Jolla's Sailfish OS Smartphone Launches Today

Today, the first Jolla smartphones become available for purchase in Finland, at a launch event set to kick off at 7pm in Helsinki.

Jolla, a Finnish startup that has designed its smartphone around Sailfish OS, a brand new platform based on Nokia’s MeeGo OS, has partnered with wireless carrier DNA for the launch, and also plans on bringing the phone to more markets in the near future. Today, the first 450 Jolla phones will be handed to users who pre-ordered the device, at a pop-up store in central Helsinki, ZDNet notes in a recent article. The smartphone was put up for pre-order with a price tag of €399 attached to it, and should start shipping to users who reserved it in the not too distant future. For those out of the loop, we should note that the handset packs a 4.5-inch IPS qHD display that is protected by Gorilla Glass 2.

Furthermore, it arrives on shelves with 1GB of RAM inside, 16GB of internal memory, and a microSD memory card slot for expansion purposes. On the back, the new device features an 8-megapixel camera with LED Flash, while packing a 2-megapixel front camera. The specs list of the device also includes GSM/3G/4G LTE connectivity, and a battery that can deliver up to 10 hours of talk time on 3G. The phone measures 131 x 68 x 9.9 mm and weighs 141 grams. As mentioned above, Jolla’s device runs under the Sailfish OS, which should prove to be a truly open platform, different from what other mobile operating systems out there have to offer.

The fast and intuitive UI that Sailfish comes with is complemented by the availability of a wide range of applications for the platform, either designed specifically for the OS, or developed for Android. This is possible courtesy of a partnership that Jolla signed with Yandex.Store Android apps portal for the distribution of software to Sailfish OS devices.

Jolla's Sailfish OS phone
Image credits to Jolla

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