Finnish mobile platform player Jolla unveiled its Sailfish Community Device Program, accompanied by new hardware for participants – the Jolla C smartphone.

The company said the initiative is “crafted to boost the Sailfish community by activating and empowering developers and fans around the world”. It was “fully booked” on the first day.

“As the Sailfish OS licensing is expanding, the role of an active community gets even bigger. We are now investigating if we can expand the programme beyond this,” Sami Pienimaki, co-founder of Jolla said.

While Jolla and its Sailfish efforts hit financial barriers last year, the company appears to have now put this behind it. It has also named hardware partners including Intex (India), Turing Robotics, MiFone and Fairphone, although it is the first of these which is by far the most advanced.

Members of the new developer programme will get access to “exclusive Sailfish OS developer sessions”, with a group of “select” participants invited to an event in Helsinki next month. Further community events will follow.

Included in the programme is the Jolla C ‘community device’, with a limited run of 1,000 units set to ship in July 2016. Programme members will get the latest Sailfish OS releases, and can opt-in for future beta releases.

It is powered by a 1.3GHz quadcore Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage and 5-inch HD (720p) display. It also has dual-SIM support and microSD support.