After Nokia and Intel gave up on their MeeGo mobile platform, hardcore MeeGo developers kept going — they founded a startup called Jolla, and this week they unveiled the results of their efforts. At a conference in Helsinki, Jolla CEO Marc Dillon and former Nokia employees showed off the Sailfish operating system, which is based heavily on MeeGo but has some similarities to Android and even Windows Phone. In fact, Jolla says that “many” Android apps could run on Sailfish without modification, although a simple port would be required for best operation.
Jolla has had clear sailing to build Sailfish, thanks to investor funding and support from Nokia’s ‘Bridge’ business incubator program. Like the old MeeGo, Sailfish will continue to be open source, although Jolla plans to license certain aspects of the UI not only for phones but also tablets, smart TVs and in-car systems. The startup has already has partnered with ST-Ericsson — which has a heavy Asia presence — and with Chinese retailer D.Phone, which owns over 2,000 stores in China.
Sailfish’s homescreen favors Windows Phone-like live information tiles and borrows other elements such as Android-like icons and personalization, but it’s unique in how you control the apps. Finger gestures are kept to a minimum, and homescreen apps are controlled with up-down swipes instead of left-right. In the demo videos below, you can see that playing music or ending a call uses an up-down ‘Pulley Menu’ system without the need to open those apps. As with Android, you can also personalize your device to match your style or mood.
Jolla also announced a Sailfish software developer kit mobile devs and OEMs. The SDK consists of Qt Creator, Mer Core tools, Jolla UI components, the Sailfish UI framework, and Sailfish handset application interfaces. For more details on Sailfish and to get the SDK, see sailfishos.org.
The first video below is with Jolla Senior Designer Jaakko Roppola, and the second is with new Jolla CEO Marc Dillon. Jolla’s founding CEO Jussi Hurmola left in October to serve as an independent consultant to the company.
