Difference between Jolla Sailfish os and Android os

Jolla is the first phone by the Finnish start-up of the same name. It will be released in late 2013 and run the Sailfish OS, which is based on the abandoned MeeGo project founded by Intel and Nokia. Jolla is largely made up of ex-Nokia employees disenchanted by the handset maker’s move to Windows Phone exclusivity in early 2011.

Jolla announced itself to the world in late 2011. It has already raised $258 million in investment from the telecommunications industry to help revive tMeeGo, which has only been available to the public once before on the widely praised Nokia N9.

Jolla handset

Six months is an eternity in the handset market, so we were surprised Jolla was keen to demonstrate its smartphone just one day after it was formally announced and targeting a Christmas arrival. That said from a hardware perspective what we saw is extremely encouraging. We got an early hands-on with the handset and its software at an exclusive launch event this week in Helsinki.

Very limited information has been released on the smartphone, and hence the list of Jolla specs and features is not long in this post.

The battery is user replaced, concealed behind interchangeable back covers. An interesting feature is the ability of the theme to adapt to the kind of back cover installed. The OS recognizes which color the back cover has, and tailors the theme of the UI to match with it.

The smartphone is said to be compatible with Android Apps. While details of how this association or integration will work are not clear, the idea is that you will be able to access the Play Store from the Jolla.

A couple of years back, Nokia was working hard to remain relevant in the smartphone industry. With its Symbian OS failing to transfer its compelling offerings to a touch screen interface, Nokia developed MeeGo, a new platform that would offer a more sophisticated smartphone experience. The OS was brought to life in the Nokia N9. Despite its size challenges, the smartphone was a success, offering power, ample screen estate and a very practical QWERTY.

But the Finnish Company became disinterested in furthering MeeGo, and abandoned it to focus on Windows 8 platform instead. A team of engineers who developed MeeGo found this decision by Nokia unsatisfactory, and left the company to continue working on the platform.

Fast Forward to 2013, and the engineers, who went on to form Jolla, have crafted their first smartphone called Jolla (pronounced Yo-la). The smartphone runs Sailfish OS, based on the MeeGo platform, and is set to launch before the close of the year.

The smartphone has an enormous challenge ahead. Any smartphone needs its own application ecosystem to explore its full capabilities. To this end, Jolla has invited developers, and other smartphone makers to join in the tribe, and explore the potentialities of the Sailfish OS.

There’s also the challenge of stealing some of the crowd from the well-established platforms. Android for instance, claims the largest number of smartphone users. It has gone from strength to strength, and continues to win over, and retain almost all users who try it out.

But perhaps the Jolla is not out to dethrone the established platforms. Rather, it hopes to provide an experience that is refreshingly different from what we have, by offering an uncomplicated OS that is simply fun to use. It will have to endure the test of time though, before any judgments can be passed.

The smartphone industry has always presented a ton of options as far as platforms are concerned. There’s Android, the leading mobile OS, then there’s iOS, Windows Phone 8 OS, and Blackberry OS. Now a new platform is hoping to penetrate this market by offering a new kind of operating system.Finnish company Jolla will now join the already crowded smartphone market with a smartphone running on its gesture based ‘Unlike’ custom operating Sailfish OS.Jolla was founded by former Nokia executives and software developers in 2011 after they quit Nokia. The software for Jolla has been built from MeeGo, a linux based software which was deserted by Nokia for windows Phone for its handsets.The handset, which costs 399 euros, is ready for shipment by the end of the year. Among its features are 4.5-inch Estrade display, dual-core processor, 4G connectivity, 8-megapixel AF camera, 16GB storage and MicroSD support. It is also Antroid App compliant and comes with a user replaceable battery.

Jolla is equipped with a cross-over feature which is referred to as the ‘Other Half’. The other Half is nothing but the removable shells on the back of the handset that can be changed and customized by the user. The ‘Other Halves’ come in a range of splash of colours and will automatically alter the onscreen colour scheme, fonts, ringtones and themes according the choice of ‘Other Half’.According to Jolla’s head of software development, these rear covers can give additional functionality to the device and help in brand building or promotional activities.The smartphone’s content, according to Jolla’s website, will be presented clearly with animations, haptics and sounds. The phone offers buttonless navigation system with the main icons as Phone, Messages, Browser and Apps.With its catchphrase ‘We Are Jolla, We Are Unlike’, and assurance of an individualised experience for each user in accordance with their mood, style and ambiance, the phone’s major selling point appears to be its uniqueness.

Given the amount of coverage that Android receives around here, you could almost be forgiven for forgetting that other mobile operating systems do exist. They do, and one of the more recent platforms that is being eagerly anticipated by many that does in fact look promising is Sailfish OS. This OS is the work of a Finnish company called Jolla.

After Nokia’s decision to ditch the Meego operating system, which was developed in conjunction with Intel, in favor of Windows Phone devices; a number of employees decided that continuing to work with Meego and not Nokia was the way forward. This splinter group later became Jolla, and Sailfish OS is based heavily on the Mer Project, a key component of Meego.

Their eponymously named first and therefore flagship device was unveiled recently at the rather curiously titled “Jolla Loveday” event. It showed us not only the hardware that we can expect to see in stores at some point before the end of the year, but also what looks to be a spruced up version of the software itself with some changes to the user interface and a more polished look than anything seen previously.

The device itself looks a lot like an N9, as you might have expected, and why shouldn’t it? That was a fantastic looking device. It has no physical buttons (on the front at least), which can only mean that navigation will be performed by gestures on the device’s 4.5″ screen. This is no doubt similar to the gesture navigation featured in Canonical’s Ubuntu Touch mobile OS. Internally, the device will feature an as yet unspecified dual core processor, 16 GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot available, an 8 MP rear facing camera, removable battery, and 4G capabilities.  It’s also possible to give your device a little personality by making use of a feature which is being referred to as “The Other Half.” These are different coloured  attachments for the rear of the device, which not only add a splash of color to the hardware, but will also reportedly affect the software and alter the theme of the UI to match the attachment. Now if you ask me, that’s pretty cool.

Did I mention that it also runs Android apps? Well it does, in addition to the native Sailfish apps that the company is striving to get developers working on. The device will also have an advantage on its competitors by being able to tap into the huge selection of already available Android applications.

Priced at around €399 (just over $500 give or take a few bucks), the device is not exactly a budget option. But once subsidized by networks, it may end up being an appealing option for quite a few people. For those who would consider buying off contract, pre-ordering will get you a €100 rebate. Whether this will turn out to be a serious Android competitor, the best of the rest, or just a total flop remains to be seen.

Android

World is contracting with the growth of mobile phone technology. As the number of users is increasing day by day, facilities are also increasing. Starting with simple regular handsets which were used just for making phone calls, mobiles have changed our lives and have become part of it. Now they are not used just for making calls but they have innumerable uses and can be used as a Camera , Music player, Tablet PC, T.V. , Web browser etc . And with the new technologies, new software and operating systems are required.

 

Operating Systems have developed a lot in last 15 years. Starting from black and white phones to recent smart phones or mini computers, mobile OS has come far away. Especially for smart phones, Mobile OS has greatly evolved from Palm OS in 1996 to Windows pocket PC in 2000 then to Blackberry OS and Android.

One of the most widely used mobile OS these days is ANDROID. Android is a software bunch comprising not only operating system but also middleware and key applications. Android Inc was founded in Palo Alto of California, U.S. by Andy Rubin, Rich miner, Nick sears and Chris White in 2003. Later Android Inc. was acquired by Google in 2005. After original release there have been number of updates in the original version of Android.

Android is a powerful Operating System supporting a large number of applications in Smart Phones. These applications make life more comfortable and advanced for the users. Hardwares that support Android are mainly based on ARM architecture platform. Some of the current features and specifications of android are:

Android comes with an Android market which is an online software store. It was developed by Google. It allows Android users to select, and download applications developed by third party developers and use them. There are around 2.0 lack+ games, application and widgets available on the market for users.

Android applications are written in java programming language. Android is available as open source for developers to develop applications which can be further used for selling in android market. There are around 200000 applications developed for android with over 3 billion+ downloads. Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. For software development, Android provides Android SDK (Software development kit). Read more about open source software.

 

These are the basics of Android applications:

•      Android applications are composed of one or more application components (activities, services, content providers, and broadcast receivers)

•      Each component performs a different role in the overall application behavior, and each one can be activated individually (even by other applications)

•      The manifest file must declare all components in the application and should also declare all application requirements, such as the minimum version of Android required and any hardware configurations required

•      Non-code application resources (images, strings, layout files, etc.) should include alternatives for different device configurations (such as different strings for different languages)

Google, for software development and application development, had launched two competitions ADC1 and ADC2 for the most innovative applications for Android. It offered prizes of USD 10 million combined in ADC1 and 2. ADC1 was launched in January 2008 and ADC 2 was launched in May 2009. These competitions helped Google a lot in making Android better, more user friendly, advanced and interactive.

• Application Framework that enables reuse and replacement of components
• Optimized Graphics that is powered by customized 2D graphics library and 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification
• Media Support for common video, audio, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
• Provision of Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G and Wi-Fi
• SQLite for structured data storage
• Open source WebKit engine based integrated web browser
• Camera, GPS, Compass, and Accelerometer (dependent on hardware support)
• GSM Telephony
• Dalvik virtual machine optimised for mobile devices
• Rich Development environment that includes a device emulator, debugging tools, performance and memory profiling and a Eclipse IDE plugin.

 

The fully integrated Android package comprising an OS, middleware, applications and user friendly interface is expected to considerably speed-up product development while lowering the cost of mobile services development.