Apps I'm using on my SailfishOS Xperia XA2
April 21, 2021 —
Nico Cartron
A quick review of the apps (both native and Android ones) I'm using on my XA2.
My App drawer at a glance
As you can see below, all my apps are contained in 2 pages of the SFOS App drawer.
I am using some folders to sort them a bit, but the most used ones are just on the first page, while the less used ones are on the second page:
Applications
First app drawer page
| Phone | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Obviously, allows you to make a phone call :) | Nothing to complain about: you have a Dialler, history of the
incoming/outgoing calls, and access to "People" (i.e. your address
book). Call waiting is supported, as well as merging 3 calls together - this depends of course if your carrier supports it. VoLTE is not supported on SFOS today though. |
 |
| Messages | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Sending and receiving SMS/MMS | I like this app: even though it's basic, it's well integrated into SFOS, and with 4.0.1, notifications display things like contact photo, making it even nicer to use. |  |
| Browser | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Obviously, a web browser to browse websites :) | SFOS stock browser has long been something to complain about, but with
SFOS 4.0.1 it has been heavily improved, since it's now based on the Gecko
engine ESR60. My personal experience is pretty good - of course, it's still lagging a bit compared with other mobile OS (e.g. Safari on iOS or Chrome on Android are much faster), but overall it is super usable and things should get even better with upcoming versions of SFOS, since the Gecko engine used should be upgraded again. |
 |
| Calendar | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Displays your calendars/appointments and manage them | Basic but it works. I am using it for a bunch of CalDAV calendars and have no issue with it. It's lacking a search feature, which could be useful sometimes, but again the integration with the rest of SFOS is nice (e.g. having your upcoming appointments on the notifications screen is nice). |
 |
| What it does | My review | Picture |
|---|---|---|
| Reading and sending emails | Does the job, but still a little bit basic. I'm still missing the ability to have the emails displayed by thread, which would make it a lot easier to archive them. Talking about archive, an "Archive" button/option would also be nice, rather than having to use the "Move to folder" option. Apart from that, SFOS Email client works well, and even better since the 4.0.1 upgrade. |
 |
| Piepmatz | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| The best Twitter client for SFOS! | What I wrote on the left is self-explanatory! Piepmatz is a super nice Twitter client, which implements everything you need to be able to use Twitter on SFOS: timeline, search, notifications, DMs, etc. It also supports displaying threads, and Sebastian (aka WerkWolf), the developer, is super reactive to update Piepmatz whenever Twitter changes its API or its usage rules. |
 |
| Gallery | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Shows pictures (both taken by the camera, and present on the phone) | Does the job. It's possible to share pictures (e.g. to Twitter or via MMS). The only real annoying thing is that if you have too many pictures, it takes ages to refresh the thumbnails and have the new picture (e.g. one you just took with the camera) appear in the gallery view. |
 |
| Fernschreiber | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Telegram Client | Another awesome app by Sebastien (WerkWolf), also the author of
Piepmatz. Apart from the name quite complex to pronounce (though I don't have any issue as I studied German at school), everything else is super nice and it implements almost all the features of the official Telegram client - I won't list them all as there's too much, but compared with the previous TG client I was using (Depecher), that's like chalk and cheese! :) |
 |
| Sailslack | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Native Slack client for SFOS | Works well, albeit a little bit slow to load initially. Also, randomly "crashes" (especially when losing network/roaming over Wifi) so you have to relaunch it. But apart from that, it's a good client which avoids you having to run Android Slack (using Alien Dalvik, and provided you're on Sailfish X of course) |
 |
| Settings | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Allows you to configure your SFOS device | The layout has been changed with SFOS 4.0.1, and I find it easier with
those 3 pages. Compared with e.g. Settings in iOS, I find what I'm looking much faster (OK, that's also probably because SFOS has less options, but I'm fine with it). |
 |
| ZuTun.txt | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| todo.txt client | I like simple things, and therefore am using todo.txt to manage my todo
list. ZuTun works really well and has nice options to sort/display your todo items. I'm using it in combination with owncloud (Nextcloud sync for SFOS), which allows me to sync it with my desktop. |
 |
| SailOTP | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| OTP (One-Time Password) client | Probably one of the application I use the most on my XA2. It's super simple to use, and the only feature I was missing (search) has been added recently! :-) |
 |
| Stores (folder) | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| App stores (SFOS/Android) | I'm using 4 different app stores: - Jolla store: the official store - Openrepos: alternative store for SFOS - Aurora Store (Android apps) - F-Droid (FOSS Android app store) Most of my apps are SFOS ones, and coming from Openrepos (apart from the stock Jolla ones). I have some Android apps but tend to remove them when I find an alternative. |
 |
| Unused (folder) | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Apps I'm barely using or use from shortcurts | - Tutorial, - Weather (I access it from the notifications screen), - People (I use it from the Phone app), - Camera (I use the hardware key on my XA2), etc. |
 |
| Tools (folder) | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Small tools useful for daily use! | - Calculator: basic but nice,
- Clock: Timers/Alarms/Stopwatch - does the job - Terminal: go under the hood ;) - SeaPrint: print PDF/images to your printer at home - works really well with my HP printer - File Browser: access your files and folders - OKboard: swipe-like keyboard |
 |
| Productivity (folder) | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Similar to the Tools folder | - Documents: read Word/Excel docs
- Media: play music - SailSync owncloud: sync client for Nextcloud - Situations: nice app allowing to automate things (e.g. turn off sound and lower brightness in the evening) |
 |
| ownKeepass | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Keepass client | Another critical app for me :) I sync my kdb database file with Nextcloud ownKeepass is compatible with KDBX4 database formats, the UI is really slick and pleasant to use. |
 |
| Firefox | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Browser (Android) | Even though SFOS stock browser got better, there are still sites which
only work well on FF Android. I barely use it, apart from those sites. But it's of course a pleasure to use :) |
 |
| Pure Maps | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| map/navigation app | I love Pure Maps. It's a little bit complicated to set up and use, but once you're used to it, it's really nice, works flawlessly and the map rendering is in my opinion much nicer than e.g. HEREmaps (Here WeGo). |
 |
| HERE WeGo | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| map/navigation app (Android) | "Why a 2nd one", you ask? Just for this time when I need traffic, which Pure Maps does not include. |
 |
| hutspot | ||
|---|---|---|
| What it does | My review | Picture |
| Spotify client | Brilliant, period. I love hutspot, and you can read my full article about it |
 |
Other apps
- Amazfish: companion app for smartwatches - see my review
- Pass Viewer: simple viewer for PassBook files
- Books: ebook/epub reader
- Imageworks: photo editor and image manipulation app
- Couple of games, all SFOS native
- Passilic: SFOS client for the Pass password manager
- Whisperfish: Signal client
- A bunch of Android apps:
- Revolut
- Joplin: FOSS Evernote replacement
- SportEasy: for my kids' ice hockey club
- Duo Mobile: 2FA
- Slack
- Netflix
Wrap Up
I have a total of 60 applications on my phone: 50 SFOS ones and 10 Android ones.
That's not much when compared with some of my friends, but that's too much for me, and writing this article helped me realise that, so I'll do some cleanup soon ;)
But back to the goal of this article: as you can see, most of my apps are native SFOS, meaning it's totally possible to run SFOS as a daily driver without Android support - although most of my apps are coming from Openrepos, and not from the official Jolla store, but I'm fine with that.
Tags: SailfishOS