Ever wish you had more choices when it came to smartphones? We’re not just talking about hardware; do you ever find yourself thinking that none of the major software platforms are hitting all the notes you’re looking for? If that’s the boat you find yourself in, 2013 could be a very exciting year for you. While over the past couple years we’ve seen the variety in smartphone platforms dry up quite a bit, losing webOS and with Symbian on the outs, there are a handful of intriguing projects that should be coming to fruition in the near future. Mozilla’s got its Firefox OS, set to debut next year, and we’ve also been hearing a bit about Jolla has been up to, hoping to breathe some new life into MeeGo. Today we get a chance to see just what Jolla’s been working on, as the company shares its progress on Sailfish, its MeeGo-based platform.

Obviously, this is still a work-in-progress, but there’s a lot of promise here. The homescreen widgets have a bit of a Windows Phone look to them, and the gesture-based navigation we see demoed here, while maybe not the most intuitive system, seems to have a good deal of potential.

While any new smartphone platform is going to face an uphill battle, Sailfish does have the benefit of an Android interpreter, letting many apps run without alteration.

If Jolla sticks to its schedule, we may hope to see Sailfish-running phones make their debut sometime in Q2 2013.