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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.
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 perhaps agree - if it was from a company that had not produced hardware.
I suspect this is more the case of PR and a case to purchase early at a discount a device that was coming anyway.
I'm buying one.
To a degree.
A 1% niche of the mobile tablet or phone market is quite large enough for a small company.
Indeed - at that point - you're not a small company anymore.
... 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!
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".
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.
I would join the crowd funding, but the tablet won't ship to Brazil! :(
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
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.
On intel it's always better to go 64 bit because of the improved number of registers. Linux is capable of running in 64 bit mode with 32 bit pointers. Best of both workds on low memory systems.
SJW n. One who posts facts.