Sailfish OS will be available for Android users to install

Want to try that sweet-sounding Sailfish OS, but don’t want to fork out the €399 for the first Jolla handset? Fret not as the company will allow you to sideload its OS to any Android device that you might already have.

The option isn’t yet available, but it’s currently being worked on as has been confirmed by the company’s CEO Tomi Pienimäki. In an interview with a Finnish website Mr. Pienimäki stated the following:

”That is the plan. We are on device business and OS business. It is fairly easy to install the OS on Android devices"

”There is no such culture in these parts of the world [Finland], but there are people that are installing new operating systems on their devices. In China it is mainstream. About half of the smartphone buyers are upgrading their older or cheaper devices with a better version of Android.”

“For us it is a possibility to distribute our operating system especially in China. There are websites that already distribute [OS] software and the Chinese customers are doing it ¬so we don’t have to teach them. We just have to get Sailfish to those websites – and to make sure that Sailfish will run on different kind of Android devices.”

 

The Jolla CEO also confirmed that the company has no intention of trying to bring in cash by selling the OS itself. Instead the team consisting of former Nokia employees will rely on applications, services and advertising to monetize their efforts. This means that wider reach is key for Jolla and giving people the option to switch from Android without spending a dime certainly seems like the right thing to do.

Would you be willing to try Sailfish on your droid? Hit the comments section to let us know.


Source : GsmArena

Sailfish OS features

Pulley Menu – This is a gesture based selection with haptic and sound feedback. Menu selection in all system apps is using this concept. View related video here.

Peek preview – This is another gesture based notification preview system available in Sailfish OS. All application notifications, battery status, network status and other notifications will be available can be viewed using the peek 
preview. View related video here.

Home Screen – The Sailfish home screen has one row of standard buttons in the bottom part of the screen as in android. But the main difference is the display of all running apps in the form of interactive tiles.

Ambiance – Pick you favorite photo from the gallery. A simple gesture will change the phone’s UI color tone to that matching the picture.

Responding to a phone call – The pull down gesture answers the call, pull up gesture enables you to silence the ring, decline or leave a message. View related video here.

 

 Jolla, both the name of a new smartphone and the Finish startup that released it on Wednesday, is stepping into a difficult arena: The tiny company is looking to take on Android and iOS with its new Sailfish OS.

Jolla (pronounced Yah-la) is a company founded by ex-Nokia staffers who didn't want Nokia's MeeGo operating system (seen briefly on the Nokia N9 and N950) to die, after the Finish hardware maker adopted Windows Phone OS.

However, Jolla and its Sailfish OS, the spruced-up reincarnation of MeeGo, enters a crowded race for third place behind Google and Apple, which, combined, make up about 94 percent of the mobile OS market, according to a recent IDC report.

What does Sailfish on Jolla's first smartphone offer that can beat its immediate competition, like Windows Phone or Firefox OS - much less survive in an increasingly Android world? Here's a look at both the Jolla's hardware and Jolla's software.

The Jolla Jolla - Hardware Specs

Jolla's self-titled smartphone (technically making it the Jolla Jolla) looks a lot like a black, blocky Nokia at first blush. Specs-wise, the Jolla is a mid-range offering. It comes with a 4.5-inch display with a non-HD resolution of 540 x 960p.
Inside is a 4G-capable dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, clocked to1.4GHz with an Adreno 305 GPU and 1GB of RAM. The only internal storage option is 16GB, but there's a microSD card slot for expansion of up to 64GB. The Jolla comes with an 8-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel front facing shooter, and a 2100 mAh battery powers the device for up to 10 hours of talk time.


Jolla's "Other Half"

Those specs aren't much cause for excitement, though they're not terrible either. But Jolla offers something interesting in its design, which Jolla calls the "Other Half." Like a simplified version of Motorola's Project Ara, Jolla is essentially two parts of a smartphone smashed together.

While Jolla right now only offers customizable rear covers in different colors - which, indeed, have the neat feature of NFC chips built-in that change the OS's theme settings to match the color of the cover - inside the back of the phone, Jolla built much a more important feature: connectors for data transfer and power.

  

This leads to the possibility of some Phoneblok-type physical upgrades through rear-cover add-ons, like a physical keyboard, another screen, or sensors that could expand Jolla's capabilities for new apps. This remains only a possibility at the moment though.

Sailfish OS - An Audacious Plan

Even with the interesting "Other Half" upgradeability, the Jolla Jolla is basically only a case study in hardware and more of a way to show off Sailfish OS, which is what Jolla's most important and audacious aspiration.

For example, the Jolla Jolla launched on Wednesday with a first batch of only 450 units, according to Tech Crunch, with a few thousand units pre-sold since August. But a day later, Jolla's CEO, Tomi Pienimäki, said that Android customers could side-load Sailfish OS on the Android devices they already have - with the immediate goal of getting Sailfish OS in the market with the most potential for a third OS, China.

"For us it is a possibility to distribute our operating system especially in China. There are websites that already distribute [OS] software and the Chinese customers are doing it ­so we don't have to teach them," said Pienimäki to Finish Magazine Talouselämä. "We just have to get Sailfish to those websites - and to make sure that Sailfish will run on different kind of Android devices." Basically, while Jolla hopes for success with the Jolla smartphone, it also wants Sailfish OS to take on Google on its own turf - Android smartphones.

So what makes Sailfish OS a competitive Android alternative? The operating system is based on MeeGo (which is, in turn, Linux-based) and open source, and is truly compatible with Android. While it has a good number of apps available from the start, navigation on Sailfish OS is what really sets it apart from Android.

Navigation 

The Sailfish UI works without the capacitive touch buttons common to almost all Android tablets and smartphones. It's based on gestural control instead, which makes it unique, but it could be difficult for long-time Android users to get used to the absence of that trusty capacitive-touch "back" button.
According to the Next Web, home screen navigation is based on a vertical orientation, rather than the left-right swipe horizontal orientation of iOS and Android. After double-tapping the screen in sleep mode to bring up a notifications screen (the power button works, too), swiping down will open up Sailfish's various navigation screens, with two swipes to get to an "all apps" menu.

 

An interesting adaptation found in later versions of Android OS, the "recent apps" screen (in Android, long-press the home button) is baked right into the home screen, which can be accessed from any app by pulling from the left side of the Sailfish UI. Functional tiles of certain apps - think widgets - can added to the recent apps-style home screen through swipe gestures, and other apps can be "minimized" back into the home screen. The effect is to have all running apps clearly visible in one screen, the way BlackBerry 10 did, but to also have certain actions quickly accessible from that screen, without going back into an app.

 
 
Pulling down from the top of the screen reveals a quick menu with settings, a shortcut to the camera app, and other options, depending on where you are within Sailfish. Interestingly, this quick menu has an auto-highlight and select feature that uses "ticks" of haptic feedback while your thumb is stationary in the pull-down gesture.

This means you can quick-launch the camera or choose a silent profile without looking at the screen (if you've memorized the settings' positions of course). This menu is different from the Sailfish notification menu called "Events," which, opposite from iOS and Android, is accessible by swiping up from the bottom.

Apps

Having 85,000+ Android apps ready to go, through a partnership with the Russian Android Yandex Store, is both a blessing and a curse for Sailfish OS.
Jolla avoids a lot of third-OS criticism by already having lots of big name third-party apps available, like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and the all-important Angry Birds. But native Sailfish apps - of which there are currently only a few essentials, like email, maps (based on Nokia HERE), and calendar - work with Sailfish's gesture-based UI, while the Android apps don't.

This means users will have a confusing mix between Sailfish gesture-based capabilities and the basic Android back button-based UI, all wrapped into one phone. Early reports also indicate that many Android apps are buggy and don't always reliably work with important Sailfish-based fundamentals like the keyboard.

Conclusion 

For Jolla and its nearly orphaned OS, now reborn as Sailfish, the future is uncertain. The Jolla Jolla is a decent piece of hardware with a unique, forward-looking design element in "Other Half." But it sells at €399 (unlocked), the equivalent of $540, which is a lot compared to new unlocked Android phones like the Moto G, which have similar or better hardware specs at less than half the price.

And Sailfish's Android compatibility is a double-edged sword. While it helps Jolla start out with more apps than the failed BB10 did at launch, and probably more than Firefox OS (which reportedly has "thousands"), right now Sailfish's Android compatibility seems clunky at best. And it cannot continue to rely on its Android side, which takes away from Sailfish's unique factor, and only current selling point, gesture-based multi-tasking. In a David and Goliath match-up, David can't ultimately depend on Goliath for strength. This little startup has a long way to go.




Source : Latinopost

Sailfish OS by Jolla

This article is about the Linux operating system (OS) by the Jolla company. For the alliance gathering Sailfish OS partners, see Sailfish Alliance. For the Jolla company, see Jolla.

Sailfish is a Linux-based mobile operating system developed by Jolla in cooperation with the Mer project and supported by the Sailfish Alliance. It is to be used in upcoming smartphones by Jolla and other licencees^{[citation needed]}. Although it is primarily targeted at mobile phones, it is also intended to support other categories of devices.

Software architecture

The Sailfish OS and the Sailfish Software development kit are based on the Linux kernel and Mer.^[1] Additionally Sailfish OS includes a partially or completely proprietary multi-tasking user interface programmed by Jolla. This user interface differentiate Jolla smartphones from others. Sailfish OS is intended to offer a competitive advantage against devices that run Google's Android or Apple's iOS.^[2]
Jolla has unveiled the Sailfish architecture^[3] which contains:

• (0) hardware

Any hardware platform on which Linux kernel can be launched.

• (1) the Linux kernel

plus all necessary hardware specific Kernel patches, or Android drivers through libhybris

Mer contains as few hardware adaptation bits in the main repository as possible

• (2) Mer: System essentials, Multimedia, Graphics (Wayland), Communications, Personal Information Management, Software Management, Security, Build and Development (Qt, Qt Webkit and others)
• (3) UI and middleware

Home screen & switcher, Real live multitasking, Input methods, Ambiance theming, Localizations, multimedia codecs, Power management optimizations, Integrated UX for key web services, Application and UI performance optimizations

Jolla & Partner Sailfish OS adaptations: these adaptations can have influences/implications on both: 4th and 3rd^{[clarification needed]} levels.

• (4) Applications

Jolla's Applications: Phone, Messaging, Contacts, Camera, Gallery, Settings, etc.

3rd party applications: Browser, Android applications runtime, Maps

Jolla & Partner Sailfish OS adaptations: these adaptations can have influences/implications on both: 4th and 3rd^{[clarification needed]} levels.

• (5) Application store
• (6) Repositories and other sources by 3rd parties including wide range of communities, operators or companies of many kinds.

"(...)Sailfish is built on the heritage of the proven MeeGo™ technology. This ensures that core cellular functionalities like power management and connectivity are inbuilt and optimized in restrained embedded environments. The core of the OS comes from the Mer Project. The UI is built with QML and Qt Quick. This enables fast and easy customization of the UI and further development of partner specific screens with fast and easy to use development tools.(...)".^[3]

Wayland (display server protocol) in Sailfish OS

Carsten Munk, Jolla's Chief Research Engineer and one of key persons in Mer project, has made it possible to run Wayland (display server protocol) atop Android GPU drivers. It's being done with glibc rather than Android's Bionic libc derivative. The solution is to enable the use of Wayland on top of Android hardware, particularly with its GPU drivers. However, as part of it, for the operating system to not depend upon Google's Bionic libc library. In April 2013 the code is at a stage of being able to handle a QML compositor on top of Wayland while rendering to Qualcomm's GPU Android drivers. The motive for engaging this work is that most device manufacturers are only willing to work with Google's Android and not supply drivers for X11 or Wayland or other platforms. Carsten Munk is planning on putting patches out under LGPLv2.1 and sees this work as potentially benefiting not only the Sailfish OS but also Qt, Mer, Nemo mobile, OpenWebOS, EFL, KDE, GNOME, Hawaii, and others.^[4]

Sailfish OS SDK

The Sailfish OS SDK has been announced in Helsinki at Slush in 2012, and published in the alpha stage in February 2013. As open source software it is available for free download from the Wiki of the Sailfish OS together with installing and coding tutorials, which are developed further. Most users have described positive impressions from using alpha SDK, however some critical remarks has been reported also. Several developers announced porting their existing software from various platforms to Sailfish OS at JollaHQ twitter channel.
The Sailfish OS SDK use Qt with virtual box for development, compiling and emulation purposes. This technique allows to compile on the Sailfish OS and to test developed software on the Sailfish OS in the virtual machine. This also separate development activities and (side) effects from everything else going on this particular computer.
Jolla says that as development with Sailfish SDK is development on Sailfish OS itself then there are no differences between developed software appearance and behaviour in SDK and on end-user machine with Sailfish OS. Note: the SDK contains the whole Sailfish OS, and emulates (see: emulation, in contrary to simulation) the entire Sailfish OS at the host computer running SDK what in fact means that the entire Sailfish OS, including the kernel, is running in the SDK's virtual machine. That is why porting and developing of any software with Sailfish SDK is possible, even before Jolla mobile is available.
The open source nature of SDK allows to shape and rebuild it for particular and specific needs of any company or any organisation or any group of developers or an advanced developer, what allows to create context specific environment. This supports creating the specific personalised coding environment with specific tools for specific needs which is set once and then always ready to work as set, and does not need initial preparations for specific needs every time it is turned on (booted).
SDK supports many systems like Android, Linux (32 & 64 bit version), iOS (64 bit version only as of March 2013) or Windows.
Marc Dillon said about the SDK: "(...)Yes, there's an emulator so you can see how the applications work, and all of our UI features are available as UI components. Actually you can develop applications that have all these different UI components and different elements and use the power of the OS.(...)".^[5]

Declared: without PRISM and no disclosure of information

Responding to privacy concerns in light of the PRISM spying program that came to light in summer 2013, a company representative said the US National Security Agency (NSA) would have no access to Jolla's servers^{[dubious – discuss]}. "Jolla servers are not in US, so we are not subject to any US rules or regulations regarding disclosing information." Many see in this the Sailfish OS and Jolla's smartphone advantage over other operating systems like Windows, Android or iOS, which are from companies that allegedly grant secret services wide access to user data.

Components

Connection between some mobile platforms. Sailfish OS uses Mer

Jolla has revealed its plans to use the following technologies in Sailfish OS:

• The Mer software distribution core
• A custom built user interface
• HTML5
• QML and Qt

Jolla continues building the MeeGo ecosystem.
The Mer project does not include a kernel, so it can't be considered a complete operating system on its own. It is a set of libraries complying with the MeeGo API specification, which can be used to build a bootable Linux distribution (i.e. Sailfish OS). This means that Sailfish OS will work on any hardware platform on which the Mer core can be installed.

Application programming interfaces

Qt APIs (QtQuick, QtWebkit and more) should be used by typical Sailfish OS applications. Also standard Linux APIs within reason for mobile usage will be available.^[6]

Software overview

Compatibility

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (November 2013)

Jolla declared Sailfish OS compatible with Android phone and tablets hardware, using existing Android device drivers.^[7] This was announced on September 2013 and it is a major milestone. This has been achieved with use of Alien Dalvik by Myriad Group. This is a big step forward for phone and tablet manufacturers^{[neutrality is disputed]} which can immediately and effortlessly integrate their existing devices with the Sailfish OS and still have ability to use Android software. Unveiled in 2013 Jolla prototypes and Sailfish running on other non-Jolla devices have shown proves of compatibility and Android applications running without problems, with native speed, without lags or jams.
Jolla has previously stated that Sailfish is compatible with Android applications.^[8] This was done in collaboration with the creators of Alien Dalvik, the Myriad Group,^[9] known for running Android apps with the Nokia N9 (but the Android layer was never released as built-in on N9). Many Android applications run on Jolla devices unchanged. To take advantage of all UI and other features of Sailfish OS and make applications fast they may need porting to native Qt/QML, there are extensive guides available on porting to Qt/QML.
Jolla has reported that Ubuntu, Sailfish and Plasma Active cooperation for sharing common APIs is in progress and - upon success - will make the platforms compatible on the API level.
As Jolla Sailfish is based on the open-source Meego, it is compatible to some extent with MeeGo Harmattan released by Nokia with the N9 phone. The applications written in Qt for N9 might need a minor conversion process before they can run on Sailfish.

Software availability

Sailfish will be able to run most applications that were originally developed for MeeGo and Android^{[dubious – discuss]}, in addition to native Sailfish applications. This will give it a large catalogue of available apps on launch.
Considering upon Jolla's declarations that Sailfish OS is be able to use software from following platforms

• Sailfish (natively created + ported like from Qt, Symbian, MeeGo - developers have reported that porting a Qt written software with Sailfish SDK takes a few hours only)
• Android applications are directly running in Sailfish OS^{[dubious – discuss]}. They are compatible as they are in third-party Android stores, with no needed modification (in most of the cases).
• MeeGo (because of backward compatibility thanks to MeeGo code legacy included in the Mer core)
• Unix and Linux (as Sailfish is Linux then using such a software is possible, especially RPM packages, either in terminal/console mode or with limitations implying from using Sailfish UI, if not ported and adjusted)
• HTML5 (because it is ready for this kind of software then use oncoming FirefoxOS software can also be possible)

Then a number of unique software possible to use can be estimated by adding number of software from the list above. In general it can be expected to be not less than 500K unique software pieces at the beginning.

Hardware overview

Advantages due to the Mer

The Sailfish OS in general can be used on any hardware supported by the Mer core distribution.
Rather than designate a specific reference hardware platform, a VirtualBox implementation with the Sailfish OS SDK is available for development on most popular OSes like Linux, OS X, Windows, and this VM contains whole Sailfish OS isolated from local resources to enable comfortable work at any particular PC. This allow to evaluate coded or ported software behaviour and performance in future on any real device and safe experimenting de facto on Sailfish OS itself. This is also caused by fact that Sailfish OS is not limited only to Jolla products and devices, but open for other partners which can use any different hardware.

Types of devices

Although Sailfish has been presented first for mobile use with upcoming smartphones by Jolla, as a continuation of MeeGo and using Mer core and the open source philosophy behind them both, it is also an OS for general purposes including devices such as smart televisions, computers, laptops, netbooks, tablets, navigations, cameras, household devices of many kinds, for automotive in cars and IVI, for sailing purposes in yachts and boats, and others. The Sailfish Linux OS in the same way as the MeeGo and the Mer projects it is not limited to use in mobiles only, but can be used with other forms of consumer electronics.
Jolla's Sailfish OS works on a tablet too. Jolla managers said in November 2012 that there could be a Sailfish tablet, but Jolla itself will, in this first wave, concentrate on a smartphone, but it does not exclude devices of different types.^[10]

Devices running Sailfish OS

Sailfish has been presented on devices like:

• Acer Iconia tab W500^[11]
• O2 Joggler^[12]
• Exopc^[13]
• HP Mini^[14]
• PackardBell Butterfly Touch ^[14]
• Nokia N950 and Nokia N9 - during several presentations given by Jolla
• Google Nexus 7^[15]

Sailfish OS Licensing

Jolla said that any mobile phone manufacturer will be able to license and use Sailfish with their mobile phones and other mobile devices, as they can with Android. The details of licensing have not been presented yet, but it was mentioned that the whole of Sailfish OS is to be licensed as open source.

OS Development status

Sailfish OS is promoted and supported in many ways with the open Sailfish Alliance established in 2011, a movement established to unite OEM and ODM manufacturers, chipset providers, operators, application developers and retailers.^[16]
On 16 August 2012, the user interface was reported as ready to go. Jolla's CEO Jussi Hurmola stated in a ZDNet interview: "(...) Our UI is ready now, we haven't released it yet, we will save it for the product launch and the platform is getting up now so the project looks pretty nice. (...)"^[17]
The next day, Jolla's CEO Marc Dillon tweeted that they had reached the first development target.
The Sailfish was presented for the first time by the Jolla team, including a worldwide internet stream, as a demo of the OS, as well as the UI and SDK during the Slush event in Helsinki, Finland, on 21,22 November 2012.
The Sailfish OS SDK in the alpha stage was published at the end of February 2013 and available for free download.
On September 16, 2013, Jolla has announced that its Sailfish OS is now compatible with Android applications and hardware.^[7]
Jolla announced that the first phone to come with Sailfish OS will be launched on November 27 at a pop-up DNA Kauppa shop in Narinkkatori, central Helsinki, Finland. The first 450 phones will be sold on this event, while the rest of the preordered devices will ship shortly after.<sup>[18]



Source : Wikipedia</sup>