First Look of JOLLA

Jolla may be a completely new name in the smartphone game, but the people in charge are no rookies. Founded by former Nokia employees, the Finnish company is looking to give the MeeGo platform a new lease of life. Established in 2011, it took Jolla two years to unveil its first product.

Their first handset is called just like company itself - Jolla, but while the naming wasn't particularly innovative the Sailfish-based smartphone certainly is. It's pretty clear that plenty of fresh new ideas went into its development and the result is quite different from anything else you can get in the market.

The Jolla smartphone runs Sailfish OS - a successor of the MeeGo open platform, which Jolla took and developed further. In a way, it could be viewed as MeeGo 2.0 However, Jolla would like to start fresh and not carry the burden of its neighbor, who abandoned the project that many truly loved.

We are yet to see if the new Finnish kid on the block will feature the same sort of magic as the Nokia N9, which made so many mourn the end of MeeGo. For starters here are the key Jolla specs.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Dimensions: 131 x 68.0 x 9.9mm, 143g

Display: 4.5" IPS LCD display of 960 x 540 pixels resolution, Gorilla Glass 2, 245ppi pixel density

Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 400; dual-core Krait 200 at 1.4GHz, Adreno 305 GPU, 1GB RAM

OS: Sailfish OS

Camera: 8MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Video camera: 1080p @ 30fps video capture with main camera

Storage: 16GB built-in, microSD card slot with support of up to 64GB

Connectivity: NFC, A-GPS+GLONASS, WLAN (2.4) a/b/g/n, microUSB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.0 LE

Battery: 2,100mAh Li-Ion

Misc: Android app compatibility via the Yandex.Store and Amazon Appstore

Given the price tag, the mid-range specifications came as somewhat of a nasty surprise when Jolla unveiled its smartphone. However history has shown that a smartphone can be much more than a sum of its parts and we shouldn't write off any device before giving it a proper test.

And while the screen resolution could have certainly been higher, you can't blame this one for skimping on innovation. The Jolla phone is made out of a unique combination of aluminum and premium plastic and sports a replaceable back panel dubbed "the Other Half", which allows you to automatically change profiles with covers.