Back in February the developer preview of Ubuntu Touch for both the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 tablets was made available outside of the closed circles of Canonical. Even by their own admission, it was far from being a daily driver. In fact, it was really only put ‘out there’ as a proof of concept to show it could and was being done.
One of the development team, Rick Spencer, has discussed the project’s development on his blog, writing:
we committed our teams to making it so that by end of May, the phone images will be usable as our daily phones.
By this, Spencer states that Ubuntu Touch will allow users to:
- Make and receive phone calls
- Send and receive SMS messages
- Browse the web on 3G data and via WiFi
- Switch between WiFi and 3G data
- Proximity sensor dims the screen when you lift the phone to talk on it
- Import contacts from somewhere, and add and edit contacts
- When updating your phone, your user data is retained, even if updating with phablet-flash
So for the Linux geeks among us, it’s all great news. At this stage there is no official word on what devices will be supported but given their developer preview devices were all Nexus devices it’s safe to assume a this stage if you’re not sporting a Nexus you’re not going to have Ubuntu Touch any time soon.
Did you have a play with the developer preview? Let us know your experiences in the comments below
I tried it out when they announced it and quite liked it.
I have it another go when 13.04 came out but the touch screen didn’t work.
I probably wouldn’t use it on my Nexus 4 but would give it a try as a daily driver on my Nexus 7.
I’d be interested in trying it out on a Galaxy. I know full well that it wont be as full featured as a droid. But I use Ubuntu as my desktop at work all day and it would be interesting to watch this things progress.
Phone calls, SMS and Web make up 90% of what I do with a phone anyway.
a daily phone for who? that list is nowhere near exhaustive enough to come even close. you might as well be packing windows phone for how useful that sounds.