How many Ubuntu Phones there are?

Linux on the mobile can today make use of Android drivers thanks to libhybris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29). The overwhelming majority of software that makes up "Linux on the mobile" is made up of mature FOSS components (e.g. Qt, systemd, Pulseaudio, Gstreamer, ffmpeg/libav, NetworkManager/Connman, Telepathy, oFono, BlueZ, rpm/deb, apt/zypp -- Wayland for SailishOS [and as of recently Tizen]).

I think at this point Linux on the mobile has a mature base. We now need a mature, polished, FOSS set of core applications. At that point (thanks to libhybris, and being able to leverage Android drivers) -- I think a self-sustaining community will be able to take over. I think we're about 2 years away from this goal.

I currently use Jolla (SailfishOS) as my daily driver, and I'm extremely happy with it.

I can confirm this. I do feel it got better with the last update, but it is still noticeably laggy in situations where it has little reason to be. It doesn't help the primary screen, or hub, or scope (whatever it might be known as) has a tendency to refresh itself frequently, and draws its various components in a very unpolished manner.

With that said, it isn't all bad - I've been really impressed with the podcatcher "Podbird". If every Ubuntu touch application was as well done as this, I could probably start recommending it to people I know. Here's a recent video of the desktop build, which is largely identical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLSqz7skYvw

Convergence is about data, right? You want all your data to appear magically on whatever form factor of computing you are using.

The key mistake of the concept of convergence at the device level, is that it runs against Moore's Law.

Modern smartphones are pretty darn powerful, but the SoCs that drive them, are also pretty darn cheap. That means that whatever shell you want to dock your phone with, can just have the same SoC and be a computing device in its own right.

It seems odd to me that you'd want to have lots of shells (be they tablet shells, laptop shells, or docks with monitor/kb/mouse on a desktop) sitting around not able to do any computing, because their CPU is somewhere else in your pocket. For a few extra bucks per shell, you can make it a primary node in your computing life. Or for a few more extra bucks per shell, you can make it a powerful node in your computing life.

Convergence is much more convenient at the cloud level - all of your form factors have their own CPU/RAM/Storage (which can also then be varied, to allow devices with more power delivery to offer more computing power) and the data can flow magically between them. This is already a reality today. My watch, phone, tablet, laptop and desktop all have access to the same data and I can use all of them at once if I want to.

I do this on iOS using Pythonista. It includes a basic on-device GUI design tool, hooks into various iOS built-in libraries and some useful third party Python libraries. There are even a few (admittedly trivial) apps published to the App store written in Pythonista. There's also Codea if you prefer Lua to Python. I tend to do most work in an iPad as a phone is a bit cramped for working on code.

For people who don't know, these numbers are very, very small. I wrote an app store dice puzzle game on Android no one here has heard of and it has 20x those numbers.

As a developer, you have to decide if the decreased competition on the platform is worth the smaller user base when you decide if you will write a version for that platform. So platform size numbers like these are important.