Should Ubuntu Phone Rebase To Android?

[duby229]

Canonical's foray into the mobile segment is a doomed effort altogether. They are simply too late. The most important feature a smartphone can offer to the user is the plethora of apps that run on it. How is Canonical tackling this? By offering developers assistance with porting their existing apps to Ubuntu. Except there's no reason for developers to do that sort of thing because the Ubuntu Phone doesn't have users in the first place. So here's the million dollar question: if you're not an Ubuntu fanboy who would gladly suffer just to run his favorite OS, why would you buy an Ubuntu Phone?

I agree with you. IMO Canonical would have been better off if they targeted a SmartTV OS or a MediaCenter OS... Something they can sell to Samsung, Phillips, LG, etc to come preinstalled. Then the only real apps they need are the important that come preinstalled. It would be much easier for to start from that and then expand into the SmartPhone OS market later after apps come.

EDIT: I suspect what's been happening is that Mark Shuttleworth is seeing his fortune bleed away and is getting desperate. That's why it always seems like Canonical is in such a hurry to fuck the maximum number of people. I don't think Mr. Shuttleworth ever learned that screwing with people will not make them want your products.

[blackout23]

I'd like to see a Linux based mobile OS that can be installed on any smartphone regardless brand or model..

Yeah if only all the SoC manufacturers would mainline their stuff and phones wouldn't be dependent on tons of driver blobs for the GPU & Co, Radio firmware etc...

[GreatEmerald]

Absolutely not, it would be just another Android clone then, Ubuntu Phone needs to go all the way with its vision of converged OS, it may succeed or fail but it is important to do it their way, not recycling Android.

Wow, I never thought I'd agree with Cerberus, but here we go. I agree, distancing even further from GNU/Linux would make the matters much worse. In fact, it would mean the death of Ubuntu Phone as we know it. Nobody is going to get excited over a yet another Android skin.

[totex71]

Hell no! We need a pure GNU/Linux phone.

Android is repulsive because of the fact that you're using Java to develop for ONE OS! There's also the problem of the whole Android OS stack being messy and bloated (not that Ubuntu is much better... >_>), which makes it tough to develop for (and slow).

Take into account the recent re-opening of the Java API issue by Oracle, and the future of Android is already on the fringe. : /

Well there is the Jolla phone with Sailfish OS. clean linux experience running with systemd, pulesaudio and wayland. and it is compatible with android apps and games. People should really consider supporting them if they want a pure linux experience on their phone's and tablet's.

[ssokolow]

I would substitute "Ubuntu fanboy" with free software advocate or Ubuntu fanboy which also has enough money to buy an additionaly phone or does not use any of Android/iOS-exclusive apps.
I'm not an Ubuntu fanboy but if I had 200-300$ more than I need I would definitely get one although I also assume it won't hit.

Thankfully, I neither need nor want to be contactable on the go, so using the DragonBox Pyra should serve perfectly a a mobile computing device for me and it'll run plain ordinary Debian armhf with a supplementary source for modified packages. (If you look at the case prototype renders and assembly videos in the dev posts, you'll see that it's the same basic "Nintendo DS-sized laptop with gaming controls" design as its precursor, the OpenPandora, which I currently use.)

• Both have physical keyboards
• Both have a GPU where the 3D acceleration driver blob is purely userland.
• With the possible exception of the wireless support (replaceable via USB dongle), the 3D acceleration is the only part that requires a binary blob.
• Both the Pandora's custom ?ngstrom Linux variant and the Pyra's supplementary packages are (Pandora) or will be (Pyra) developed in the open. (The Pandora would be nowhere near as awesome as it is without the help of ARM hackers like notaz who are "merely" community members.)
• The Pandora could boot from one of the two SD slots. The Pyra will have a MicroSD slot hidden under the battery to allow the soldered flash (eMMC, I believe) to be overridden for upgrading without tying up an SD slot.
• The Pyra will have an optional cellular modem which, while intended for WLAN use, could theoretically have software written to make it do phone things too.
• The Pyra's cellular modem will be a discrete, USB-attached chip and incapable of DMA (no "this baseband processor's OS is stuck in the '90s" security exploits)
• While it was unfeasible to directly switch the power supply to the cellular modem chip, the "cellular enabled" light will be an indication of the amount of power the cellular modem chip is drawing, so hypothetical sneaky "baseband OS can ignore cellular modem chip's disable pin" tracking attacks can be noticed.

[Cerberus]

Well there is the Jolla phone with Sailfish OS. clean linux experience running with systemd, pulesaudio and wayland. and it is compatible with android apps and games. People should really consider supporting them if they want a pure linux experience on their phone's and tablet's.

And that is where we come to marketing and the influence of a brand, Jolla is not well known outside geeky circles which is one of the reasons it didnt make significant inroads in the mobile market, while Ubuntu is a big name in the Linux world, and the most well known distribution among non Linux users, that means something to manufacturers, telecoms, developers etc. In todays world marketing is everything, if a big manufacturer would support any of the alternative OSes it would mean much for their promotion, Samsung sells Tizen phones in India I believe and they sold pretty well, if Samsung would launch an Ubuntu phone it would be a huge boost for Ubuntu Touch. Concerning systemd Ubuntu Touch will also switch to it, it already uses pulseaudio though not Wayland, it uses Mir.

The "problem" with Sailfish etc is the fact many people look upon such OSes as Android clones, "oh it runs Android applications and looks like Android I dont need that when I have real thing already in my smartphone". Geeks will appreciate the innards of Sailfish but average users wont, they will see it as Android clone, and average users make up for vast majority of smartphone buyers which is why Ubuntu Touch is doing it right with their own UI paradigm, scopes and convergence, they may fail of course but it is something new people wont associate with Android, I showed my Ubuntu phone to Android users and they were intrigued by the new UI, scopes, gestures etc. When I showed them videos of convergence demos they said they will seriously consider buying a converged phone once the convergence becomes available, of course they also said they need WhatsApp and Viber but I am sure Canonical is aware of that and is working with those companies to bring their applications to Ubuntu Touch, there is a hint somewhere online that Canonical is in talks with WhatsApp and Dropbox to bring their services to Ubuntu Touch.

[Nille]

I only had a quick look, but yes the java stuff seems a huge mess.

The Problem is not the Java Stuff. The problem are the Hardware drivers for the SoCs. They require huge code changes and most time (e.g. Mediatek) you not even get the source code

[sunnystormy]

Samsung sells Tizen phones in India I believe and they sold pretty well, if Samsung would launch an Ubuntu phone it would be a huge boost for Ubuntu Touch.

That will never happen. I've had dinner with Samsung bigwigs when I used to work for a different tech company, and they made it clear that Tizen is their bargaining chip against Google in case they (Google) try to pull something that allows them to monopolize the Android market. Their rationale being that they (Samsung) own the largest global share of smartphone users outside of the US, so it would be a loss to Google if their devices unilaterally stopped running Android.

If anything, Samsung will continue pushing Tizen. They've invested too much money into it already.

[akincer]

Canonical's foray into the mobile segment is a doomed effort altogether. They are simply too late.

Based on what? People said the same thing about Android.

The most important feature a smartphone can offer to the user is the plethora of apps that run on it.

You mean like Android had (few) vs iPhone (many) when it launched? Look where we are today.

why would you buy an Ubuntu Phone?

Because every app I run on my computer will out of the box and truth be known, I don't actually use that many apps. I'll take the convergence so I can have a full PC on the go for productivity. I don't need tons of horsepower for the stuff I do.

[Cerberus]

That will never happen. I've had dinner with Samsung bigwigs when I used to work for a different tech company, and they made it clear that Tizen is their bargaining chip against Google in case they (Google) try to pull something that allows them to monopolize the Android market. Their rationale being that they (Samsung) own the largest global share of smartphone users outside of the US, so it would be a loss to Google if their devices unilaterally stopped running Android.

If anything, Samsung will continue pushing Tizen. They've invested too much money into it already.

I mentioned Samsung as the currently most popular Android brand, but it doesnt have to be Samsung, it can be Sony or any other famous brand. I am not saying they will launch an Ubuntu phone but that such a thing would give a huge boost to any alternative mobile operating system, though it is much more important to obtain the favor of various telecoms, as market has shown that people buy other brands as well including Chinese brands, getting your phones in the stores of telecoms gives you the opportunity to reach a lot of people.