News
74 Aqua Fish goes on sale from eBay India; more retailers expected in coming weeks.
Jolla on Monday announced that its first smartphone developed by a licensed OEM partner has gone on sale in India.
Called Aqua Fish, it was developed by Indian electronics maker Intex and costs 5,499 rupees (€74). It has a five-inch display, a 1.3-GHz quad core processor, 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage, which can be increased thanks to a memory card slot. It also has 8-megapixel rear-facing, and 2-megapixel front-facing cameras.
It runs Jolla’s Sailfish OS 2.0 software, which is designed to be navigable with one hand, and includes features like single-view multitasking.
The smartphone is available from eBay India. Amazon India, and two popular Indian online retailers, Flipkart and Snapdeal, are expected to begin selling Aqua Fish in the coming weeks.
"We are very excited and proud to witness the launch of Aqua Fish, the first Sailfish OS-powered smartphone licensed by a major device vendor," said Jolla co-founder Sami Pienimäki, in a statement.
"Sailfish OS is a young mobile OS; a challenger with a lot of promise. We are confident that our consumers will enjoy the Sailfish experience on the Aqua Fish," added Intex director Keshave Bansal.
Intex was the first device maker to partner with Jolla after the latter opted to spin off its hardware assets and concentrate on licensing its Sailfish software.
Intex was expected to launch its first Sailfish phone last year, but details of Aqua Fish did not emerge until this year’s Mobile World Congress.
The fact that it has now gone on sale could be a sign that a degree of normalcy has returned to Jolla.
The Finland-based company, formed in 2012 by former Nokia engineers working on the ill-fated MeeGo OS, filed for debt restructuring and suspended a large number of staff in November 2015 following a failed funding round.
It secured a fresh source of capital in December, enabling Jolla to emerge from what it described as its most challenging ‘death valley’.
