Since the smartphone discussion, last week I purchased a Murena-imported Fairphone 6. The hardware is top-quality. The app store experience is great, but at $900 all-in, I expected the OS to actually finish applying an update after three attempts.
I’m returning the Fairphone 6 now (RMA pending) and have instead purchased a Sony Xperia 10v off eBay and intend to put SailfishOS on it.
This might sound like a WILD diversion from where this all started, but I have continued to review (and re-evaluate) exactly what I want and need for my personal phone.
I am a big fan of the wallet-function of my phone, but that can be replaced with a physical wallet and me pulling my physical cards out of my “backup” wallet.
I can and will use OsmAnd for maps. If I need to find something nearby, I can use Yelp on a browser.
Also, thanks to a recent console upgrade to the Nintendo Switch 2, I have a “free” UHS-1-class microsd card with 512GB of space. Thanks to the microsd card slot in the Xperia, I get plenty of extra storage that I can load up on my computer beforehand.
I still haven’t solved my music problem, but that’s coming.
I am really unhappy with Apple’s recent push of Ads into Maps, with no opt-out. My spouse even said, “I would like to buy an Opt-Out button for $500, Alex.”
There’s just no “winning” under capitalism in this case and, as someone I read said, “once Jobs died, I knew I had maybe five years before every iPhone started looking like the older ones, but at higher prices.”
I’m slowly converting my environment over to linux and freebsd where I can. I made a mistake thinking Apple would hold a line when “money is being left on the table.”
This is also driving a broader belief that “no for-profit corporation can ever Do Good.” A corporation may cause some good things to happen because of actions a company takes, but it will be incidental to the extractive, exploitative original goal.
While I was eyeing the Fairphone, I have come to realize just how good the Sony Xperia lineup is. I purchased the 10V for SailfishOS, but discovered that recent releases still have bugs for things like… camera usage in the 10V, and the unit is still in “Trial Phase” per ongoing development for the handset.
That’s not great, but, in the mean time I have an Xperia 10iii on its way which is (per my peers) fully supported and a daily-driver for several folks.
Assuming the Jolla folks manage to continue building for the Xperia, my investment in the handset won’t be a complete waste of money and I can hand it off to my spouse for daily use.
Now that I have the handset, I have some brief updates:
Things that I need to validate: