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Comment by andy99 | Hacker News Reader

I tried this briefly on a pine phone ~2 years ago as I was going through the different options trying to see if there was something viable. It was useless then, the phone barely worked, and I’m pretty low maintenance, I basically just wanted mobile date, wifi, email, and browser. I don’t really remember sailfish specifically as I was quickly cycling thought the options but I know I tried it and found it unsuitable.

P.S. unless there is a sailfish browser that ships separately with a different OS and I’m remembering that.

P.P.S. I would love a Linux phone that lets me take calls and has mobile data, wifi, web browsing and GPS/navigation. I don’t care about apps other than navigation. AFAIK there is not currently something that fits the bill and works out of the box.

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Initially, due to the PinePhone not using libhybris but a mainline kernel, the SailfishOS browser and mail app was not working at all. At least the browser was fixed; mail later on AFAIR too. Generally, judging an OS that has officially supported hardware by an unfinished community port is not something I would call fair or useful ;-)

Ubuntu Touch does all of this. https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/

The Sailfish browser is using Firefox rendering core BTW, so you might have used it elsewhere. ;-)

From other comments in this thread though it seems to be stuck on quite old versions of ESR though. Seems like it took until about September 2024 to go from a mid-2020 version (78) to a late-2021 version (91) according to this [1].

I don’t have any first-hand experience but from the comment that linked that blog, and the site itself, it’s not clear whether the browser engine has been updated since…

1. https://www.flypig.co.uk/?to=gecko&list_id=975&list=gecko

Afaik the problem is the lack of embedding API in the Firefox core, so they have to adapt their patches every time they need to update Firefox version.

This is also why you see Chome being used as a core in all kinds of applications and frameworks - AFAIK it has the necessary API for this.

There's GeckoView which one'd use for embedding Firefox in an Android app. Can't use that on Sailfish OS of course, but it'd help in figuring out what of core Firefox to bind to to make a similar layer.

Yeah, don't know the details of the GeckoView API but looks like its going in the right direction to help what Sailfish OS needs. :)

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