Sailfish OS: Should you upgrade to the Sony Xperia 10 III
A quick one, as I recently upgraded from a 10 II to a 10 III.
What was wrong with the 10 II?
Not much really, the Xperia 10 II running Sailfish OS can clearly be used as a daily driver, as everything works, including tethering, GPS, bluetooth, the 3 cameras.
The only downside I found was the issue with applications being closed too
often, especially when running Android apps or the stock browser - but that can
be fixed (or at least improved) by tunning the memfree values (see this
article I wrote about
it).
This, and also the fact that the phone can sometimes be slow, especially when having a few applications open - and this has an impact on the overall performances, e.g. the browser laggs, or when on a Zoom call (Android app), it can be painful.
Upgrading to the 10 III
Good deal
I'll spare you the details, but I had a good deal on a 10 III, so I bought one.
I won't be doing a full review of its tech specs, but quickly, compared to the
10 II, what you'll get is:
- more RAM (6 GB instead of 4),
- more internal storage (up to 256 GB, vs 128 on the 10II),
- better camera (albeith the difference is really small),
- includes 5G (which SFOS does not support yet),
- bigger battery (4500 mAh vs 3600).
Other than that, the rest is the same: form factor is identical, there's 18 grams of difference, so completely OK.
First experience
Flashing the 10 III is as easy as any other device, nothing to report here, there are many articles describing how to do it, from Jolla, and I wrote an article about it when I got my 10 II.
Upon booting it for the first time, I could already see the difference in terms of speed: Sailfish OS boots a lot faster, the stock browser is snappy, launching Android applications is almost instantaneous, and I can have 4 or 5 AD apps, along with the stock browser and a few other native SFOS apps - with no issue/slowness.
Things I'm missing
So far my experience has been great, but there are 2 things missing when compared to my 10 II, one of which is super annoying:
- Tethering (Hotspot) does not work, should it be over Wifi or using a cable
- UPDATE December 1st, 2022: it is possible to have tethering if you insert your SIM card in the SIM slot #2
- But this breaks VoLTE and also means you can't use a SD Card
- Only the main camera lens works, the 2 other ones (wide angle and telezoom)
While the camera one is not super important to me (granted, it would be nice to have all cameras working), the tethering not working is a problem, as I use it a lot when travelling...
Wrap Up
So, should you upgrade?
As always, the short answer is "It depends":
- if you're running an older Sailfish X device (X, XA2, 10), then the upgrade is totally worth it,
- if you're running a 10 II and are happy with it (i.e. the memfree tweak works for you), then maybe you can keep it and not upgrade.
Overall, I'm glad I upgraded, since Sailfish OS is a lot snappier on the 10 III, and I'm sure the tethering issue will be fixed - soon® :).
Tags: SailfishOS