Today sure, it just needs support from a major player. Not -that- long ago, nearly every mfg had their own OS(Blackberry, Meego/Symbian, Win Mobile, Palm, etc) and each had enough apps.

If Samsung or Huawei or probably even Motorola decided to ditch Android and go all in on Sailfish, we'd see support for apps in short order. But as a third party OS you have to install yourself, it's basically dead in the water.

What BlackBerry did before giving up was a smart approach, they basically just converted Android apps to BlackBerry ones for you. And that'd be a fast way to get bootstrapped. They just didn't have enough steam left in them, sadly.

> each had enough apps.

They had enough apps in the same way 640k of RAM was enough for everyone.

I think it's a fantastic topic, but to be succinct: we couldn't get app makers to keep parity between iOS and android, including banks, government and transportation apps for a very long time.

Assuming it would go easier with a random 3rd OS where "I'm sued for illegal deals" Google has struggled so much doesn't sound realistic.

> They had enough apps in the same way 640k of RAM was enough for everyone.

It pretty much was, for almost everyone, for quite a few years.

BlackBerry was a huge player. They declined, as with Nokia, entirely because they didn’t use a platform

Well, their problems were manifold and I think the movie does a decent job explaining them. Highly recommend, if you haven't seen it yet.

They didn't evolve, took the iPhone as a joke, and when finally playing catch-up, the hardware was awful.

If they'd have seen the writing on the wall and responded in kind, I think we'd have all three players around today.

Nokia...I don't even want to talk about. I'm still half convinced it was a sabotage job.

Like all “based on a true story” or whatever movies/tv shows, the BlackBerry movie has a lot of fiction:

https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/blackberry/

There is no way for a viewer to know which parts are real or fake, so watching it is not going to help educate.

There was nothing awful about hardware. But they did not run Android, and that was enough to bring the whole company down.

From Wikipedia -

The Blackberry Storm sold 500,000 units in its first month and 1 million units by January 2009.[15] However, Verizon had to replace almost all of the one million Storm smartphones sold in 2008 due to issues with the SurePress touch screen [16] and claimed $500 million in losses.

Nokia failed because Nokia was Nokia.

To elaborate - Nokia innovated a lot. But internally Nokia was chaotic. They were Google, before Google got the reputation for creating projects only to kill them when they had hardly started.

Couple this with the absolute dictatorship that the Symbian division had over what they were releasing as a cellular device, and Meego/Maemo never had a chance. Up till the N900 the Maemo division was blocked from having cellular. After the N900 it was too late really. They clambered to make the N9, but it was at the breaking point and so they did the burning memo thing. The N9 was basically the blueprint for the Windows Phone models Nokia released.

Sailfish is the successor to Nokia's Linux efforts, before they scrapped it all for Windows.

The community got fractured when the N9/950 did MeeGo Harmattan. This was a continuation of Nokia's Maemo OS that was based on Debian, but they just called it differently when they announced a collaboration. Nokia and Intel started a 'merge' called MeeGo (based on moblin and fedora). Nokia never actually used this in a device as they signed the famous partnership under Stephen Elop's guidance standing on a burning platform.

Sailfish is a successor of this actual MeeGo work that was done and therefore had an uphill battle. They never got the same traction as Maemo (or even Mer), so I never called this a successor of Nokia's work. Nokia created a community with developer conferences and handing out devices. Jolla couldn't do this ... and therefore remained niche.

My N900 with Maemo was fantastic. It's still working Just Fine, mechanically as good as when new (the Mercedes-door feeling sliding keyboard, for example), the only reason I'm not still using it is because it only supports up to 3G, and that isn't available anymore where I live. Such a nice phone. I could easily make Debian packages and install them, my minicomputer emulator for example. The MeeGo transition stopped it for me, and Stephen Elop's burning-down-the-house strategy killed everything.

I have all of the NIT devices, but found the N810 the best; great keyboard, large, thin... but unfortunately no 3G. N900 is second best; great camera and nice User Experience

But for an old phone a very open and developer friendly environment (Linux like maybe) is attractive. Sadly those available are limited to more modern phones, which is I think a mistake. Maybe the answer is a side loaded application with a ridiculous amount of permissions?

> You can't simply give up every popular app for a system nobody else uses or develops for.

Perhaps the solution for such a phone is to make PWAs feasible for every kind of app?

I guess it would need a few essential built-in apps (something like an Apple Health analog) but hopefully the rest could be web apps with extra privileges, if needed and approved by the user.

Is geofencing already possible with PWAs? I.e. location based events? If not, that would also have to be a builtin (helper) app.

Yep, if you capitulate from the start than nothing changes. And you as a user are giving them a chance to lock you into custom OTPs (that are just little changed standard OTP to force you to use their app so they can track you, steal your contacts and god knows what else (i have reversed it, got the seed and i am running it from shell as I was sick of it) even if they have a classic web page.

Everyone just agreed that it is fine if certificates are no longer used for web apps (even with a fully standardized pkcs#12 tokens), everyone just agreed that bank is using some non-standard otp generator, everyone just agreed with everything. Now you will soon have to pay heating in car on monthly basis.

Stop agreeing. Start complaining. Now and you.

Sailfish on Sony Xperia 10 works like a charm, with working things that even modded roms are having issue with.

If you fight it back... I am running my banking app (that they have even if they also have a web based app) for 4 years now without any issues, they did a major rewrite in between, but quite frankly in most of cases Safety-net is just a bunch of sand into eyes of security, if implemented right it might have impact but at the end most of banking banks are reducing it to if statement (that i patched).

Yep, true that normal user cant do this, but this is users call. Complain to financial ombudsman, complain to the bank, demand a way for you to authenticate if you are paying for the product, complain bank supporting phone monopoly etc.

Harass developers that decided to verify if phone is rooted, prove in media that they are just a bunch of kids having a boner on security they don't understand (which is a huge fact in all annoying login schemes, from mail to sms etc., OTP was more than enough (sms... giggling... ss7 access on tor for 500 dollars monthly)

Actually you are addressing wrong problem. It starts somewhere else, when you want to use Bluetooth hardware that has a custom app to use it and you cant use it on Sailfish while you cant use it in Android layer as there is no bluetooth pass-trough. Here I vote with my wallet, not buying such devices and waiting for Sailfish to implement it.

Does it have good messaging and maps? That’s 90% of my phone usage. I don’t do banking on my phone.

It has outstanding offline maps and navigation. One of its strongest points.

Messaging support depends on the protocol. Very good for Telegram, good for Matrix and Signal.

Lots of people use e.g. WhatsApp through the Android emulation layer.

> I wish it was feasible to have alternative mobile systems, but it's not really.

I think there is a possible exception here.

I mean, firstly, yes, sadly this is largely true.

I had a Blackberry Passport, a beautiful handset running the QNX-based BB X OS. Over a year of ownership it gradually got less and less useful as app vendors turned off BB X support. No FB IM, no Whatsapp, and I have a phone that won't let me text with 90% of the most-contacted people on my phone.

And in those days (2014-2015) I did much less with my phone than now.

But I also own 2 little-used tablets.

I use tablets for watching films and TV, reading books, occasionally email. I don't do any of the mobile-phone stuff on my tablets, and they do not have SIM cards in them.

I would have as much use for a FOSS-powered tablet as I do for an Android or iOS tablet.

Poor patchy phone support does not cut it, sadly, and that's more than doubly so without apps.

But good support for at least one currently-available cheap Chinese tablet would be of legitimate interest to me.

> good luck running banking apps without Google SafetyNet.

Doesn't most banks have a mobile version of their website. Maybe not the best but it could be a good compromise.

Most banks here in Europe require Mobile apps to login into their website.

So the EU attempts to invade your privacy using smartphones [1] and forces duopoly-brand smartphones upon its citizens, yet it fails to compel Apple to allow true sideloading, so you're stuck choosing between "no freedom but some privacy" or "no privacy but some freedom"? Their digital policy initiatives overall seem like a net loss for EU citizens as it stands.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/19/24181214/eu-chat-control

You really had to stretch a lot of bullshit just to rant over chat control here, didn't you?

The point is that we're being forced into a duopoly, which is unacceptable.

I was trying to make a case that when you add up everything the EU has done recently with regards to digital policy, you get a net loss for EU citizens. Their attempt at chat control decrements the score by a significant amount. Amending the DMA to have it not be completely useless would increment it by a significant amount, but it is unknown if that will happen yet.

The EU as a whole is a net loss for citizens, always has been.

As far as I have evidence, that is not true in Germany. I have accounts with three banks, and all of them can be managed with SMS 2FA and web access.

But that's probably mostly because Germany is generally so far behind the rest of Western Europe in modern Internet and online usage, isn't it?

The SMS 2FA is mostly being phased out because it's horribly insecure :/

And many banks stopped providing hardware tokens as well because it's too expensive.

They don't offer hardware tokens by default. Often you can request one (you will be charged). I did just that despite it not being advertised option. I just said I need one.

If you bank requires it, you can: a) find different bank that doesn't; there are banks like this b) demand a hardware token

Unless you explicitly sign for Mobile-only bank (neobanks are weird) you will be able to get hardware token.

Speaking from German, UK and Polish experience.

I think all banks in my country as well provide hardware token method (used to be paper cards, nowadays a small Tamagotchi like device that outputs codes) if you don't want to use a phone app.

Yeah, while they certainly try to push it, I don t know about any Czech bank that would force you to use a mobile app.

If you want to go in and do the basics (check balance, do a normal transfer, look at activity) this can get you by. A lot of the more useful features tend to be app only though. E.g. "scan to deposit check" is an app only item for my bank.

I can do that sort of thing from the Ally website. Which is good, because Google is actively killing off support for devices more than a few years old, and I can't run most new apps on my phone, banking or otherwise (old apps are hit-or-miss, but the practice of forcing updates to the latest version poisons most of them).

I'm as old as a dinosaur and I haven't used a cheque in my life, not even back when bank accounts were managed through this little paper book with numbers and stamps.

That's simply not factually correct. You can use bank web sites entirely without a smartphone. Banks supply this option as there are really - surprise! - people without smart phones who still has money.

My own bank does not even use 2FA. I log in using the officiel state sponsored digital ID (yes, without having a smartphone). This is in Denmark.

(sorry about the new anon account, it's been so long since I posted I've forgotten my old account. Perhaps I should use a PW mgr...)

Where in Europe? Everywhere on the continent? Certainly not in Sweden where I live. The major banks here use 2FA but not mandated to a mobile app.

Not in Poland either. Pretty much every bank has also SMS 2FA available.

I remember Poland has a very late cycle of sunsetting 2G / 3G. Which makes SMS 2FA not very secure ( other than Social Engineering ).

Europe is not one single country, and for me that statement is 100% untrue.

The banking regulation is usually introduced across whole EU and this includes new recommendation to phase out 2FA via SMS.

Not all countries have caught up yet, but you can expect that to change within a few years.

Which doesn't preclude hardware keypads, which British banks have been issuing for at least 15 years now.

They may have, but here in central EU they stopped to save costs and now the only option on many banks is having a smartphone.

That's not really the point. The 2FA I use isn't via SMS, and never was.

Why don't they use a third party authenticator instead?

for the downvoter, it is a tool people use to deal with this.