Posted in: Android, Mobile software, Sailfish OS

Sailfish launcher by Jolla demoed on a Sony Xperia Z

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Sailfish is one of several alternative OSes that are trying to make their mark on the mobile landscape but is so far available natively on only one device – the eponymous Jolla phone.

The launcher will soon be transplanted on Android so more people can use Jolla’s take on what a mobile UI should be like.

You can check our preview of the phone for more details, but it’s essentially a gesture based UI. The lockscreen, homescreen and app drawer are just vertically scrollable pages and you can swipe from the left to switch from an app to the homescreen. There’s a clever pull down menu on the top, which replaces the Menu key.

Here’s an early beta of the Sailfish launcher running on a Sony Xperia Z. It’s still sluggish and has bugs, but Jolla plans to make it available on the Play Store in late June and will hopefully have enough time to fix those issues.

The full Sailfish OS has been ported on a number of Android phones (which was always part of the plan), including the Nexus 5, Nexus 4, even the Nexus One and Nokia N9.

Firefox OS, another alt-OS, has a launcher for Android too but runs natively a number of phones from several makers (ZTE, Alcatel, Geeksphone).

Thanks for tip, dear readers!

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