Jolla: Ex-Nokia Employees Launch Smartphone (MeeGo Resurrected)

mrspoonsi writes "A team of ex-Nokia employees has released the first handset running on a new smartphone platform. The Jolla phone — pronounced Yol-la — is powered by open-source operating system Sailfish, but can run most apps designed for Google's Android platform. The platform — originally called MeeGo — was developed by Nokia, but dumped in 2011 in favour of the company adopting the Windows Phone system. Nokia released just one handset running the software, the N9-00. Antti Saarnio, chairman and co-founder of Jolla, told the BBC in May that MeeGo — now called Sailfish — had not been given enough chance to succeed."

Comments

Come on eds...

[wbr1]

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/11/27/1855217/jollas-first-phone-goes-on-sale

Dupe much?

Re:Good job editors

[phluid61]

Actually, yesterday here in Australia is today in backwards regions like the USA.

*sigh*

[CreamyG31337]

Actually, as an experienced MeeGo developer, this just makes me sad because they won't sell one to North Americans. Nokia did this to us with the N9 too, but at least they sent me a developer device. These guys still haven't released the official GSM/LTE frequencies it supports for some stupid reason, so I don't even know if I should bother trying to import one.

Re:*sigh*

[kthreadd]

Jolla is a very small company and doesn't have the resources to ship to the entire world from day one. I'm sure they will ship to North American customers as soon as they can.

Re:*sigh*

[GNious]

From Jolla's website:

GSM/3G/4G LTE* (Works on 6 continents).

Which doesn't answer your question, but should mean that it works unless you're living in Antarctica :)

GSM Arena says:

2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
4G Network LTE

yeah, probably not trustworthy, but one would hope they have a (semi-)official source for it.

Disclaimer: Mine is in the mail... :)

Is this one bugged by the NSA?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a Finnish company not owned by Microsoft or any other company in cahoots with the NSA, this could be the only smartphone worth buying anymore.

Pro

[MrEricSir]

"Antti Saarnio, chairman and co-founder of Jolla, told the BBC in May that MeeGo -- now called Sailfish -- had not been given enough chance to succeed."

Antti's brother, Prro Saarnio, disagreed.

Re:Had a good run with Nokia

[tiagosousa]

Am sure this new model is an "Android Metoo" phone.

Far fom it! Sailfish has a very distinct feel and it actually goes back a few years, being from the same lineage of Meego and Maemo before it. Check out the main interface features in this short video. And it's a proper GNU/Linux system (as opposed to Android/Linux), if you're into that sort of thing.

Re:N900, not N9-00

[fatphil]

I was internal to the project. I can assure you that comment on wikipedia is bollocks.

We used the hardware numbers (RX- or RM- something), and the code names (Rover, Lankku, ...), we never used the intended/expected public code numbers, as they could change at any time. I have seen an n950 with "n9" stamped on the case, for example.