Jolla refuses to go away, releases second Sailfish powered phone

Breaking into the mobile arena is no easy feat, just ask Microsoft. While Google and Apple have had a great deal of success, this battlefield is littered with casualties including Palm OS, Web OS, Symbian, Bada, Firefox OS, and several others. Then there’s platforms like Blackberry OS and Windows Phone (aka Windows 10 Mobile) that are struggling for their lives. Considering the landscape, it’s no surprise that Jolla has had a hard time getting consumers to embrace Sailfish OS, though they appear to refuse to throw in the towel, announcing a brand new phone.

To date, Jolla has released only one hardware product, their original phone. Despite a successful Indiegogo campaign to get a tablet off the ground, Jolla recently canceled this endeavor and is attempting to refund bidders, saying the financial implications were just too high to make it happen – despite the crowd-sourced funding. Amid the cancellation, Jolla has announced the Jolla C, a new handset aimed primarily at developers and hardcore enthusiasts of the platform.

Jolla is offering the C as part of a “Sailfish Community Device Program” and will only sell 1000 units. All of which have already been snatched up, actually. Whether this will encourage Jolla to offer a second run remains unseen, but we wouldn’t be too surprised. At €169 with VAT (roughly $188), the Jolla C wasn’t ultra expensive but the phone isn’t without its serious downsides.

First, the phone is being offered as-is. Since they are billing this as a dev-first product, they aren’t giving it formal support, which will save them a lot of money. Second, this is a company that has canceled projects before, making them more than a little hard to trust. Third, the specs aren’t exactly amazing with a 5-inch 720p display, a 1.3GHz Qualcomm 212 processor, 2GB RAM, an 8MP camera, 16GB storage, a 2500 mAh battery, and Sailfish OS 2.0.

Basically, you’re talking entry-level specs, without any native apps to speak of. The good news is that Sailfish is compatible with Android apps, though the actual performance of said app will likely be hit and miss.

At the end of the day, there are obviously a small number of folks willing to lay down money for Jolla hardware, but there’s no denying this niche is too small to actually make a difference for the company’s finances. So here’s the question, given the chance, would you support Jolla by buying a handset from them? Would you consider a phone made by a different OEM with Sailfish onboard? Share your thoughts in the comments.