Jolla's First Sailfish OS Smartphone Starts Shipping

Last night marked an important event in the evolution of Jolla, a Finnish startup that dreams of changing the mobile market, as the first device designed by it has arrived in users’ hands.

The company held the phone’s launch event in Helsinki, where it also handed out the first 450 units of its smartphone, which runs under Jolla’s own Sailfish OS. The phone was launched in Finland in partnership with wireless carrier DNA. Built based on MeeGo, the mobile OS that Nokia has started to develop a few years back in collaboration with Intel, Sailfish promises a different experience than what other mobile OSes out there can deliver. The platform’s UI is gesture-based, and the device comes with no buttons on the front, featuring an “original Finnish design,” as Jolla notes on its website. The software comes with no pre-loaded applications, but users will be able to choose to install apps they need straight from the startup wizard. In addition to the aforementioned interface that takes heavy advantage of swipes and other gestures, Sailfish OS comes with support for natively developed applications and for Android software. Right from the start, users will receive access to over 85,000 Android apps, courtesy of a partnership with Yandex. Furthermore, the platform offers navigation services via Nokia’s HERE Maps.

The platform is still not complete as of now, and it lacks support for features such as DLNA, MMS, and Calendar sync, as the company notes in a series of posts on Twitter. The handset packs some appealing hardware specs inside (such as a 4.5-inch IPS screen, 1.4 GHz dual-core CPU, 4G LTE, and 8-megapixel camera) and also arrives with a series of customization options, courtesy of “The Other Half” smart covers. Put up for pre-order several months ago, Jolla’s smartphone has been reserved by people from 136 markets, but no info on how many devices were booked has been provided. For the time being, however, the company won’t ship outside Europe.

According to Jolla, its smartphone will be available through its webshop for direct sales as soon as all reserved devices have shipped. Unfortunately, no timeframe for when that might happen has been provided. Jolla appears to be confident on its ability to grow and capture market share around the world. It will certainly receive support from people in Finland, especially now that Nokia’s handset division is becoming part of Microsoft. You can learn more on the new Jolla smartphone and on what the Sailfish OS has to offer via the promo video embedded below. You can also sign up for info on the availability of the device on the vendor’s website.

Jolla's phone starts shipping
Image credits to Jolla

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