OS and hardware to support it, I want some assurance it won't be total jank.

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Well you'll need to talk to your monopolistic carriers then. US mobile innovation is dead for the foreseeable future due to them, all new innovation is happening in China and other SE Asian markets.

You just need to be a good consumer and buy that iPhone that Verizon orders you to have with their blessing.

Huh? You think that the VoLTE requirement is something unique to the US? What new innovations are you referring to by the way?

What you are describing is much more accurate of the US cell carriers before the iPhone. I remember paying $20/mo (to the carrier) for a terrible mail application on a feature phone. The iPhone's AT&T deal saved us from that situation.

What are some of the innovations you're referring to?

> before the iPhone

And MVNOs.

This came back with first Trump era so your knowledge is out of date.

Carriers in the US restricted the phones people used in the 00s and early 10s, back when there were short model whitelists, CDMA networks, and radios with only a few bands… but not so much today. Global market GSM phones activate pretty much on any US carrier just fine today.

2/3g deprecation and VoLTE is precisely because US carriers are pushing forward with new tech.

There were no activation for GSM phones. You insert a whitelisted SIM and the phone would just register(login) to the network. The network doesn't care. Phone might care, but it's processed instantly on the modem. It was Apple that added online "activation" gimmick to it.

"CDMA" networks built on proprietary Qualcomm cdma2000 standards used its equivalent of eSIM, and that was why it required special trusted phones for OTA programming. It was also used by Verizon which IIUC had better coverage than others so lots of people would have had memories of having to go through something akin to Apple activation.

I had people that got blocked on their fully working Xiaomi phones in US (and which still work when they roam on a foreign SIM card) in ~2024 when AT&T decided to block off all "unknown" phones. So I'm not sure why do you thing that's a thing of the past.

As of 2025 both AT&T and Verizon (plus, as a downstream their MVNOs) have a whitelist of allowed phone models and block connection of other phones even if they're compatible with the network.

See https://www.att.com/scmsassets/support/wireless/devices-work...

To be whitelisted, the phones need to go through onerous testing process that goes way beyond just checking for network compatibility.

I know there are phones that work on ATT that are not on that list.

Regardless, my point is that the situation has vastly changed over the past 20 years. It wasn't that long ago that you could walk into carrier's store in the US and literally every phone that was allowed on the network was on the shelf.

I have been using Xperia 10 III as my main phone for years with Sailfish OS just fine.

Looks like they also support up to Xperia 10 V & there is the Jolla C2 community device:

https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/

I remember not too long ago seeing a similar table from Jolla that showed these devices, but also included a breakdown of specific hardware features that were not fully working. Was there a major update in the last few months that cleared that up?

Not following things in great detail, but I would dare to answer: Zero updates to the situation you describe for roughly a year.

I think you can install it on Xperia X 10 III, and IV (which I have) is in a long-toothed beta.

Gosh I miss my XA2.

XA2 was the perfect fit for my hand. I cracked the screen pretty badly, but now it has a second life as a timelapse shooter :)

Recently I bought another to have a spare. Cost me 50 €.

The battery life was insane for the time.

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