Jolla phone's Android support stands in unique position

Image: Jolla Boat's Sailor girls getting ready at MWC2014. Photo by Marc Dillon

Jolla phone stays unique with its Android Support

We are seeing a lot of new mobile phones introduced at Mobile World Congress 2014, but there's still no other phone model capable of running Android apps on top of another OS. Jolla is powered by Sailfish OS, and Android support can be installed on top of it as a virtual platform.

After the support is installed, any Android app store can be installed on Jolla, and any Android apps can then be downloaded and installed. However, Jolla takes care of the user privacy and security on this - Android apps have no access to the contacts saved in Sailfish, nor can it make phone calls or send SMS. Google has no change for phishing important data here.

Android apps have a limited access including e.g. photos and videos and phone sensors, but they can't change any phone settings or access the hardware buttons.

Jolla's virtual Android platform is developed by Myriad. It's an Android Open Source Project called Alien-Dalvik. It doesn't include Google Play services, so apps depending on those are not running out of the box. Users are able to install Play Services for even better support for more apps, but most of them have kept their phones clean of these services.

While more and more native Sailfish apps are being developed, some users have already removed the whole Android Support from their Jolla's. Meanwhile, Jolla is developing their Sailfish OS further to release it for Android devices

Read more:

• Sailfish OS for Android devices
• Sailfish apps developed at Jolla Hack Day
• Sailfish OS running on Nexus 4 (video) 
• Meet Jolla at MWC2014