

In which Ars is allowed to see—but not touch—an Ubuntu phone - rainmaker23
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/in-which-ars-is-allowed-to-see-but-not-touch-an-ubuntu-phone/

======
Ianvdl
I would prefer such a phone above all others currently in the market and I
doubt I'm alone.

A very large fraction of this community would probably want a linux phone that
allows you to basically carry your desktop around.

I hope they find a manufacturer soon.

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
As a former N900 user, I loved carrying much of the GNU goodness on me, but
the maps/contacts/mail integration offered by Google on its Android platform
is just too enticing! I doubt I will even consider Ubuntu Phone without this.

------
damncabbage
_"We're just doing all of the driving for the demos for now simply because we
understand how the experience works"_

This is a pretty limp excuse. I wish they'd just drop the PR-speak and say
that it's not quite ready yet.

~~~
vy8vWJlco
Smells like a "Hollywood launch." :\

Re: lack-o-source code: _"We don't want users to install it on hardware that
we're not sure it can support"_

Not really getting off on the right foot with the tech community either, IMHO.

I can't begin to emphasize enough how much I want this to succeed. (One open-
source OS to rule them all, and what not...) It's a bit sad that its birth
feels like another canned industry event rather than a true hacker love-child.
But hey, at least it's progress, right?

~~~
pekk
If they believe that early fiddling from the press will result in a permanent
black mark on the platform, then it is a savvy move regardless of how
disappointed people are now.

Anyway, it is really doubtful that they will get much traction against iOS,
let alone iOS + Android, even with a perfect launch.

~~~
vy8vWJlco
I assume you saw the post on the Windows phone. (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051291> ). Windows is an interesting
case: Microsoft is still the incumbent; Windows is royalty, and the press
loves photos of royalty with their pants down. (iOS is in a similar position.)

Ubuntu is in slightly different situation, and people would more willingly
forgive glitches as long as they are trying. Swartz's point (among others)
about the Hollywood launch was that the more you set yourself up as glassy and
untouchable, the more people want you to fail, and the bigger you usually do.
So, if Ubuntu/Canonical suffers the same sort of articles as the Windows phone
article from earlier it will have probably been because they took themselves
so seriously that people became all too eager to point out their flaws. It's
the Streisand effect on marketing hype. As soon as you say "pay no attention
to the man behind the curtain" everyone starts tugging at the curtain. "No
touching" already works poorly for geeks (and at this stage, I think only
geeks care about Ubuntu on a phone), and even less well for a company that
built all their offerings on free software.

As for traction, I think Android could work to Canonical's advantage. I don't
know how much Google "needs" Android, but they even might benefit from
outsourcing the platform. (Those Android phones could pretty easily become
Ubuntu phones.) Dalvik's open-source, so there's no reason to think Ubuntu
wouldn't be able to run Android software out of the box. Ultimately platforms
are less fertile than the standards they embody, so if Ubuntu becomes only
"another Linux phone" it's still fine by me.

------
evincarofautumn
Well, it looks solid. Canonical’s vision of the new Ubuntu UI certainly seems
to work well with touch displays, which was probably the idea all along. My
first impression is definitely that Canonical is working toward a better
cross-device experience than the one currently on offer from Microsoft.
Whether I actually _care_ about cross-device experiences is another issue
entirely.

------
kryptiskt
I think FirefoxOS is a much more viable contender. It has a head start; it is
not going straight up against iOS and Android in the massive undertaking of
building an app ecosystem, but is exclusively using web technologies; Mozilla
controls a deeper part of their stack than Canonical; they have deals in
place; and they are aiming low-end phones, where there is an opportunity as
iOS doesn't exist and Android 4.0 performs like crap.

~~~
DeepDuh
I keep hearing this. Could you explain why pure web technologies with no other
options is better than giving developers the best of both worlds (deeply
integrated web apps as well as native apps, if the performance is needed)?
HTML5 browser technology isn't even able to render current iOS games in full
blown desktop browsers, how is it going to be adequate for embedded devices in
the coming few years?

In the long run you may be right, but it's going to take quite a bit longer
and until then the mobile market is going to be even more entrenched than now.

~~~
kryptiskt
This is about making a virtue out of necessity. There is no way a small player
launching a native SDK now can attract enough developers to not look like a
total joke beside Android and iOS (or even Windows Phone).

Mozilla controls and understands the vital parts of their platform, their
rendering engine and JS VM, they can concentrate their work on making them
performant enough to compete and making sure that the long run will come
sooner rather than later.

So yeah, I'm impressed by them having a narrow focus and playing to their
strengths rather than making something that is just like Android, only with no
apps.

------
ljoshua
The killer feature to me would be the following:

 _You may recall that certain Ubuntu phones will become full Ubuntu PCs when
docked with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard._

The idea of being able to carry around just one small, main device instead of
two separate (though well-integrated) ones, a la iOS/OS X, would probably be
just enough to tip the scales and get me to use it, provided the experience
was good enough.

~~~
noahl
When I first heard about this I was really excited, but then I realized that
if I dropped or lost my phone, my entire environment would be gone. What do
you think about that issue?

I think I'd still do it, but I'd really like to have some sort of automatic
sync to another hard disk. Maybe when I plug it into my desktop docking
station, it would automatically sync everything to the hard disk I have there.
That would really be the best of both worlds. (I seem to recall some Ubuntu
feature like that, but I don't remember the details.)

~~~
weego
What if I lost my laptop? My laptop might be more expensive, but cos isn't the
factor in why I'm more careful with it (as it's insured); I just really don't
want to lose my setup. If you're phone becomes more important through elevated
use aren't you naturally going to become more protective?

~~~
noahl
I think a phone has a higher risk of being lost than a laptop because it's
smaller. People (at least the ones I know) carry their phones more places than
their laptops. And it's much more likely that a phone will drop out of a
pocket than that a laptop will drop out of your backpack or briefcase.

But that doesn't change the fact that I would do it; it just makes good
backups even more important.

------
DannyBee
"Like the Ubuntu phone OS, the source code for Ubuntu for Android is not yet
available. "We don't want users to install it on hardware that we're not sure
it can support," Collins said"

Don't worry though, this is definitely going to be different than how android
development has proceeded.

------
nicholassmith
It looks good, but it's disappointing that Canonical felt they couldn't say to
Ars "Hey guys, you know it's going to be rough round the edges, we know it,
just keep it in mind as you use it". Now we all end up thinking it's worse
than it probably is. It's a piss-poor move PR wise.

------
fideloper
The article mentioned some native applications being browser-based.

I wonder what app development will be like if their browser actually gives
some system access.

~~~
bergie
I imagine this is quite close to how PhoneGap apps already work, and how your
browser already asks you whether you want to share your location with a
website

~~~
lostlogin
Ahh, that irritating message. Right up there with: want to install our app?

~~~
bergie
The permissions have to be checked somehow. The other typical way to do this
is to ask all the permissions when you enable the app, though I sometimes like
the more granular manner that browsers have.

Another interesting option would be to allow users to have a more general
policy, like _"I'm OK with any app reading my Twitter stream, but not with
allowing them to post"_

------
neya
Looks good. Hope they get rid of the terrible unity experience found on their
desktop OS. Atleast, an improvised version wih better user-experience should
help. It is so important that they get this right because of the fact that,
for stuff like these (new platforms, phones) the first impression will remain
the best impression amongst the consumers' minds.

~~~
woah
What is the 'terrible unity experience'?

~~~
nextw33k
Slow, glitchy and shopping integrated.

I gave Unity 3 ubuntu releases until I tried Gnome 3.6 and have wondered how I
survived until now. Look at how quick Gnome's sidebar is compared to Unity.
Look how they got the movement right in term of screen window movement. Look
at how quick the finder is. Look at how the bar hides when you don't need it
by default. Look how the menu bar is with each window reducing the distance
your mouse has to travel to get to what you want.

Having the Unity side bar on a phone is a waste of screen real estate. 70% of
the screen is with the previous application which you are switching away from
and you are going to have to scroll more with the single width unity bar
(based on the images seen).

------
sigkill
This looks like a mashup of Android, iOS and Maemo in my opinion, with regards
to the UI. {Notification, Icons, and Menus resp.}

