Jolla, the Finnish smartphone and Sailfish OS developer, today announced that Jolla’s mobile operating system Sailfish OS has reached release 1.0 and is now ready for global distribution. Jolla is also introducing availability of the Sailfish OS experience as downloadable software to devices running Android OS.
A major milestone for the young company. The fourth big update to Sailfish OS will be released early March, at which point the operating system leaves beta and hits 1.0. This fourth update will further improve landscape supports, include visual changes, new camera functionality, and more.
On top of that, Sailfish will be made available for popular Android devices as well, so that you no longer need to buy a Jolla phone in order to use the operating system. Furthermore – and I did not see this one coming – they will release a Sailfish launcher for Android that brings some of the operating system’s unique features to Android.
These men and women are on a roll.
I like what I see on Sailfish, but it is more closed than Android, Mer + Nemo ^a‰ Sailfish. the possibility of a “CyanogenMod” like from Sailfish is none, Jolla uses the half open source strategy at the platform level, instead of Android at the applications and services level
They have promised to open all the code at a later date, if I’m not mistaken. Personally, I trust them, they have done everything well for now.
You are absolutely correct.
I love the Jolla mobile and plan to buy one to replace my Nokia N900, which also has fewer open source software components than Android, because of its GNU / Linux software and control given to me.
All Jolla mobile phones are unlocked (not tied to a mobile service provider) and come with root access (the user has complete control over the software on the phone). Also, Jolla is trying to have users more involved in the development of the operating system than Google. I know it’s not really your question, but in those regards Jolla is more “not closed” than Android.
(As always, please correct me if I’m wrong.)
Thanks Thom,
Can’t wait to try it out.
… is to release builds for Nexus devices, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4 and 5. It would be a big hit if it could dual boot.
Would like to try the O.S. in my Nexus 5.
So where can I find this demo for my Android phone?
Where can you find it? Why — In the Future! — of course.
FTFPDF:
“Sailfish OS has been developed to be compatible with commonly available Android hardware platforms. Due to this advanced technology, Jolla is introducing the Sailfish OS experience as downloadable software to devices running Android OS. Users can soon start to enjoy the modern, gesture based Sailfish OS in selected Android devices and also renew the lifecycle of their existing older Android devices.”
…
“Jolla will release the downloadable Sailfish OS software in phases during the first half of 2014. First, the UI launcher application is released so users can start to experience the Sailfish user interface in their existing devices running Android OS. Later Android smartphone users can get the full Sailfish OS to their devices.”
Edited 2014-02-21 15:58 UTC
I’m stuck with a phone with a locked bootloader, so I’m pretty excited by the prospect of this Sailfish launcher. I hope I can try out a proper Sailfish phone someday, though. I’m not sure if imported Jolla phones would work on US networks?
You can read the thread “Can the Jolla phone be used in the United States?” here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91821
Summary: Yes, it works in the United States, but only at a maximum of 2G speeds.
…but for someone like me who only uses talk / text / wifi, that’s not a problem.
If I go through with getting a Jolla, that’s a tradeoff I could accept.
Thanks for the link- it was very helpful!
If it can do phone calls, SMS, email, WWW and calendar, and the camera works, it might well be the next OS for my Nexus 4.
Edited 2014-02-21 16:18 UTC
Ubuntu said they’d do the same thing with Nexus devices… yet they have no plans for the Nexus 5.
Hopefully Jolla will run on the Nexus 5.
Expect Sailfish to be runnable anywhere where you can install CyanogenMod, since they’ll probably be using them as hardware adaptation layer.