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New Jolla Phone Now Available for Pre-Order as an Independent Linux Phone (9to5linux.com) 45

Posted by EditorDavid from the phoning-it-in dept.
Jolla is "trying again with a new crowd-funded smartphone," reports Phoronix: Finnish company Jolla started out 14 years ago where Nokia left off with MeeGo and developed Sailfish OS as a new Linux smartphone platform. Jolla released their first smartphone in 2013 after crowdfunding but ultimately the Sailfish OS focus the past number of years now has been offering their software stack for use on other smartphone devices [including some Sony Xperia smartphones and OnePlus/Samsung/ Google/ Xiaomi devices].
This new Jolla Phone's pre-order voucher page says the phone will only produced if 2,000 units are ordered before January 4. (But in just a few days they've already received 1,721 pre-orders — all discounted to 499€ from a normal price between 599 and 699 €). Estimate delivery is the first half of 2026. "The new Jolla Phone is powered by a high-performing Mediatek 5G SoC," reports 9to5Linux, "and features 12GB RAM, 256GB storage that can be expanded to up to 2TB with a microSDXC card, a 6.36-inch FullHD AMOLED display with ~390ppi, 20:9 aspect ratio, and Gorilla Glass, and a user-replaceable 5,500mAh battery." The Linux phone also features 4G/5G support with dual nano-SIM and a global roaming modem configuration, Wi-Fi 6 wireless, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, 50MP Wide and 13MP Ultrawide main cameras, front front-facing wide-lens selfie camera, fingerprint reader on the power key, a user-changeable back cover, and an RGB indication LED. On top of that, the new Jolla Phone promises a user-configurable physical Privacy Switch that lets you turn off the microphone, Bluetooth, Android apps, or whatever you wish.

The device will be available in three colors, including Snow White, Kaamos Black, and The Orange. All the specs of the new Jolla Phone were voted on by Sailfish OS community members over the past few months. Honouring the original Jolla Phone form factor and design, the new model ships with Sailfish OS (with support for Android apps), a Linux-based European alternative to dominating mobile operating systems that promises a minimum of 5 years of support, no tracking, no calling home, and no hidden analytics...

The device will be manufactured and sold in Europe, but Jolla says that it will design the cellular band configuration to enable global travelling as much as possible, including e.g. roaming in the U.S. carrier networks. The initial sales markets are the EU, the UK, Switzerland, and Norway.
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New Jolla Phone Now Available for Pre-Order as an Independent Linux Phone More

New Jolla Phone Now Available for Pre-Order as an Independent Linux Phone

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  • The rest of us will not want to suffer from the underdeveloped platform.

    Right now, the only truly great mobile OS is GrapheneOS. Secure, fast, well-supported, and private. Nobody else compares.

    • Re:This will be great for about 2000 people (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Sunday December 07, 2025 @03:14AM (#65840739) Journal

      You shouldn't talk for everyone.

      That GrapheneOS? Was a pain in the arse for me and I went back to LineageOS in under 48 hours.

      • I am thinking about installing lineage on my old Pixel 5, which I use for audiobooks and which Google no longer supports. However, Lineage is a step backwards in security compared to Google's releases on current phones, and it just can't compare to Graphene's security. I do have a few apps that do not work on GrapheneOS, or that have broken features, but I'd expect to run into similar issues with Lineage.

        • Re:This will be great for about 2000 people (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Sunday December 07, 2025 @04:46AM (#65840793) Journal

          My phone is primarily a tool. It must be usable as a tool.

          Where I live, I don't have to worry about my phone getting yoinked. As such, the greatest threat to my principles is having gApps installed. Which I do. So at that point, I'm installing LOS primarily so the user experience remains about the same across devices.

          But that's my point: Someone who is all about security isn't looking for the same things as somebody who isn't. I am optimizing for workflow. You are not. Hence completely different use-cases.

    • SailfishOS runs on the standard Android kernel, so it should be easy to port Android to the phone. The whole Android/libhybris approach coincidentally also the reason I'm not interested in this phone, and why I am of the opinion that GrapheneOS is the wrong approach unless if you ONLY care about cutting out Google from your personal data. What about all others that still can have access?

    • You're misunderstanding their offer. Jolla doesn't compete with GrapheneOS but with Purism.
      Apart from the DoubleThink that GrapheneOS obliges you into. GrapheneOS is the OS of choice to cut away links from Google, and at the same time GrapheneOS wants to you pay dollars to Google for the hardware. Using GrapheneOS for no-google-ads is like paying Meta their monthly Facebook subscription to removes ads.

    • Bad name for a phone. Let the wars over Jolla (hard J like jolly) and "h" j, as in "hoya", begin!!!

      • As someone based in the southwest USA, I've been calling it hoya. Hard J, Jolla just sounds odd to me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tindur ( 658483 )
        "Jolla" is a Finnish word meaning dingy. In English you would write the sound of the "j" with an "y". Double L is just a long L"

  • Add a 5 row slide out keyboard (Score:4, Insightful)

    by madbrain ( 11432 ) on Sunday December 07, 2025 @04:01AM (#65840769) Homepage Journal

    And we might get back to the usability of the first Android phone, the HTC/T-mobile G1.

    Virtual keyboards are horrid to type on, and cover half the screen.

    Trackball would be nice, too.

    Other hardware specs look great, especially microSD slot and replaceable battery.

    • That would be a laptop.

      In other news, Boeing has entered the car market with 200+ seat busses with some extra features, like jwt propulsion, wings, and the ability of "driving" from London ot New York in 12 or so hours. You need a special permit to sit in the driver's seat though, driver's license won't do ir.

      • Re: Add a 5 row slide out keyboard (Score:5, Informative)

        by pereric ( 528017 ) on Sunday December 07, 2025 @05:50AM (#65840835) Homepage

        No, it does not have to be a laptop - it can still be a phone with typical form factor and use cases - staying in the pocket, casual chat, phone calls and video, outdoor navigation ... Case in point: I had a Nokia N900 in 2011 - it was phone-sized (a bit thicker than modern phones but not much), and could do all phone things. With wonderful two-thumbs text input. In addition, it had a resistive instead of capacitive touch screen, so I could use it even with thick gloves - Finnish design considerations?

        Yeah, you could use it as a "mini-laptop" - it even ran Libreoffice and gcc. However, that was not how you typically used it, except for exceptional cases.

        • In addition, it had a resistive instead of capacitive touch screen, so I could use it even with thick gloves

          These days we have thick gloves which can activate a capacitive touch screen.

      • The Blackberry was a successful design and another company Unihertz has something similar called the Titan 2, and it has a physical keyboard, I may just buy the Titan 2 if I can't get a portable cyberdeck with a similar design

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by madbrain ( 11432 )

        Funny, I could have sworn that HTC G1 fit in my pocket. I have never seen a laptop that did.

        The removal of physical keyboards from 99.9% of my smartphones is a prime example of enshitification.

    • Sliders, I think, died with Nokia Symbian ^3.

      Not an endorsement - I would need a man-purse to carry the thing:

      https://www.unihertz.com/produ... [unihertz.com]

      • You'll probably need a man purse to carry the second more usable device than this 4.5" square screen thing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by madbrain ( 11432 )

          That Symbian keyboard design doesn't look so great - only 4-rows keyboard, and the top row only has 6 buttons. The keys might not be sufficiently separated to get meaningful tactile feedback - I would have to try and feel one. But the biggest issue is that the keyboard takes away from the screen real estate. It really should be underneath.

          My first smartphone, HTC G1 : 117.7 x 55.7 x 17.1 mm - 158g
          Symbian ^3 : 137.8 ×88.7 ×10.8 mm - 235g
          Samsung S Relay 4G, my last slide-out smartphone : 126 x 6

      • My last three landscape sliders were the Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 4 and F(x)tec Pro1, so they survived longer than that, and all three were in the size range of normal phones.

    • There was tthe Astro Slide... I'm one of the lucky ones who actually got their device. Still using it, typing this post on it,, in fact. Unfortunately the company behind it are a clusterfuck so it only got one firmware update and they essentially ghosted Indiegogo backers after that. I'd like to get Lineage on it, but since there are proprietary Mediatek blobs involved I doubt it is going to be possible. So stuck with Android 11...

      • I got my money back a few months ago from indigogo but only after complaining on Trustpilot....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by madbrain ( 11432 )

        Thanks. I was not aware of this device. The hardware specs look great. Battery is not removable.
        Android 11 is a non-starter in 2025. One of the reason I own a Samsung phone nowadays is the 7 year of support.

        I just bought a Galaxy S25 FE for my mother last week, after her S20 FE went out of support. Built in storage is still 128GB. The microSD slot on the new phone is gone, so she no longer has access to all the music I had stored on the microSD card for her. Talk about enshitification.

    • Back in the day, phones had a numeric keypad which also allowed a kind of touch-typing for text messages. Then people started getting online with their phones more and more, and ended up typing more than talking. If things were logical, this would have resulted in better/larger keyboards for phones, such as the slide-out QWERTY ones. Instead, we lost even the small numeric keypads due to some idiotic fashion ideas.

      (I still have my Nokia N900 which I use as a backup phone and camera -- it has a better cam

  • https://volla.online/ [volla.online]

    I'd say the similarities in name aren't by accident. I wish Jolla good luck they had a nice product but 400 euros for a crow funded phone from a company know for it's volatility probably doesn't inspire confidence in long term viability. Just saying.

    • I've doom scrolled through but can't figure out if Volla phones support android apps... Then I go through to one of their phones and find out that "apps that don't require the play store" will work, and then I find that with micro-g many other apps will also work. I need my banking apps to work. Will they? Even if I could find out, most people wouldn't, so Volla has more work to do if you ask me.

      • It's best to assume that banking apps won't work with anything but a non-rooted commercial Android install with its full suite of Google trash. Either that, or the most meticulously rooted systems that can fool all forms of root checking. Banks only want their apps running on walled-garden systems.

        The solution for me has been to use banking websites rather than banking apps. This also eliminates the potential issues of banking apps having access to more than what can be seen through the browser, and it will

        • The one crucial thing bank apps support that websites don't is mobile deposit. Though perhaps that's becoming moot if the US Fed kills checks, as it's reputedly considering.
        • I agree on those assumptions. Interestingly, I got by on my Galaxy S22 without connecting with a Google account. But just using banking web sites doesn't work anymore, my banks have moved to using their app as 2nd level authentication. Beats the security of SMS which they used before, so I'll take it. I do think I got stuff working on my good old OnePlus 3T running lineage os and rooted (or perhaps I've un-rooted it at some point?) but I've not used that thing since lineage didn't get any updates around 202

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tindur ( 658483 )
        If you're talking about Volla phones I can't say. More info about banking apps on SailfishOS is here: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t... [sailfishos.org]
    • No it's not. It's a separate company that once used SailfishOS in their phones.
  • I require IP67 or better, if possible e-SIM, DP-alt/ display out and a good camera. It seems that those may or may not be present.

    I still have an N9 lying around, and a few years ago bought a compatible Sony and then got a licence and put Jolla. Due to all that didn't work, I had to break off the exercise.

    Nonetheless, my 1.5MHz quad core galaxy Siii had nothing against the dual core 1GHz N9, due to Meego being so much more efficient. Also, all fart apps on android use up 5 to 10MB, apps on Meego were a

  • This thing needs support, updates, etc. That requires more than 2000 units sold. Sorry.

  • On top of that, the new Jolla Phone promises a user-configurable physical Privacy Switch that lets you turn off the microphone, Bluetooth, Android apps, or whatever you wish.

    I am wondering about that a bit. How is a physical switch "user configurable"? Is it through tiny dip switches or jumpers accessible through a back panel? Or is a software configurable physical switch? Because that second option would make it not really much different from a virtual button in the interface. It might be a little more convenient if you want to switch those things on and off, but it defeats the main purpose of physical switches for that sort of thing which is having an actual physical interloc

  • I've been using Sailfish since the first release (and the Nokia N770/800/810 before that).

    I'm no IT guy, but even with a little experience it is powerful, I run Arch with Syncthing in a container, have syncthing also natively for the Sailfish installation.

    https://github.com/kabouik/har... [github.com]

    It's just the perfect phone OS to me, can run all the banking Apps I need, or Spotify etc, but also can SSH in and control it remotely, or use it as a emergency terminal to connect to my servers etc.

    That and the fact that i

  • Interesting phone (Score:3)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Sunday December 07, 2025 @02:01PM (#65841593)

    If it was a cheaper, had a notchless and holeless IPS display and was able to boot OS images from SD card like the PinePhone I would pick one up. Would also love to see one with an integrated LoRa radio.

  • Wasn't this phone based on Intel's Atom, or whatever other CPU they had planned for phones? If so, haven't those been discontinued? In which case, this platform would have to revert to ARM, wouldn't it? Or maybe RISC-V?

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