Jolla Press Release: 16/09/13
Sailfish OS achieves compatibility with Android ecosystem
HELSINKI – September 16, 2013. Sailfish OS has achieved a major milestone whereby the OS is now compatible with the AndroidTM ecosystem, in terms of application and hardware compatibility.
Android applications run directly on Sailfish OS without any modifications
Users enjoying the unique gesture-based and modern Sailfish OS user experience will be able to take full advantage of the Android application ecosystem available through various app stores globally. Jolla will co- operate with leading global app stores to ensure users can seamlessly download Android apps just as they would do on any Android device.
“For example, highly popular apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Spotify run directly on Sailfish OS. Also Chinese WeChat – already with over 400 million users – runs on Sailfish OS,” says Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki.
Sailfish OS runs on common Android hardware
Jolla has made a major breakthrough in Android hardware compatibility by developing Sailfish OS to run on common hardware produced for Android, particularly smartphones and tablets. Vendors interested to utilize Sailfish OS are now able to develop phones and tablets based on many different chipset and hardware configurations. This new level of compatibility will enable device vendors who use Sailfish OS to fully utilize the existing Android hardware ecosystem.
Jolla believes that this breakthrough offers growth opportunities of significant scale for Sailfish OS globally, especially in China. “We believe Sailfish with Android compatibility is a highly relevant mobile operating system option for major mobile companies in Europe and in Asia. We are already in discussions with several major Asian vendors regarding this opportunity,” says Tomi Pienimäki.
Next production batch will be opened for pre-orders this week
The last weeks have been very dynamic in the mobile industry and after the Microsoft-Nokia announcement the strategic position of Jolla and Sailfish OS has strengthened significantly.
“Due to extremely positive feedback and increased demand in the past weeks, we are offering another pre-order opportunity for our second production batch later this week through jolla.com. This will be targeted to Finnish customers who want to express their passion for the Finnish mobile industry,” Pienimäki concludes.
ABOUT JOLLA
Jolla Ltd., headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, is developing mobile devices and open Sailfish OS based on the heritage of MeeGo project. In addition to its R&D sites in Helsinki and Tampere, Jolla has offices in Hong Kong.
Please see jolla.com/press for further press and media materials.
Jolla media contact:
Latest posts by jollatides (see all)
- Jolla: Weekly News Roundup V2 - October 30, 2013
- Jolla: Weekly News Roundup - October 21, 2013
- Sailfish: The App Story To Date - October 18, 2013
Robert Southern on 
venu on 
Pedro F. on 
But does it have Play Store support?
no, so you have to download the .apk to your pc and then send it to your phone and then install. of cause there will be a native app store with both nativ and android apps. but i suspect that you will have to go via your PC/google play to get the app for your local bank. not ideal but it will work for me.. :-)
If it’s as easy as it sounds, even for a small market share a lot of developers won’t be missing out the opportunity to get their apps to the jolla store as well. Of course no native apps with the full Jolla experience, but still we’d have the apps we love.
I still hope for an openwhatsapp port though, since I consider it the nicer application <3.
Me too. I was surprised to see how well it works on my N9. Tarek (the dev) has all my respect. A proper native port of OpenWhatsapp using Silica and Qt 5 would be awesome.
Why are you so definitive about that? According to their Twitter feed ( https://twitter.com/JollaHQ/status/379898194143875072 ), Android apps will be available from Sailfish store, alternate store or directly using the browser.
The negative aspect to having superior Android compatibility is the fact it may be used as an excuse by some publishers not to produce native Jolla Sailfish applications. BlackBerry BB10 can sideload some Android applications and the fact they are not native is a common complaint.
no, for the moment only the third party app store are available
“Jolla will co- operate with leading global app stores to ensure users can seamlessly download Android apps just as they would do on any Android device.”
I would presume number 1 on the list of stores to co-operate with is Google’s Play store and I do hope Google will co-operate. I mean, why not? Google presumably still makes their cut of revenue regardless of it being on Android or Sailfish.
“Due to extremely positive feedback and increased demand in the past weeks, we are offering another pre-order opportunity for our second production batch later this week through jolla.com. This will be targeted to Finnish customers who want to express their passion for the Finnish mobile industry,”….. Why..!!!! Why not internatioanally again! :(
And those pics look so awesome! Good work Jolla :D
Hello
I tried many times to find out, if the Jolla system will support a led notification!! And if so, how long will it blink??
This is very important to me. If Jolla does support led notification I will preorder a device!!!
Thanks for an answer!!
Daniel
Von Samsung Mobile gesendet
Why would you want a flashing LED? There’s that many notifications these days it becomes pointless – email, sms, tweets, facebook, voice, voip, skype…
Mine would be on all the time!
No thanks. The low power screen with multiple notification icons and the time works great on the N9 and I do hope the Jolla has something similar. One glance and you know the time and if you’ve missed a call/tweet/email/software update…
The phone looks big. The bezels ARE big. And somehow the design looks cheap. And this is unflattering to the awesome OS they have been developing.
I’m not sure if those are the latest pictures of the latest prototype.
The first prototype had wide bezels and the designers said that it will change.
They’re also not that big IMHO. You’ve got to have bezels or it’s impossible to hold the phone without touching the screen plus you’ve got to put the speaker, mic, camera, sensors somewhere.
Weird. I wonder if these pics are of the latest prototype too. The height of the top bezel has been reduced, just like in the new renders, but the other bezels still look huge and the screen looks cheap just like in the previous prototype.
I’m worried. Sailfish is awesome and deserves hardware up to its standards.
The gesture-based UI would need significant bezels, I guess. The swipes starting from bezel, and those from the screen might be doing different actions, like in the BB10 OS, I suppose.
It’s the new one, the buttons are on the right side for example. But it doesn’t have to be final quality.
Bezels are definitely much smaller than the 1st prototype we handled and IMO are perfect now.
Like Shaun says if you have a swipe interface and have to swipe from the edges, you really need a bit of room for fat thumbs otherwise you’re right on the edge of the screen all the time which is impractical/uncomfortable. ;-)
Anyone knows the final dimensions of it. Or has anyone tried to calculate them based on screen size/aspect ratio etc.
Rough estimate from the photo : screen = 56.2×99.5mm (4.5″, 16/9), phone = 68×131.6mm which means approximately the same size as the 4.7″ RAZR HD (67.9×131.9). It’s a little too big IMHO.
I find it amusing, that the technical aspects are not being discussed at all.
How as this compatibility achieved?
Android kernel instead of Mer?
This would be the Ubuntu Mobile path and while it is clever and effective, it has some issues concerning independence from Google.
I somehow hope it means that Mer is now really compatible with Android. That would be great news also for NemoMobile, etc. But I doubt it.
In any case, i would really like to know more and expect from the Jolla community to be equally technically minded…
It has been mentioned before that Sailfish would be compatible with Android apps thanks to built in Alien Dalvik layer from Myriad Group. No change to kernel AFAIK.
Well, the Alien Dalvik solution would not explain the “full hardware compatibility” that has been announced today. it is just a VM that mimics Google’s Dalvik.
To be honest I do not think it is Alien Dalvik, but some much deeper integration, that includes drivers, etc. Really curious how it works.
@JollaBG – Sorry I thought you were talking about app compatibility but with rgds hardware compatibility, yes I think Chet is spot on about libhybris which is integrated in Mer core which is what Sailfish is built on.
I bet it’s libhybris + glue code working in kernel level. And maybe also in the Nemo middleware level.
The App compatibility is achieved thanks to Myriad’s Alien Dalvik.
The hardware compatibility is probably achieved thanks to libhybris, which allows Andrioid drivers to be used in a more standard Linux stack.
http://mer-project.blogspot.fr/2013/04/wayland-utilizing-android-gpu-drivers.html for more info.
Thanks! This looks interesting and very encouraging if it is the actual solution!!
IIRC Ubuntu also took the libhybris code developed by @stskeeps for Mer/Jolla to get their Mir X replacement working on Android drivers. It seems like an awful lot of extra effort to avoid using Wayland but since when has that stopped anyone in the FOSS world from suffering NIH syndrome.
I’m confused ! Does this “Android hardware compatibility” mean that you can basically install sailfish to HTC one(or whatever) for example, or does it mean oem’s still have to make drivers for it ? Can someone explain this…?
@ Reks – I think it means that it is super easy for potential hardware partners who already produce Android orientated handsets to put out eg. the same model handset running Sailfish if they wanted to partner with Jolla on the Sailfish Alliance.
So what it means is Jolla have made the route to adoption for handset manufacturers seriously easy and uncomplicated ie. no need for building a new handset from the ground up just to run Sailfish. ;-)
can i know what the disadvantages of android hardware compatibility are?
I don’t think there are any really that I can see. ;-)
manufacturers would have to put smaller batteries in the sailfish-version of the device to disguise the power-consumption of android ;D
So disappointed by this. It’s a downgrade to Android being disguised as a ‘feature’. Where’s the incentive for developers to to work with Sailfish if they can streamline development to Android (and iOS)? Where’s the incentive for me to use the ‘phone as an Android device (I can already get one of those for next to no cost with any provider). Maybe I’m being too cynical but this, it seems to me, is an admission that Sailfish can’t generate sufficient users to succeed as an OS (and by implication, Jolla as hardware). I hoped that Jolla would have had sufficient faith in the Sailfish OS and device combination to have ‘gone it alone’ and trusted developers to develop for an innovative platform. How long will it be before Jolla is marketed primarily as an Android device with an add-on OS for ‘enthusiasts’?
Not a good day…
1/ In what way do you think Sailfish is a downgrade to Android ?
2/ Even large companies like Microsoft/Blackberry struggle with their billions of dollars to get developers onboard – do you really think a small company like Jolla can attract hundreds of thousands of apps overnight which is necessary these days for mass adoption in the market without something like the compatibility layer?
3/ Think of it like this way: Greater number of apps at launch attracts far more users. More users = more interest from developers = more interest from developers = more native apps. Win, Win. :-)
Would you rather there were very few apps available at launch = limited adoption and no network take up = no investment = no future ?
+1
1. In my view Android is inferior to iOS. I had hoped that Sailfish would provide a superior user experience to iPhone – sufficiently improved to justify a move from Apple back to a start-up EU product. But since the majority of apps will be limited to Android (with little or no incentive to go sailfish native) it is a ‘downgrade’.
2. To some extent I agree with you – and admit to a certain misunderstanding. I had hoped I was buying into a high-end niche product. If the aim is for mass market then I would remain sceptical as to whether Jolla can compete irrespective of adopting Android (unless it goes down the ‘China route’ but that’s another issue…) Not sure how the marketing and branding fits with a mass market appeal however.
3. Yes. I’d have preferred fewer (but higher quality) apps at launch. Bring in users and developers via quality rather than simply the quantity of replicating Android apps.
4. Happy to be proved wrong! And in Helsinki late December so hopefully will be using my Jolla ‘at home’!
The user experience of a Jolla phone is still going to be pure SailfishOS UI for the majority of the time. All the core apps that matter for most people – mail, contacts, calendar, twitter, facebook, camera, maps, music are native Sailfish apps.
Any developer who was considering Sailfish before today was by definition developing for a niche and Jolla have been saying since the first hardware reveal that Android compatibility would be in the final device. That hasn’t changed.
Since Sailfish and Android’s UI are different, any developer developing native Sailfish apps is going to have an advantage over Android apps. Sailfish apps will integrate with the OS better, look better and run faster. It remains to be seen of course how much users care.
For games though I do wonder if we’ll see any native Sailfish games. Generally games don’t integrate and have their own UI. I doubt this matters at all.
sailfish use android driver, do it mean it will lag
new specs for jolla phone came out.. very very disappointing screen resolution
I might cancel my preorder if they don’t improve screen resolution
https://jolla.com/your-jolla/
Pingback: Jolla: Specs Updated, Pre-Order and Other News! | Latest Jolla Sailfish News
Do the Sailfish OS support RK29 SOC? where can I download?
BTW you may also get compatibility with Windows RT apps with http://wiki.winehq.org/ARM