Jolla Sailfish OS to be ported to new Fairphone

Users of the forthcoming modular smartphone will be offered a choice of operating systems for the first time

Jolla, the Finnish creator of the open-source Sailfish mobile operating system, is to co-operate with Dutch smartphone maker Fairphone on porting its OS to the forthcoming Fairphone 2 (FP2).

The ambition of the Amsterdam-based social enterprise has always been to offer a choice of software on its phones, but owing to the lack of availability of open-source drivers for some components of its first model, the FP1, particularly for the MediaTek chipset, this was an ambition that could not be realised. Instead, Fairphone users were restricted to a modified version of Android, although some reported success with the CyanogenMod Android fork.

With its second model, Fairphone - which aims for sustainability, longevity and fair trade in its supply chain - has been able to achieve far more control over the components and firmware. By designing a modular phone from the ground up rather than adapting an existing model, the firm has been able to dial in much more flexibility into the way the phone is made, and, importantly for many users, the software it can run. The choice of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 CPU will have been a key factor in enabling other operating systems to run on the phone.

Sailfish is based on Meego, a Linux-based operating system first developed within Nokia, but discarded in 2011 when then-CEO Stephen Elop chose to focus the company's smartphone resources on Microsoft Windows Phone. Version 2.0 of the OS was released last month. The company also produces its own range of tablets and smartphones.

In a blog post today, Fairphone, which is still working on a development environment for its new phone, announced today that the Jolla will be joining it in the task.

"We are collaborating with our friends at Jolla to support the porting of their innovative Sailfish operating system to our Fairphone 2 hardware! This is something that a large proportion of our community has been very interested in for some time, and we are proud to finally get this off the ground," Fairphone said, adding that this is still a work in progress.

"The overall aim of our collaboration with Jolla is to be able to offer the full Sailfish OS experience directly to our customers. To do this, there first needs to be a basic stable version of the Sailfish OS running on the Fairphone 2, after which the integration of Jolla's specific technology and services would need to be finalised. This will take time. How much time is still unclear at this point."

The crowdfunded FP2 is currently in production, with the first batch due in November. It will ship with a modified version of Android 5.1, but users will now be able to install Sailfish if they so wish.