Hasta La Gadget!

When it comes to smartphones, there are a variety of different platforms that one can choose from – iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and so on, so the question is with iOS and Android dominating the way that they do, […]

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Jolla’s heavily teased launch day in Finland has already spilled some major news: pricing and specs for the first Sailfish OS handset. The phone seems to be called “The Other Half” — or at least that’s the working title for now — and judging from Jolla’s Facebook page it consists of a colorful plastic case, available in various shades including orange or green, which hooks onto the main chassis containing a 4.5-inch display (of unknown resolution), dual-core processor, microSD expansion with 16GB onboard, a “4G” modem, user replaceable battery and an 8MP rear camera. The chassis recognizes which case is attached and adapts the visual theme of the OS to match, creating “your other half, exactly as you want it to be.”

Perhaps more usefully, the Sailfish operating system will also be Android app compliant out of the box, and we’re currently on the ground in Helsinki trying to discover exactly how developers and users will be able to put that feature to work (while also chasing down the rest of the specs). Meanwhile, there’s an emphatic video message from Jolla co-founder Marc Dillon after the break, seeking the world’s assistance in taking the heritage of MeeGo into a new era.

Update: We now hear that the phone will simply be called the “Jolla.”

Update #2: Jolla has just clarified that 4G means LTE. The display resolution has been vaguely described as “HD,” which to our minds suggests 720p. Furthermore, it sounds like the way the “other half” interfaces with the main body of the device allows for much deeper functionality beyond just personalization. We’ve just added our own video tour with more information.

[Thanks, Toni]

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Source: Jolla

So the rumor is true: the world’s first Jolla Sailfish device will be launching this month. In fact, Marc Dillon, the ex-CEO and now Head of Software Development at Jolla, was kind enough to flash the back of the product at the GMIC Beijing conference earlier today — mainly to emphasize his love for the booming Chinese market. It was very brief — no more than two seconds — but the orange device appeared to be no smaller than five inches in screen size. Dillon only added that the official launch is “coming in a couple of weeks,” so we’ll be keeping an eye out for an invitation in our mailbox.

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Jolla, the Finnish startup comprised of ex-Nokians who left to keep the MeeGo fire burning, has confirmed it will be showing off its first handset next month, and kicking off a “pre-sales” campaign to allow fans to register to buy the phone. Although Jolla has demoed its Sailfish UI in some detail before, it has generally been tight-lipped about its plans for the device’s hardware design — so next month will mean another big reveal.

Jolla had previously pegged the second half of this year for its debut device launch. Today it has confirmed to TechCrunch that this launch timeframe is not changing, despite its intention to show the phone next month. It provided the following emailed statement confirming the pre-sales campaign and noting that the shipping timeframe remains the same:

Jolla will showcase its first device in May. The exact timing of the introduction will be announced later. A pre-sales campaign is expected to start after mid-May. The campaign is currently being planned and further details will be available at the time of the product introduction. The sales start of the first Jolla device will take place during the second half of 2013 as earlier announced.

The pre-sales campaign was reported earlier in Finnish publication digitoday, which ran an interview with Jolla chairman Antti Saarnio. According to the  interview (translated from the Finnish by Google translate), the pre-sales campaign will be a “Kickstarter-style” crowdfunding campaign, whereby early backers can expect to get a device with a few special extras compared to buyers who pile in later.

Jolla told TechCrunch via Twitter that the pre-sales campaign is not a crowdfunding campaign to fund the initial production run, rather “pre-sales is for the fans to sign up their interest and make sure they get the device first”. However the distinction between a pre-sales campaign for fans and a crowdfunding campaign to fund production is a minimal one, and mostly a difference of emphasis.

In its interview with digitoday, Saarnio apparently talks about taking “advance payments” and “pre-payments” from fans who register to buy the device — payments that “will not be so great as to constitute a threshold for the fans” but will be tiered, allowing them to get a more “tailored” phone, the more they pay.

Jolla has not, however, confirmed this advanced payment detail separately to TechCrunch. Its statement suggests it is still finalising plans for the pre-sales campaign. Update: Jolla has now confirmed via Twitter that it will be taking payments ahead of the phone’s launch from fans who intend to buy it. “Yes, there will be various options to show the support and get something in return. Stay tuned for the announcement in May,” it said.

The pre-sales campaign is clearly part of Jolla’s marketing and community-building efforts to spread the word about Sailfish and build momentum behind it. But taking payments ahead of production also makes sense for a startup with limited resources to build hardware and one that is competing in such as fiercely competitive space, against smartphone makers with such huge resources.

Software builders with a can-do attitude should be delighted to learn that the SDK for Sailfish OS has arrived just a few days late of its pencilled-in due date. Jolla, the company behind the open-source MeeGo revival, has crafted versions for developers using Windows and OS X as well as 32- and 64-bit Linux machines. It’s available for free at the source link, with the aquatic caveat that the SDK is just a minnow, but the company hopes you won’t toss it back straight away.

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Source: Sailfish