Jolla, a small start-up developing an OS based on MeeGo, have unveiled their efforts at an event in Helsinki by showing new Sailfish OS, which was running on a smartphone. Jolla came about through the get together of some former employees of Nokia who wanted to carry on developing the MeeGo OS, after Nokia deceided to ditch it, in favor of Windows mobile. The new ‘phoenix from the flames’ OS is called Sailfish, running with the watery theme, as Jolla is Finnish for dinghy.

The Sailfish OS is another entrant into the tough mobile OS environment, which would also be able to run on tablets, TVs, car systems etc. It would seem like a big undertaking to be successful, when others like Android and iOS have been around longer. But small companies like Jolla can chip away and get a good coverage, they have lower running costs due to smaller size which helps to get a footing. Announced at the Slush event was the partnership with several chipset makers with ST-Ericsson one of the first, and that Sailfish will be open sourced. A big plus is that, according to Jolla, many Android apps can be run unchanged using Alien Dalvik from Myriad, which is sort of a sandbox runtime to run apps outside of Android.

The interface is similar to that of both Android and Windows 8 live tiles. Jolla say that Sailfish will provide better multi tasking and interacting with running apps from the home screen. There also be a SDK available that is based on QT Creator, another software that Nokia decided not to support. The first Sailfish devices are expected to be released in China, as a distribution deal was signed with D.Phone Group, China’s largest mobile phone sellers earlier this year. Below is a video from Jolla presenting Sailfish.