Sailfish OS versions
Sailfish OS versions run in five generations: 1.x from 2013 on the first Jolla Phone, 2.x from 2015, 3.x announced in February 2018 and released that October, 4.x from 2020, and the 5.x series that Jolla ships as the current line.
How Sailfish OS versions are numbered and named
Sailfish OS versions carry a four-part number and a codename, and both are worth reading. The number takes the form 4.6.0.11, where the first two components identify the release generation and the last two identify the specific build within it. Jolla names each release after a place in Finland, working through the alphabet within a generation, so 3.0.0 shipped as Lemmenjoki and 4.0.1 as Koli. The generation number is the part that signals a real change of direction; the third and fourth components mark the maintenance releases that arrive between them, typically a handful per year.
Two consequences follow. A device described as running Sailfish is not necessarily running the current generation, because older hardware falls off the update path as the vendor kernel under it ages. And the codename alone is ambiguous in conversation, so the numeric version is the value to quote when reporting a problem.
The Sailfish OS release generations at a glance
The Sailfish OS release generations divide cleanly by what each one was built to run on.
| Generation | Arrived | Reference hardware | What it changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.x | 2013 | Jolla Phone | First public release, the gesture interface, ambiences, Alien Dalvik for Android apps |
| 2.x | 2015 | Jolla Phone, Jolla Tablet, Jolla C | Reworked home screen and events view, tablet form factor, licensing to third parties |
| 3.x | 2018 | Sony Xperia X and XA2 | Filesystem encryption, VPN and corporate features, the Sailfish X programme at scale |
| 4.x | 2020 | Xperia 10 II and 10 III | Move to a newer Qt and app framework, Jolla’s own Android container replacing Alien Dalvik |
| 5.x | Current line | Jolla C2 Community Phone | Renewed core and toolchain, first-party hardware after an eight-year gap |
Sailfish OS 1.x and 2.x, the Jolla Phone years
Sailfish OS 1.x and 2.x belong to the years when Jolla was primarily a phone maker. Version 1.0 shipped with the first Jolla Phone, which reached buyers from 27 November 2013 on a 4.5in 540×960 display with a dual-core Snapdragon 400 and 1GB of RAM. The 1.x line established everything the platform is still recognised by: navigation by edge gestures with no back button, live application covers on the home screen, pull-down menus, and Android application support through Alien Dalvik licensed from the Myriad Group.
The 2.x line, from 2015, rearranged the shell. The home screen and the notification events view were merged into a single vertical flow, so the lock screen, the home screen and the events feed became one continuous surface. It was also the generation that had to survive the company’s 2015 restructuring, the collapse of the Jolla Tablet that had been crowdfunded on Indiegogo from November 2014, and the pivot toward licensing the system to other vendors rather than selling handsets. The Jolla C of 2016, a run of roughly 1,000 units for the community device programme, was the only first-party hardware of that period. The corporate side of the story is on the page for Jolla.
Sailfish OS 3.x and 4.x, the Sony Xperia years
Sailfish OS 3.x and 4.x are the generations built around other people’s hardware. Version 3 was announced at Mobile World Congress in February 2018 and released that October as Lemmenjoki, and its headline additions were the ones a corporate or government customer asks for: full filesystem encryption, VPN support, better device management. That was deliberate. By then the licensing business, including the Russian derivative Aurora OS maintained by Open Mobile Platform, mattered more to Jolla’s revenue than retail sales did.
Version 4.0 arrived in 2020 as Koli and did the heavier engineering. It moved the application framework to a newer Qt and rebuilt the browser engine, and across the 4.x line Jolla replaced Alien Dalvik with its own Android compatibility container, which it now also licenses to other companies as a standalone product. The 4.x releases tracked the Sony hardware the Sailfish X programme supported, principally the Xperia 10 II and Xperia 10 III, and the line closed with 4.6 in 2024. What each of those generations does at the level of the interface and the userland is described on the page for Sailfish OS.
Sailfish OS 5.x, the current generation
Sailfish OS 5.x is the current generation and it follows 4.6 directly. Its purpose is a renewed core: an updated toolchain and base libraries under the same Silica interface, which is the kind of work that shows up as maintainability rather than as new features on a screenshot. Its reference device is the Jolla C2 Community Phone announced in 2024, the company’s first hardware of its own since the Jolla C eight years earlier, and licensed Sony Xperia models continue to receive the line through the Sailfish X programme.
Version numbers and their release dates move. This site is an independent reference, not Jolla, not Nokia, not maemo.org and not the original Maemo Freak blog, and it hosts no firmware or ROMs. Jolla’s own release notes are the authority for the exact build a device should be running.
Which versions ran on which devices
Which version ran on which device is not a single list, because three separate tracks have always existed side by side. Jolla’s own phones ran the generation current when they shipped and were updated for as long as the adaptation held: the 2013 Jolla Phone through 1.x and 2.x, the Jolla C through 2.x, the Jolla C2 on the current line. Licensed Sony Xperia models joined at the generation matching their release, the Xperia X from October 2017 on 2.x and then 3.x, the Xperia 10 II and 10 III on 4.x.
The third track is the community ports, and they run whatever generation their porters have managed to rebase onto. Ports have existed for the Fairphone 2, for Samsung’s Galaxy S4, for several Xiaomi and OnePlus handsets and for the PinePhone, and their version numbers lag the official releases by however long the volunteer work takes. A port carries no Android application layer, because that component is proprietary, so a community build of any generation is a smaller thing than the licensed build of the same number. The whole lineage sits downstream of the collapsed joint programme described on the page for MeeGo, whose core the Mer project kept alive long enough for Jolla to build on.