Jolla shows Sailfish OS on round smartwatch

The Finnish software maker Jolla has shown for the first time a variant of its mobile operating system Sailfish OS that runs on a watch. It is still unknown if and when the Sailfish variant for wearables will be released, but it is clear that Jolla is working on it.

Jolla showed the watch at Slush start-up meeting in the Finnish capital Helsinki. The Finnish newspaper Ilta Sanomat published a video of the watch with an article on the subject. Presumably Jolla makes the wearable version of Sailfish so that hardware manufacturers can use it for their own products. Sailfish would thus become a competitor for, for example, Android Wear.

The operation of the watch is similar to that of Android Wear. The prototype shown has a round screen and works with input via the touchscreen. A button is visible on the side, but its function is unknown. A swipe to the right seems to lead to notifications, while a swipe to the left shows widgets like a pedometer. A swipe up on the screen reveals a main menu of apps.

On Wednesday, Jolla announced that it had signed a deal with the Russian government whereby government bodies and state-owned companies in the country will only supply their employees with smartphones with Sailfish OS in the future. Jolla sees its future in licensing its software and not in selling products to consumers, as it did with the Jolla and Jolla Tablet in recent years. The Finnish company is seen as a continuation of Nokia’s efforts in Linux distros, such as Maemo and MeeGo.

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