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Jolla Crowdfunds Its First Tablet
SmartAboutThings writes: Jolla is another rising star in the tech world, having recently expanded its smartphone sales into more countries across the globe. Jolla's Sailfish OS is based on the Linux kernel, and considered by many to be a direct successor to Nokia and Intel's MeeGo and the N9 mobile phone. Its software is based on the open-sourced components of MeeGo. Now, the company is ready to start production of its first tablet. They're crowdfunding it, and they blew past their $380,000 goal in about two hours.
The tablet has a 7.9-inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. It's powered by a 1.8GHz 64-bit quad-core Intel processor, comes with a 32GB of storage, an SD card slot, 2GB of RAM and a 5MP rear camera. Judging by its size, we can see this will rival the iPad Mini the new Nokia N1. While there aren't too many Sailfish-specific apps available, as with the phone, Jolla's tablet will be compatible with Android apps.
The tablet has a 7.9-inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. It's powered by a 1.8GHz 64-bit quad-core Intel processor, comes with a 32GB of storage, an SD card slot, 2GB of RAM and a 5MP rear camera. Judging by its size, we can see this will rival the iPad Mini the new Nokia N1. While there aren't too many Sailfish-specific apps available, as with the phone, Jolla's tablet will be compatible with Android apps.
And the 40 thieves!
The problem with any new product release whether it be from those morons over at AGPTek or alleged professionals over at Samsung is that you have to wait a few weeks for reviews to outline any massive defects. Like a lot of Rockchip tablets (which is the manufacturer behind at least 50 different low end tablets for various brands) had trouble with the DC charging pin snapping off and with the tablet failing to turn on while charging. I don't care what a company's history of reputation is, they can still get screwed over by Chinese part makers lying to them about the quality of one specific part. That or engineering stupidity like for example the bending iphone 6. Because of that, blindly crowdfunding a tablet that isn't even made yet is a VERY bad idea.
Competition, other ideas and implementations can only be good for everybody!
Hope to Thor, that everything works out for Jolla and their vision!
I would be seriously cautious of this. That goal is crazy low.
Come on at least have 4gb
Why does does this awesome thing that's not Android but is oh-that-good at running Android apps bring memories of the OS that was not Windows but was a "better Windows than Windows itself"?
It's great technical feat and should bring you recognition around your collage campus. But if you want to build business you need a compelling reason for people to switch over.
... not bad for a (supposedly) burning platform. Competition is always good and this tablet has good specs, reasonable price, runs an OS that is based on Linux + standard userland and is not made by a company whose main business is mining information about you. I wish good luck to Jolla!
OMG! An Open Source, Kickstarted gadget - complete with shitty features and a too-high price tag! Take my money, please!
Why does everybody add those .9" all of a sudden? (Purely rhetorical question. Don't answer)
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
A 7" LCD is fine for 9:16 or 10:16 display aspect ratios, like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7. Once you widen the screen to 3:4, which some users appear to prefer, you need to extend it to 8".
Awesome specs, looks good, cheap price. This is trés cool. I have been toying around with the idea of getting a Huawei or Asus Cheapo Tablet as a new one, but I think I'll wait until this ones out and take a look at it. Like the Jolla Phone too - but my HTC Desire HD is still holding up, so I'll pass for now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Interesting that the battery spec isn't on par with the competitors listed on their website. Both the Nexus 9 and the iPad Mini have in excess of 50%-more capacity. I didn't see any numbers on expected battery life.
On the other hand, the price and multitasking-approach makes it a very attractive alternative, to me.
And ONLY 2 GB of RAM? What's the fucking point of including a 64-bit processor?
It's idiotic design decisions EXACTLY like this *cough Toshiba Satellite L45 cough* that make me stay away from upgrading hardware.
There's no point to having 64-bit CPU if you don't even give it MINIMUM 4GB RAM. Especially on a QUAD CORE device. Are you trying to memory-starve the damned thing?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Wasn't the year of the GNU/Linux tablet supposed to be a few years ago? I think there was something called a 'Spark' tablet that runs KDE, but that dissapeared in the ether. It would be nice to see GNU/Linux available on mobile devices. This tablet does not look much better than other crap out there. I really hope it meets your expectations as Jolla seems like a cooler company with seemingly nice products. I have not been able to get my hands on one to see for myself.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
They don't explicitly say, but it looks very much like they're using a Moorefield system, like the Nokia N1. The PowerVR graphics in the Moorefield benchmark well on Android, but it's no good.
The PowerVR drivers are closed-source, the company is hostile to open source, and even on Android the performance is inconsistent. See page 2 of Ars Technica's review of the Nexus Player. And in Jolla, the device driver is not native to the operating system, but goes through libhybris.
I refuse to support PowerVR outside of iOS, so I'm going to sit this one out.
Have a nice time.
The current state of x86_64 at Intel means that there is no reason to create a 32 bit only processor, it'd be a huge amount of architectural rework with little benefit.
Now, just because it's 64 bit capable doesn't mean that the OS will be 64 bit. In fact, given the low memory, that might be an option. This is all about SoC cost and low margins. That means each bump in memory really adds up. This isn't the same as just putting a more dense DIMM in a motherboard.
Also, given the target usage, one would have to argue why you would need more than 2G of ram. Seriously, I get away with it on a Windows 8.1 tablet for basic Office, etc. No reason Sailfish won't do even better.