“Jolla Launcher” Community Alpha testing begins next week

Jolla has officially announced that the launcher for Android phones that is going to resemble Sailfish OS user interface (Sailfish UI) will be released next week for alpha testing

This means that it won’t be available on Google Play Store *yet* though you will be able to get the APK file and install it on your phone.

Although the testing phase is focused on Nexus 4 and Nexus 5, they say that you are likely to run it on any Android device that is running Android 4.3 or higher.

We are proud to tell that we’ve reached a new milestone in the development of bringing the Sailfish OS experience to Android devices. The product will be officially called the ‘Jolla Launcher’, and our invitation based Alpha phase testing will start next week.

Initially, the Jolla Launcher is designed to give Android device owners the opportunity to try out the smooth Sailfish OS experience in a simple and risk-free way. As a launcher, it is designed to work on top of your Android OS, providing you the effortless gesture-based swipe user interface and highlights of the essential tools that make Sailfish OS stand out from the competition.

The Alpha testing phase is targeted mainly for Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 devices. The Jolla Launcher Alpha can also be installed on many other devices running Android 4.3 or later.

how to get it?

We are now calling our community members to sign up for the Alpha testing group. If you’re interested to join, this is what you should do:

Send an email to jolla-launcher@jolla.com from your Google account

Include the following information: your name, and which device(s) your using

Wait to receive the Google Play installation link and further instructions

Note that your email address is only used for the purposes of i) registering you to the Community Alpha, ii) keeping you informed of the progress of the testing. We will remove the email address from our database after the end of the Community Alpha.

Please do this no later than June 27, 2014.

Requirements for signing up:

You have a Nexus 4 (or 5) device, or some other device which runs Android 4.3 or later

You have a Google account

You’re willing to give feedback and report issues via together.jolla.com

When is time for a stable release?

Jolla Launcher is planned to go to the next phase after some thorough testing and possible tweaking, after which we will launch it to wider audiences. Stay tuned for further announcements!

In my humble opinion, this is great news for Jolla itself if the company wants to make it through the unknown channels and make Sailfish OS as popular and known to others as possible!

For bonus, I know many of you have already watched it but foe those who haven’t, this is a video of the very *very* early version of the launcher that contains many bugs but certainly does show the concept.