Ubuntu Phones Soon To Be A Reality

Following the announcement of Canonical that they have partnered with 2 mobile device manufacturers to finally bring Ubuntu Phones to reality, I’ve kept on visiting popular Ubuntu-centric sites and Ubuntu’s official site itself for more juicy news. I’m pretty much excited about this new development! From the limited info that is out there, the manufacturers are BQ (Spain) and Meizu (China). If I recall correctly, the Ubuntu Phones should be available at the latter part of this year, and that it will  only be for release – initially – in their respective countries/regions. But I also read that it will be available for order online. So I suppose that would give us who are not in either Spain or China, to have a chance to get our hands on it. As for the price, I hope they don’t make these Ubuntu Phones too expensive. I’m comfortable with Google Nexus pricing (or cheaper).

Honestly, I have never heard of these companies until after the Ubuntu partnership announcement. So I later find out that these companies already have existing Android phones in the market. Despite that, the designs and specs  of their current Android phone releases are really not bad at all. I would even go so far as to say that it looks better than the ones we normally see from the big names out there. It is also rumored that BQ and Meizu will also be using the same hardware for Ubuntu Phones, with maybe a few minor modifications. If that’s true, then the Ubuntu Phones would really be rockin’.

My concern is the apps for Ubuntu Phones. When I looked at the demos on YouTube, most are showing only how to go about swiping the screen to get the menus, access the notifications, or generally to navigate around. I cannot even recall seeing noteworthy apps being launched except for the gallery app and the messaging (SMS) app. That gives them only a few months to get some really big apps working. Don’t care much for playing games. I don’t even have a single game app on my Nexus 5. I would really love to have native apps for popular names such as Twitter, Flipboard, Google apps like Maps, Gmail, G+, QuickOffice and/or Drive, instead of web apps.

Lastly, I hope they have the “Ubuntu for Android” concept also included in this release. I mean, connect the phone to a monitor, mouse and keyboard, and then it turns into a full Ubuntu desktop OS. Would be very convenient since lately I have become very lazy getting my laptop out of the bag and turning it on. When I reach home I just usually browse the Internet through my Android.

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Notice: This article was published on March 4, 2014 and the content above may be out of date.
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