Sailfish OS v3 announced, coming to more smartphones and 4G feature phones

Jolla has had a tough time bringing its Sailfish OS to the mainstream over the years, but the Finnish company is still trudging along. Today at MWC, Jolla unveiled Sailfish 3, the next major version of the OS that’s making its way to a handful of devices later this year.

Sailfish 3 will roll out in stages sometime in Q3 2018 to the Sony Xperia XA2, the Gemini PDA from Planet Computers, and an upcoming tablet from Russian brand Inoi. It’s also coming to 4G-enabled feature phones.

Feature phones are still very popular in some areas of the world — especially in emerging markets. The version of Sailfish coming to feature phones will come pre-installed with some core Sailfish applications, as well as an app store where users can download a few select Android apps. This version will also be compatible with non-touchscreen phones with numerical keyboards.

Sailfish 3 will feature 30% faster performance, VoLTE support, as well as new camera, location, and VPN APIs. It’ll also come with cloud integration, with access to web folders, automatic photo syncing, and more. The user-facing features include a new light theme, new UI animations, and improved multitasking.

Sailfish OS is a particularly light operating system, able to run on devices with less than 1 GB of RAM. This of course puts Jolla’s operating system up against Google’s Android Go, which has had a big presence here at MWC.