Hasta La Gadget!

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

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.

The Nokia N9 was the Finnish company’s first and last MeeGo handset, and so far based on the reviews we’ve come across, many have good things to say about it. So far N9 owners appear to be pretty pleased with their purchase, but the longer they use their device, they are starting to notice more bugs appearing. Unfortunately despite Nokia promising to provide support until 2015, it seems that nothing has been done to address these bugs, some of which causes battery levels to suddenly drop, missing core features in apps, as well as certain apps that crashes on random.

Nokia N9 owners have since launched a petition, asking Nokia to provide them with the support they promised, and to not neglect them despite the focus currently being on Windows Phone. In fact it seems that the petition is merely asking for updates and bug fixes and nothing more, an issue which we assume Nokia should be able to address swiftly if they chose to. At this time of posting there are 362 signatures so if you’d like to get in on the action, head on over to Change.org and sign the petition yourself.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: The 7th Guest: 3 Heading To PC, Mac and Mobile To Give You Nightmares Again, Marvel Unlimited Subscription-based Comic Book Service Comes To iOS,

We recently had the chance to spend time with David Greaves and Vesa-Matti Hartikainen of Jolla and take Sailfish OS for a spin. As you might recall, this open source mobile OS builds upon Mer (a fork of MeeGo that includes Qt) and uses the Nemo framework with a custom UI. Like any decent Linux-based OS, it supports both ARM and x86 devices. The company is also behind the Sailfish SDK which is in the process of being finalized but is still open to developer feedback (the source code is available). After seeing Jolla’s various demo videos and noting some UI similarities with MeeGo (swipes) and, strangely, with BB10 (peek gestures), we were eager to experience Sailfish OS for ourselves.

If you’re wondering why the mobile OS is usually shown running on Nokia’s N950 developer handset, that’s because Jolla employs many ex-MeeGo engineers, so the OMAP-based phone was a natural fit. We were first given a walkthrough of Sailfish OS, then allowed to play with it. Many apps are still being worked on and some are still off-limits (we got in trouble for launching the camera), but what we saw was pretty solid. Take a look at the gallery below, then hit the break for our hands-on video and first impressions.

Continue reading Hands-on with Jolla’s Sailfish OS (video)

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The date we were promised an introduction to Sailfish is here, and it turns out Jolla’s not just targeting smartphones with its MeeGo-based OS, but tablets, smart TVs and other devices, too. Jolla has kept its OS under wraps until now, but it wants Sailfish to be an open-source affair which “will be built through community involvement and participation.” The SDK will be available soon, and we should get a look at the UI during a presentation occurring shortly. We’re assured superb multitasking capabilities, as well as deep personalization and “fast and effortless interaction.” Jolla has said Sailfish will be available for use with “multiple chipset technologies,” and is already supported on ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor platforms. It’s also reported that it’s partnering with Finnish carrier DNA to promote and sell Sailfish smartphones on home turf. The full reveal is coming shortly, so we’ll let you know more as soon as we do.

Update: The Jolla team took to the stage with touchscreen hardware in hand (we also spotted a Raspberry Pi), keen to express how they’ve been working all hours to boot Sailfish on anything they can find. The company called its creation the first truly “open ecosystem,” and said that development will be fully transparent from the outset. While there will be Jolla-branded phones launching, Sailfish is also being offered to handset manufacturers to use on their own hardware. The UI tour wasn’t as in depth as we’d have liked, but “true multitasking” was the main focus. Active programs can be pinned to the homescreen as tiles (in a layout that looks something like BlackBerry 10), which offer some control of the app without it hogging the screen. They also showed off a feature called “Ambiance,” which uses colors from a picture you select to tint the UI. We wish we had more info to share, but right now, we’re all just left wanting more.

Continue reading Jolla’s Sailfish OS promises multitasking, personalization and ‘effortless interaction’ (updated)

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Source: DNA