Jolla announces its first Sailfish OS smartphone (video)

Jolla has just unveiled its first smartphone, which will go on sale this year for €399 (roughly $510). Running the company’s MeeGo-derived Sailfish OS.

Specification: 

• 4.5-inch display
  
• dual-core processor
• 8-megapixel camera with auto-focus
• 4G LTE (in selected markets)
• removable back covers
• 16GB of onboard storage, and a microSD slot

the phone runs the gesture-based Sailfish OS which is based on MeeGo which received acclaim when it launched on Nokia’s N9 smartphone. However, Nokia abandoned MeeGo and chose Windows Phone as the future OS platform for its smartphones,  following which a group of employees of Nokia’s MeeGo unit left the company to start Jolla and work on their own smartphone.

At present, the launch is limited to a select few European countries, but Jolla says it’ll expand availability in the future. There’s no firm word on a release date just yet, but the company says it’ll ship the smartphone by the end of this year. It’s not clear how the market will respond to yet another smartphone OS. In addition to the big four of Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry, we’re anticipating the release of phones running Samsung’s and Intel’s Tizen OS shortly, along with consumer launches of Firefox OS and Ubuntu-based phones. Sailfish OS (by way of MeeGo) has pedigree in the form of thewell-received Nokia N9, but Jolla doesn’t have the rights to Nokia’s much-lauded Harmattan UI, so has created an entirely gesture-based interface for its phone.

Jolla : SailFish OS by incpak com

Jolla Sailfish UI Hands On by incpak com