I’m sure many Sailfish OS users have been waiting a lot for this – no need to wait anymore! Today we released the software update, which updates your Jolla phone with the new and refreshed Sailfish OS 2.0 user interface. It was first released to our early access user group about a week ago, and now it is available to all Sailfish OS users.

Along with the simplified and beautiful new UI comes many fresh and enhanced features – this is for sure the biggest Sailfish OS software update so far! And the other big thing for Sailfish OS 2.0 is that it now supports both smartphones and tablets, as the first Jolla Tablets powered by Sailfish OS 2.0 are almost ready to be shipped. In the ‘what’s new’ section below you can also see a few tablet specific features, which we’ve prepared to complement the bigger screen size.

People powered OS

Sailfish OS has always been a people powered platform. While maturing to Sailfish OS 2.0 we’ve listened closely to user feedback through customer polls and together.jolla.com, and worked together with our community to build the best user experience possible. The key objectives for this update are to ease and simplify the first time experience and to improve the overall quality of the OS. Of course we also aim to take the user experience of all users to a whole new level.

Enhancing the flow with a new carousel view

The most notable change is the new and refreshed Sailfish OS 2.0 user interface, which introduces a new and simple mental model of core views, enhancing the flow of the OS dramatically.

You can simply swipe left or right between Home and Events, like in a carousel. The App Grid is quickly accessible from anywhere in the UI just by swiping over the bottom edge – you don’t need to go to the Home screen if you want to open a new app.

Events is now richer and smarter by comprising a weather widget with an option to display five-day weather forecast, a calendar widget, as well as grouped and enhanced notification handling. Now you are able to see and do more with your notifications directly in Events, whether they are from native apps or Android apps.

We also added a lot of other enhancements like redesigned App covers for Gallery, Notes, and Camera apps, added many new animations, and made improvements for existing apps like Jolla Store, Calendar, Camera. Just to mention a few.

More personalization

There are now even more options enabling you to personalize the phone according to your needs. One example is defining the behavior of the top edge swipe gesture: you can choose to keep it as an ambience switcher or change it to close apps directly with one top swipe (like before).

And be sure to check out the cool new ambiences picked from our Jolla ambience photo campaign!

What’s new in this update?

New User Interface:

Home is now a carousel. Swipe to cycle between Home and Events

App Grid can be accessed from anywhere in the OS (even from inside an app) by swiping up from the bottom edge

Swipe down from the top edge of the screen to open Top menu with lock action and ambiences. The currently active ambience is marked with an indicator. You can change it to close apps directly with one top swipe.

Tutorial app has been updated to introduce the new navigation of the user interface

Refreshed visual style in Home, buttons, pulley menus, time picker, volume bar and remorse timer

Refreshed layouts for Calendar, Jolla Store, Clock, Email and Camera apps

Refreshed active App Covers for Gallery, Jolla Store, Settings, Notes and Camera apps

Events:

Events is now richer and configurable via Settings > System > Events

Notifications in the Events are now shown by grouping them based on type

New gesture option enables quick Events view access with a left swipe, activate it in Settings > System > Gestures

New Calendar widget displays your upcoming events directly in the Events view

Redesigned Weather widget shows five-day forecast information – tap on the widget to view it and remember to set your location in the Weather app

Jolla Tablet: now you can pick your favorite settings shortcuts to be shown in the Events view

Jolla Tablet: perform your favorite actions directly from the Events view. E.g. connecting to internet, search the web, find your location, take a photo, make a note or add a reminder

Camera:

Records video clips in H.264 format now

Android apps:

Android apps now use the “Chat” system tone for notifications, and alert with vibration and notification LED

Android app notifications now wake up the display

Other improvements/features:

Jolla Tablet: three finger volume control gesture enabled – hold three fingers on the screen and slide one of the fingers to adjust volume

Support for US English language in the OS

Support for Lohit Devanagari font (Indian fonts)

New ambiences based on the selections from the Jolla ambience photo campaign with Jolla tones set as default actions

Notes can now be shared as text files

Media controls on lock screen for native Media app

The next OS upgrade will include further improvements to the Sailfish OS user experience, and it will complete the transition to Sailfish OS 2.0. At that point the software version numbering will also jump to 2.0.

Read more details about this and the next update here.

We hope you love the new user experience! Have fun with it!

On behalf of the whole Jolla team,

Juhani