Jolla’s Sailfish OS is officially intended for only one smartphone, but it has sailed and continues to sail into other territories. The latest device to welcome it at the docks is Google’s latest and greatest smartphone and from the looks of it, it works quite well on the Nexus 5.
Developers from Jolla as well as volunteers have actually just recently made an alpha-quality Sailfish OS available on the Nexus 4 for early adopters. They have also hinted at making the Galaxy S III the next target. It almost doesn’t make any sense to have a specialized mobile OS available outside its primary device, but Jolla is actually trying to fight the battle on two fronts. Aside from selling a smartphone that runs Sailfish, it is also trying to spread word about its platform in order to entice developers to build an app ecosystem around it. Of course, Sailfish can actually also run Android apps, so that sort of removes incentives to write native Sailfish apps.
This Sailfish port is an unofficial one made by volunteers. The shaky cam demonstration below shows how smooth and fluid the whole experience is, despite not exactly designed for the device. The Nexus 5 does make a good target for such experiments not only because it has great hardware for running it but also because of the rather open nature of the device itself.
Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, not everything is working. Of course, running Android apps in Sailfish isn’t possible yet because of the missing aliendalvik layer, and it is quite unlikely that it will ever happen. While this Nexus 5 port is unofficial, Jolla will soon be releasing a Hardware Adaptation Development Kit (HADK) to help others port Sailfish to Android devices running CyanogenMod 10.1.
SOURCE: Jolla Blog
VIA: Liliputing
