Jolla Releases First Sailfish OS Smartphone

Jolla has released the first Sailfish-OS powered smartphones in its native Finland and has started the process of shipping handsets to those who have pre-ordered handsets.

The company’s Finnish operator partner DNA opened a pop-up store in Helsinki last night, offering 450 smartphones to customers, the majority of which were gifted to those who had pre-ordered.

Jolla has so far accepted pre-orders from 136 countries since the programme started in May 2013, and has sold out its initial batch of devices. Other pre-orders will be fulfilled shortly after the launch and DNA, which has the exclusive rights to the phone in Finland, will begin stocking the device in December.

Jolla smartphone

“Being a Finnish operator, it has been very important to DNA to be able to support a Finnish success story, one in which we see great potential,” said DNA’s business director Cedric Kamtsan. “People have been eagerly awaiting Jolla phones and their long wait will finally be rewarded.”

Jolla was formed by a number of Nokia alumni after the Lumia manufacturer abandoned the open source MeeGo platform in favour of Windows Phone. Its Sailfish OS is a continuation of the MeeGo project and boasts full compatibility with Android.

The Jolla smartphone costs €399 without a contact and boasts a 4.5-inch display, 1.4GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB of storage, LTE support an eight megapixel rear camera. It comes pre-installed with the Yandex app store and Nokia’s Here Maps service.

Sailfish OS

Earlier this year, Jolla’s Marc Dillion told TechWeekEurope that Jolla’s vast experience in creating smartphones, the open nature of Sailfish and the closeness to its customer base would allow it to stand out from its rivals.

“As the first Jolla phone is about to be launched, everything is ready to make the consumers involved,” added Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki. “The launch does not mark the end to product development, it goes on in cooperation with the consumers.”

Sailfish OS is one of a number of open source mobile operating systems looking to make an impact of the smartphone market. Firefox OS, Tizen and Ubuntu Mobile are all at various stages of development and hope to offer an alternative to the likes of Android, iOS and Windows Phone, which currently dominate.

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