SailfishOS - Android App Support

[as400]

Hello,

Does anybody know if SailfishOS on PinePhone will ever include Android App Support ?
I have Sailfish on Sony Xperia XA2 and it works fantastic.

[Boern]

Only if we get a commercial release of Sailfish. You could try copying over the Alien Dalvik files from your Xperia. I heard it worked on some other phones.

[DracoLlasa]

im looking forward to this as well.
Sailfish is the most usable OS i have tried so far Ubuntu Touch is pretty decent, Neon still needs a lot of work
I would be happy to pay for a Sailfish license if it helps to support the already good work.

The testing has been interesting, looking forward to more things to work with

[as400]

Sailfish is the best phone OS I have ever tried. With its consistent gui and ease of use with one hand it's just great.

Actually the only things I need android app support is my ebanking app and bus ticket app. I use them frequently.

[kaktux]

Sailfish is the best phone OS I have ever tried. With its consistent gui and ease of use with one hand it's just great.

Actually the only things I need android app support is my ebanking app and bus ticket app. I use them frequently.

same here. Currently using Jolla Phone - and from android apps a must only my public transport app and a banking app are needed.
Most apps certainly aren't without alternatives - banking and public transport sadly are.

currently i am looking at ubtouch - as its most promising. But a sailfish with current alien dalvik - i would buy that along with the pinephone. Without it wouldnt be able to replace my current phone.

[explit]

guys, PinePhone is pure Linux Hardware, its not libhybris / bionic based. It doesn't use android driver (HAL). So i think it would be not possible to have android apps support on the PinePhone. But on the other side - we we have a really open Smartphone and SailfishOS will work great on it.

[cefre00]

I think by far this OS is the most beautiful one.
Now networking is working, SIM card is not recognized at all, I guess by time it will be.

Apps are a big missing part, as there are not too many apps I could download e.g. Ubports is better from this perspective. I don't know how many guys are working on this OS, but not too many I guess. Slowly but it is getting better.

[DrYak]

Hi, long time Sailfish OS user on most of devices supported by Jolla.

SIM card is not recognized at all,

Happens actually even on the official devices. In my experience, turning the SIM slot on/off and/or going to Airplane mode and back sometime helps to force restart the modem and restart the SIM Card.


I guess by time it will be.

Apps are a big missing part, as there are not too many apps I could download e.g. Ubports is better from this perspective. I don't know how many guys are working on this OS, but not too many I guess.

Jolla is a small-ish team indeed. Luckily we are also a lot of users and community supported apps are a thing: check openrepos.net. Storeman is a good package manager for that, if you aren't that much into command line zypper/pkcon.

I would suggest community apps such as Pure Maps (decent map and navigation app), Laufhelden (sportstracker), OSM Scout Server, etc.
There's tons of good stuff there.

There are even advanced tools like Patchmanager which enable you to hack and modify the interface (Despiste some of the UI component of Sailfish being closed source in theory, in practice the source is readable anyway given that these component are written in human-readable QML/Javascript and it is possible to modify them).

So i think it would be not possible to have android apps support on the PinePhone.

Aliendalvik on the recent Sailfish OS devices is based around LXC containers (similar to Anbox and Collabra SPRUV). These type of compatibility layers only require a few kernel modules to be present (usually the Android message-passing stuff such as binder), and rely on userland libraries and daemon that forward API (mostly graphics, sound, input, and GPS. Currently no support for Bluetooth yet) that Android API uses inside the container to the GNU/Linux standard stack outside (Wayland, Pulseaudiom libinput, etc. in this case).

For testing purpose I would gladly volunteer the files I have in my Sailfish X on Sony Xperia XA2 to Pinephone testers.
(Note: for testing purpose only. It's a commercial product, it wouldn't be the proper way to distribute it widely, at least until Jolla introduce an actual commercial license for PinePhone. Otherwise It would probably be considered illegal in most jurisdictions).

[as400]

@DrYak did you hear/read anything about official support of Pinephone from Jolla ?

[tllim]

Jolla and PINE64 just established contact and will ship 2 PinePhone to them for porting. Hopefully the collaboration will soon benefit PinePhone community.