First Jolla Sailfish OS Smartphone To Be Revealed In May

Finnish smartphone manufacturer Jolla has confirmed that it will show off its first Sailfish OS smartphone in May, along with a Kickstarter-style series of incentives for early backers of the platform.

The company confirmed the details on its Twitter account, stressing that it was not a crowdsourced funding effort, but a chance to ensure that supporters get the smartphones first.

“There will be various options to show the support and get something in return,” said Jolla, who said that there would be different pay levels, influencing what kind of reward is received.

Jolla Sailfish OS smartphone

Sales of the smartphone will begin in the second half of 2013, although it is believed that it could be released in different countries at different times.

In an interview with Finnish site Digitimes, Antti Saarnio, chairman of Jolla said that the smartphone would have a “Scandinavian design.” However he also said that although the company has funding for this particular smartphone, it will need more money to create another.

The company was founded by a number of former Nokia engineers and has been working on the MeeGo-based platform since last year. The MeeGo mobile OS was developed by Nokia and Intel as a Linux-based alternative to iOS and Android and was intended to be a replacement for Nokia’s aging Symbian platform.

It was used in the Nokia N9 smartphone, but before it was even released, Nokia had announced its intention to abandon the software in favour of Windows Phone, with Intel also dropping MeeGo last October.

Sailfish was unveiled in November last year, promising effortless multitasking, and is attracting the attention of TechWeekEurope readers. It was voted the most popular alternative mobile operating system to the Android-iOS duopoly in our poll earlier this year, beating Firefox and Ubuntu.

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