The Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Tablet Now Available For Pre-Order

[droidhacker]

And OTAs are a blessing after using Android and waiting for months for the new firmware to come, if it comes at all. It will probably never endanger Android and iOS but it can carve itself a niche for the more technology enthusiastic users, privacy conscious users, Linux users and anyone in between. And convergence is something Linux users can really be excited about, and some businesses too. Having a phone or a tablet I can plug into a monitor and run X applications is a dream come true, no more lugging the laptop around. In any case I hope they succeed as alternatives to Google, Apple and Microsoft (FirefoxOS/Sailfish) seem to be dying out unfortunately, if Ubuntu doesnt succeed at carving itself a niche I fear that Linux phone as an idea is facing a bleak future although it should succeed if Linux users in general stand behind it when the time for mass market comes, plenty of potential users there, more than enough for a niche.

Maybe you ought to start buying your Android devices from a responsible vendor? My Nexus 6 harasses me *EVERY MONTH* to install auto-downloaded security updates, and gets the new Android pretty much on launch day. In fact, there are already preview builds available for the *NEXT* major Android version.

There are TWO problems with douchebag phone vendors, one of which is how they pollute Android with all their junk, which really puts an ENORMOUS burden on themselves for the update. Unfortunately for them, it isn't as simple as "repo init -b {newversionbranch}; repo sync; make" as it is with "pure" android implementations. Hell of a lot of burden to add to yourself to accomplish nothing besides alienating your customers.... unless....

The second problem, is that they use lack of updates as a *motive* for their customers to "upgrade" (spend hundreds of $$ on new hardware, even though their old hardware is perfectly adequate). This is highly irresponsible.

[Cerberus]

Maybe you ought to start buying your Android devices from a responsible vendor? My Nexus 6 harasses me *EVERY MONTH* to install auto-downloaded security updates, and gets the new Android pretty much on launch day. In fact, there are already preview builds available for the *NEXT* major Android version.

There are TWO problems with douchebag phone vendors, one of which is how they pollute Android with all their junk, which really puts an ENORMOUS burden on themselves for the update. Unfortunately for them, it isn't as simple as "repo init -b {newversionbranch}; repo sync; make" as it is with "pure" android implementations. Hell of a lot of burden to add to yourself to accomplish nothing besides alienating your customers.... unless....

The second problem, is that they use lack of updates as a *motive* for their customers to "upgrade" (spend hundreds of $$ on new hardware, even though their old hardware is perfectly adequate). This is highly irresponsible.

Except for Nexus line of phones pretty much every vendor dumps their phones after some time to force you to buy a new one. Nexus gets everything first, but it gets the early bugs too so it is a mixed blessing, note-I didnt own a Nexus but I know several people who did, they werent always happy with the fastest possible upgrade. And I am not buying an Android device ever again, if Ubuntu Touch fails I will rather buy an iPhone than Android, at least Apple has the decency to update their older devices, when you buy the latest iPhone you can be sure you will receive several years of upgrades, and they are all delivered at the same time, not at different times depending on which Android phone you have and how fast is the vendor in delivering their upgrades.

[Cerberus]

You seem to be saying that to suggest that this is something DISTINCT about ubuntu from Android, which is very plainly NOT TRUE.
Android *DOES NOT* provide access to address book or sdcard UNLESS that permission is explicitly granted. Previously, the permission had to be requested via the application manifest, and presented to the user during installation -- if you are comfortable with that access, install continues, else it is not. Point is that EVERY permission the application gets, is vetted BY the user.

Android 5 takes that one step further, and asks for permission BOTH at install time, AND at USE time. I.e., even if you are completely retarded and install something that asks for access that you aren't comfortable with, it asks you later on and even gives you the opportunity to block that access and continue using it! I mean consider -- if an application is asking for access that it doesn't need or you don't trust it with, isn't that a sign that you shouldn't trust the developer AT ALL? It sure is to me....


What you are describing there, which is a system that denies everything and brokers specific data through the system (you are referring to as "media hub"), is a blatant COPY of the Android data sharing model. http://developer.android.com/guide/t...rmissions.html , https://source.android.com/security/index.html

And you really think users even bother to read permissions? Just like on Windows most are click to continue. Most barely know how to do basic stuff on the phone and God forbid if they need to tinker with system settings. I like Ubuntu model more where user is protected even if he or she cant be bothered to read the permissions. Confining X applications in containers is another good thing though unrelated to Android as Android doesnt have that.

[reepca]

I really don't understand why people place such high value on common "apps"... I don't need them on my Desktop, why the heck would I need them on my other stuff? This stuff IS meant to do general-purpose computing, right? I'll admit I am unfamiliar with the ecosystem, but the idea of giving some proprietary application (that doesn't really do anything useful except conform to what those around me are doing so that we can "share" empty experiences and get ads shoved in our faces) special access to the device with the most information about me (especially in conjunction with closed firmware blobs... doesn't the GPL say something about that, anyway?) and those around me just so I can get a "special mobile experience" doesn't sit well with me.

[devius]

I really don't understand why people place such high value on common "apps"...

Because these people use those apps on a daily basis either for work or for leisure and it's convenient to have them on your phone when you're away from the PC, or you don't want to power it on and wait a few seconds to access that info when you can get it nearly instantly. Although you could also argue that we used to manage just fine without them and being always connected can also be a curse, but that's the way things are. Always moving forward.

[starshipeleven]

I don't know about others, but things like the Snapdragon 810 can online any combination of its 8 cores, like 2xA53 + 1xA57.

The purpose of the 4xA53+4xA57 setup is that the A53's are a lot more power efficient on a per clock tick basis. I would go so far as to call it a HACK for the fact that the A57's actually *suck* in terms of power efficiency, even at low clocks. The good news is that the now-current generation of hardware is starting to do away with this nasty hack, the Snapdragon 820 is back to being a true quad-core, high power efficiency at low clocks, and high performance at high clocks.

Yes, with my "most of the times" I was referring to the fact that the average app isn't using 2 cores, so even if the processor has X amount of cores it won't matter and it will perform the same as a quadcore (or as a decent dualcore).

So yeah, the SoC has no good reason to keep all eight cores online for kicks, and you get that it is either more or less idle, and then it is using the low-power ones, or it is working and only the powerful ones are active (and other tasks are migrated to them because it makes no sense to keep the other cores active for kicks.

[starshipeleven]

I really don't understand why people place such high value on common "apps"... I don't need them on my Desktop, why the heck would I need them on my other stuff? This stuff IS meant to do general-purpose computing, right? I'll admit I am unfamiliar with the ecosystem, but the idea of giving some proprietary application (that doesn't really do anything useful except conform to what those around me are doing so that we can "share" empty experiences and get ads shoved in our faces) special access to the device with the most information about me (especially in conjunction with closed firmware blobs... doesn't the GPL say something about that, anyway?) and those around me just so I can get a "special mobile experience" doesn't sit well with me.

Yeah, but if all the idiots around you use Facebook and Watsapp to communicate, or (god forbid) Skype, and you do need to communicate with them because you MUST do so (family, friends, and people you need to get in touch with for other reasons), you need these apps.

It's not a matter of "conforming" it's a matter of "the goddamn idiots use that app EXCLUSIVIELY to communicate online and if you don't use it they won't be able to communicate with you, but you MUST be able to communicate with them".

For example, last time I received a SMS from a human being (not automated SMS spam/login codes/whatever), was 3 years ago. None I know uses SMS now, but they still need to reach me somehow.

Although with a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod I can lockdown all accesses I don't like, and that's a good thing.