I’ve had a review unit since last week. Today the Jolla Phone is officially out. The short version is that the company that walked out of Nokia two years ago actually shipped a phone, which was not guaranteed, and the phone actually works as a daily driver, which was also not guaranteed.
The gesture system is what I keep coming back to. There is no home button, no back button, no permanent navigation bar. Left or right edge sends the app to the background. Top edge closes it. Bottom edge is the launcher. Long-press on the home screen opens a second set of controls I found by accident on day two. The N9 had something similar but Sailfish’s version is more thought out. The multitasking view shows all open apps as live tiles you can interact with directly — read a WhatsApp message, see a tweet, without actually opening the app. That part I didn’t expect to like as much as I do.
Days one and two I kept ending up in the wrong place. Day four I stopped noticing I was doing it. The transition is faster than it has any right to be for an input model this different from everything else shipping right now.
The Other Half is the NFC backplate thing. Swap to Poppy Red and the OS theme shifts to match. Jolla published the hardware spec so third parties can theoretically build panels with embedded electronics, extended batteries, whatever. I have no idea if anyone will. It’s an interesting idea and the NFC hook is real, but “interesting idea” is a long way from “ecosystem.”
Android app compatibility via Alien Dalvik is what keeps this from being a Sailfish enthusiast-only product. Install an APK, it runs, it looks native. WhatsApp works. Spotify works. Instagram opens, mostly. The dependency this creates on Google not breaking the APK format is obvious, but the alternative is shipping a phone with a blank app store in 2013, which isn’t a phone anyone buys.
Camera is fine in daylight. At €399 the hardware is exactly what you’d expect. Neither of those are reasons to buy this phone. The gesture OS and the fact that it isn’t Android are the reasons, and both hold up after a week.
More after I’ve used it through the weekend.
Update June 2026: The weekend turned into thirteen years. A tablet Indiegogo nearly finished the company in 2015. By 2017 Jolla had stopped making hardware and was licensing Sailfish for Sony phones. The gesture system I kept coming back to in this review prefigured where iOS and Android would eventually go, though I had no idea at the time. In 2026, Commodore put Sailfish on the Callback flip phone. The OS from this review unit is still shipping.