New Jolla Phone Pre-orders hit target quickly. Shows people are fed up with iOS-Android monopoly

After successful crowdfunding, the latest release of the original handheld Linux distro will power a new handset coming in mid-2026.

The initial crowdfunding drive for the new Jolla Phone seems to have gone well: at the time of writing, the new device has comfortably passed double the number of orders needed to go into production. Finnish vendor Jolla set a goal of 2,000 €99 pre-order deposits by January 4th, but passed the goal in less than two weeks. The first batch of 2,700 units were £499. Batch 2 will ship two to four weeks later, and cost €549, but that’s now sold out too. Currently, well over 5,000 orders have been placed. With 20 days to go, the pre-order page says:

We take a maximum of 10,000 pre-orders until January 31st, 2026. Reserve your spot and lock your special total price of 579€.

The new Jolla Phone, resplendent in The Orange – or Snow White and Kaamos Black – Click to enlarge

The down payment will be deducted from the total price. Jolla is now taking orders for 5,200 units in batch 3, which will cost €579 and ship three to six weeks later. After the first few production runs, totalling 10,000 units, the price of the handset will go up to €599 to €699.

The phone specs were set by a survey the company ran, with a first stage in August followed by November update. To our eyes it looks decent if not outstanding: 5G connectivity, a 6.36 inch AMOLED screen, an indicator LED, 12 GB of RAM plus 256 GB of storage expandable via microSDXC. Some of the details are welcome: a user-replaceable 5,500 mAh battery, plus a software-based privacy switch which can disable the microphone, or Bluetooth, or Android apps, or other programmable options. For this vulture, a sad absence is a headphone socket.

An added incentive, if the device sells 10,000 units, is the return of smart back covers called The Other Half, which even included a keyboard.

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Sailfish is distinct from any other mobile OS today. Its origins at Nokia predate the January 2007 launch of the iPhone, by whose prospects The Reg was not enthralled. That, of course, also means it was out long before Android, which as Daring Fireball described in 2010 was originally designed to rival Blackberry. (The Internet Archive still has some of Engadget’s screenshots.) After Android was remodeled to take on Apple, both OSes look a lot like each other: the home screen is a grid of app icons, and both lean heavily on tapping on-screen buttons. (Before that, of course, they relied on physical buttons.)

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Sailfish 5 feels very different, with little visible influence from anything else. You flip between its two home screens by swiping left and right. One holds a list of messages and notifications, and the other is a full-screen app switcher, with tiles for each open app. Dragging up from the bottom reveals the app launcher. Uniquely, it distinguishes between long and short drags down from the top of the screen: a long fast swipe down opens a settings panel, but in native Salfish apps, a short slow drag opens a full-screen-width menu; you scroll up and down until the desired option is highlighted, then select it by lifting your thumb. It shows whether options are turned on or off with a large, bright white dot, or a smaller dimmer dot. A different white dot at top left is also the Back button, where one makes sense.

Like the overloaded white-dot symbol, some aspects of the OS are a little confusing. In addition to the official Jolla Store, there are two different tools for managing third-party native apps: StoreMan manages software from the collection on OpenRepos, and Chum GUI manages RPM packages from Chum. Then there’s the built-in AppSupport compatibility layer, which lets you run Android apps. We installed both F-Droid and the Aurora store, and had no problems installing any typical tools such as Signal, Whatsapp, or YouTube Kids.

There are built-in apps for all the things you’d expect a smartphone to do, and these connect to the usual suspects such as Google’s email, calendar, and contacts. There’s a browser based on Mozilla tech, as well, which works fine – as did Android browsers such as Vivaldi. Like its very distant relative Symbian, though, this is a local-first sort of device which can sync, rather than a pocket cloud client.

Maps are a particular weak point: we tried Google Maps and Nokia spin-off Here, which both literally drew a blank. The OpenStreetMap-based Mapy.com ran and could be searched, but couldn’t detect our location. There aren’t many cloud-storage clients, either. The stock keyboard doesn’t support swipe-style text entry, which we found frustrating.

Overall, Sailfish is arguably the most complete independent mobile OS. It’s totally separate from anything from Google, or Apple, or desktop Linux, and the app catalog is impressive. We did regularly get lost in its slightly idiosyncratic UI, but it was always possible to get out again. If you want a total break from the mainstream mobile duopoly, this is a viable alternative. Although you might need a standalone sat-nav too.

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