Current State of Sailfish on Gemini PDA

[greguu]

Hi there,

This forum has gone a bit quiet.

Are there any active Gemini PDA users out there, with Sailfish OS (Community Version or Sailfish X) as their main driver ?

If yes, please post your feedback here.

Currently running 4.4.0.58 as of this post and have adopted quite well to it.

Cheers,

Greguu

[gabs5807]

i updated to the latest version and it works quite well . But i do not use my PDA as main phone. It's to big for my pocket ... .

[greguu]

Great, even if not used as a main phone. Please share your experience.
Sailfish seems to be only OS for Gemini that is still being updated / maintained. (not so much about the kernel though)



Issues I noticed:

- WiFi selector does not work well in landscape mode, unable to see available access points.
If confirmed by others, I am happy to raise a ticket / case with Jolla.

- Alarm clock is unreliable. I set multiple alarms, on the same day, different hours, with odd results such as the alarm not being triggered (this is the stock clock app)
Same as previous issue, please confirm if you experience this.

- Speaker / Microphone orientation appears to fixed, not alined with as the phone is being held. This needs confirmation from other users.
Same as previous issue, please confirm if you experience this.

- Lack of Social / Communication apps. Sailtrix (Matrix) works ok, but I fail to validate the client. Whisperfish (Signal) I have trouble to authenticate at all.
These are non default apps. May need to raise directly with the maintainer.

- Indicator LEDS are working only for calls, txt and email. Is there any support for other apps ?
Question for the Jolla forum perhaps.


Positive Observations:

- Battery live is pretty good. No figures to compare with Android, but as good, from a pure feeling perspective.

- The Sailfish browser does most of what I want, is fast and efficient with tabs. Youtube works well.

- Solid IRC support

- Solid RSS feeder available

- Solid Console support




Cheers!

[gabs5807]

Great, even if not used as a main phone. Please share your experience.
Sailfish seems to be only OS for Gemini that is still being updated / maintained. (not so much about the kernel though)



Issues I noticed:

- WiFi selector does not work well in landscape mode, unable to see available access points.
If confirmed by others, I am happy to raise a ticket / case with Jolla.

Because of the 'small' screen the access points are not visible. You have to scroll up to see them.
Same problem is, if you put your apps into folders. Only one line is visible and you have to scroll to see the apps below ...

- Alarm clock is unreliable. I set multiple alarms, on the same day, different hours, with odd results such as the alarm not being triggered (this is the stock clock app)
Same as previous issue, please confirm if you experience this.

- Speaker / Microphone orientation appears to fixed, not alined with as the phone is being held. This needs confirmation from other users.
Same as previous issue, please confirm if you experience this.

Sorry, no experience to the upper problems. It's not my main phone and i have no sim in it and use it very rarely ..

- Lack of Social / Communication apps. Sailtrix (Matrix) works ok, but I fail to validate the client. Whisperfish (Signal) I have trouble to authenticate at all.
These are non default apps. May need to raise directly with the maintainer.

Same here. But on my fairphone Whisperfish works well so far and on PDA the same package should be used - both use 32bit - only the kernel on PDA is 64bit as i know ...

- Indicator LEDS are working only for calls, txt and email. Is there any support for other apps ?
Question for the Jolla forum perhaps.

Dont think so. The access to the LEDs are different on each phone as i know and there is no porter for the PDA - but i think you'er welcome to do so ;-) ...

Positive Observations:

- Battery live is pretty good. No figures to compare with Android, but as good, from a pure feeling perspective.

- The Sailfish browser does most of what I want, is fast and efficient with tabs. Youtube works well.

- Solid IRC support

- Solid RSS feeder available

- Solid Console support

Same here. It seems that most things work well (IRC and RSS i don't use). But as i wrote above, it is to big for my pocket - and the problem with the not working 'silver button' to accept a call is  ...

Cheers!

Hope some of the information helps 

[greguu]

Thanks for sharing your observations.

I hope some more will tune in to add their feedback.

By providing feedback to Jolla via their offical channels we can possibly improve the experience on the Gemini, while at the same time proving there is still an active user base.

Anyone using their Gemini alongside a current Sailfish OS (community or Sailfish X), please post your feedback here, but also on the Jolla forums !

[gabs5807]

Short update: I have 4.4.0.64 on PDA and inserted a SIM for some tests.
After boot (regardles boot or reboot) the ofono.service did not work.
No SIM card is shown.
Restarting the ofono.service via systemctl, everything is fine. The SIM card works as expectet.
This seems to be a known bug also occured on some sony devices - as i read on sailfish forum ...

[gemini_user_j]

Short update: I have 4.4.0.64 on PDA and inserted a SIM for some tests.
After boot (regardles boot or reboot) the ofono.service did not work.
No SIM card is shown.
Restarting the ofono.service via systemctl, everything is fine. The SIM card works as expectet.
This seems to be a known bug also occured on some sony devices - as i read on sailfish forum ...

I use my gemini witout simcard so havent tried ofono, but you should let them know on the sailfish forums since it is directly related to the OS, and some devs may want to correct this

[idc]

I still use Sailfish OS on Gemini as my main phone. I'm currently on Sailfish OS 4.0.1.48 (Koli), and it was a bit of a pain to get to 4.0 because of a lack of space in whichever the partition is that one has to install the OS to (is it the root filesystem that is unreasonably small at something like 2.454GB?). I think I found some instructions somewhere on how to grow this partition on some other make of phone—which is clearly what needs doing—but haven't the time to be without my phone and have been really busy so haven't got round to it yet. It works pretty well as a main phone, but I am now carrying an Android phone as well because there is always an app one wants that doesn't run on Sailfish ... (usually Signal, though I understand it should be possible to get that running on Sailfish—again a question of finding time ...)

[idc]

It would be interesting if we could make it run Waydroid ...

[gemini_user_j]

@idc, that is not so much space, did you partition it for multiboot?
if you dont mind wiping it, you can flash a fresh sailfish on it: https://support.planetcom.co.uk/index.php/Gemini_Firmware

as for waydroid, I am wishing too, but unless you can convince some opensource developers, you probably need to learn how to compile kernel modules ( I am a bit new to that, so couldnt help you)

[idc]

I haven't got as far as Waydroid, but tonight I did get round to installing Whisperfish as a secondary device. I can report it seems to be working. I had been carrying my Cosmo using Android in order to use Signal, but now I have Signal on the Gem, I shouldn't need to do this.