Rajaa Chowdhury asks:
What is your opinion on the Ubuntu Smartphones interface features demonstrated at their official website video by Ubuntu CEO? Do you think it can be a serious contender to Android in the future?
You can see the video above and head over to the Ubuntu for Smartphones homepage to find out more then give your opinion.
11 Answers - Write an Answer
James Bruce
January 7, 2013Nice idea, but rather late to the game. I doubt it will be able to take any kind of foothold in the market now, just as Windows Phone has utterly failed.
Very true I also agree with you that they are a bit late into the fray though I personally liked the concept of the same kernel for the phone, Desktop and TV concept. However, OEM commitment and support is required to make a smartphone OS popular and all the biggies are already committed to a platform, example, Apple to iOS, RIM to BB10, Nokia to Windows 8, HTC to Android and Windows 8, rest mostly to Android. Probably, if Google ticks off Sammy with the Motorola X Phone, in the near future, an interesting thought maybe Sammy may look elsewhere.
Ubuntu has also come up with their OS on the Android multi-core phones, which is an interesting idea. More details at http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
January 8, 2013I didn’t know you can embed video to the question. I thought it only accept standard comment tag (underline, bold, italic). Nice for detailed question.
January 8, 2013As you said, the concept is good, but in addition to late, the hardware specification as stated below is quite ridiculous. However, if it could tone down the requirements, I think Ubuntu will make a nice entrance to smartphone world, because unlike Desktop OS, we’re more likely to try different operating system in our mobile phone. Who knows, with Nokia faring so badly with Windows Phone they might think it’s time to change. Would be so ironic if that happens.
Fawad Mirzad0
January 8, 2013The biggest problem with Ubuntu for smartphones is that it has a very high minimum hardware requirements.
512-1GB RAM
1 GHZ processor
32 GB flash storage
We All know that majority of high end android devices do not have 32 GB flash storage.
So we can guess that Ubuntu phones will be really expensive and will not get a good market share. if they could not get a market share, developers won’t port their applications for it, If not enough applications, then no user interest.
Although they have brought some new features including a running applications side bar. but again I guess it will have bugs as Ubuntu desktop and because of high price and less applications it won’t get a good share in market.
Although it do have some strengths as well like a truly open OS will encourage lots of manufacturers to switch to it.
Perhaps at this time they may be able to compete with android in coming five to six years.
One thing that lots of us make mistake is we thing this will compete with Firefox OS. this is a mistake as they are built for two different customer groups. Firefox OS is built to run with minimum hardware capabilities but Ubuntu has the highest requirement in world of mobile operating systems.
That specification is on par with netbooks. I think light distro like Puppy would do better for smartphone, even if not as eye-catching. As for applications, if only it can make use of Ubuntu’s desktop repository, it’d be able to compete with Android. It’s funny that Ubuntu phone needs higher hardware capabilities than Windows phone.
January 8, 2013Using Ubuntu desktop applications in Ubuntu for smartphone in possible but they do need a complete redesign to fit small screens of smartphones and to optimize them for touch (which almost all Ubuntu application are made for small mouse pointer) . And developers will only do all these if Ubuntu get a market share which is not achievable in near future.
January 9, 2013Official site says this on hardware requirement :
System requirements for smartphones
(They will be having two flavours)
Entry level Ubuntu smartphone High-end Ubuntu “superphone”
January 10, 2013Processor architecture 1Ghz Cortex A9 Quad-core A9 or Intel Atom
Memory 512MB – 1GB Min 1GB
Flash storage 4-8GB eMMC + SD Min 32GB eMMC + SD
Multi-touch will be present in both flavours
Desktop convergence only in the high end
Official system requirement link : http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone/operators-and-oems
January 10, 2013Junil Maharjan
January 8, 2013I agree with James that they are late to the game. Ubuntu is a great OS and what they are trying to do is great as well – binding desktop and mobile OS. But android has been beating every OS in the market, even coming close to iOS.
salim benhouhou
January 8, 2013wow i didn’t know that ubuntu goes mobile now . a big step i think .
Drew Butler
January 8, 2013i thinks its great. with Steam in beta and this in the works things are looking up for linux in general. just my opinion.
Rajaa Chowdhury
January 8, 2013Found another cool video of the review of the new OS : http://youtu.be/33GiecW1E-4
ha14
January 8, 2013something extraordinary something never existed before! On Ubutnu if you can see it you can use it:)
Dimal Chandrasiri
January 8, 2013it’s really interesting. waiting to get my hands on the first ubuntu mobile!
susendeep dutta
January 8, 2013The reason why Canonical thought to make a different kind of OS for mobile platform is that they have realized that their low market share might get even lower than 1% as the PC market continues to be in gloom.Ubuntu’s success do depend upon Windows PC as many users use it along with it.It’s good that people who hate the Modern UI might find the Ubuntu’s solution appealing.
I think it’s similar to what the Meego OS looked like.It do has swipe UI but would take sometime for the people to get used to it.It needs to be quick on commonly used tasks performed by any users like clicking a photo and uploading to clod or sharing it in a tap,playing most of the formats(video,image,audio) out of box.
High minimum requirements must not pose a problem as what experience it’s offering is good and the pace of technology is making any high end hardware come to mid and low end ones within 1 year.
Canonical needs to make this OS free from bloatware when it lands from manufacturer to the user else it won’t be able to differentiate from Android at first point itself and if it doesn’t happens,it might find itself in a situation that it would need to wait for a sinking company with good hardware spec phone to acquire and build its own phones and thus alienating other manufacturers.It will have to compete with other open source OS like Firefox,which it has to make sure that it brings up a good browser in it by default as it’s carrying out this tradition in many Linux distros.
It also needs to maintain a good app ecosystem with no useless stuffs.Differentiating from others would be a challenge and if it succeeds in it,then it can become a contender in within 4 years.
Nirdesh Naagar
January 8, 2013i think it will BEAT AND EAT android as well as apple.
i love the ubuntu interface and their app market.
Kshitij Verma
January 19, 2013It is late however, i feel that it can still take it’s position in the market, judging by the massive backing from canonical and it’s not so big yet growing appstore.
However, if they (canonical) portray this phone as a geek-only device, it will start and stop selling before we know it.