Jolla Announces Sailfish 3 and Expands to More Devices

Jolla has announced version 3 of its Sailfish operating system for mobile devices at Mobile World Congress. With this, the company is expanding to new devices, including the Sony Xperia XA2, which should be released in March.

The Finnish company reports that, except for the Xperia XA2, support will be provided for the Gemini PDA smartphone from the company Planet Computers. The third category is a tablet from the Russian brand Inoi. Apart from these devices, Sailfish will also be available for feature phones with support for 4G. Jolla said during his MWC presentation that they will have their own app store and can run ‘selected Android apps’. The interface is designed for control with hardware buttons and not by means of touches. In addition to 4g, VoLTE, or calling via 4g, must also be supported.

Furthermore, Jolla has put a page about Sailfish 3 online, stating that it should be released in the third quarter of this year. This version should be thirty percent faster than its predecessor and offers support for fingerprint scanners and integrated VPNs. Jolla does not provide details on the properties of the new version of its operating system.

It recently emerged that the Russian telecom provider Rostelecom has applied to buy a company that has a majority stake in Jolla. The Finnish company created Sailfish OS as a further development of Nokia’s MeeGo platform. The first Jolla phone with Sailfish OS came out in 2013. Besides Russia, China is also adapting Sailfish OS for use by officials. Both countries see the operating system as an alternative to iOS and Android, from Apple and Google respectively.