The Original Jolla Phone turns 7 today
The first one is always the first one. Most Sailfish fans remember the first ever device to run Sailfish OS, the original Jolla phone, or Jolla 1 as we sometimes like to call it. This device, a trailblazer in its own field at the time, was first launched exactly seven years ago. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Jolla phone!
Launching the Jolla smartphone back in 2013 was a truly memorable event for many of us in the Jolla team, but also for the hundreds of fans queuing to get their hands on the first ever Sailfish device. For me, as one of the founders of Jolla, launching this iconic device was undoubtedly one of the most exciting moments in my life, which I’ll always remember. I trust many others share the same feeling with me.
Well-deserved retirement plan for the Jolla phone
After so many years, the time has come to activate retirement plans for the good-old Jolla phone. Thus, we have decided to start the ramp-down of supporting for it. We are very proud to have supported the original Jolla smartphone with a total of 34 software updates during its well-served lifetime of seven years! While the latest Sailfish OS software update (3.4.0, Pallas-Yllästunturi) will remain the last officially supported software release for the original Jolla phone from 2013, we will continue to provide Jolla store access for it for the time being.
For our tech-oriented readers, there are also several technical reasons why we need to discontinue future updates for Jolla 1, such as:
- Jolla 1 has the oldest Android App Support implementation, which cannot be updated to a newer one due to architectural limitations.
- The device is also now the only one with the (very) old 3.4 kernel, which is blocking us from utilizing features from newer kernels and making it impractical to provide e.g. certain security updates
- Jolla 1 is using the (very) old BlueZ 4 Bluetooth stack, which has also become impractical to maintain
Comparing this 7 years – which in today’s mobile technology era feels like an eternity – to a typical smartphone’s lifespan, it certainly is a well-deserved time for the retirement of our dear Jolla 1 phone.
What next?
Sailfish OS continues to go from strength to strength as the only alternative mobile OS in the otherwise duopoly market. While Jolla has a strong business focus on corporate and governmental customers and projects, we also strive all the time to make Sailfish OS better and better for all of us, in collaboration with our community, and also through our Sailfish X community device program.
Sailfish X also continues to grow and our developer community is porting Sailfish OS to newer devices all the time. We encourage users of the original Jolla smartphone to try out e.g. one of the supported Sony Xperia devices to get the latest Sailfish OS experience and software releases in full.
Further, we have been working in good collaboration with our active community of porters (thanks all!), and thanks to that there is a new Sailfish OS reference port coming together nicely that will enable Sailfish OS support for new 64-bit and Android 10 driver based devices – stay tuned for more on that soon!
Your Jolla captain,
Sami
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