
DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review - ashitlerferad
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20160801#ubuntuphone
======
rglullis
I got the BQ Aquarius 5 a few months ago, after my Moto G2 SIM card stopped
working. So when comparing two budget-but-capable-phones, I can say that the
hardware on the Ubuntu phone is not the problem.

The software they have is great, and I haven't seen any half-backed features.
The updates are consistent and always bring something interesting. The idea of
lenses and scopes are great as an alternative to the lack of common apps. I
didn't miss not having a weather app or yelp, or youtube or whatever.

The one thing that is lacking on Ubuntu Touch are the things that are core to
mobile use cases. For example:

\- I understand that I won't get a decent Google Maps app, but there is no
real alternative. Here Maps comes installed, but I could not find a way to get
public transportation data. uNav seems to do the turn-by-turn navigation, but
they don't have voice, which is useless when I am on a bike.

\- There is no decent story for messaging/VoIP: You can have Telegram, but
also is just a webview wrapper. Messenger, Whatsapp? Nothing. And if at least
they had half-decent XMPP/SIP clients, I could try to drop the closed services
and _try_ to switch my friends and family with me. But what good is a
smartphone that I can't use to talk or chat?

Because of these things, I was basically forced to always be walking around
with two phones: the Ubuntu one for connectivity and basic media and as a
hotspot for my broken Android, which I would then use when I needed to look
into maps or call/message someone. The hassle was enough for me to find a
replacement board for the SIM card and go back to use only Android for
everything. The Ubuntu phone now is in a drawer, waiting for me to get some
time to play with application development for Ubuntu Touch.

All-in-all, my feeling is that Canonical is close to get its break and make
Ubuntu a compelling alternative. It is just not there yet. I also hope that
this Moto G was my last Android phone.

~~~
dmca
I can't speak for this OS but I use OsmAnd
([http://osmand.net](http://osmand.net)) in place of google maps on
cyanogenmod and it does do a reasonable job of voice navigation (using the
same OpenStreetMap data as uNav). It's open source so it should be able to
work in principle.

~~~
Brakenshire
I agree there are good applications available, but OSMAnd is an Android app,
you'd need some sort of compatibility layer for it to run on stock Linux. I
think there is work going on for that happen, but it's not there yet. The
project I can recall is Shashlik, there are one or two others as well.

I think Android app compatibility is necessary for a Linux phone. You won't be
able to use Play Services, but a lot of apps do not require that. Android
compatibility would for instance give you WhatsApp. It also gives you access
to hardware like activity monitors (Garmin and Withings apps don't require
play services), which otherwise is very unlikely to be supported. And also
sophisticated public transport apps like Moovit.

~~~
dharma1
Hopefully Google will open source the container based approach they use for
enabling Android apps on Chrome OS

[http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/05/chrome-os-
android-a...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/05/chrome-os-android-apps-
play-store-details/)

------
kogepathic
> Over the past year and a half I have become accustomed to the idea that I
> get to run free applications on my phone in exchange for being shown semi-
> frequent ads. This tended not to bother me most of the time, except when
> Android apps would suddenly show me full screen videos at high volume.

Really? I installed AdAway [1] on my Android phone and since then I have seen
no ads. Zero.

The only issue is that some legitimate apps don't work, because they pull
content from sits which are blacklisted (mostly stock ticker apps). I feel
that's a small price to pay for not having battery and data sucking ads during
my phone experience.

Yes, it requires root to install the hosts file. That's basically a one time
event (I rarely update the list and still never see ads) and the battery
impact is none because the ad blocking works at DNS level (as opposed to say,
a system-wide proxy)

[1]
[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=Adaway&fdid=...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=Adaway&fdid=org.adaway)

~~~
lambda
Huh. I've just never installed any ad-based applications. If there's a no-ad
paid version for a buck or two I'll buy it, otherwise, I just don't use it.

~~~
rplnt
How did you know which apps have ads? Until recently it was not shown anywhere
I think?

~~~
fps
The latest version of the play store identifies apps that show ads or have in-
app purchases.

[https://files.derf.us/Screenshot_20160801-105001.png](https://files.derf.us/Screenshot_20160801-105001.png)

------
lake99
> About 1GB of memory is required to run the phone with its default scopes and
> settings, leaving us about 2GB of space for applications and other features.

I did not see this coming. I was under the impression that moving away from a
JVM would have lowered the memory requirements.

A comparison of the two versions of Meizu Pro 5, Android and Ubuntu, would
have been useful too. I am curious if the move away from the Android
architecture has changed the responsiveness of apps, or affected battery life.

~~~
pjmlp
As of Android 5, there is only ART, which is no different than using Go, D, or
any other AOT compiled language with a GC enabled runtime.

Also many Scopes are actually written in either JavaScript, or QML with C++
and Go as possible code-behind languages.

[https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/scopes/](https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/scopes/)

So overall the runtime requirements aren't much different, unless you are
writing a pure Qt/C++ scope (without QML).

~~~
lake99
Ah well, I guess I'll stay with Android for the time being then. I hope they
meant to introduce Scopes as a stopgap measure to bridge the app divide to
Android and iOS. I don't like this trend of newer (Android) apps needing
20-50MB downloads, and being so bloated for what they actually do.

~~~
pjmlp
> I don't like this trend of newer (Android) apps needing 20-50MB downloads,
> and being so bloated for what they actually do.

Most of those apps are actually written in Qt, PhoneGap, Xamarin, or whatever
portable flavour of the month.

Applications written in Java just with the Android Frameworks, are hardly
above 10MB in application code, usually the rest are image/audio resources or
a collection of the "Java framework of the month" for Android.

------
teekert
I bought a OnePlus 3 for the reason that it will be a well supported Ubuntu
Touch phone [0]. It allows me dip the toe into the water with Ubuntu Touch
while keeping Android as a backup. The 6 GB RAM of the OnePlus3 may well prove
to be useful after all ;)

[0] [http://techpp.com/2016/06/17/oneplus-3-ubuntu-touch-
os/](http://techpp.com/2016/06/17/oneplus-3-ubuntu-touch-os/)

------
rtpg
Surprised at how good this phone sounds!

Though I am not sure I have the courage to move from Android, it does sound
like Ubuntu Phone could be a decent 4th player in the market now that FFOS is
DOA.

I imagine you have a lot more flexibility for the software you write? Like,
could I easily use Python + Tkinter to set up a quick "app" for my phone?

Basically, is this phone more of a small computer with Ubuntu, or a different
beast?

~~~
CaptSpify
I keep hearing it's supposed to be pretty much stock ubuntu with a slick
front-end and phone drivers. I haven't been able to try it yet though. I hope
it is, because I've been _dying_ to get an actual linux phone for a long time.
Unfortunately this review was a little skimpy on what went on underneath the
hood.

~~~
Brakenshire
It's not quite stock Ubuntu in the sense that the core system is read only, in
order to allow for OTA updates. So at present you can only apt-get by going
into a dev mode which means you can't get the OTA's.

------
anilgulecha
I hope the ubuntu phone fulfills the promise that FirefoxOS had. FFOS was
killed due to a spiral of very low spec hardware and no real third-party
development.

Being able to hack on the phone using scripts at a moment's notice is not
something any phone currently provides.

~~~
rtpg
I wonder if we could put FFOS on this phone. I still think the FF model of
"everything is a web page" would lead to a pretty magical end goal, first set
out by Smalltalk VMs. But I am not using a phone with a laggy keyboard.

~~~
pjmlp
Smalltalk used "everything is native".

As someone that used Smalltalk, HTML/CSS with JavaScript glue surely isn't
what Smalltalk had for its GUI.

~~~
rtpg
Oh, did it? I thought it was in its own universe. Maybe I'm thinking of some
other system (Scratch??).

------
jaimex2
I do miss my Nokia n900 running Maemo, this might be as close to a replacement
as it'll get. Just need a phone with a good built in keyboard.

~~~
ashitlerferad
[https://pyra-handheld.com/](https://pyra-handheld.com/)

~~~
ekianjo
Not really like a phone though.

------
twblalock
> When I first started using the phone I noticed the Today scope showed
> temperatures in the weather forecast in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. This
> can be adjusted by changing our selected language in the device's settings
> panel _and restarting the phone_.

Really? You have to restart to change the temperature units? What a joke.

~~~
darklajid
The real issue is "You have to change your language to change the temperature
units". There's no correlation between those. That is one broken scope/widget
if the author is correct.

~~~
allendoerfer
While I agree, that it should be changeable independently, there is a very
strong correlation between language and temperature units.

------
jstanley
I run Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 4, and have done for about 6 months now. It is
slow and the mail client often crashes. And it doesn't have Snapchat. And the
camera app is rubbish.

Apart from that, it is a lot less stressful to use than Android. I got fed up
with it being slow at one point and reinstalled Android, and it had so many
nag screens about reporting data to Google, and so many privacy options that I
had to be sure to configure correctly, that I put Ubuntu back on it the same
day.

I carry a second phone to run Snapchat and take photos.

EDIT: They do make you sign up for an account before you can download apps
from the store, which completely boggles my mind. Their singular advantage
over Android is that they don't hassle you for information, yet they almost
throw that away by making you sign up to download apps. I just used a fake
account, but I wish they didn't make you sign up.

------
benbristow
Distrowatch is definitely looking dated nowadays. Could do with a re-design at
some point or another.

~~~
yAnonymous
They rank distros by popularity based on how many clicks they get, so I always
viewed it as a kind of parody/entertainment website.

~~~
type0
It is web 1.0 clicking game for linux enthusiasts. Linux Mint users have been
most avid clickers for a while now it seems.

------
tluyben2
I would like this phone because, I assume, I can inspect and change the kernel
and all other OSS software on it. What I don't get is, with their focus on
emerging markets, why it needs to be so expensive. If they would focus more on
performance they could have one for $100. I recently bought some iPhone clone
in China, and besides the software, it's a fine phone; most people who see me
with it immediately want one. It was $65 and works fine for most things I use
smartphones for, even, to my surprise, taking great pictures. Battery life is
around 8 hours/day with quite heavy use, the GPS performance is total crap (I
think this is a software issue), but for $65 this is a nice device (it feels
great as it's a 6s+ ripoff casing wise). But proprietary software in as much
that I can't swap out the kernel and the rip off iOS on-top-of-Android is
quite painful. If someone would just equip these phones with something fully
OSS (minus a few drivers possibly) I don't think I would buy anything else.

------
Freak_NL
I own the Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu smartphone. And I like it.

This is actually my first smartphone, so my perspective may be somewhat
different from that of the reviews of it out there. I am a software engineer,
and I greatly value the freedom to do whatever I want with computing devices I
own, and to be able to tweak things and contribute any enhancements back to
the community.

If something irks me and I can fix it, I will submit a patch (i.e., as a
drive-by contributor), otherwise I will file a bug report and help reproduce
the issue. Nothing major, no huge time-sink; just being able to help shape the
software that surrounds us, and having a feeling of contributing to something
bigger than a single corporation. So naturally I use a flavour of GNU/Linux on
my computer.

I already use Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop computers (both professionally
and private), so the Ubuntu smartphone seems like a good shot at getting
something that can potentially near the freedom I have on desktop Linux, and
thus far I am not disappointed.

A smartphone for me is a way to get information on-the-go. For things like
public transport itineraries, weather forecasts, and navigation Ubuntu Touch
already suffices.

The big 'issue' of course is apps. Ubuntu Touch has its own store with a
growing number of free software apps, and some proprietary stuff. Most of the
basic apps I expect are there, mostly pre-installed. Big name apps are missing
though — there is no WhatsApp for instance. Now for my opinion on this topic,
which may very well be an unpopular minority view:

To me, this lack of big name proprietary apps is just fine and exactly what I
want. The term 'app' is ambiguous at best and I feel that it is a threat to
software freedom. To illustrate: A simple stand-alone off-line calculator is
called an 'app', but so i a web-service accessible exclusively with
proprietary software like WhatsApp. That is, an 'app' in common parlance is
not just the piece of software you install on your device, it is also the
infrastructure backing it. In the case of the extremely popular WhatsApp, you
need their software to be able to access their service. It appears to be
illegal to create a free software client that can talk to their service,
unlike, say, email (SMTP, IMAP, etc.). That's fine, its their service, their
rules, I prefer to make due without.

I don't want a computing device filled with a bunch of proprietary clients for
day-to-day tasks. If you offer a great service, offer a great web-app to use
it with (I already have a capable browser installed), or (re)use or create an
open protocol anyone can use. Otherwise, I'll just do without. If your
business model depends on me installing a piece of proprietary software, I am
not interested.

Other than that, there is still plenty of rough edges. It is not trivial
(though possible) to install the normal software packages from Ubuntu's
repositories, but on the other hand, I have not had the need yet. I do sorely
miss Firefox with uBlock Origin though! Ads on websites seem even more
intrusive than on the desktop.

If I had to summarize the threats to Ubuntu Touch's future I would say that it
sometimes feels as if there are not enough core developers working on the
product, but that may be just the impression I got from the issues I have
reported.

Canonical seems to bet on being able to get Ubuntu Touch entrenched in
developing countries, but I doubt that that strategy will pay off (although I
am not knowledgeable enough on that topic to make a firm statement about
this). If they can manage to make Ubuntu Touch synonymous with _the easy to
use and obtain free operating system for smartphones_ (the way Ubuntu is for
desktop computers) they may have a good chance at winning the hearts of
software developers with a preference for free software — that is the niche I
would bet on.

The lack of apps in the way of Android and IOS is of course problematic in the
current app-economy driven smartphone world, and will prevent major adoption
of Ubuntu Touch for some time to come, but it may be that I am not alone in my
dismissal of this reliance on proprietary apps.

~~~
Sylos
> I do sorely miss Firefox with uBlock Origin though! Ads on websites seem
> even more intrusive than on the desktop.

You could edit the hosts-file to block ads...

------
B1FF_PSUVM
Specs and pics of the hardware, if anyone else is curious:
[http://www.gsmarena.com/meizu_pro_5-7573.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/meizu_pro_5-7573.php)

------
Scarbutt
How does distrowatch gets the "page hits" for all the distros's websites? or
are those "page hits" initiated from within distrowatch?

(surprised to see Mint at the top)

~~~
cnr
They are counting "one hit per IP address per day" on distribution subpages.
Here is explained "DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking":
[https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity](https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity)

~~~
angry-hacker
Therefor it depends how well specific distro page of theirs rank in Google? If
linux mint ranks 5th and Ubuntu 30th, because ubuntu is so popular, of course
it gets more hits. And maybe some little known distro ranks 1st because it has
no competition.

I think their popularity table is flawed, but I still love their website. You
can browse distros that are based on specific distros etc.

------
IshKebab
It seems kind of mad to think Ubuntu could succeed where Microsoft failed. I
just can't see any way they will convince third party developers to write apps
for it.

~~~
Sylos
Well, a few things which might help:

\- There's going to be developers who will develop for Ubuntu Touch in their
free time, just because they want the platform to succeed, similar to desktop
Linux. And essentially no one will do that for Windows Phone, meaning that
Windows Phone depends much more on developers to be able to make a profit off
of it, and therefore much more on having market share to begin with.

\- Ubuntu Touch appeals more to developers than Windows Phone does. And if a
developer already uses a platform, it's much more likely that they write an
app for it in their free time.

\- Because Ubuntu Touch is open-source, it can be ported to existing phones.
You can for example dual-boot it on a few of the Nexus devices already, which
again, makes it easier to develop for. Also means there's another way for
people to try it out.

~~~
benbristow
> And essentially no one will do that for Windows Phone, meaning that Windows
> Phone depends much more on developers to be able to make a profit off of it,
> and therefore much more on having market share to begin with.

Totally incorrect. There's loads of developers making Windows Phone apps that
are compatible with services that don't have an decent official app yet (See,
for example, Rudy Huyn).

------
oDot
See [http://ubports.com/](http://ubports.com/) for ports to some Android
devices

------
owly
If you're willing to leave vanilla Android or Apple and experiment with a new
OS project, you should check out the security focused Android fork of
Copperhead. [https://copperhead.co/android/](https://copperhead.co/android/)
Why go through all of the grief of switching without a security focused
purpose?

