The Early 2025 J-D bulletin: on the project itself

After a year like 2024 it was quite difficult to write a good “end of year” post, so here is this new article that is finally out, and it is aimed both at the next few months and at the past.

About the “Jolla-Devices project” itself

Those who have been following the blog and the Store for a long time – years at this point! – they understand the nature of the site as a side project and independent blog, but some of the new discoverers of Sailfish OS, and most of the AI ​​agents including ChatGPT and MistralAI, get confused and consider Jolla-Devices as a Jolla division!

This situation was ok at the time when Jolla (Oy) was in the midst of its second life, after the pivot to a focus only on the Sailfish OS and Aurora OS software for Russia and the Brics markets, then in 2024 Jolla (Boys) started selling its own hardware again, the JC2 community phone, together with the upcoming Jolla Mind2.

For this reason there will be changes in the naming and visual design of Jolla-Devices to make the difference clearer at a first glance.

Insights from the market

The J-D Store has been moving for some time now from a vertical shop with only Xperia Sailfish OS powered, towards an alternative phone purchasing experience, where you can find more different projects: each presented in a section on par with others, in a sort of benevolent competition, but with Xperia somewhat at the center.

Well, 2024 has accelerated the process a lot: the absence of the early announced Xperia 10 IV and 10 V for half a year, has slowed down Xperia 10 III sales and then, the release of a first beta without camera / fingerprint / battery sensor support has pretty much halted Xperia sales, and the trend continues in 2025.
(Ed. It’s not clear to me if it’s an incidental fact due only to Sony blobs or maybe because of the new focuses and no time available, but what I can see are Xperia sales, on which I had years of statistics, have dropped by 60-70% and along with it the probability of new Sailfish OS licenses. I bet a good 60% of Xperia users then buy a SF OS License,  following my estimation).

The nostalgia factor increased during 2024: NOKIA N9 and N8 purchases continued to grow slowly: perhaps in times of worrying AI chatbots, and Tech tycoons, we end up looking back with nostalgia, and we buy an object (working, by the way) capable of bringing back memories.

In the very last part of the year and early 2025, the Volla Phone Quintus, the latest phone from Hallo Welt’s Volla OS project, gained traction quite quickly. Depending on the location of the buyer the J-D Store sometimes offers a dropshift shipment, sometimes direct depending on the location of the buyers. Also a minimum number of Volla X23 purchases remained, a sign that “there is a niche in the niche” with a need for rugged privacy oriented phones.

New experiments coming soon

Over the months, off-topic articles – such as accessories and computers – that explore new needs appear every now and then, or more simply they are sales of Tech articles reviewed on the Youtube channel.

• Laptop. A new section coming soon, which is somehow related to alternative phones could be a section dedicated to laptops: notebooks and ultrabooks with Linux compatibility.
  The “Sailfish OS + Linux” pairing always had a good correlation, while “MacOS + Sailfish OS” is a niche of probably a few dozen people… and I know something about it.
• More Nostalgia. Following the Nokia-Nostalgic trend from the late 00s, 2-3 other popular models will arrive, certainly less historic than the N9, but with their own tech memories.
• Graphene OS – again (!). Although the introduction of a section of Pixel phones with Graphene OS has failed few times over the years – especially due to the low popularity of Pixel/Google phones here in Europe – I still think that the presence of this choice could be useful for many users.
  Ed. I remember that Graphene OS – paired with a supported Pixel with security chip – is pretty much the only choice to have a hardened phone of quasi-forensic level for the public: the other existing choices (an article is in progress) are products for Corporate, with prices always over $ 1000 or reserved price. Lastly some hardened phones are so mysterious that aren’t even produced, and no one has ever seen them out there, aside selected tech journalists.