Hands On With Ubuntu For SmartPhones

adeelarshad82 writes "Ubuntu for smartphones may be pretty late to the smartphone ecosystem, but as the hands-on video demonstrates, Canonical has been paying attention. The operating system is just called Ubuntu, allowing the company to complete their illusion that this operating system offers everything that desktop Ubuntu runs. If you're a fan of the Unity UI you will find yourself right at home with this interface since every bit of Ubuntu has visual cues that come straight from Unity. As the video shows, the animations looked great, and the phone feels incredibly fast. The top bar of the OS has several icons across it, offering a quick glimpse into things like battery life, messages and others. Settings for every app are available by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, in a gesture that is quite similar to the one used in Windows 8 to access the menu. Given that it's early days for the OS, Ubuntu is far from perfect. For instance, their welcome screen allows for way too many apps to be rapidly accessible without a pin lock of some kind."

Re:Oh No

[oodaloop]

At the time, I considered 2010 to be the year of the Linux phone, and had a signature that said such. From the beginning of the year to the end, there was a huge rise in numbers of available handsets running Android and proportion of users using Android compared to iOS and other OSs. 2010 also saw phones running Android 1.5-1.6 (which is terrible in retrospect) in the beginning to 2.3 (which is decent and still widely used) at the end. It was a rather impressive evolution in a single year. I'd love to see another popular Linux distro on the phone that could actually compete in the marketspace. Maybe this will be it. But we've already seen the year of the Linux phone.

Someone explain how this works?

[scorp1us]

I'm on board with this Ubuntu-on-a-phone idea. But I want to know how it works. Is the phone itself one display (display 0) and when you plug in another display (conventional monitor) you get a traditional Ubuntu desktop on display 1? Two display managers on one system? How does the window manager work? Can I drag windows to my phone screen?

Love linux, but this is stupid

[EmperorOfCanada]

I don't want a Shuttleworth phone, I want a linux capable phone. I want a phone so controllable that if the phone is capable of doing it then I or someone else is doing it. The ideal phone would be one so controllable that some hardcore dude would instantly cobble together a complete command line interface to the phone:

phone-dial 5551234
sms-message -u5551234 'I will be 5 minutes late'
list-recent-calls
I am sick of phones that are missing features that would tick off the telcos. I want to block text messages from certain users (I'm looking at you Telus) I want to have a list of people who can and can't call me at certain times of the day. I want to block calls from certain callers. I want an easy button to turn my cell data on and off. I want to delete any app that I don't want. When (not if) I reinstall the OS I want to strip out everything and then put back only that I want (I'm looking at you NewsStand). Whereas I see an Ubuntu phone as being Shuttleworth trying to get his piece of the appstore pie. I want a phone that cannot be locked to a carrier.