First look at SailfishOS 4.2.0.19 (Verla)
On August 31st, Jolla has released SFOS 4.2.0.19 to the Early Access subscribers. Let's have a look at what it brings!
Verla?
According to Wikipedia : "Verla is a well preserved 19th century mill village and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996"
As usual, I'll focus on the main new features and improvements, and will also cover specific topics about the Sony Xperia 10 II I'm using.
New features
Android App Support
- Wifi connection of Android apps has been improved
- Updated to 10.0.0.54 security patch level (~05/2021)
- More generally, I found that launching an Android app is faster than before
Home Screen
- "Sticky mode" added to App Grid: by swiping up and holding the App Grid, you can pin it and launch the App directly:
Browser
- Toolbar improved:
- adding access to history
- possibility to add a webpage to the grid viewer directly
- Improved Wifi captive portals management
- Overall the web browser in SFOS 4.2 is much faster and smoother compared with even 4.1 - the Changelog does not mention any major change, but a lot happened under the hood, and I found using it a much nicer experience now.
Calendar
- Calendar monthly view now includes colored dots reflecting events/calendars they belong to:
Camera
- SailfishOS now takes advantage of multiple cameras, such as on the Xperia 10
II:
- x1 (default)
- x2 (telezoom)
- x0.6 (wide-angle)
The pictures above have been taken from the exact same place and you can see the differences clearly between default / telezoom / wide angle. (oh and you can also see the very nice PineTime smartwatch :)
Misc
- Sharing nows opens a system dialogue, making the UI more consistent:
- Accessing the phone via SSH is a lot more reliable and works well now. Before that update, it would work roughly 20% of times, and would otherwise refuse the connection (forcing me to use Etherner over USB).
- Predictive input now available for Xperia 10 II (for licensed users) - yeah!
- Internet sharing for Xperia 10 II now works (didn't work with 4.1)
Conclusion
Again, this is not an exhaustive list of new/improved features in Verla - for such a list, please refer to the changelog.
To be honest, when I looked at the translation round for 4.2, I wasn't expecting
a lot from this release.
But Jolla proved me wrong, as Verla is a lot smoother and brings very nice
features such as a better web browser, faster Android App Support, and finally
predictive input for the Xperia 10 II!
Oh, and if you like watching videos, Leszek has published his usual review of SFOS 4.2 here.
Tags: SailfishOS