Apparently the system was a dumped OS when they were at Nokia so they revamped to be more open than the iOS and android. They'll be just over 400 mobiles available at lauch.

Jolla is the evolution of the Meego OS as seen on the Nokia N9, which probably got the best reviews of any mobile - universally applauded for its physical design and one of the most elegant interfaces ever to grace a mobile.

The problem was that Nokia had (and still have) scarily incompetent senior management who had already delayed the N9 and the Maemo/Meego development - once out from under Nokias interference the development of Sailfish seems to have proceeded without any issues.

The Jolla phones looks quite good and has extended the gestures as seen on the N9 quite nicely. I'm on the pre-order list and am hovering over the "order" link ...

It will be interesting to see how they get on and I wish them all the luck and hope they succeed.

It's great that Android apps are supported. This alone could give them a huge boost.

Riding on Android's coattails then. Those few pictures I saw look nice though.

Didn't work for Blackberry and it won't work for this. What's the point if the OS is relying on apps from another ecosystem?

Didn't work for Blackberry because they haven't started with full support yet.

It certainly would be ironic if they did better than Nokia. But I am skeptical if they do well at all. It's a small operation atm, they produced 400 handsets and look for an investor. They created something that is mostly compatible with Android to benefit from the work put into it. But will they have enough resources to bring updates? What's the USP of this new OS? That it is like Android?

450 handsets for early investors. Its a variant on a kickstarter campaign. They've got a few thousand pre-orders and one operator is offering the phones on contract over in Finland.

The USPs of this OS? True multi tasking (not seen on Android), a genuinely interesting interface (Android is pretty dull in reality), the other half would allow you to add a physical keyboard (cannot be done on any other phone).

Oh, and its effectively a full *nix OS under the hood with no JVM/Dalvik layer for native applications - which as a result will run considerably faster.

I do wonder if the Myriad Alien Dalvik still claims performance benefits. When it was first announced, Myriad claimed it ran Android applications faster than Android itself.

I am not sure a true multitasking is something needed for a small mobile device. I personally think an explicit background processing like when playing music, agents that run periodically etc. are enough for a mobile phone. Just because it can be done does not mean it has to.

no matter how good it is. there is no space in the market for it.

Being ex-Nokia employees I wonder if they also inherited the Nokia baggage and mindset as well.
I suspect it won't really get very far.

Forbes have said today that most people who've used it, think it's been released 'not ready'. One reviewer described it as broken.

I used maemo (the precursor to meego, and hence jolla) on a Nokia N900. An interesting device, but very geeky. Ultimately the problem was the ecosystem - ie were app developers prepared to support the device. With iOS and android already very established, windows phone on the rise, and blackberry not quite dead I think it will be nigh on impossible to get anywhere.

It will IMO lenguish in geekdom along with Firefox mobile and Ubuntu.

The Nokia baggage was management incompetence. The actual developers who started off the Maemo project were pretty good. They achieved a lot despite their management not having a clue how to manage it.

Their apparently going to be offering the OS on its own for Android devices. I'd love to see how well it would work on the Nexus 4 ....

I'd have to agree with clonmult, I've heard a lot of praise both from users and developers about Meego and Maemo, despite the horrendous incompetent management in place at Nokia at the time. Even the N900 device itself received widespread acclaim despite the prevalence of Android.