With Nokia shareholders voting to approve Microsoft’s acquisition of the Nokia handset business, it seemed like all was over for anything mobile to bear the iconic Finnish taste and pride. Thankfully for the Finns, those disgruntled Nokia employees that left to found Jolla have been working behind the scenes for some time now and they did not take long to come out with something. That Sailfish OS powered smartphone we’ve been hearing of and even seen in the past is now official. The Jolla phone was announced in Finland moments ago and the first 450 units are available to those who pre-ordered them.
The Jolla team partnered with Finnish carrier DNA for a low profile launch as had earlier been indicated and is starting small with plans to partner with a major UK carrier in coming days said to be in advanced stages and the team has also announced that the device will still be available in other markets. The device’s pre-orders that went live some time back saw it ordered across the world (136 countries).
Running on Sailfish OS, the Jolla phone enjoys the new platform’s Meego-based open source nature that makes it easy to port Android apps. Jolla had previously announced that its Sailfish-based smartphones will ship with Yandex.Store as the default app store. Yandex is a Russian Android app store that boasts of over 85,000 apps with all the “big name” apps available. Jolla also licensed Nokia’s HERE Maps to be the default maps and navigation application across all Sailfish-based devices.
The specs of the Jolla phone are as follows:
- Measures 131 x 68 x 9.9 mm
- 4.5 inch 960 x 540 IPS touch screen with Gorilla Glass 2
- 8 megapixel auto-focus main camera and a 2 megapixel front-facing camera
- 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor
- 1 GB RAM
- 16 GB internal storage
- Connectivity & Networks: GSM/3G/4G, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. Bluetooth also available
- 2100 mAh battery
The device will cost 399 Euros
