Jolla is back with their second device, and this time it’s a SailFish 2.0 tablet that they’ve decided to fund through the wonderful virtues of crowdfunding. The Jolla Tablet hit IndieGoGo earlier this morning with a lofty goal of $380,000. While we imagine they were confident in their ability to hit that goal, we don’t know if anyone anticipated that they would be able to meet that goal within the first two hours. We also didn’t know they’d roar on to raise $180,000 more as of the time of this writing.
So what’s SailFish, and why are we writing about it? It’s a Linux-based open source mobile platform made by the folks at Jolla, and while it has its own applications framework and APIs, the team built SailFish to be fully compatible with Android apps. You could sideload pretty much anything you want that doesn’t already exist in SailFish’s apps marketplace.
Version 2.0 of SailFish introduces a couple of cool changes, including Ambiances for easily changing the way the user interface works, or an Events view that shows all your upcoming meetings and dates on the calendar, notifications and more.
But the most exciting thing about SailFish OS isn’t its features, it’s clean look or its intuitive multi-tasking setup (all of which you can read about right here): it’s the prospect of its users having a voice in its ongoing development. Jolla draws most of their inspiration straight from their own community, and the tablet’s day one IndieGoGo performance is a testament to how much that means to many folks.
The tablet isn’t too shabby for its $200 asking price, either. Here’s what you can expect under the hood:
It’s not going to blow you away on the basis of specs and horsepower, but those internals should be more than enough for a pain-free SailFish experience. Want to get your hands on one? Jolla is currently offering early bird special prices for folks who stamp their ticket early.
The device was going for as low as $189 pledges at one point, though the current tier for early pledges sits at $204. We’re not sure what the exact retail price will end up being just yet, though we imagine they won’t look to move further than a comfortable $250. The tablet is due in March 2015 (don’t hold them to that) and ships the US, EU, Norway, Switzerland, India, China, Hong Kong and Russia. Be sure to take a look at Jolla’s feel-good promo video up above.
[via IndieGoGo]