9 ms·

In which Ars is allowed to see—but not touch—an Ubuntu phone

58 points by rainmaker23 14y ago

evincarofautumn 14y ago
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.
Ianvdl 14y ago
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.
- justincormack 14y ago
  Well there already seems to be the Galaxy Nexus. Will certainly try it on mine.
- ezequiel-garzon 14y ago
  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.
neya 14y ago
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 14y ago
  What is the 'terrible unity experience'?
  - pekk 14y ago
    Using something which isn't Gnome 2, or similar clone of the Win95 interface, because it is the default, and not knowing that there is a shell one-liner for installing an alternative desktop.
  - nextw33k 14y ago
    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).
fideloper 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    Ahh, that irritating message. Right up there with: want to install our app?
    - bergie 14y ago
      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"
damncabbage 14y ago
"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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      I assume you saw the post on the Windows phone. ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051291 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.
kryptiskt 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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.
  - notatoad 14y ago
    It makes sense for a new entrant that doesn't have an existing ecosystem to only support apps that are compatible with the big players. If you're android or apple, you can ask developers to build native apps. It's a struggle for microsoft and RIM to get developers building native apps, no company smaller than them has a hope in hell of getting developers to build apps for their platform, unless they can offer compatibility. Sure, native apps have advantages. But those advantages only exist if native apps exist, and for all the new mobile platforms, native apps don't really exist.
sigkill 14y ago
This looks like a mashup of Android, iOS and Maemo in my opinion, with regards to the UI. {Notification, Icons, and Menus resp.}
ljoshua 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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.
  - pekk 14y ago
    The same will be true for any device of real use which stores data. Either you are going to depend heavily on backups, or you are going to require a constant internet connection to a centralized service (in effect the same thing).
nicholassmith 14y ago
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.
DannyBee 14y ago
"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.

58 points by rainmaker23 14y ago

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.

Ianvdl 14y ago

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.

justincormack 14y ago
Well there already seems to be the Galaxy Nexus. Will certainly try it on mine.
ezequiel-garzon 14y ago
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.

neya 14y ago

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 14y ago
What is the 'terrible unity experience'?
- pekk 14y ago
  Using something which isn't Gnome 2, or similar clone of the Win95 interface, because it is the default, and not knowing that there is a shell one-liner for installing an alternative desktop.
- nextw33k 14y ago
  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).

fideloper 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  Ahh, that irritating message. Right up there with: want to install our app?
  - bergie 14y ago
    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"

damncabbage 14y ago

"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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    I assume you saw the post on the Windows phone. ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051291 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.

kryptiskt 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
- notatoad 14y ago
  It makes sense for a new entrant that doesn't have an existing ecosystem to only support apps that are compatible with the big players. If you're android or apple, you can ask developers to build native apps. It's a struggle for microsoft and RIM to get developers building native apps, no company smaller than them has a hope in hell of getting developers to build apps for their platform, unless they can offer compatibility. Sure, native apps have advantages. But those advantages only exist if native apps exist, and for all the new mobile platforms, native apps don't really exist.

sigkill 14y ago

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

ljoshua 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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.
- pekk 14y ago
  The same will be true for any device of real use which stores data. Either you are going to depend heavily on backups, or you are going to require a constant internet connection to a centralized service (in effect the same thing).

nicholassmith 14y ago

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.

DannyBee 14y ago

"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.