During an emotional speech delivered today at the Slush conference, Jolla’s Marc Dillon unveiled the company’s next product: the Jolla tablet, running Sailfish OS 2.0. He launched a crowdfunding campaign for the tablet, with a goal of $380,000 – which was achieved in less than three hours (this may be one of the fastest funding consumer electronics devices ever). I got in early, and was one of the very first people to back the tablet (just as I was one of the first to back the Jolla phone a year ago). A second round has already been announced. Big news for American readers: it’ll be available in the US too.
The tablet itself is very similar in specifications to Nokia’s N1 tablet, with an 1.8GHz quad-core Intel processor, 2GB RAM, 2048×1536 330ppi 7.85″ IPS display, 32GB storage, and all the usual sensors and ports you have come to expect. It’s quite light and compact, and has its own design – there’s no way people are going to twist this one into an iPad copy.
The tablet is expected to be delivered to us early backers in May 2015, and I can’t wait. Also, Mr. Dillon, keep rocking that beard.
I really don’t like that they always claim that their OS is open source. IT ISN’T.
The Kernel, Hybris and Qt and some other parts are, but nearly everything the user sees is as proprietary as it gets.
Yeah unfortunately not everything is opensource. Still better then other tablets though. I hope it will be possible to install Plasma active by KDE on it, as it is still the best tablet GUI I have seen so far, and it is completely opensource.
They are gradually opening stuff, and so far claimed they plan to continue doing it. I won’t take this as a guarantee, but let’s hope.
Oh, they call their OS open source nearly from the start and they say they will open it up for exactly that long. It just didn’t happen a lot in the last 18 months.
A few things so far. They opened their UI for the browser and social plugins for example:
* https://github.com/sailfishos/sailfish-browser
* https://github.com/nemomobile/buteo-sync-plugins-social
It’s way too little and way too slow to my taste, but according to developers they plan to open the whole thing. No idea how long it can take though.
Edited 2014-11-21 05:55 UTC
I know right ? It’s like If linux is open source why isn’t Matlab for Linux open source, or even all of the firmware binary blobs the kernel linux ships with. Kappa
Matlab does not claim to be open source, wise man.
Hi. I can recommend Jolla and Sailfish OS. But if you are outside of Finland and the device fails or something like the glass breaks. Then the Jolla customer service is really bad. They use one external company for fixing the device. As a result the repair will cost 250,- Euro. Addition is the transport costs. Jolla wants the device to be sent with a private transport company like DHL etc. which adds the cost of 200,- Euro from Norway atleast. So you end up paying atleast 450,- Euro if your Jolla device gets broken. Its really shame, because Jollas products doesnt deserve this. But their customer service does. I write this so they can improve. Or!?
200€ for shipping a smartphone from Norway to Finland with DHL? How can that be? You can probably fly it there yourself cheaper!
It can’t. I just went to the DHL calculator to prove him wrong. A 500€ insured package from germany to finland goes by 13.99€. Something went very wrong with this guys return/repair.
If my $200 tablet breaks, its broken. I don’t buy non user reparable electronic devices under $400 that experience fast depreciation with the intention of having it fixed. Its never really been economical to do so.
Even with my ~ $600 Galaxy S3 with a broken screen and usb port a year into my ownership, it wasn’t worth it to shell out the $200 to have it repaired when there was a better phone available at $300.
What are you talking about? I live in Ireland, drove over my Jolla and a round trip repair to FInland including screen replacement cost €210. Stop spreading FUD.
Ah Thom, have you so little faith in Apple or their fans?
I have so little faith, actually
So the phone is collecting dust, but you are ready to shell out cash for the tablet. Sounds like fanboy behavior to me.
(I understand the kickstarter price of 179 is quite attractive, but you will have to wait half a year if everything goes right)
Why not buy the Nokia N1 instead? It would be available earlier, has better specs (cpu, camera’s, size and weight) and same price: “Should Jolla Tablet be sold after this campaign, the expected retail price is 249 USD”
Edited 2014-11-19 13:53 UTC
Or, an advocate of competition and as much choice for consumers as possible who puts his money where his mouth is.
As I’ve stated numerous times – Sailfish is a fantastic operating system that lacks decent 3rd party application support – probably mostly because there are far too few devices out there, the usual chicken and egg problem. Instead of just the talk of “we need alternatives!” and “screw monopolies!” that fills these forums, I’m willing to do something about it.
If that makes me a fanboy, then so be it.
I understand that you like the OS, although you complain about the lack of other software the most.
Hoping that this piece of hardware will make more software available seems foolish. Jolla should focus on making their software available on other hardware, not on making hardware. Even according to their own comparison on their site they don’t have a single advantage over the N1. So why don’t they cooperate with their previous employer and license that hardware to put Sailfish on it?
Edited 2014-11-19 18:10 UTC
Releasing a Wi-Fi tablet will help get Sailfish in more hands as it will be able to be used worldwide but…
I own a tablet already so can’t justify spending money on another one. Jolla, I have a Nexus 5 and 7 that could use Sailfish…
Thom, any word if it will have a unlocked bootloader and what GPU it will have?
Its hard for me to say this, because I really respect the difficulty in creating a whole new operating system and phone hardware, but the jolla phone has always kind of sucked hardware wise ( in true nokia fashion).
This tablet’s hardware doesn’t suck. If I were to buy it, I would be making zero compromises to own it.
You would make a ton of compromises on the most important part of the product: software.
Edited 2014-11-19 20:23 UTC
Maybe. Depends on how much improvement they’ve made to sailfish and how easy it is to put something else on there. But software is much easier to change in modern mobile devices than hardware. Still cheesed over the decision to put a *resistive* screen in the n900.
Full, unobfuscated source code or fuck off.
I guess you don’t own any tablet or smartphone then?
because the main thing I have concentrated was the fact that he has very visible handicap that would, somehow be unnoticed when on the street, but had a lot of emphasis on video specially because how the shots were done.
There was a take of a guy using the device and for a split second I was thinking if Jolla had some sort of a accessibility feature.
I know I should not concentrate on it and so many kudos for the dude for over achieving way more than many of us (I am looking at myself) have ever done.
Keep rockin Jolla
I didn’t know Dillon was handicapped until I saw the video, too. But I like to think it’s the reason why the Jollaphone has such great usability when used with only one hand. 😉
I didn’t preorder this time. I did with the phone, and a year later its still a barely usable piece of kit. Primarily because of the sad state of calendar and contact sync, and the lack of attention paid to the core apps.
This time they will have to deliver a usable product before I spend any money.
Are there any details whether it will use Intel GPU (and 14nm SoC), or it will be PowerVR GPU (and 22nm SoC)? Indiegogo doesn’t provide that info.
Edited 2014-11-19 17:54 UTC
Intel GPU is confirmed.
No, it has not…
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/11/19/…
And they claimed, hardware is more or less finalized already.
Edited 2014-11-20 18:54 UTC
That link was already discussed below so we are still at having no confirmation on what GPU they are using…
Edited 2014-11-20 21:19 UTC
We have a confirmation, however they also said that specs can change and are somewhat open to discussion.
See here: https://together.jolla.com/question/64460/request-jolla-tablet-postp…
Holy cr*p… We have no confirmation from Jolla on the GPU and even if we did it may change before shipping??? I don’t think will slap down over $200 (now) on a probably.
I guess they didn’t mean the SoC though. Just minor variations. The chip is confirmed to be this one:
http://ark.intel.com/products/80274/Intel-Atom-Processor-Z3735F-2M-…
I don’t understand why they just don’t list the GPU but I ordered one…
Any word if the bootloader will be unlocked or it will use coreboot?
Edited 2014-11-23 23:38 UTC
See a response form Jolla CTO: https://together.jolla.com/question/63631/request-jolla-tablet-usb-3…
According to this article it’s a Z3700-series platform – and as far as I know they use Intel GPU’s based on the older Ivy Bridge GPU.
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/11/19/…
Edited 2014-11-20 17:41 UTC
Yes, we know it will use an Intel processor… The link in the article lists all the processors in that series but none match the GHz listed for processor in the Jolla tablet. I am assuming Jolla will be using a currently unreleased Intel chipset but will it have a Intel GPU coupled with it?
I don’t think Jolla knows/decided yet so that is why the GPU is not listed in the specs. I can’t pay money now and find out later it will have a PowerVR GPU.
The z3700-series were introduced in Q1’14. There are several that match the 1.8Ghz specified by Jolla: http://ark.intel.com/m/products/series/76761/Intel-Atom-Processor-Z…
Of course I don’t know if the article is correct – but it’s on an Intel site so I guess it’s not entirely impossible it is.
The link from the Intel article about the Jolla tablet you first posted does not list any processors at 1.8GHz.
I think the answer is the most obvious one… Jolla has not listed the GPU because they don’t know or decided yet. Hell, they could change the CPU for the finished product…
I doubt (and hope!) that they don’t know or that they will switch out anything at this late point. They did that with the phone – and it ended in a world of hurt, both for Jolla and us users.
We’ll know for sure in 6 months.
Edited 2014-11-20 19:07 UTC
They could have a 2.0 GHz Intel processor (upgrade) and a PowerVR GPU (never specified) which would suck for my use case.
Edited 2014-11-20 19:50 UTC