Jolla recently announced plans to launch their debut smartphone on November 27. The company, composed of multiple former Nokia staffers, will initially launch the Sailfish OS-based handset at a pop-up shop in central Helsinki.
Early devices - just 450 of them, we're told - will be available on the DNA wireless carrier in Finland for one day only. After that, a wider launch will take place in early December that will hopefully fulfill the 50,000+ pre-orders the company has received thus far.
The Jolla smartphone is a mid-range device with a 4.5-inch Estrada display operating at 960 x 540, a dual-core processor, 16GB of storage, a microSD card slot and an 8-megapixel rear camera. There's also LTE support baked in but not much else is known about the phone otherwise.
We do know the target price that it will debut at: at €399 (roughly $535 including sales tax), which is rather spendy for a device of this caliber - especially one with a brand new and unproven operating system. Motorola just announced the Moto G with similar hardware specifications and a much cheaper $179 off-contract price that'll be available in 30 countries when it launches.
The Sailfish operating system, which is said to be loosely based on MeeGo (the failed mobile OS collaboration between Nokia and Intel), is no doubt the primary draw of the handset. It's too early to know if it'll eventually be a serious competitor to Android, iOS and Windows Phone but as a consumer, competition is always welcomed.