- cross-posted to:
- linuxphones@lemmy.ca
- linuxphones@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linuxphones@lemmy.ca
- linuxphones@lemmy.ml
The Finnish company Jolla is back with the Linux-powered Jolla Phone. It’s being positioned as an antidote to the US-dominated smartphone status quo of Android and iOS.
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Buy a pixel phone(2nd hand) and install Graphene OS
Or soon, a Motorola
hardware is compromised. OS cant change that.
Source
Jolla crowdsourced a tablet in 2014, blew by their initial goal, then delayed and delayed and eventually canceled the project claiming they would try to offer refunds. They refunded half of the contributions of most of the backers and then pocketed the other half, over $1M. I don’t know if their new phone is anti-big-tech or not, and I’m all for alternatives to Android and iOS, but this is not a company I can trust.
deleted by creator
So, as an American (unfortunately) is there a way to get one of these?
Move here, no downsides
the problem is the usa antenna bands
Is it privacy friendly ? I don’t care if it is Eu product or not ,
Google will not spy on you and most of the code is open source. I’m not sure if it has been audited.
nice
So, is the Jolla phone with Sailfish OS better than a Fairphone with /e/OS?
Most here would love to have a fully FOSS phone. However, Jolla is still an excellent and simple proposition for the vast majority. We need to wholeheartedly support this and other significant movement away from US spyware/ ransomware/adware.
My problem with it, is thats its even less open source than android is, even after all the enshittification. If they were serious with their anti big tech approach, they would open source it, then Sailfish OS would be a real alternative.
I wasn’t able to read the article, for those who are in the same boat it’s copied below. Sorry no images.
Edit: Saw the archived link, mybad 😅
The ‘European’ Jolla Phone Is an Anti-Big-Tech Smartphone
Julian Chokkattu
7 - 9 minutes
Jolla may not be a household name, but for more than a decade the Finnish company has positioned its Linux-based Sailfish OS as an alternative to the mobile software duopoly that is Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
Now, 13 years since it tried to cut through the market with the Jolla Phone—a device which remarkably received software updates through 2020—it’s back with a successor of the same name.
This time, the company is positioning its handset as the “European phone.” This bit of marketing caters to the growing distrust in US digital services and platforms that has arisen since Big Tech sidled up to the second Trump administration.
The new Jolla Phone (pronounced “Yolla”) costs €649, mimics the Scandinavian design of the original, and has secured more than 10,000 preorders since its preview in December 2025. Those orders are expected to begin shipping at the end of June. At Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona this week, the company divulged more details about the phone’s hardware.
Alt Android
Jolla has had a turbulent history. After the company floundered the launch of its Jolla Tablet in 2015, it nearly went bankrupt and pivoted to licensing Sailfish OS to automotive companies and governments, including Russia. After the invasion of Ukraine, Jolla had to cut ties with Russia, and a corporate restructuring meant that Jolla’s assets were acquired by the company’s former management under a new company called Jollyboys.
Image may contain Electronics Mobile Phone Phone Computer Hardware Hardware Monitor and Screen
The new Jolla Phone.
Courtesy of Jolla
It got back into the smartphone game in 2024 with the Jolla C2 Community Phone, made in collaboration with a local Turkish company, and it was this experience that gave Jolla the courage to jump back into the hardware business with the new Jolla Phone. Unlike the C2, this device is completely assembled in Salo, Finland, where Nokia phones were manufactured more than a decade ago.
“Europeans want more European technology,” Sami Pienimäki, CEO of Jolla Mobile, tells WIRED. “People want to go away from Big Tech, and the other trend is that European people want sovereign tech—it makes it possible for our kind of company to have a position in the market.”
Building a smartphone from scratch was also much harder over a decade ago, but today, Pienimäki says the operation can be fairly lean without having to “pay too much up-front.”
The components are sourced from various vendors and countries. The MediaTek Dimensity 7100 5G chip hails from Taiwan; the 50-megapixel main and 13-megapixel ultrawide camera sensors are from Sony; the 8 or 12 GB of RAM is from SK Hynix in South Korea.
“There are Chinese components as well—we are totally open about it—but the key is that, as we compile the software ourselves and install it in Finland, we protect the integrity of the product,” Pienimäki says.
What makes Sailfish OS unique over competitors like GrapheneOS and e/OS is that it’s not based on the Android Open Source Project, but Linux. That means it has no ties to Google—no need for the company to “deGoogle” the software; meaning there’s a greater sense of sovereignty over the software (and now the hardware). Still, it’s able to run Android apps, though the implementation isn’t perfect. Another common criticism is that it’s not as secure as options like GrapheneOS, where every app is sandboxed.
There’s a good chance some Android apps on Sailfish OS will run into issues, which is why in the startup wizard the phone will ask if you want to install services like MicroG—open source software that can run Google services on devices that don’t have the Google Play Store, making it an easier on-ramp for folks coming from traditional smartphones without a technical background. You don’t even need to create a Sailfish OS account to use the Jolla Phone.
Jolla’s effort is hardly the first to push the anti–Big Tech narrative. A wave of other hardware and software companies offer a deGoogled experience, whether that’s Murena from France and its e/OS privacy-friendly operating system or the Canadian GrapheneOS, which just announced a partnership with Motorola. At CES earlier this year, the Swiss company Punkt also teamed up with ApostrophyOS to deploy its software on the new MC03 smartphone. Jolla is following a broader European trend of reducing reliance on US companies, like how French officials ditched Zoom for French-made video conference software earlier this year.
Murena CEO and founder Gaël Duval wrote in a statement emailed to WIRED that the company believes it has a different mission from the Jolla Phone as it’s trying to bring the existing mobile app ecosystem—minus the permanent data collection by Google and third-party trackers—without a learning curve for the average person. “We want to make privacy possible for the everyday person without the need for technical expertise or a development background,” he says.
The Phone
A common problem with these niche smartphones is that they inevitably end up costing a lot of money for the specs. Take the Light Phone III, for example, a fairly low-tech anti-smartphone that doesn’t enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, resulting in an outlandish $699 price. The Jolla Phone is in a similar boat, though the specs-to-value ratio is a little more respectable.
It’s powered by a midrange MediaTek Dimensity 7100 5G chip with 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, plus a microSD card slot and dual-SIM tray. There’s a 6.36-inch 1080p AMOLED screen, the two main cameras, and a 32-megapixel selfie shooter. The 5,500-mAh battery cell is fairly large considering the phone’s size, though the phone’s connectivity is a little dated, stuck with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4.
Uniquely, the Jolla Phone brings back “The Other Half” functional rear covers from the original. These swappable back covers have pogo pins that interface with the phone, allowing people to create unique accessories like a second display on the back of the phone or even a keyboard attachment. There’s an Innovation Program where the community can cocreate functional covers together and 3D-print them. And yes, a removable rear cover means the Jolla Phone’s battery is user-replaceable.
Pienimäki says that while the device doesn’t have FCC approval, you can theoretically import it into the US, and it should work with the major US carriers, though compatibility is rarely a given. Jolla is considering a separate US launch, though right now it’s focusing on the European Union, the UK, Norway, and Switzerland.
Antti Saarnio, Jolla Group’s chairperson, reiterates that the Jolla Phone will be a niche product. “Most of the people using Android or iOS will not switch, but we should treat this as a stepping stone for something new,” Saarnio says. The “path to real volume” will come from the mobile market breaking down into new form factors, powered by artificial intelligence.
He’s likely referring to Jolla’s Mind2, a privacy-focused AI computer, which is still in active development. It plugs into a PC and connects Jolla’s AI assistant to apps like email and calendar locally—no cloud access required. The chatbot-like interface lets you ask it questions about your data, whether you’re fishing for something from an email or a private message. While the new Jolla Phone won’t have any AI capabilities at launch, Saarnio says an integration will be an option users can enable later this year.
Jolla has street cred for supporting its devices for a long time, but we’ll have to wait and see how the fresh hardware holds up and just how much the company has polished the Sailfish OS experience, especially since it’s much easier today to get started with a deGoogled Android alternative.
and a 32-megapixel selfie shooter
Do the people who want a Linux phone that isn’t Android, also want a selfie camera? Those 2 things don’t seem to go together.
the new Jolla Phone won’t have any AI capabilities at launch, Saarnio says an integration will be an option users can enable later this year.
Again, Linux and LLM?
I personally don’t like the phones/software targeting the privacy-demographic, because of all the pro-crypto and LLM stuff. Anyone have suggestions for phones for people who care about privacy, but care more about ethics? So no: LLMs, crypto, Russia/Chine/USA components?
Do the people who want a Linux phone that isn’t Android, also want a selfie camera? Those 2 things don’t seem to go together.
Yeah, I want to be able to have a video call with my family that doesn’t look like ass. I’d also like to be able to attend meet/zoom calls without being called out for using a potato.
the new Jolla Phone won’t have any AI capabilities at launch, Saarnio says an integration will be an option users can enable later this year.Less so, but then again, if I’m in control of my data, getting a on-device speech to text for a conversation would be good, if I could use the hardware to fuel a swipe text model, that would be net positive.
Selfie cam: oh.
Personally I’ve never seen the advantage of my or others’ faces in calls/conference-calls.
LLMs: are there open-source ones, not built from stolen text?
Don’t think LLM, think specific training data. instead of tapping out T H I S, you press down at the T, swipe over to the h, up to the I and left to the S then release.
The NPU takes that squiggle you just made and runs it against a model that’s been trained on tens or hundreds of thousands of squiggles to deciper the word you just swiped. It’s not trained on books, or the whole of humanity and the internet, it’s just trained on the keyboard app you’re using and other people who have used it. if they swipe and keep going, the word was right and the squiggle counts, if they went back and corrected the text, that’s the answer for the squiggle.
There are all kinds of AI things out there that aren’t LLM based.
am statesian. should i be pronuncing this holla (with a rolled l) or yoya or jola or i’m sure i can think up something to make the linguists on here scream like ghøghə
Considering that it’s a Finnish company, the pronunciation is probably meant to be “yol-la” (approx)
edit: /ˈjolːɑ/ for you IPA perverts
If it’s closed source it is not anti-big tech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzCMKbhK-EY
Pity about the pay-walled factory reset and the closed source software they use like drivers, homescreen UI, the compositor, some QML components and the Android compatibility layer
It wouldn’t bother me so much if they weren’t specifically positioning themselves as privacy and FOSS advocates
What. What do you mean pay-walled factory reset?!
In odd chance that you happened to forget your encryption password on old Jolla, the reset needed factory assistance, which cost some tens of dollars. So a nothingburger really, did not appear predatory, simply a bit lacking UX design.
Will it run my bank apps? That’s all I care about, really.
I hope it won’t run bank apps. When my bank tries to shut down their website and force me onto a smartphone (which is inherently not a smart move for privacy and security), I want to be able to show them that their app won’t run on my linux phone so there is pressure to keep the website running.
Fuck phone banking. Let’s have some separation of church and state.
boot lickers who want to run corporate spyware → Android or iOS
freedom seekers who want to keep their dignity and autonomy → linuxWorth noting that banks deliberately block alternative platforms. Some detect whether they are running in an emulator and refuse to run. And “emulator” is very loose. I saw a bank app refuse to run on a laptop that natively ran Android.
It’s a bit hit and miss. Some work, some don’t. There’s a topic about it on the Sailfish forums.
With Motorola going with GrapheneOS and Jolla coming back with a Linux phone, I wonder how Denmark will react. Will the Danish government make versions of Mit ID for these operating systems?
For those who don’t know, “nemkonto” is a centralised digital ID system in the Danish government to which all your things are tied. You use a security app called “Mit ID” to log into places that make use of your personal information.
Your bank requires your Mit ID, your doctor requires your Mit ID, your ISP requires your Mit ID. Every time you log into anything remotely official you are required to log in with Mit ID.
On Android it requires Google’s security services and a locked down phone to function. So rooting is not an option, as it takes away your ability to use your phone to simply… Exist… As a citizen.
You can get a code key device from the Kommune, but you can only use that to log into things through the Web browser of your PC. On your phone you are required to use the app, and if thr app doesn’t work then you’re simply not logging in. Something as basic as checking your bank balance becomes a major annoyance.
Re: the code device. All apps requiring MitID works perfectly fine on the phone without the app as far as I can tell. There’s no need to use the web browser of your PC. Source: I had the code device and a phone with e/os/
What stops you from using the code key device with your phone. Can it not plug into any USB port and output a code? If their site says it doesn’t work on mobile, can you change the browser user agent?
Code key device is not something you plug into a USB. You push a button and it generates a code for manual input.
On websites that require a Mit ID log-in you have options to change to the code device instead. With an app on your phone it requires the Mit ID app to be present, as well as the phone to still have Google’s security process running.
Several apps can have the Google security spoofed, but still require the Mit ID app. Mit ID, on the other hand, cannot be spoofed at all.
The code device works fine on Android and Grapheneos, I’ve never used the app.
I see, that’s frustrating, especially if the same functionality isn’t available via the web. My university’s IT department helped with exceptions and gave me a workaround to the Windows/Mac-only VPN software they were using and made me a different kind of account to login on my Linux laptop so I could access intranet resources. Unfortunately, this wasn’t advertised and I didn’t find out about it until a year in.
That sounds so dystopian and yet so many governments are moving towards similar ideas.
It does have quite a few upsides as well. Identity theft is harder than ever, everything requires 2FA, there is a lot less bureaucracy and paperwork, and almost everything just works.
Everything is digital, cash is only for drugs and old people. If I travel to the other end of Europe, it feels like the stone ages lol
I have simply moved to the OTC keyring.
Yup, my biggest reason for not running e/os on my Fairphone in denmark. Idk what to do other than carry 2 phones or wait
I’ve felt the pain of the mitID strictness, it really sucks. But can’t you request the desktop version of a site om your phone when logging in and using the code key device?
The MitID keygen works on mobile browsers, it just has to be chromium based and all telemetry enabled. It is not a nice experience, but in a pinch it’s doable.
I’ve been using it with Fennec (not Chromium) and Vanadium On Graphene as recently as this morning. Have had no issues with the code display
Ech… I don’t use Chromium browsers…
Yea it sucks, but that’s sadly how it is for most danish government sites. It’s almost like everything is hardcoded for chromium and anyone not using that can get fucked. That is at least my experience though I should mention that librewolf on Linux works flawlessly.
Finland had a similar system. It’s the only reason I can’t move over to graphene or others.
You can use the key card for manual input in that case. I had to use it for awhile myself
And revert back to the 2000s? No thanks!
Depending where on 2000 it wasn’t that bad. Housing was more affordable for example
Not all Finnish banks require play services for their apps, if any. Mine works just fine on eOS. Don’t know about Mobiilivarmenne, if you’d rather use that
Is this a recent change?
I don’t know about play services, but a few years ago I received errors that the security of my device was compromised or something, if I installed a different OS, and couldn’t use banking apps.Edit: come to think of it, it wasn’t “a few” years, more like “many years” ago.
Will the Android Signal client work on it, or does getting one involve forfeiting any means of communication with people who don’t know what a XMPP server is?
I think their refusal to allow third-party clients but also only maintain the official one for select few platforms is one of the things that is a big fat minus for Signal
Yeah I don’t trust Signal. I don’t get why it’s so beloved. Anything that requires me to use a phone with a telecom-company-controlled number as my identity is not something I am generally inclined to interact with much less consider “secure” in any way.
There is an unofficial native client for Signal called Whisperfish.
