A couple of months ago, Swedish startup Jolla went to Indiegogo to launch a crowd-funded campaign to build a tablet that runs on its own Sailfish OS. After a few weeks in hiatus, the company is back on Indiegogo with some details about the slate’s hardware.

As earlier reported, the device will have a 7.85-inch display with a resolution of 2580 x 1536 pixels. But this time around, the tablet will have a bigger storage – 64GB, which is up from 32GB on the original device.

Other notable features of the Jolla tablet include a laminated display, built-in gyro and compass and a 4450mAh battery. The Swedish company is also giving its backers a special price of $250 for the slate.

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Remember Jolla? It’s that company that was composed mostly of ex-Nokia employees who released their own smartphone with its own mobile operating system called Sailfish OS. Well, just like Nokia, they’re also building their first tablet – sort of.

The company has just launched an Indiegogo campaign for its still to be named tablet which is expected to launch by May 2015. Similar to the recently announced Nokia N1, the Jolla slate will have a 7.85-inch display with a resolution of 2580 x 1536 pixels and will have an Intel (quad-core) processor.

As the tablet is a crowd-funded project, Jolla is opening a conversation with its community as well as the supporters of the tablet to know which features they want to be incorporated into the device. At the moment, the only sure detail about its specification is that it will be running the latest version of the Jolla’s open-source Jolla OS that runs Android apps and expandable storage via a microSD card.

Jolla expects the first set of tablets to ship by May next year with a retail price of $200 with a $10 discount for the first 1000 customers.

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Sailfish OS hasn’t really taken off as much as Jolla had hoped. In fact, the Finnish company (which is composed mostly of former Nokia employees) had previously made their OS side-loadable with Android possibly to help improve its consumer reception.

But its previous move to make Sailfish OS compatible with Android apps doesn’t mean that it’s completely crossing over to Google.  Today, Jolla started rolling out Update 8 to Sailfish called Tahkalampi, which improves the operating system’s user interface.

Some of the new features included on Tahkalampi involve the following

• Easily switch between open Android apps in the homescreen by tapping on their respective active covers i.e they are no longer grouped into one cover (experimental 1)
• Add shortcuts to webpages in the app launcher area
• Set separate synchronization schedules per mail account
• Upload multiple files via Browser and be able to filter files by file type during file selection
• Define email signature and sender name per account
• Save unsent messages as drafts when messages app is pushed to background
• Search word auto-completion in Jolla Store
• Use stroke input method for writing in Chinese
• Define an end date when creating/modifying recurring calendar events
• Artist search support in Media player

The update will be available initially to Jolla owners with “The First One” covers with roll out scheduled for other users shortly after.If you've already received the update, give us some feedback in the comments section below.

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Last Friday, the Finnish company Jolla started to put its Jolla smartphone in retail stores in its home country at a €399 price tag. Although the smartphone runs on the company’s Sailfish OS, which is actually an offshoot of Nokia’s Meego OS, Jolla has built the device to be compatible with a large number of Android applications through its Yandex Store.

Today, the company’s CEO Tomi Pienmaki announced that it will also make its Sailfish OS compatible to Android phones. According to his statement in a Finnish website, the company is considering the possibility of distributing its Sailfish OS as an installer that will let users to sideload the operating system onto their smartphones.

Pienmaki also cited that it is already a practice in China where people are downloading new software from various distribution websites and then installing the downloaded operating systems on older devices. And Jolla is planning to employ the same strategy for Sailfish OS.

Moreover, he confirmed that the company is planning to rely on its applications, services and advertising for generating profit, instead of selling the OS itself.

There’s no timeline on when the company plans to implement this cross-platform approach, but nonetheless, the mere fact that Jolla is willing to make its own OS available to Android users shows really how powerful Google’s product has become. And it’s very interesting how this would affect markets in the future. We guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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Back in April, Finnish startup company Jolla announced that they will start shipping their first smartphone – the Jolla towards the end of 2013. And as we approach the last month of the year, the first ever Sailfish OS-powered smartphone is now available in stores.

The Jolla phone costs €399 in Finland and comes with a 4.5-inch qHD IPS display with 5-point multi-touch and protected by a layer of Corning Gorilla glass 2 panel. The smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chip with a 1.4GHz dual-core Krait CPU.  It also has an Adreno 305 GPU, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of on-board storage which can be expanded via a microSD card slot.

In the imaging department, the Jolla phone boasts an 8MP camera with LED flash at the back and a 2MP camera at the front.

As with other smartphones, connectivity features include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.0 with EDR HS, USB 2.0 and an extension interface for wireless NFC. The Sailfish OS comes with Nokia’s Here Maps as well as access to over 85,000 Android applications through its pre-installed Yandex store.

The Jolla smartphone, which is available in 9 colours will initially be available in Finland, but Jolla says it will be rolling to 135 more countries in the near future.

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Finnish startup Jolla announced today that its Sailfish OS is now compatible with Android software and hardware.

According to the press release, Sailfish OS users will now be able to take full advantage of the Android ecosystem by allowing specific apps including Instagram, WhatsApp, Spotify and WeChat to work with the operating system. The company says the apps will be available for download from various app stores globally, although it failed to mention, which specific app stores it will be.

Related Story: Jolla Unveils Its First Smartphone, Priced at €399

Moreover, the OS will now be compatible with common Android hardware, specifically smartphones and tablets. This will enable manufacturers of Android devices to easily and conveniently make phones for Jolla as the current hardware they are using will also now work with Sailfish OS. The company aims to use Android’s massive user base in order to get Sailfish to appeal to a bigger user base.

Jolla also announced a new batch of Sailfish phone pre-orders this week, for Finnish customers who still want to get their hands on the Jolla phone. 

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The Finnish company behind the Meego offshoot operating system – Sailfish OS has finally released their first smartphone today. The phone is simply called Jolla and features a 4.5-inch display and an 8-megapixel camera at the back with autofocus and LED flash.

The phone is reportedly having a dual core processor and 16GB of on-board storage which can be expanded via a microSD card. The phone also features interchangeable back covers called “other half” which snaps out to reveal the interchangeable battery.  Sailfish OS detects will recognize these covers and changes the theme of the UI to match the current cover snapped on.

Related Story: Jolla to Hold Press Event on May 20

As with previous reports, Jolla will have a pre-sales campaign that will provide early adopters with an incentive for pre-ordering. There are currently three offers on Jolla’s pre-order website where users can sign up for.

The first offer which costs an additional €100 on top of the price of the phone involves pre-ordering a limited edition Jolla phone and an exclusive limited edition other half.  A t-shirt and a €100 discount will also be provided to customers who sign up for this offer. The second offer which costs €40 buys a customer a limited edition Jolla phone plus a Jolla t-shirt, while the third will offer the basic Jolla phone.

For those who prefer to wait for the official launch of the phone, the Jolla handset will be priced at €399 and will ship by the end of 2013. 

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