Has anyone had a chance to try out any of the Ubuntu phones. I was really excited when they were announced, a phone totally running on a linux platform and multi-platform!, and had their kickstarter a while ago and then totally forgot about them. Decided to look into them tonight and noticed they were only available in Europe and China. I was wondering if anyone had a chance to play with them or had one themselves.
I've played around with it on my Nexus Tablet. I'm a long time Ubuntu/Linux user and found it to be interesting. But as much as I love using Linux, I was having a hard time imaging using it full time on my tablet or phone. But I think that was mainly because I'm just so used to using Android and all of it's apps for so many years now. It's hard to imaging making the switch and giving that ecosystem up just yet. Maybe once more apps are developed to take the place of the things I currently use I could see doing it. I love the idea of one device that just gets plugged into other interfaces and all that. But it's still all a bit new and needs some growth and development yet I'd say.
Yeah it still is exciting to me, especially what Cedar mentioned about using it as a portable desktop, but my androids apps are also something that will be hard to give up
Exactly, I love the idea and can totally see it getting there. I just think it might be a wee bit longer before I'm ready to make the move. I had my nexus setup to dual boot Android and Ubuntu, but I just didn't really find myself going over to Ubuntu very often on it. Android with the plethora of apps available is just too easy and convenient right now. I'm sure it will get better though.
It runs on a linux kernel, yes. But it's not exactly a full fledged Linux OS like Ubuntu is. But I guess that might say more about the interface than the underlying OS itself.
I have an old galaxy nexus, and tried installing it onto the phone. Needless to say, I bricked it. It's more than a couple of years old and I've been using an iPhone for about a year, so I'm not pissed, just disappointed that I could get to mess around with the OS. The nexus was probably drained of cpu and the battery life was shit, so I don't think it even had the ability to run it lol
Can't say that I have, sorry. I'm interested in it and had a brief discussion with someone on here who seems to have later deactivated their account. They put me on to checking out the Ubuntu Phone mailing list which may be a resource you want to check out.
One of the things I'm looking for is the ability to plug the phone in to a monitor, keyboard and mouse and start using it as a portable desktop. I suppose that's possible already with Android to some extent through OTG cables but I would like something more robust.
Yes! I definitely agree that using the phone as a portable desktop was really exciting when I saw it in the kickstarter.