An Ubuntu Phone Will Ship This Year With The Converged Unity Experience

During Mark Shuttleworth's keynote this morning to kickoff the Ubuntu Online Summit for Ubuntu 15.10 (codenamed the Wily Werewolf) he also shed a few details about a new Ubuntu phone that is supposed to ship this year.

Mark briefly mentioned that they expect to ship an Ubuntu phone this year that will feature their converged desktop experience -- where the phone that can fit in your pocket can also power a desktop experience with the Ubuntu core apps adapting to the respective form factor. The phone would just need to be connected to a monitor to provide the "PC experience." The dreams since the failed Ubuntu Edge project could finally be realized.

Unfortunately, Mark didn't reveal the device manufacturer or put any timeline for this phone to ship (besides "this year"), but we'd anticipate it to not be until closer to the end of the year given many of the Ubuntu core apps are still in the process of being rewritten and other work being done to provide a proper converged experience. Mainline Ubuntu won't default to Unity 8 and the converged apps by default until Ubuntu 16.04 LTS next April.

Stay tuned for more details.