Jolla has released the first builds of Sailfish OS for the Nexus 4. Installation isn’t exactly easy, and the builds are far, far from complete or stable (the display is even watermarked to say as such), but it does constitute Sailfish’ first steps beyond the Jolla phone.
Take note of all the disclaimers – and if you’re okay with taking the plunge, have fun.
Any word on where I can download a SailfishOS image for my 2012 Nexus 7 tablet? I see it’s on the Mer compatibility list, but no SailfishOS image seems to exist anywhere, despite the fact that the Nexus 7 port was shown off recently.
There were some instructions for installing Nemo on it. Same should work for Sailfish. But those didn’t use libhybris (instead they used Linux4Tegra). The last time I tried those, the end result was booting but the UI didn’t work.
This Nexus 4 release isn’t using native glibc drivers – it uses libhybris with Android drivers. I guess same can be done for Nexus 7 (and supposedly was done), but no instructions were published so far.
Edited 2014-03-28 00:25 UTC
Now I only hope it will become even more stable in the future
…. I will give this a go as soon as a public release is made.
Its fun to experiment with different phone oses. But, on this one, I think I’d have to wait until the phone call functionality works.
Maybe I’m old, but I still make and receive a lot of audio phone calls on my phone.
Looks like my last regular voice call on my Nexus 4 was 5 March, just a few weeks ago. Still, I think I’ll wait a few weeks before I install.
Actually, the most important feature for me is the alarm. I’m not sure I’d wake up without my phone.
If you have an old phone in a drawer somewhere, you can pull that one out and swap out your SIM long enough to play with Sailfish on the Nexus. That way you don’t miss any calls, but you still get to play.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve held on to my N900 for so long; it’s stable, dependable, and reliable as a backup for whatever I’m using/experimenting with currently.
They get this working on the Note 3. I would much rather be running SailfishOS over Android.
Going from my N9 to it… I almost feel violated every time I use it. Bring up a browser “Hey, where are you located? Tell us!!!” Uhm, how about NO?
I know exactly how you feel. I used a Nexus 4 followed by an iPhone for quite a while after an N900. They were both beautifully designed devices and worked very well, but I never felt comfortable with them. In both cases it always felt like I was using someone else’s device.