The ‘European’ Jolla Phone Is an Anti-Big-Tech Smartphone | WIRED

Overview

The ‘European’ Jolla Phone Is an Anti-Big-Tech Smartphone

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 i OS.

Details

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 euros, mimics the Scandinavian design of the original, and has already secured more than 10,000 preorders since its preview in December 2025. Those preorders 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.

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 Ltd.”

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 upfront.”

The components are sourced from various vendors and countries. The Media Tek 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 Graphene OS or 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 “de Google” 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 Graphene OS, 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 Micro G—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 “de Googled” experience, whether that’s Murena from France and its e/OS privacy-friendly operating system, or the Canadian Graphene OS, which just announced a partnership with Motorola. At CES earlier this year, the Swiss company Punkt also teamed up with Apostrophy OS 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.

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 Media Tek Dimensity 7100 5G chip with 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, plus a micro SD 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-m Ah 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 in the future, though right now, it's focusing on the European Union, the UK, Norway, and Switzerland.

Antti Saarnio, chairman of the board at Jolla Group, reiterates that the Jolla Phone will be a niche product. “Most of the people using Android or i OS 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 Mind 2, 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.

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Key Takeaways

The ‘European’ Jolla Phone Is an Anti-Big-Tech Smartphone
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 i OS
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
The new Jolla Phone (pronounced “Yolla”) costs 649 euros, mimics the Scandinavian design of the original, and has already secured more than 10,000 preorders since its preview in December 2025