This article was published on November 19, 2014

Jolla launches crowdfunded SailFish OS tablet


Jolla launches crowdfunded SailFish OS tablet

It’s a big week for iPad alternatives from Finland. Yesterday Nokia announced it’s dipping its toe back into consumer electronics with the Nokia N1 – a $249 Android-based tablet running its Z Launcher software – now fellow Finns, Jolla, have revealed plans for their own tablet.

Unlike Nokia which is launching the N1 the conventional way through a deal with Foxconn, Jolla is crowdfunding the unimaginatively named Jolla Tablet. It’s opened preorders with the price starting at $189 for the first 2,000 orders and jumping to $199 for the next 1,000 backers. Its aim is to raise $380,000 in the next 21 days to make the Jolla Tablet a reality, with a shipping date of June 2015.

The Jolla Tablet has specs that put it in the same ball park as the iPad Mini 3 and Google Nexus 9 – a 7.9 inch 2048 x 1563 resolution screen, a 1.8GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage (with the opportunity to add up to 32GB more via micro-SD) and a 5MP rear camera. On the software side, the tablet will come running Jolla’s own open-source SailFish OS, which can run Android apps as well as native software.

Jolla launched a smartphone running SailFish in Finland in 2013. It’s spread its way through Europe and Asia this year and recently launched in India. The SailFish OS is a progression from MeeGo which Jolla’s founding team worked on at Nokia.

The Jolla Tablet IndieGoGo campaign total was speeding towards $200,000 at the time of writing so it looks likely to hit its target. If you want to grab one of those early bird deals, you might want to move quick. It’s a much more modest goal than the Ubuntu Edge campaign that tried for $32 million to fund a new smartphone and failed.

Update: It’s hit the $380,000 target and rocketed past it.

Jolla Tablet campaign on IndieGoGo [Jolla]

Read nextJolla: hands-on with the first SailFish OS-powered smartphone 

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