Abstract

I previously wrote an extensive blog post about my initial experience with Jolla phone 2026. The experience from pre-ordering the phone until receiving it and using it for few days. Now I'm writing this follow up after few months of using it as a secondary phone.

If you haven't read the previous blog post, I suggest reading that first, as this is an update/extension to that blog post. You can see all my posts about Jolla phone and SailfishOS as well though here and here respectively.

Positive things first

The Jolla phone 2026 (as a phone) is really good. It holds battery for about 2 days, it always feels nice to handle the phone, it is responsive and not even once it glitched or crashed. Overall, I really like the physical build quality, the hardware, and how it looks.

As for the user interface, the pulley menus and the gestures needs some getting used to, but imho they make sense in the context of SailfishOS.

Also in the course of these months I have witnessed first-hand that some of the issue got fixed with SailfishOS software updates, which shows there are development happening.

Next I'll write about non-positive stuff, but I should emphasize that basically 95% of the phone experience is solid and good as a phone (not to be confused with smart phone with an app ecosystem). So I personally recommend this phone. Now, let's get to the not-so-great parts:

Paper-cuts

As of writing this on 2026-10-27, and after several updates, these software issues are bothering me a bit. I put them under paper-cuts because they can potentially be addressed if Jolla invest in it (not everything can be done by community because SailfishOS is not [yet] OpenSource):

• Keyboard

  • No glide-typing
    
    
  • Very limited number of languages (e.g., Persian is not supported)

• UI/UX

  • When an app is open, the battery charge info, clock, and etc. get hidden. Conventionally, like iOS or Android, one would pull down from the top edge to see those info, but despite of having enough empty space, those info are not presented there, instead on should slide from the left, but only to half of the screen to check those info, otherwise the app you have open will get minimized
    
    
  • The Do Not Disturb does not silent the phone, and user have to use the volume keys to reduce the ring tone too.
    
    
  • Limited available essential apps (e.g., lack of password manager and feature-rich PDF reader)
    
    
  • Extremely confusing settings UI for managing two simcards and decide which one used for mobile data and etc.
    
    
  • App menu does not have a fuzzy search

• Jolla company

  • I expected to see more frequent and regular software updates (e.g., weekly), considering that Jolla have shipped 3 batches and at least for the sake of marketing and PR, they should have rolled out more frequent updates to show that their dev team is actively working on the issues
    
    
  • There is not conventional bug tracker to submit bugs. Sailfish forum is unfortutanely also using for this, which means same toxicity easily leaks and Jolla devs are practically quiet in the issues. Easy comparison would be to compare Github issues and how dev team responds and triages issues compared to this infamous forum
    
    
  • After software updates, one have to login to the forum and report if updating went smoothly or not, which means those who own the product (paid for it with real cash) cannot raise their voice if they don't want to use the forum. The correct approach would have been to have a form inside the settings to report the issue right after updating and the bug report goes directly to the dev team rather than a social forum that is not meant for this. It could even be a web-app open in the browser with a small form that also collects some info about the phone, but ...
    
    
  • There is no officially announced SailfishOS milestone, so that users know what are planned and what should they expect

Daily-driver deal breakers

There are few blocking issues with using it as my main daily-driver phone. I listed only those that I don't think is as easy to be fixed or addressed by Jolla devs. Those that are problematic but can be addressed relatively quickly are listed in paper-cuts.

• My EV car Android app doesn't work (perhaps for the same reason that some banking apps don't properly work)
• Fingerprint is not passed to Android apps
• No contactless payment (this is not a deal breaker for me, but it is for many)

Open questions

After using the phone for several months and passively reading the forum and interacting with polite and civilized part of the SailfishOS community on Mastodon, I have these questions that I'm yet to find an answer for:

Question1: Considering the very large volume of flatpaks on Flathub that are already designed for mobile phones (e.g., many of the KDE apps), why Jolla is not using the opportunity to immediately increase their app support by supporting Flatpaks? Why the community should go through the trouble of working countless hours to make things work, and Jolla is completely quiet about it (last public activity was 3 years ago in 2023)

Question2: After shipping 3 batches of phones, which means thousands of new users, the SailfishOS forum is getting more and more users, and the level of gatekeeping and toxicity is skyrocketing. I wonder why Jolla does not stand up to protect their own brand and moderate the forum properly. As far as I'm concerned, not taking action translates to supporting this form of behavior.

Final thoughts (for now)

The Jolla phone 2026

This phone is real progress towards having a solid hardware that runs a solid Linux distro. I wish more people would buy the phone and use it daily. The apps are stilllacking, but both the community and the Jolla company can jointly work on this and make it better. Adding support for Flatpaks would also be a great addition that I hope it comes soon.

Others are also releasing their experiences and review, so I would like to encourage the reader to also check those out. I list a few of them that showed in my YouTube feed here:

• 1 Week Using the Jolla Phone (2026) | First Impressions, by Laura Malvoyante

  This is a very good review and contains points that also match my experience.
  
  

• 85 days with the new Jolla jp2026 phone, a deep review by Tomás

  This is a more in-depth review in a more casual narrative. It is 38 minutes long, but I believe it worth watching

Final words about the phone, if you wish to have a Linux phone in your pocket with working camera, bluetooth, etc. out of the box, and with good repairability and battery life, I recommend buying the phone.

The Jolla company

Jolla have shown so far that they are not an evil company and the phone clearly is not a scam. Both the company and the phone and solid. Almost all the downsides that I explained in this blog post and the previous one are either software or management, both of which can be (and should be) addressed relatively easily. I truly hope Jolla wake up from this "indifference coma" and shake things up a bit to the better direction. What they should realize is that people like me are refusing to participate in the SailfishOS forum due to what I have explained before, so our voice will not be heard in that forum, and we are those who have paid to support the cause and the product. For the sake of their brand and reputation, there need to be massive changes in the way Jolla is managing their PR.

I truly wish Jolla take action and become a Finnish company that we can all be proud of, and we happily support them. That day is not that far and just requires some serious decision and actions to be taken.

@Jolla, if you are reading this and you are happy to take suggestions and constructive criticism, contact me. I can even take a train and meet you in Tampere or Salo for a brief meeting. I [and many others] really want to see this OS and ecosystem prosper.