Worst Phone I Ever Bought - Jolla Phone - SailfishOS
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- Опубликовано: 7 июл 2023
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One has to wonder if Jolla have really thought about how much of an overlap there is for people who would use a "Linux Phone" and those willing to put up with a locked bootloader.
The bootloader is un-lockable. But it requires the pin code I dont have.
@@HughJeffreys you might be able to bruteforce the pin
It'll probably permanently lock after so many tries.
@@someguy2338 Correct.
There is a 12-43% chance or a 50% chance that you might get the correct pin when brute-forcing it.
@@AlKaseltzer87 Why would Jolla do this?
It looks like they are in a top secret phone agency.
Protecting it by perma-lock the phone.
So much for "truly open". I bet they should rename Sailfish OS to Selfish OS.
it is unlockable, you can see the option in the video, it just requires what i assume is the pin code set by the original owner .
Oooh Got em
damn you just beat me to it
and it requires a hoRNDIS software to reset it which sounds horrendous
@@mactep1 Still they provide no image for the os
How the hell does someone manage to make a more convoluted repair system than apple
and apple got away with it
ask why macos isnt able to telnet, when windows needs 1 internal installer and linux has it 99.9% preinstalled
@@majstealth Newer versions of macOS are, Hugh was using high Sierra
@@yousefhawi telnet is tech out of the 70´s
@@yousefhawi it's the best
I started digging around for some answers to this and it turns out there’s a way to unbrick it using fastboot mode. The issue is, the person who went through the painstakingly complicated process of compiling firmwares for Jolla phones uploaded them on Mega and they are expired, so you’ll have to compile it yourself from source if you have a bricked phone.
@@delusionante I used to run a repair shop. You’d be surprised to see how many factory images and essential tools are paywalled or uploaded on Mega, making firmware issues harder and expensive to fix.
Companies hate to give the tools and factory images away to people, especially Chinese ones. And since you have to look for them in sketchy sites as well, you risk installing malware by accident on your work computer or even worse installing a firmware that has a malware on it.
the problem with OP is that he has a LOCKED Jolla by maxed pin attempts, so for security reasons won't allow you to unlock it. Actually now it's the same with iPhone and probably Pixel phones.
@@malfunchan And we're not talking about MegaUpload (which was shut down by the United States government), but Mega, a website that forces you to turn off all of your ad blockers and gives you a ton of fake download links when you try to download anything.
yeah you cant reset an android without removing your google account n stuff. otherwise phone theft would be much easier. also he made it way harder by using mac witch is "horrendous" why the heck cant you even use telnet.
@@Randy-nb6fwSometime before Android 5 you could actually factory reset a device without needing to sign in with a Google Account. Now it would be a royal PITA to get a secondhand device that the previous owner didn't bother to reset. --- Sure, theft is harder, but people who just discard/sell/give away their old tech without tidying up properly make it effectively e-waste short of manufacturer software tools.
"I burned hours before trying Linux" is the most Apple thing I've ever heard. 😂
lmao
But... not true.
No iSheeps are allowed here
@@What00054 go away troll.
@@What00054 Give them a break, man
Bought one of these and collected it at the launch event on Oslo. Had so much potential, was designed by the team at Nokia who produced the Nokia N9. But many promises never delivered and lack of key apps led to a frustrating experience.
I had one aswell.. it was a decent device but quality was not that amazing. But I liked the UI though N9 UI was so much better still.
@@akse yes the N9 is the best phone I’ve ever owned. Nokia did not realise they had created a better iPhone than Apple.
Marc Dillon was the soul of the company and when he left in 2015, it looked like a very bad omen. It was. It's in my opinion a clown outfit without Marc and I went from being passionate about a successor to my beloved N9 to forgetting about Jolla altogether.
I DO hope Jolla sees this and reaches out to you to make this thing work again. For free, of course.
1) the damage has been done. 2) if they help him we know every other customer that’s not a social media influencer has gotten boned so big whoop.
Why when support ended over 3 years ago and they moved on? Why waste the resource just so Hugh can make a follow up video that only half his audience will even watch?
i hope they go bankrupt and shutdown pine64 did it better anyways
My parents said if I get 50 subscribers on RUclips, they would buy me a Phone for recording and content..
@@iSamYTBackupI love Sailfish's interface, but Pine's philosophy is better. Sailfish's interface isn't even open source.
They were definitely ahead of the game with that anti-theft feature. It was only the last few years that factory resetting was locked down on modern phones. Only difference is you don't have a bypass potion like jolla... not sure how I feel about an option to pay to bypass security
the security is opt-in. The true owner of the device specifically set a password to lock the booatloader so only they could access it. He purchased a stolen device and doesn't have that password, he SHOULD be locked out. He is not the lawful owner of that device, it is not his to reset.
@@robonator2945Yeah, the "Permanently Locked" should have been an IMMEDIATE red flag that the phone might have been stolen/illegitimately sourced.
iCloud activation lock was introduced in iOS 7
@@BigTylt nah, it's just a "device that questions the concept of ownership"
said the man holding a device that was stolen from it's rightful owner. I can't even be charitable here, I have NEVER heard of this phone before, and instantly recognized it was most likely an opt-in security system with a user-set pin. So if I, with zero experience or context, can recognize it's most likely an opt in system within minutes of considering it, how the fuck can this youtuber not when he made a full video on it and - by his own admission - spent hours working on it? You reach a point where indifference becomes malice, and for me this video more than crossed that line. He had every opportunity to find out the truth, and just didn't because he wanted a nice easy villian to rip into with a snarky line and a wink.
If my phone is stolen, I'd want the new owner to factory reset it. That would give me peace of mind knowing my personal data is no longer at risk! Not sure why you'd want to lock that feature out...
Back then in around 2014 I was working on a custom kernel for Sony Xperia M. I can confirm that this first version of Jolla phone and the Sony Xperia M basically have the same hardware specs, because both company indeed bought the same hw design from a 3rd party company.
did they buy it from a chinese company too? would've been a classic
@@helper_bot of course they bought it from a chinese company. I don't think anyone else manufactures phones
i remember jolla being hyped up as the next nokia here in finland by some, then it just sort of never went anywhere. The idea was neat and Sailfish is kinda interesting.
probably a good thing it went nowhere considering the horrible recovery paywall, overengineered and objectively worse than any other solution
Expensive (at that time), bad software, Android apps barely worked and bad hardware. Overall a disaster phone and OS
@@accik The software improved a lot after updates
Still use SailfishOS as my daily driver, really enjoy it even with some quirks that come with it - mostly with few crucial Android apps that do not have (and will not have) native alternatives.
@@Lebeu nice, need to actually give sailfish a go sometime myself too
Maybe if they were actually open then they'd have some more recognition
I take this one with a grain of salt. The phone is both low-production and quite old at this point, and it seems like most of the issue is documentation-related (struggling to get Telnet to work on macOS is a macOS issue as far as I'm concerned, being a Linux user.)
It is really interesting to see inside of a Jolla phone, having heard about Jolla and Sailfish OS on the sidelines of Linux phone conversations for years, but never actually seeing a phone running it live.
Yeah most of the other hassle sounds similar to the crap you need to do to get something like finding the right version of Odin for a Samsung phone and screwing around with drivers on Windows. But yeah it's a shame they went the "anti-theft by creating e-waste" route. It could've just as easily just had an option to wipe the storage to at least prevent exposing personal data, but not creating trash.
@@Aeduobut it's in fact an Apple way to phones with famous activation servers they go
@@Aeduo uh no, fuck you. If you've stolen my device it's not yours to reset. If I'm running a clothes shop, it's my fucking right to put ink packs on the clothes I own. If you try to steal them I don't give a fuck whether you can wear them after the packs blow or not; you don't fucking own them. If you take issue with that from an environmental standpoint, maybe don't steal shit.
If I went out of my way to enable a security feature on my device to prevent resets, you don't get to play the victim because you stole my device and can't reset it.
@@Aeduo Its hardly 'anti theft' if the thief can just do a factory reset wipe the data and then have a new device they can sell on to some other unsuspecting person for profit.
I personally would like to see an option on all phones that would permanently erase them and then brick so it doesn't even switch on anymore if stolen. There is a HUGE black market for stolen phones that end up getting shipped to China and resold, and that would kill that market overnight.
You might call it making e-waste but there is nothing to say that the phone can't be recycled still if bricked.
i used to daily one for two years in 2017-18 it was awesome
i had the intex aqua fish(glorified indian variant for the jolla jolla C)
i still have it in pretty decent condition in my cupboard and resently reflashed it and got it to the most recent firmware i could without messing anything up
Honestly, it's not Jolla's fault that MacOS lacks basic command line programs, plus makes it so hard to install them.
That was my thought. A lot of the whining was due to MacOS, not the phone. Of course the developers would have used Linux...
Still, what a pita.
@@davidmaxwaterman Well, two days ago I helped someone SSH into another machine from their MacBook. Zero problems actually.
@@graealex ssh is not telnet.
@@davidmaxwaterman oh yes, you're right - it required telnet, so plain text transmission
What I want to know is why the fuck is telnet not available by default?
The Jolla phone was discontinued in 2020 7 years after it came out. Sailfish os is only available in the European union, united kingdom, Switzerland and Norway and outside of the authorized countries is prohibited. The last thing is you can only install sailfish on supported Sony Xperia devices (except for the Planet Gemini PDA).
I hate that... I wanted to try it so bought a compatable Sony but they won't sell it to me..
@@zakofrx Use VPN or proxy server in supported area to access their site. That's how I bought it.
Jolla managed to somehow to be worse than Apple when it comes to locking down software. Give Apple credit where it's due at least you can download the iOS package and reflash without sending your device away.
My parents said if I get 50 subscribers on RUclips, they would buy me a Phone for recording and content..
@@xItzNellywhy would the parents need the subs for just a phone
@@revertfellpapyrusfandeunde4380 because spam
@@RadioMartyT1B oke
I do think this is more due to incompetence rather than maliciously being a PITA though, unlike Apple.
I was a huge fan of Nokia's N900 which used the Maemo OS which I believe was part of the foundation for Sailfish OS as it felt very advanced for its time and very open, it's such a shame to see how poor the recovery options are on the Jolla Phone
While the telnet situation is a bit odd, the troubles in the start of this video are Apple/Mac's fault. Isn't it great how complex they make simple things?
this is not true.
@@nnnnnn3647 as someone who's had to setup multiple development environments on mac systems over the years, installing apple's xcode cli tools is simple, just horribly slow and bloated. Not to mention the versions of tools like git and python are frequently out of date. These are not issues on Linux or even windows, as they provide standard, open, and modular ways to add necessary dev software to a system.
@@nnnnnn3647 ur mom
@@nnnnnn3647 You didn't watch the video, did you.
@@rog2224 you didn't.
That phone seems like the perfect device for secret agents. It's so secure that even Hugh tried to fix it
Did you even watch the video
@@jonatan_leandoer96do you watch the video? Like there is he wrong?)
Mission: Impossible
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
I think the other issues are quite valid, but there really isn't an issue with a using telnet, its a really standard protocol.
they aren't valid either. This is an opt-in security feature the true owner of the device went out of their way to enable. It's no different to setting a password for your bios or using LUKS encryption on your hard drive. An educated user used the tools they had availiable to secure their device, that device was stolen, and the security measures worked - locking out the unlawful owners.
If you owned this device, but it was then stolen from you and sold to some Bue Heffries over eBay, would you want him (or the thief, looking to get maximum resale value) to be able to overwrite the phone easily and just start using it afresh?
Some people might answer both ways, and perhaps buy different phones based on their answers, but I don't think it's a cut and dried topic that should morally only be answered with I get to wipe a boot loader 100% of the time every time for every phone, whether it's running FOSS or not.
I would hope that the thief instantly resets the phone before he thinks to retrieve any personal information like passwords from it! Not sure why anyone would consider locking out factory reset to be a security feature...
@@EdKolis no because they shouldnt be able to sell your stolen phone
@@MinecraftPlayer-tl5lxI'd rather my stolen phone be sold than thrown away
IIRC, most of Sailfish OS was actually Open Source, except for (among other minor stuff) the Android emulation layer, which was actually developed by another company and licensed to Jolla and the main impediment to freely distributing the OS images.
afaik, the entire UI is closed-source, as well
was gonna buy a copy for my xperia to try switching to it, but that successfully turned me off the idea :/
@@danielromero4640 Some UI components are closed source but most of the UI is very much open and easily editable QML files and there are a whole lot of patches to customise the look and behavior.
I tried it but I ended up switching back to android because of many bugs and missing nfc. @@danielromero4640
I can't believe that Jolla could be this stupid to lockdown basic functionality, let alone lock software images behind a paywall, this business model reminds me of how EA charges for every little thing, I just can't with these types of companies, nowadays, SMH...
Sailfish os is good. You probably don't even realize the Jolla phone was discontinued in 2020 and it's the first and only phone Jolla made. All of the other devices you need to have supported devices and they're all supported Sony Xperia devices (except for the Planet Gemini PDA)
@@delusionante yeah, if you buy a stolen device that the real owner locked behind a password, and you don't have the password, you can't get in. It's sorta like if you go to someone ELSE'S front door and try to turn the knob, it won't open. Now this might be hard to understand, but see this isn't some massive corrupt conspiracy by lock makers of the world! See, locking out people who don't own the thing behind the lock is the point of locks. You don't own it, you don't get in.
The owner of the device specifically enabled a lock for the bootloader, the device was stolen, the unlawful owners cannot access it as a result of the bootloader locks, and now you jackasses are blaming the company because you want your rightous indignation.
@@delusionante read the comments, it seems the bootloader PIN is an opt-in feature rendering the device useless in case of theft. This phone was probably stolen from the original owner and resold.
I bought this phone back in 2013 when it was new, and it was one of the nicest phones I had. I also think its much more sensible to have a no-frails telnet server than vendor specific sketchy recovery. I didn't need any custom programs to use it other than a telnet client (sorry MacOS users...). that way I unlocked mine twice because I still known my PIN code anyways. Also I suppose this phone was stolen once and hence the PIN code is not known. It would be pretty short sighted to call this phone the "worst" phone ever.
can you confirm the pin is only numbers? and if so how many?
@@Locomamonk look at the lockscreen, it only asked for numbers.
Every idea of a new mobile operating system trying to disrupt the market as a new big thing, failed only on one aspect... And that is the app support.
Jolla did make a noise with their Sailfish OS back in days, so much so that I flash it on my phone. With all bells and wistles, what's disappointing is that it's merely a good looking touch based OS with some good gesture support, that does a little more than what any burner phone could do.
Regardless, using it was refreshing.
really wish modern phones would have cameras that were flush with the back again, it's OK to have a big camera module, make the rest of the phone fit the size either with better heat dissipation hardware or a super increased battery capacity, idc how, but I hate the camera bumps and especially apple and samsung for making them the norm
Heck yeah. I think the entire camera module bulging out is a ploy to make us buy phone cases. Or something. IDK.
To be fair you can solve this pretty easily by buying something like an otterbox case (or any other case that doesn't include a raised camera bump) my pixel 6 looks very nice in it's case and sits flush on the table with it, makes it an absolute joy to use
Agreed. And the case argument is utterly stupid. If I have to put a case on a phone to make it usable, the phone shouldn't get any credit for being thin because it's not thin anymore, is it? And that extra bulk of the case adds NOTHING. I'd rather have a phone that's thicker from the start, with a flat back, bigger battery, headphone jack, and SD card slot. Instead I spend extra money on a case and get only one of those things out of it.
@@mjc0961 It adds the ability to drop your phone without breaking the screen or back glass.
Well you're not too bright if you're using a flagship iphone or samsung without a case. But it is an unattracive design having this tumor sticking out the back of the phone on one side.
Wow what a rabbit hole of disappointment! Respect for giving it a red hot go Hugh 👏
I used this phone daily around what, 2013-2017 or so. I actually love the native interface very much- much better and more consistent and more convenient than what Android has. Plus it had good security, privacy, proper Linux underneath (not the castrated/abused thing Android has), best terminal app ever, it had a lot of things going for it. Native app selection was poor, Android compatibility sucked, but there was quite a bit of potential. Too bad the software stagnated (not enough development or funding), it was never opened up completely, and hardware got too old to continue using it, and no new mobiles were released.
If it's a closed garden, is it really linux?
@@ExtraThiccclinux is just the kernel so technically yeah
That is the thing. When you have the freedom, you're also free to install non-free software. Getting android app compatibility is basically the one important thing for any emerging phone OS. Even F-Droid marks "anti features" but doesn't stop people form releasing closed source apps on the platform.
And lack of OS updates is more a lack of demand. I recently saw that the ancient Galaxy S3 has unofficial Android 13 support via LineageOS. So if there is interest, updates will come.
i have some interest in this phone, as it was developed (as far as I know) by the team that created MeeGo OS for Nokia, which was only used on my (and TheMrNokia Abdulla Zaki's) favourite Nokia phone, the N9. Strange that a company that trumpets their open-sourceness should make something so locked-down. Another great video, thanks Hugh!
they didn't, this is a lockout feature the actual owner of the device enabled to protect their device from theft. He bought a stolen device that the owner enabled additional security on and is blaming the company that he's locked out of it.
Meego was a godsend on my aspire 1 netbook with the awful ssd and the truly terrible linux monstrosity preinstalled on it. Meego made it very pleasant to use as a sort of proto chromebook. They stopped supporting meego and released some other os that I forget the name of which was a bit too much for that poor netbook unfortunately.
regarding the EVT/DVT thing, as those are typically used to describe later prototype builds, it's not necessarily uncommon for designs to not actually change between then and mass production, but it's definitely unusual for them to not change the silkscreen between builds lol
Telnet problem looks like a mac issue, on ubuntu worked first try😅
Mac really doesn't work with anything Linux and there really are no Mac experts that can help you. Most support is by novices who have little understanding of computers in the first place.
Mac, a Unix like OS and telnet is not built in? What kind of crap is this Apple?
@@JoeLinux2000not really, he just needed something to connect to a server from the terminal. Apple should have a program to do this simple task.
@@JoeLinux2000The Unix components of OS X/macOS, inherited from BSD, do have some incompatibilities with Linux, but not as many as you might think. In this case, Homebrew (a package manager) only requires the Xcode command line tools, rather than a full installation of Xcode. Once the requirements are met and Homebrew is installed, GNU Netutils (the same package that comes with many Linux distributions) can be installed without any problems.
@@manuelvillalba9644telnet binary was indeed included and was placed under /usr/bin until macOS 10.12 but Apple removed it from later releases. idk why :/
Jolla had a promise written on the box to provide the source code for the OS for anyone and they did follow up with the promise when I emailed them and asked for the source code back in the day. I think you still can get the source for free and flash it, but if you want the version with the Android compatibility, that costs due to licencing from Google. I'm not sure though.
My dad had one and used it for quite a while but it got bricked somehow and it sat in a drawer for many years. At some point I picked it up and factory resetted it, don't remember how but it didn't involve a computer. The interesting part is that it resets to the version of SailfishOS it was shipped with, not the one it was running on. I believe we still have it working somewhere, but of course it doesn't make much sense using it in 2023.
That might explain why some Android devices can use older versions of Sailfish as a custom ROM, but without Android app compatibility
@@MarkusMaalso you just play around with your jolla (this is a serious manner) and maybe it will actually reset it
Android is FOSS there is no license fee that you have to pay to Google to use Android on your phone. If you had to pay a license fee i suspect there wouldn't be nearly as much custom roms floating around on the internet for Android phones as there are.
If there was some licensing from Google I doubt it was for official Android support. Otherwise it wouldn't have been such a PITA to install Play Store and Google Services. IIRC they couldn't even give the installation instructions officially, so the instructions were posted as forum posts for every major version.
3:19 So all that messing with Mac OS X was just to have telnet that works? That's more a testament to how broken the OS is than a problem with the phone (ignoring the problems you had after this once you had a working telnet).
This looks openable. Would love to try.
The only examples I could find of the code were 5 digit numerical only (Someone please correct me).
If the number of tries reset on telnet disconnect, it could be easy to have a script try all possible codes and stop on the correct one.
If they don't reset on telnet disconnect, you already found the perfect workaround. Lab power supplies can be automated, such that the battery power cycle and button presses are done by a script, to get the device into recovery mode with new tries remaining. On the other hand, the microcontroller that "presses the buttons" could also switch the battery power easily.
Would love to play with this thing. I do have the required hardware but never got to use the remote control feature of my lab supply.
5 digits might be the minimum required but you can use a longer code, as I did on my Jolla and still do on my Xperia 10 with SFOS.
@@Fetusgi thanks for updating me! Is that numerical only, or are alphanumerics possible?
@@Chrismettal Today, you can use alphabets if you explicitly choose to use the keyboard instead of the default numpad it offers while setting it but I don't believe that it was yet available with the last update for Jolla, so it's most likely all numbers.
They actually did release their firmware image, but under a different name. It was a collaboration of Sony and Russian Mail(???) and the modified system image "Approved by Russian Federal Security Service" that included some apps that a Russian would need, for example "Gos Uslugi" was uploaded as "AuroraOS". It's entirely based on SailfishOS, except it actually in development and active beta testing now.
With a micro controller you could create switch off-on for the battery and create a script / program that connects to the phone and tries one code after another. Might take a few days depending on the startup time but would be a interesting project. (assuming it's only numbers of course)
Unless the microcontroller has fused switchs..
I immediately thought about it, I'm sure it's possible to JTAG into the phone, or even write a simple script that would enter one code after another in the terminal without having to JTAG. Raspberry Pi, or even an Arduino could switch the battery, maybe even something as simple as an ESP32. That's a thing to think of @HughJeffreys
If this setup did happen, the other thing worth mentioning is that the vast majority of the 10,000 possible phone unlock codes never get used. Most people will use some meaningful date. If you know where it came from, country-wise, you can determine what date order (day-month or month-day) is used there, and now you've got the codes down from 10,000 to a significantly more manageable 366.
@@vaguerantbut if the person using the phone forgot the password, it means that it is unlikely he used any birthdate as his password.
I'm sure someone else will have pointed this out but: modern macOS ships with nc AKA netcat, which can be used as a telnet substitute.
The pin is a 4 digit number and you can only get it by bruteforce or by buying a new phone of the same model and returning the old one as factory damaged
Won't they check the SN?
Won't they see its not "slightly used"?
Isn't there a limit on how many times you can enter an incorrect pin?
Do they still have a 10yo phone in stock?
@@Skrychi they don't have the phone in stock, they don't usually check if it's used and there is no limit in the pin tries I did it once long time ago
How would you approach a brute-force?
@@Alias_Anybody for people swift enough to write scripts, they'd have to install a switch between the battery & phone to reset & then run the next iteration.
@@MilesProwerTailsFox Exactly, so your solution wouldn't work today unless you're mad enough to grind for the pin of an outdated phone
Oh come on, this is like testing the iPhone 4 in 2023. That's a 2013's phone. Gotta try the Xperia 10 III at least. I've a 10 mark 1 and it's not so crucial bad. Some apps doesn't work, the browser sometimes is outdated, but it's a great OS with much better gesture then Android :)
and it's EUROPEAN!!
This gives me bad flashbacks to "Enter PUK code" triggered in the old Nokia 1100 series when you mess up the lock code too many times
Apple: Hey, that gives us an idea. Write that down, write that down.
**copies the individual screws having different thread pitches and the requirement to pay them to factory reset the phone.** 😂😂😂😂
Apple already has something like it.. icloud/fmi locking your device is unbypassable in modern iphones, even if you try to wipe it.
@blastingoff They'll copy the screws that have different thread pitches, make it different for each screw hole. 😂😂
Then they'll make it so that you have to go to them everytime you want to factory reset your phone. 😂😂
Apple is horribly incompatible with anything Linux, even though Apple OS is actually very similar to BSD.
MacOS uses XNU(Based of Mach) and most linux software can be easily recompiled
@@blastingoff Thankfully on older iPhones iCloud protection can be bypassed
I wouldn’t buy a phone second hand if the seller doesn’t know the pin.
It's not great, but I don't think you should conflate your difficulty with MacOS and the problems with this phone. Telnet was removed a while ago for good reason.
When one has zero idea what device and OS one is dealing with, but still isn't embarrassed enough to trash it right away as the worst thing ever due to one's own ineptitude, a video like this is the result.
I bought a Firefox phone around the same time as this one, it was a lot more friendly allowing you to flash any Android OS from the time or just update the installed OS. Very low tech but was quite quick and simple to use, if I had to use it as my daily driver I wouldn't have minded.
These Jolla phones supposedly supported removable back covers which could be sliding keyboards, controllers etc which probably explains the switch to detect the back being open - it's a switch to detect one of these being slid out. Anyway there is a 2015 talk called "hacking the jolla" on speakerdeck which could lend some insight into the pin you need to type
we had some solar powered back cover, some magnetic recharge cover, a sliding keyboard (the most famous one) and the official covers that were changing the phone atmospheres (wallpapers, ringtones and so on), you just had to attach it to the phone
we also had some official covers that let you watch cartoons or browse fashion catalogues
there were more things planned but never materialized due to jolla stopping production
That speaker deck is interesting.
Mhm! They called it: "The Other Half".
They'd detect different covers with different colors and fears and automatically download themes/drivers that paired well with them.
Old linux phone: Nokia N900 with Maemo - a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to compete with Apple and Android, and that strategy failed for complex, institutional and strategic reasons.
I respect the idea of using other OS than Android.
I love the rushed comments where they try to pretend they watched the video.
3 minute old comments left on a 8 minute video that was posted 4 minutes from when I clicked it.
And then when you watch the video, you realize they most certainly didn't. Lol
Great video Hugh, such a shame that the phone was locked down so ridiculously and that you couldn't even re-image it.
Wonder if someone could reverse engineer it and fix it.
I’d argue that’s actually a pretty cool way to give the middle finger to resellers of stolen devices. Said that, they should provide a more flexible way to unblock the device, like by using some recovery code specific to the device and shipped with phone. For second-hand users, they should ask for this code (and validate it) before buying a used unit.
I used to read all the comments in a video before watching. Nowadays I watch first then read a few comments. If something really stands out and I know a good answer, then I decide to reply.
@@StaffyDooIt's also a middle finger to people who want to re-image their own phone that they paid for and a huge pat on the back for anti-consumerism.
My parents said if I get 50 subscribers on RUclips, they would buy me a Phone for recording and content..
@@StaffyDoo Or middle finger people who forgot their code, or inherited/gifted a locked phone, or unknowingly bought one on facebook. They should offer free unlock to anyone unless it is actively blacklisted as stolen by someone with proof that they are the owner.
If you are interested in SailfishOS, it could be installed atop of Lineage on many modern phones, Mi A2 or 1+ 6 for example
Darn. That phone may probably never be unlocked. Hopefully I'm wrong. 💀
Then the securityfeaturss worked
Wow, a removable battery. Good times (and if only I could say the same for the rest of the phone)...
This reminds me of Huawei,who as of 2017 decided to block all bootloader unlock attemps making you go to an authorized service if you have a problem with the firmware
Exactly, and that means I'm stuck on Oreo on my P10. Latest security patch was in May of 2021 :(
I don't understand why a person with this level of technical knowledge buys a locked phone and tries to go through all the trouble. You could spend yourself hours of messing around with macOS and the RNDIS drivers (which I could install without any problems on all of my Macs) and just use a free operating system called Ubuntu, or any other flavour. It would be plug and play... EDIT: 3:20 Ah, you finally realized it.
I'm wondering if you can find a used motherboard and swap it out.
@HughJeffreys I'm guessing you tried all the default PIN codes, right? (0000, 000000, 1234 or 12345)? You'll be amazed how many times these work!
I would be very very disappointed if he didn't try them.
@@gentle285 So true. Hugh is the master of anything IT, so I'm guessing he probably did. Always worth double checking though! 🙂
I wonder if this unit's unlock instructions don't match because you have an internal design validation unit.
Absolutely not justifying this phone - but as someone doing what you do, "I have a Mac and damn it I'm going to use it" may not be the most reasonable approach. I'd have expected that you have a Linux and a Windows box/laptop lying around just for cases like this given that these fringy Android phones barely support Windows, let alone macOS.
This was my favorite phone, really loved how they kept supporting it for so long
This was great man! The no ownership statement was intriguing. I'd have to guess that with no ownership, comes with it, no theft!?! 😅
mine also died for to the same reason, literally forgot the pass to root, but the hw was also on its last breath
Maybe there's a work around on that lock. Like on modern vivo units where if you forgot the passcode, you need to short 2 pads on the board while entering recovery for it to work without looking for a passcode🤔
Yeah, there's also something like this on Qualcomm boards. They're called test points if I remember correctly. Shorting them out then turning on the phone makes it boot into EDL
For the targeted audience this system makes sense. Enterprise and governments love boot locker locked devices and not giving third parties a way inside the phone without passcode. Using MAC when you had access to Linux to do this is like trying to flash IOS with Linux.
All modern phones let you either unlock with pin or factory reset without pin (wiping all data). This approach makes sense from a security standpoint and from a end user standpoint. It happens so often that you buy a phone second hand and the owner didn't bother to reset it.
the target audience was Nokia phone users when jolla was launched. it was made by Nokia employees that were fired when Microsoft took over Nokia. This phone wasn't directed at government employees or secretive businesses.
@@SergeeeekThere are argument in favor and against. Easy unlocking means less e-waste, but it also helps thieves. As an example.
@@graealex turning devices into e-waste to combat thieves is too high of a price.
@@graealex Thieves aren't going to care about reflashing. They're going to break your phone down for parts and sell the screen, battery, whatever on ebay. Or the whole thing in its "permanently locked" state for spare or repair. [x-files theme plays]
Jolla phone seems to have a even higher level of security than Apple and blackberry 😂😂
Reminds me of BlackBerry OS 10. Beautiful operating system (compared to this) but so locked down it was actually getting stupid. Unless you managed to steal RIM's BBOS 10 encryption key good luck unlocking the bootloader and flashing a custom ROM - Even though the phones had near identical specs to competing android devices at the time and even ran an android sandbox.
That was the purpose of BB - to be secured to the max. Even if you did a full hard reset and it was connected to your account, you weren't able to turn it on without logging in. The OS was so good that it didn't need any custom OS. I've had a Q5 for 2 years as my work phone, it was a fantastic phone with fantastic OS and fantastic keyboard. It was so good that when I left the company I paid them for the phone so that I could keep it. It was stolen later and after a few years someone bought it in a pawn shop, the new owner contacted me over Facebook (the e-mail it was connected to contained my name) and guess what - the phone was still fully locked.
@@piotrkubiec5549 Yeah but it makes what is beautiful hardware pure landfill now as the Android 4.3 sandbox BBOS10 runs is good for nothing. I believe BB10 os is is some varient of BSD but unless you have an encryption key that allows root files to be editied (which i'm pretty sure even ex-blackberry employees don't even know) they're useless.
@@piotrkubiec5549 I feel like BlackBerry should of somehow given you the encryption key via a paywall (like this) along with providing your BlackBerry OS 10 account and proof of purchase of the original device.
Someone just defeated Apple in repairability🎉🎉🎉
No part of it is bad for repairability.
For security, and dumb people forgetting security details proof, it's not good. But that has nothing to do with repairability.
@@wyterabitt2149 locking down software is anti-repair Imo
If I had the hardware and software, I would remove the storage part of the chip and try to pull the OS off with that, maybe even unlock it.
Thanks for spending the time to provide us content
I actually tried to daily drive a OnePlus One running a community developed port of Sailfish a couple years ago. While I enjoyed using the operating system, I was missing a few features, for example the Android compatibility layer from the paid version. It had one of the most unique yet intuitive interfaces I’ve used in a long time, and the third party repositories were helpful for a few edge case things, like a few cyber security related tools.
Overall it was a fun experience, but I’ll admit it was far from perfect. While I probably wouldn’t daily drive it again, it was an interesting experiment that I don’t regret in the slightest.
Imho at the time the commercial version was ahead of Android for a very short period of time. Then Sailfish kinda stalled and Android didn't.
5:00 -- Is anyone else waiting for the forthcoming phone with a self-destruct mechanism that is triggered once the outer shell is removed? The ultimate in anti-repair technology!
Dont give them ideas
The Apple iPhone 15 starts at $3499
Everytime he said "horrendous" it felt like someone's tickling me from the inside 😂
I would love to see you do a video on the pinephone pro an actually open phone that was made relatively recently.
Did you contact Jolla support? Although you shouldn’t have to, it would be interesting to see what they say before judging too harshly.
Jolla is actually pronounced 'Yolla' ( J in Finnish is pronounced as a Y )
Nice work Hugh. This was a phone that i was after for many years..... jolla in itself was touted to be an OS to beat all OSes although support in this fashion is not so. us Aussies do get a kick in the guts with Euro prices for some decent odd world devices.
Jolla wanted to bring back alive Nokia's MeeGo Os. They failed miserably.
can you help me with samsung galaxy tab reflashing ? i have lot of bad time with truing to fix it :(
I had to look up HoRNDIS. It's a USB tethering driver. Microsoft created the Remote NDIS standard for USB networking devices and it works by serializing the NDIS driver semantics over the wire. It's somewhat sketchy in that you need so sign an NDA to implement it completely. Even though Microsoft has some sort of licensing deal with Apple which is why Apple implement ExFat Apple seem to have declined to implement RNDIS. Of course it was reverse engineered and implemented on Linux.
The history of Sailfish OS and the Jolla phone is pretty good. I was sooper excited about all of it. The UI/UX had some (for the time) awesome attributes. Old Nokia "MeeGo" for the N9 people (the N9 is a whole other sad story). I see "new" features in iOS and Android that that thing was doing back then. The second piece of hardware was a tablet that had the same "second half" idea they encouraged people to make what they wanted and share. I think they maybe as rare as hens teeth (for a reason). The problem you are facing here seems off. Did you ever contact them about any of this? Or try to make an Xperia Jolla phone?
He shouldn't have brought a Jolla phone this year. Instead he should have brought a supported Sony Xperia device and installed sailfish on that.
Do you mean the WeTab? The WeTab needs registering, therefore the original OS is unfortunately literally useless, since the servers are no longer available.
Hugh Jeffreys greatest hits:
0:34 Buys second hand phone on the internet without knowing condition.
1:10 > 4:44 Realize that its locked and complain that its locked.
5:13 does not fix problem but opens inside of phone.
TZE eND
Others have talked about brute forcing the PIN, but I'm wondering what telnet server and other software is exposed on the phone's IP during the reset process.
Could there be a vulnerability or vuln chain that gets you into the bootloader proper?
My observations about the video:
1 - Sailfish OS
Honestly, sfos is much better at many things than android. I used it myself on my old moto G2 and loved it. Nowadays I just don't use it because I haven't been able to port it to my current one (moto one fusion). The problem with contrast was really annoying, I don't know if they already solved it
2 - Bootloader Locked
This is normal on any cell phone at the time (and even today, if you look at it). I've already taken a lot of cell phones (mainly Samsung ones) that the person blocked, formatted in recovery mode and had forgotten the account password (this is normal here in Brazil). To unlock it, I had to put a sim with a puk blocked and take advantage of a tiny window of time to access the notification bar, search for the RUclips app and access the browser. If the person has not unlocked the bootloader and left the cell phone with a password, the ideal is for no one to be able to unlock it anyway
2 - Telnet
Your skill issue. The problem with rndis is with apple, not jolla. It was always a pain to use this on macOS (mainly for those who wanted to use usb tethering on android to transfer internet to a mac). Even with the problems (mainly security), telnet is widely used not only by jolla but also by any device based on halium as well. It's simple and works well. There's nothing "hacker level skills" about it. Even the last time I tried it (macOS monterey) horndis needed a little workaround to work on macOS
3 - "Truly Open OS"
You are confusing the balls. The open there is the operating system code(it has some closed parts, like the layer to run android apps). It has nothing to do with unlocking the cell phone that someone has locked
4 - Pin in recovery mode
Well, did you want to be able to format without the pin? It works for that
5 - Firmware
You were right there. It's a shame that they don't make his firmware available until today
6 - EVT/DVT
If it passes the tests, I don't see a problem. Not using it is a waste
And that. Honestly, half of the video looks like you just got pissed off because of the rndis/telnet and went out messing with the product. I really like watching your videos, but this one seemed more like a rant
You have to remember that this is a cell phone for those who know what they are buying. The least that the person has to know is that for a cell phone with pure linux they will preferably have to use a linux distro. This is normal for sfos, it is normal for ubuntu touch (at the time) and it is/was normal for distros on top of halium
This was translated with google translate so any issues, I'm sorry
The horrendous software was exactly as advertised, horrendous
To be fair, it's used for RNDIS USB Ethernet adapters, and it worked. It actually installs a kext (driver), so Hugh just probably forgot to reboot. Otherwise it's also needed for USB tethering on Android and for that it has always worked quite well.
Jolla's guide is also horribly written, you just need a telnet connection to the phone, no specific version of HoRNDIS is needed
Imagine I purchased a used, FDE, locked iPhone (probably specified in the ad I there was an unusual deal on) and was shocked I would need to know what I was getting myself in to and trashed the whole product
I have an iPhone X that is network locked! Can you help?
I have never seen a Telnet port in such a way before, it would be really interesting to know if there are any vulnerabilities. Especially considering the numerous test points I see on the mainboard, it wouldn't surprise me if one of the pins provides direct superuser access.
I hope some hacker youtubers offer to take a crack at it for him
Stumbled on this video by chance. :)
Have you tried getting the Samsung stock image from Samsung themselves? Jolla wouldn't be allowed to redistribute that, but should at least link to it. With that, you can go through the Android-way of reflashing a phone via the bootloader using adb/fastboot. Once done, initialize Android, enable Developer Options and proceed to unlock the bootloader again. With that, you can now go ahead and reinstall Sailfish OS. That is, however, if they even provide the image for that, which they should have listed somewhere as this would be part of their updates, I would think.
It is super backwards; but that is the state of "Linux phones" compared to "Android phones". It is incredibly janky.
quite impressed that the 9 year old battery isn't swollen up... something which cannot be said for galaxy batteries from the same era.
oppo also have the problem of recovery factory reset need to decrypt data first for some reason is there any way to bypass
so basically an iPhone
No most likely worse. Many people like IPhones. This is the first Sailfish phone that was once in service that I've ever seen. AOL mail is becoming similar. Another kludge that's hard tg use.
well, if you couldn't flash iPhone OS and the phone was generally mediocre as hell, then it'd be just that.
at least iOS has app support
@@JoeLinux2000honestly yeah yall iPhone users win cause yall only have to plug in a computer with iTunes
ohno i bought stolen phone and i can't unlock it i wonder fucking why
It's literally 9 years old, they were going to completely wipe it and lose all data. If you think that people shouldn't be allowed to wipe stuff that they bought then you are insane
Wonder how they got the pre-production boards, did they have unlimited supply?
They didn't bother changing the text on the board when it went into production. Because who would care about it anyway
I broke my s22 ultra wondred if its worth me fixing it or repalcing it with a new phone it needs a new screen thought I should let you decide
sorry but this is some high tier clickbait to the extent of just flat out dishonesty.
For one, you're blaming the phone for MacOS' shittiness. It's not their fault MacOS can't use telnet easily.
For two, requiring the pin to restore the phone is entirely reasonable as a security measure. This isn't the bootloader being "locked" in the traditional sense. When people say a bootloader is "locked" they mean the user cannot unlock it and it's stuck as-is. This bootloader is "locked" in that the actual owner can just put in the password and unlock it. (hell it's entirely possible it being locked was a choice the original owner made)
You bought a phone not just in spite of it plastering "PERMENANTLY LOCKED" on it's screen, but specifically BECAUSE it plastered "PERMENANTLY LOCKED" on it's screen, and for some reason were surprised to find that it was locked?
'another product questioning the concept of ownership" he says while looking at a stolen phone he can't get into because of security features.
edit : another commentor checked their Jolla phone and confirmed that the pin-lock is something that has to be opted into. In other words, the real owner of their device went into the bootloader and explicitly ENABLED this feature to mitigate device theft. This is an opt-in security feature and it is only locking him out because he clearly purchased a stolen device.
I have one, it's not locked but battery is dead. At the time I've got one these were only available for developers and they were produced in low numbers. I loved the fact that it had 2 sims and removable battery, but there were almost no apps for the phone. Native app development was relatively hard compared to android/ios apps, there was very little users too so there was not much incentive to develop and publish anything.
honestly sailfishOS does a lot of things right and is really, really nice to use, using a lot of UI concepts ahead of its time
There was a phone designed by Latvians called Just5 Spacer, first one was not bad but they all broke very much.
@HughJeffrys The reason why the image is not distributed is because of driver related license issues. I've sent you a message to help you out. Also newer phones like the Xperia 10 iii runs much smoother with SailfishOS and is easier to reflash with image downloadable for free.
I've tried sending you a message on Instagram but apparently you don't accept new messages from anyone.
Jolla should have a repair service where they ship you a recovery server to fix your phone :)
The self-repair option: $600,000 deposit, they ship you 2 entire server racks on a pallet, you need to get an entire separate electrical circuit installed to power it, just to re-flash the OS
0:49 as an Italian, I'm very very surprised to see the Diabolik logo into one of your videos lmao especially well visible inside the box
Me and most of my family used to have this phone (and I still have 3 of them) back in the day. This phone was developed by ex-Nokia employees, but didn't really gain enough users to really take off. They did provide software updates for a long time as you mentioned, but they had (at least for me) a problem with the phone slowing down over time with more and more updates. Also, when hard resetting, you had to go through the update process one by one, from the version your device shipped with updating through every single iteration until you get to the newest version and after all that your phone ended up being slower than a newer phone that shipped with the newer version. I am really disappointed to learn this! The phone did seem promising at first with the android app support and everything... I did use this phone for quite a few years until the experience just got way too sluggish and updates didn't bring any meaningful new things.