Jolla
Jolla Phone

The story of the first Jolla smartphone is all about its software and the aspirations of the start-up that created it. The Finnish company had picked up the remnants of the mostly open-source operating system called MeeGo — previously backed by Nokia and Intel —  and evolved it into what it called Sailfish OS. This phone was the launch device for Sailfish. Nokia itself had dropped MeeGo (and Symbian) in favour of Windows Phone. The innovative Sailfish interface on the Jolla phone encouraged users to swipe fluidly from the edges of the display to switch between running apps and functions within apps. Its app store listed both native apps, many of which were ports from other open-source operating systems, and also included Android apps. The Android compatibility was, like Sailfish itself, a descendent of Nokia’s efforts with MeeGo (and before that Maemo) to create its own platform. Unlike BlackBerry’s Android compatibility efforts, on Jolla it was possible to side-load and run the Google Play store as well as apps that relied upon Google APIs. However, during the life of Sailfish OS the Android app support lagged behind the latest Android versions meaning not all Android apps ran or ran well. Plus, there were a few unique, differentiated, Sailfish third-party apps that could make the platform stand out. The hardware of Jolla’s smartphone was behind typical models from 2013 when this phone launched. Its 4.5-inch 540x960 pixel display was smaller and lower resolution than most Android devices. The eight-megapixel camera was capable of full HD video recording but it was still lower resolution. Similarly, its chipset was a lower-end dual application processor core Snapdragon 400, rather than the quad-core Snapdragon 800 used on the flagships of the time. The scale of the challenge facing Jolla was perfectly articulated in this graphic published in the leading Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat when the venture was announced. However, while the phone’s innards were unexciting, Jolla chose to offer its phone in multiple colours with backs that could be easily swapped by users. But the playful marketing of the phone by Jolla and its striking software design failed to establish a new platform. While a few other Sailfish devices followed, both Jolla and Sailfish remained a niche player in the smartphone market, and the promise of this unusual and innovative device was never realised. Many of the ex-Nokia staffers at Jolla probably hoped that Jolla would be to Nokia what Steve Jobs’ Next had been to Apple if Nokia’s pivot to Windows Phone failed. In the event, when Nokia’s strategic change did eventually stall, rather than look to Jolla, the Nokia group chose to exit the smartphone market, wait a few years, and then use a new start-up company called HMD Global to re-launch Nokia as a smartphone brand using Android.