Ubuntu Phone Gets Blasted In Reviews This Week

[Nobu]

Thinking I'll stick with my Samsung Galaxy S3 and CM12 for the forseeable future (unless AOKP springs back to life for my phone). I might consider Plasma Phone/plasma-mobile if a nice phone is supported in the future that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

[Luke]

What good is a phone without Google? PLENTY! If a phone is to be used for peer to peer communications where privacy is an issue, you need a divorce from Google and Apple. Next you need end to end encryption, and Ubuntu is less likely to keylogger this than Google. Right now Daesh (ISIS) is steering their chumps recruited overTwitter to a closed-source messaging app with end to end encryption that is supposedly secure, but I would distrust that app for that exact reason. The NSA might push the author to install a keylogger/keyt emailer to allow decryption, or the author, disgusted with the crimes of Daesh, might even do it on his own. With closed source detection will require behavioral analysis or binary decompilation/audit. Thus, nobody other than Daesh can trust that closed encryption app, nor any closed OS over which encryption apps will be run as they too can be used to trap and send decryption keys. Maybe we get lucky and any backdoors are used only on Daesh, but the history of DHS suggests they will also be used on Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and so forth. This is how it always starts.

[Aleve Sicofante]

The BI review is ENTHUSIASTIC. The guy even considered not going back to Android.

Business as usual, I guess. Geeks hating Ubuntu while ordinary people love it. Shutty's plan doing exactly what it was conceived for.

Now back to trolling everyone.

[johnc]

What good is a phone without Google? PLENTY! If a phone is to be used for peer to peer communications where privacy is an issue, you need a divorce from Google and Apple. Next you need end to end encryption, and Ubuntu is less likely to keylogger this than Google. Right now Daesh (ISIS) is steering their chumps recruited overTwitter to a closed-source messaging app with end to end encryption that is supposedly secure, but I would distrust that app for that exact reason. The NSA might push the author to install a keylogger/keyt emailer to allow decryption, or the author, disgusted with the crimes of Daesh, might even do it on his own. With closed source detection will require behavioral analysis or binary decompilation/audit. Thus, nobody other than Daesh can trust that closed encryption app, nor any closed OS over which encryption apps will be run as they too can be used to trap and send decryption keys. Maybe we get lucky and any backdoors are used only on Daesh, but the history of DHS suggests they will also be used on Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and so forth. This is how it always starts.

Buying an Ubuntu phone isn't a viable solution.

Loading up with guns and ammo is the correct solution.

[johnc]

Every OTA update brings new features and critical bug fixes thereby improving my daily experience.

There is something that to this day Canonical has still been unable to grasp: you don't release a product with "critical bugs".

[Cape]

The problem with Ubuntu Phone is that canonical is reaching bankruptcy and so shuttleworth is pushing on mobile as much as he can. That's why they went with MIR, which is heavy mobile-oriented.

Still, the phone market is really hard because manufactures are greedy Chinese corporations that give less than 2 shits and a Popsicle about Free software, so drivers are a major issue.
Also, you are fighting the biggest ad company (google) and the most trending brand (apple. Still can't understand why people likes apple products.. )

I think it's pretty clear that canonical is rushing this whole thing, and when you are in a rush you make mistakes...

[Passso]

Ubuntu phone is still behind Apple and Google when it comes to apps.

Hmmm... so new systems have less softwares than old ones... the guy who write that is a kind of genius !!

Well now (since start in fact) Canonical must really focus on MIR and get this smooth, for ALL techies and reviewers smooth navigation = power (yes, here is another kind of genius...)

[speculatrix]

the moment I read the words "Business Insider" I knew to use more than a pinch of salt.

[akincer]

As someone looking forward to having convergence when it's ready -- it doesn't surprise me that it's still pretty rough around the edges. I remember when I saw my first Android phone. To say I wasn't impressed would be an understatement. And one of the arguments at the time when it was first released was how there were so many more apps available for the iPhone. Now look who's dominating the market.

Seriously, you could go back and dig up the early Android reviews and just about do a search/replace and end up with a nearly identical article. Wake me if Canonical isn't making serious progress on a polished platform a year from now and I'll consider their efforts a failure.

[Michael_S]

So this is what Canonical have been sabotaging the Linux ecosystem for. What we need as Linux users and want as Linux developers is a common software stack. Canonical's dishonest, deceitful, switch from Wayland to Mir is unforgivable. If they had serious technical issues with Wayland they could have argued them within the Linux community, but they didn't they are merely seeking monopoly power. Mark Shuttleworth styles himself as the great dictator of Canonical. I think he fancies himself as a second Steve Jobs gaining power and dominance through ruthless control of the user interface. I have long suspected rather that he will prove to be the Mussolini of opensource.

Starting yet another flame war won't help. Free software (open source) allows forking and the creation of alternative products. It also allows forks and alternative products to be developed in private. If you don't like Mir, don't use it. Also, there can be no "Mussolini of opensource" by definition - if any person starts to abuse their power too much, the project will be forked or replaced. You can see that even at the Free Software Foundation - GCC was forked into EGCS, and eventually the FSF developers realized they were not developing GCC well and they basically adopted the EGCS fork as the official version of GCC going forward.

Last but not least, even with their mistakes Canonical is still more open, more devoted to open source, and more focused on end user rights and privacy than Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Oracle, Blackberry, or even Google.

That's not to say I support Canonical. I think they have made a lot of poor decisions and alienated their community. If Ubuntu phones become available in the US and they mostly function for talk, text, camera, and web browsing then I will abandon Android for Ubuntu Phone. But I would prefer if Firefox OS or Replicant become more viable options, because to my mind they're morally ahead of Canonical as well as Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

I also switched my home desktop and work laptop off of Ubuntu to other flavors of Linux due to my dissatisfaction with Canonical.