Finnish startups Jolla has announced that its alternative mobile operating system, Sailfish, will soon exit the beta tag with its upcoming software update coming in March. With that, Jolla states that the platform is now ready for global distribution. In addition, the company has also stated that the OS will soon be available to flash on Android devices.
After announcing its first-ever Jolla smartphone late last year to a limited market in Europe, Jolla also revealed that it is currently in negotiations to release its smartphone into three new countries, namely Russia, India and Hong Kong (where the company also has a second office). In addition, other European countries will also soon be added into Jolla’s list of available countries.
While in its beta state, the Sailfish platform has seen three major software updates that brought about plenty of bug fixes as well as many new features. The next software update, which will roll out in March, will see even more improvements across the board, such as improved performance, extended landscape support, lots of visual improvements, lots of new camera functionalities, enhancements to the Jolla store, new general settings, and many more.
As for a list of supported Android devices which may be flashed into Sailfish, Jolla has stated that the Jolla community has successfully ported stable versions of Sailfish on “major versions” of popular Samsung Galaxy, Google Nexus, and Sony Xperia smartphones. Also, porting for the highly popular Xiaomi products is under work in community projects.
In addition, Jolla also plans to release a Sailfish UI launcher for Android to simulate the Sailfish OS experience on Android devices. The app will be available “in the near future” from its official website, as well as “common Android market places”.
Finally, the company has also announced three new partnerships with popular global companies. The first is an agreement with Rovio to produce exclusive “Angry Birds”-themed The Other Half smart covers that provide “exclusive Angry Birds user experience”. Second is with Tieto Corporation, where Jolla will offer integration services to OEMs and ODMs willing to start the use of Sailfish OS in their products. Finally, Jolla has also partnered with security company F-Secure, which will offer younited, a secure cloud storage service to Jolla smartphone owners (the total amount of storage was not revealed).
The Finnish company will showcase Sailfish 1.0 on its Jolla smartphone, as well as Sailfish OS running on Android products and Jolla’s latest partnerships at its booth at next week’s Mobile World Congress.
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