The Case for Ubuntu Phone | Hacker News Reader

The Case for Ubuntu Phone

gould.cx

99 pointsreddotX94 comments

I would like to try Ubuntu Phone but I cannot find it anywhere.

Canonical's page says that all devices are out of stock, various online stores say exactly the same thing, and all the devices that are listed as compatibile (Nexus 5 for instance) are two generations old and also hard to come by.

The only option I haven't tried is buying used phone on eBay, because they usually come in pretty bad shape so I want brand new device.

Please Canonical, get your shit together and release SOMETHING, pretty much any device with 4.5 inch screen 2GB RAM and 32GB flash will do.

You can get the tablet bq M10 now. Or you can preorder the Fair phone 2, the version with Ubuntu preinstalled.

The Fairphone 2 doesn't come with Ubuntu preinstalled and the project to run the OS on the phone is community based and in progress.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/07/ubuntu-fairphone-2-port-u... https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fairphone-2-ubuntu-touch/23475

You can run a version of Android without Google ("Google Mobile Services") on FP2. This is called Fairphone Open OS [1].

[1] https://code.fairphone.com/

Same with Jolla – my first gen is breaking and I can't buy a replacement running Sailfish at this moment. I like Sailfish and I'm interested in Ubuntu Phone, but clearly they seem to have some issues convincing manufacturers to release some hardware with these alternative systems. I hope maybe Fairphone and Puzzlephone could become open mobile hardware devices with at least semi-official support for multiple open operating systems because I'm not quite brave enough to start hacking mobile devices to run Linux.

Canonical aren't likely to release another Ubuntu Phone until Snaps are a standard way to install new software, which I personally think is a great move by them.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-P...

You could always flash your own...

https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/devices/installing-ubu...

I've bit a little disappointed that Firefox OS didn't pan out

You can still buy a tablet here (top listing). https://www.amazon.es/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%...

I applaud the OP's bravery, but after a long, long time in the telco business and having seen many attempts from multiple platforms towards gaining a foothold (Symbian, Maemo, LiMo - including Vodafone's own version - Bada, etc.), I have to point out that Ubuntu Phone, despite the vision and values behind it, is at a massively overwhelming disadvantage in terms of both telco appeal (what I and my former colleagues still in the device procurement part of the telco business have seen so far has no compelling advantage over Android) and ecosystem.

Even if selling off-telco worked, the one problem I see is the lack of that ecosystem, or a way to bootstrap it, because if it ran Android apps (and therefore fracture the user experience) that would not ensure developer adoption... And most people only want a "good enough" phone that lets them run apps and a few games, which further compounds the problem -- the value of Ubuntu Phone Just isn't apparent to them, which is sad.

I think the biggest thing that could probably help the Ubuntu Phone is an approachable development environment. If the road to developing apps for a phone is short enough, that people on their weekend make apps for it, it will expand rapidly with apps. This requires great tooling, and documentation. Potentially even adoption of a programming language that either comes with a powerful SDK or is tailored from the ground up for this purpose, or forked. We've seen this type of boom with Go. Go has a LOT of out of the box functionality, and Python does too, it is what makes people stick to them once they like them in my opinion. However, tooling and documentation are key. I know Ubuntu has Ubuntu Make, but it still has a long way to go. If they can make a great development ecosystem, they can bring in a number of developers.

They should be targeting OEMs and telcos as their primary customers and a first class dev environment is key to that. The reason Android AOSP is so widely available is it's free, is trivial to port to new hardware and is easy to customise. Since ORMS and telcos are the gatekeepers to anything reaching customers, appealing to them has to come first. Fail to attract them and it doesn't matter how popular you might have been with customers, because they'll never even get to see your product.

I'm not sure that this holds true in today's ecosystem. Yes, developers may come to the platform, but the big companies won't come unless the consumers come to the platform. And consumers won't come unless Facebook, Snapchat, etc show up.

Curious why you say Go comes with a lot out of the box. Compared to Python or Java I find it pretty lacking. And even more so when you include 3rd party libraries and the fact that Go has no package manager ala. pip or Ivy.

Android Studio is a pretty mature well documented way to make apps so if anyone is truly determined and has some programming experience, making a simple Android app in a weekend is doable. I've heard (but don't know personally) that the iOS toolchain is even easier to use.

That all aside, nobody will WANT to spend their weekend making Ubuntu apps when nobody has a phone to run them.

> and the fact that Go has no package manager ala. pip or Ivy.

A featureful Go package manager a la Cargo or NPM is coming.

A not-so basic package manager is baked into the language and its official tooling. It just behaves like a Unix application, so instead of "pip uninstall package" you run "rm -rf $GOPATH/src/github.com/author/package" (or do it in your app's vendor directory, instead of using a virtualenv).

>We've seen this type of boom with Go.

Canonical was in fact funding development of go-qml, with the Ubuntu phone in mind.

It has unfortunately broken over time, although a fork exists maintained by the limetext developers.

There is a Qt (and QML) binding library at github.com/therecipe/qt which works, but is far less simple.

> Symbian

Err?

The most logical thing for Ubuntu Phone to do would be to start out with making some kind of ROM that people could sideload onto their existing Android. The people who first started out using Ubuntu were interested enough and wanted an alternative to Windows badly enough that they didn't mind installing it as a replacement. Why can't Ubuntu Phone start out as a replacement to Android? The only "problem" being that Android has not really messed up too badly yet, other than in making everything go through the Google Play Services and shutting out AOSP and leaving it stuck in 2009.

And yes there is a ROM out there but it's not available on enough devices to create enough of a stir. This is the mistake Canonical is making, and they might regret leaving the job of porting to popular devices up to the 'community' (read: volunteers) instead of paying a team of developers to just get the ROM working to a point where it is a half-decent alternative to even Cyanogenmod. Microsoft made that same mistake before the iPhone and never really recovered.

I think this is relatively easy if you have the right phone. I think you can even install MultiROM through the app store, and then install Ubuntu Touch alongside your existing Android installation.

https://2buntu.com/articles/1510/installing-ubuntu-touch-wit...

You're right about the half-hearted device support, though.

And they should write a porting guide, first thing. Start with setting up a dev environment and cross-compiler.

Then they should do a sample port to some very easy to obtain hardware, a Chinese $100 GSM phone, and document the whole process step-by-step.

If you want wide support, you need to leverage enthusiasm.

They have a porting guide here:

https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/devices/porting-new-de...

Cross-compilers have been available for a while now.

That is exactly how they started before partnering with some phone vendors:

https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/devices/installing-ubu...

I would love to have a Ubuntu Phone, but my carrier in the US probably doesn't support such phones yet as far as I'm aware. If they can sooner reach the multiple carriers in this side of the globe effectively (and hopefully not AT&T first, kind of sick of everyone going to them first) then that would help the ecosystem currently going on. I am not enjoying the options left.

I loved Android at first because it is based on Linux, but I don't feel like I'm using Linux, I just feel like I'm using the only other option left. I like the few freedoms Android gives me at least, but it takes more effort than if I had Ubuntu installed on a computer to do anything useful on it.

Amazon tried, but why would I want to stop being locked down by one tech giant just to be locked down to the next. A phone should have the essentials, nothing forcefully locked into the phone. I can't uninstall Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger from my phone without rooting. If one day they all shut down that becomes a completely useless set of applications. Years from now I should still be able to text and call though? I should be able to change the apps that do those things too either way! If the manufacturer stops supporting them for example.

I love the freedom of Linux, and Android never feels like it yet. I hope Ubuntu comes to America and becomes highly available everywhere. I also hope competitors are allowed, or Distros. Would be nice to see alternative phones. I don't want to be locked down as much as I love Google, they shouldn't have total control of my phone, neither should Apple, or Canonical.

At least Canonical respects that.

> I would love to have a Ubuntu Phone, but my carrier in the US probably doesn't support such phones yet as far as I'm aware.

How does that work? Does the carrier have to support each new brand of phone?

I don't think we have a system like that here in the UK. I have an iPhone 6 paid for with a monthly contract, but I was using a ~2002 Nokia feature phone recently while it was away for repair.

Just went through this research again for the first time in five or six years. One of the most frustrating things about US carriers is that they force manufacturers to limit their offerings in this market.

For example, dual SIM card phones are not offered on any phones built for the US market, since carriers make a lot of their money from financing new phones. There are also phones with three and four SIM cards made for other markets. Need two (or three or four) numbers? In the US, you have to buy two (or three or four) phones.

AT&T and T-Mobile use the GSM protocol on their networks, which is the protocol used in the rest of the world. The 2G bands use different frequencies in this hemisphere than the frequencies used in Europe and Asia. The 3G and 4G and LTE bands are different yet, but the basic protocol is the same, so if the radio works, the phone works.

Sprint and Verizon use a different protocol called CDMA which is incompatible with GSM. Phones designed for foreign markets do not work at all on their networks.

So to summarize, barriers built using different protocols and marketing limit the ability for US consumers to treat their handset for what it is (a commodity) and help lock them in to one of two carriers. This is why Apple and Samsung can get away with charging $600+ for devices that cost a very small fraction of that to manufacture using impoverished laborers.

I just bought a 2G Philips dual SIM phone made in China for the Russian market that will work on T-mobile's US 2G network. (It will not work on AT&T since they turned off their 2G network on January 1.) I plan to use two SIM cards for the two numbers I have, and to limit mobile data to a tablet for those times when I absolutely need it. Everything else (paying bills, looking for work, shopping, playing games, getting directions, etc.) will be done on a laptop or desktop.

I would welcome reform of the US cell market, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen. They simply have too much power, and most Americans are completely unaware that it could be any different or better.

Are Apple and Samsung phones cheaper in Europe?

I hope that's a rhetorical question.. pretty much every company loves to shaft Europe on price, even with taxes considered. Although Australia has it even worse!

> Sprint and Verizon use a different protocol called CDMA which is incompatible with GSM.

This was only true up until LTE. LTE is GSM.

This is a distinction without a difference until VoLTE is the only option. Calls and texts are still sent over CDMA.

US CDMA carriers right now require that you whitelist your phone's IMEI before it will activate. That means, even if your phone is compatible with all bands used, you can't just pop a SIM in and have it work. That may change once VoLTE is everywhere, but it may not, because carriers like making it hard to bring your own device, so you'll buy it from them instead. Verizon has some restrictions here, due to their purchase of the 700mhz LTE spectrum, but they still make it difficult.

> For example, dual SIM card phones are not offered on any phones built for the US market, since carriers make a lot of their money from financing new phones.

Actually there are plenty of dual SIM models available in the US from US companies that are 100% compatible with US carriers, you just have to be willing to open a browser and shop for five minutes. I am currently using a Microsoft Lumia 650 dual SIM phone, purchased from Microsoft and shipped to me in Georgia (US) from California. It fully supports both AT&T's and T-Mobile's networks, and consequently all MVNOs of those networks. Until I gave her my Nexus 6, my wife was using a dual SIM Blu Android phone, sold by a Florida based company and shipped from the US. Again, the phone supported all US GSM bands.

I stand corrected. I was not shopping for smartphones this time around, so hadn't looked at those. There isn't nearly as much variety in basic phones and feature phones offered in the US.

You're right, and that's unfortunate. I wanted a basic phone for porting out my Google voice number to my carrier when I decided to stop using all Google services, but there wasn't anything worth having that was cheaper than a smartphone. So, since I was buying a new smartphone anyway, I went with a dual SIM model.

> […] but my carrier in the US probably doesn't support such phones yet as far as I'm aware.

Is there something specific about US carriers that prevents a phone running Ubuntu Touch from working? My experience in Europe is that my Ubuntu Touch phone (Meizu Pro 5) just works, because it supports all the necessary bands and SIM-cards. I don't think my carrier really cares what phone I use.

The US is still split between carriers using cdma, and gsm. So if the carrier is on cdma, SIM cards don't exist.

Are the CDMA ones planning on moving to LTE?

They (Verizon, Sprint) already have, but they still use CDMA in outlying areas and for voice service. (Verizon, especially, is known for having the best rural service, at least in the rural areas near where I live.) Verizon does use SIM cards for LTE; I'm not sure about Spring but I'm guessing they do as well.

Both still have the CDMA-carrier mindset of wanting only "their" devices on their networks. In the past they would not (usually?) activate a phone not sold by them even if could work, but I feel like I've heard of people using unlocked devices with Verizon, but it could just be iPhones.

I set my granddaughter up with an unlocked Nexus 6 on Verizon.

Can you buy SIM cards for Verizon/Sprint and the GSM carriers? Or do they force you to buy a phone that includes a SIM?

You could technically buy an unlocked phone and ask for a SIM Card though I've never done this so I cannot say how well this works. I'm on Sprint and my last few phones have had an internal SIM.

My understanding is that Verizon CDMA use the 450mhz band. A band I have seen described as the butter zone for mobile communications (Also the band used for the initial Nordic NMT network).

I don't understand the aversion to rooting, other than the obvious security implications. Few consumers install Ubuntu (or another desktop distro) on their machine and don't allow themselves root access, so it's difficult to imagine having much freedoms on your phone without doing so either. Try a custom ROM (e.g. CyanogenMod or its apparent descendant LineageOS) which adds many more options to AOSP and doesn't force you to use Google Play Services. I'm running this currently with an open source Google Play alternative [1] and it works surprisingly well, with far better battery life and performance.

[1]: https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki

I think it comes down to expense upon repair, and OEMs raising a stink if you try to get something fixed on a rooted device (even if it is clearly a hardware failure).

FOSS software running phones/tablets is currently at roughly the same place FOSS software on the PC was at the turn of the millenium, and now reports indicate that Linux on the PC/laptop is gaining more and more notice from vendors each year, something no one could've dreamnt of during the monopolistic haydays of MS. So whether or not it gains traction from telcos and the average consumer, a functioning alternative to closed ecosystems is justified by its very existence and the ever-present possibility that a combination of factors can at any moment cause it to rise to the forefront. But it can win only if it's still in the ring right?

PCs have interchangeable components that are built around standards. So if it's easier to write for them in an abstracted way. Vendors control the hardware for their phones. They have no interest in enabling people to remove their Android flavor, with built in crapware. Open source phone OSes will come, but only after we've reduced the smart phone to a commodity and market forces have compelled standardization through economy of scale.

What I urgently need to see before I can buy an Ubuntu phone is an integrated 1-click backup solution:

I want to connect my Ubuntu phone to my Ubuntu notebook and click "Backup now", to have everything I need synced to my notebook (and not to some "cloud"/somebody else's server).

In lieu of such a tool, I wrote a crappy shell script to backup my Ubuntu Phones. :)

https://github.com/popey/buds

Thanks. It's just that the average user will never accept such hurdles. An automated backup solution is really one of the most important things to have in phones. No backup solution means one must be OK with losing all the data as soon as the phone gets stolen or lost.

Indeed. I wrote that before there was a backup tool built into Ubuntu Phone. I saw a demo of the backup tool a few months back, but don't know if it landed yet.

> don't know if it landed yet.

How can the consumer know about all currently available features in Ubuntu phones? A dedicated page for that would allow one to check "if Ubuntu is ready for me".

It's a bit academic right now as there are no Ubuntu phones on sale, but yes, that would be a great page to make.

There are Ubuntu tablets on sale now, which run about the same software as far as I know.

Only they're sold out.

Tablets here (top choice):

https://www.amazon.es/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%...

Have you checked out Syncthing?

Looks interesting, thanks. (The average Joe however will require a solution similar to iTunes's backup feature.)

The paragraph focused on carriers in this article makes me wonder : can ubuntu mobile guarantee OEM won't install any uninstallable apps as well?

I only buy nexus phones precisely because I don't want the carriers and OEM stuff, they always have been a bad experience for me. I can see how "build your own bundle" is a selling point for carriers, but it's hardly one for users.

That being said, I'm excited to see a true linux mobile distro. I've tried it on my nexus 7 when most apps were placeholders, can't wait to see a viable one. Any chance to have dual boot?

> The paragraph focused on carriers in this article makes me wonder : can ubuntu mobile guarantee OEM won't install any uninstallable apps as well?

It looks like he's saying that Ubuntu gives carriers more flexibility to bundle in alternative apps and services, as you say it would be interesting to know whether Ubuntu will agree to carriers making those services uninstallable. My guess is Ubuntu do not have the clout to stop that, and still get sold through that channel. I would say there will always be a distinction between phones you buy directly and those bundled with contracts. The latter will always involve that kind of influence from the carriers. One compromise could be it comes locked down, but includes some non-obvious but relatively easy way to root the system, and open it up completely.

With the present phones, Canonical provides all the packages and the full ROM files. There is no feature yet for phones that cannot be rooted so I do not see such risk.

There is a feature for Snapdragon SoCs that can enable dual-boot. For others, it is still difficult or impossible.

With the new Android versions, it is far more difficult to get tools like xposed to reclaim some of the privacy and control back. Having a usable alternative is essential.

Many comments same/similar to "I would like to try Ubuntu Phone but I cannot find it anywhere."

Well, I got tired of waiting, so I bought a NEW Meizu Pro 5 (Flyme Edition) and installed Ubuntu.

Works great. New phone, with warranty, running Ubuntu.

What's more the Pro 5 runs a Exynos 7420 (ARMv8-A) so is likely to run the Xenial based snap image when released by Canonical.

We really need something like "GNU phoneutils" ... a big package of command line utilities to control and manipulate a telephone.

I really, really want to do things like this:

  cat file | sms -send -n 4157771234

  grep mom addresses | awk (field with phonenumber) | dial --nobusy --retry 3

That is to say, I want a unix phone. I want to run the phone with unix and unix commands. Certainly not all of the time, but some of the time I would like the power to manipulate dialing/texting/answering in this way.

I am not aware of any utilities like this - collected in a big package or not ...

You could try freeswitch which has some fun cli stuff. mod_portaudio lets you make and take calls from your terminal (although you have to use fs_cli, but you can alias dial to fs_cli -x"pa call $1"). There are a few sms modules as well.

You kinda can do it on Android via Termux: https://termux.com/add-on-api.html

Hrmf, 5.0 or newer. And here I was wondering if I could get some extra mileage out of my older devices...

Closest you can get is sending DBUS commands to oFono or FSO. Should be easy to write a command-line wrapper for those though.

> The biggest strength and weakness of Ubuntu Phone is that it’s a device without an intrinsic set of services. If you buy an Android device you get Google Services. If you buy an iPhone you get Apple services.

I think what you may get with a "popular" mainstream Ubuntu phone platform will be a lot worse - like Canonical allowing companies to install their own services/crapware, but worse than it already is for Android phones.

A interesting effort by Ubuntu that could have potentially enriched the ecosystem for users but hardware and drivers in the tightly closed Arm and Google ecosystem is a significant challenge. Or we would be able to install Linux on our devices ourselves.

Its curious these devices work flawlessly with Android but cannot even boot with Linux. Or if it boots none of the functionality works.

The drivers are there and they work on 'Linux' just fine but somehow they are never available on Linux. Folks here get worked up about insignificant chinese companies when this is totally in the control of Arm and Google.

Its now tiring to see open source developers struggle incessantly to get information from ARM for over 5 years and the ball is kicked from ARM to the OEM both claiming the other has denied permission and this goes on. There are always promises and excuses but never any results.

The problem is, Ubuntu is completely unsuitable for a mobile phone or tablet.

I bought one last year and had to return it because it was functionally unusable - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/05/the-ubuntu-tablet-a-review-...

The OS doesn't support modern features like multi-touch, many apps require a physical keyboard, it can't connect reliably to Bluetooth devices, app switching doesn't work - even icons are missing from certain apps!

There's no app store to speak of, just a small collection of apps which haven't received even rudimentary testing. That's before we even get to the lack of "killer" apps like Angry Birds, Dropbox, Spotify.

> Carriers are also interested in this flexibility.

No, they aren't. I've just finished 10 years in European telcos - they don't care about flexibility. They care about profit margin and making sure that people don't ring call centres to complain about broken hardware.

My old employer (O2) sells a bunch of Cyanogen based Android devices - because the cost is right and the services are good enough. Ubuntu isn't even close to competing with that yet.

> Some they may provide themselves and some by well known providers; but by not being able to select options for those base services they have less flexibility on what they can do.

This is factually incorrect. Providers (in the UK at least) are able to bundle services and apps with iPhones, Android, Windows Phone. I've worked with handset manufacturers to add DropBox, replace DropBox with something else, have apps preinstalled, remove bloatware - and everything in-between.

> So that effectively makes it difficult for the carriers as well as alternate service providers (e.g. Dropbox, Spotify, etc) to compete.

Again, that's not really true. Dropbox has a multi-million dollar marketing budget. If your new service can pay an operator €10 per customer - guess what - they'll push you to the front of the user's home screen.

> I think that Ubuntu Phone has the fundamental DNA to win in this race.

I don't. I've installed Ubuntu on my MacBooks, my laptops, my servers, and my TV's media box. It's a brilliant OS. But it doesn't work on touchscreens. It cannot meet the efficiency demands of small battery devices. It has no alternative services which even come close to what's on the market.

I love Ubuntu - but I wouldn't let it near any of my phones.

I had pretty much exactly the same experience with Ubuntu Touch (but on an Aquaris phone). All in all I found the window manager a frustrating and horrible experience.

But the one "killer app" I really missed was email. There's precisely one native app, and it fails to load subfolders in imap.

A "free" OS feels like a petty distinction when the only (usable) applications are wrappers for mobile sites.

I have one, but the screen cracked a month or two back, so now back onto Android.

I actually found the Ubuntu interface a lot nicer to navigate than Android, but there is a serious lack of apps for it. The GPS was next to useless compared to Android (not sure if my model had a problem, but it took forever to get a lock, on Android its almost instant). The other big downside for me was traveling. Almost all of the apps were web based so maps wouldn't even load without an internet connection. Pretty useless when I was in the South of Chile and just wanted to check the street map of a small town we were in.

Android does feel way ahead of the Ubuntu phone now. Though it acts like an attention seeking child a lot of the time. I am getting notifications from Google plus, despite the fact I barely ever log into it. Beeps here beeps there always wanting my attention. From web sites I have browsed but refused to install the app as well. At least the GPS is useful now, as its one of the few things I actually find useful on a phone.

Sounds like the typical FOSS syndrome. If you make comments about this you can expect "if you don't like it don't use it", "works for me" and "it's open so you're free to fix it yourself".

But I can't actually buy an Ubuntu phone anymore. And I want to because I lost me aquaris E5. This is not a good situation even for the most committed and patient early adopters (like me).

Have a look at the Fairphone 2. It is on preorder and can get the Ubuntu veraion.

I own a Ubuntu phone, Aquaris E4.5, imported from Spain via a EU dropshipper. Wouldn't use it as my daily phone until it supported full disk encryption.

Many comments same/similar to "I would like to try Ubuntu Phone but I cannot find it anywhere."

Well, I got tired of waiting, so I bought a NEW Meizu Pro 5 (Flyme Edition) and installed Ubuntu.

Works great. New phone, with warranty, running Ubuntu.

What's more, the Pro 5 runs a Exynos 7420 (ARMv8-A) so is likely to run the Xenial based snap image when released by Canonical.

Reading this I'm totally confused what he's talking about: On Android, Telegram is miles ahead of Hangouts & Allo in terms of UX, feature support and performance, while Google Drive feels like a completely wasted opportunity for a storage service by Google on their own platform. Hangouts even ships being disabled per default on their flagship Pixel phones. Instead of growing the amount of apps OEMs need to preinstall to get access to the Play Store, they reduce it, year by year. Even after all these years Android is still designed to be an OS where every company could offer Google-like services and integrate them like Google does.

I'd be surprised if the author actually used an Android device in the last years.

    The biggest strength and weakness of Ubuntu Phone is that it's a device
    without an intrinsic set of services. If you buy an Android device, you get
    Google Services. If you buy an iPhone, you get Apple services.

What he's missing is that the device is pretty much useless without the services. The services are as necessary to the functionality of the device as say, filesystem drivers are on an operating system. Yes, it's possible to have an operating system without filesystem drivers, but it's not going to be very useful to your average consumer. Similarly, it's possible to have a smartphone without location services, or push notifications, but it's not going to be very useful.

    While these can be strengths (at least in Google's case) they are 
    effectively a lock in to services that may or may not meet your
    requirements.  You certainly can get Telegram or Signal for either of those, 
    but they're never going to be as integrated as Hangouts or iMessage. This 
    goes throughout the device including things like music and storage as well.

I don't know what he means with regards to "storage" (cloud storage, perhaps?) but when it comes to messaging, I find that Telegram actually makes a better text messaging application than Hangouts. The UI is easier, it's easier to scan through archived messages, and it's faster. That's leaving aside the obvious privacy improvements that Telegram brings over Hangouts. Similarly, I find that Spotify does a better job of handling music on Android than Google Play Music. It has better integration with its desktop client, better sync, and it doesn't lose its network connection when switching from wifi to LTE.

Android already has the strengths and disadvantages of Ubuntu Phone (mostly thanks to Google's incompetence). I'm not sure what Ubuntu Phone brings to the table that would make it better than Android. Right now, it appears to be an OS like Android with many fewer apps, and even more headaches when it comes to cloud services.

If they're trying to target the same customers that buy Apple and Android for the services and all the other skin-deep beauty, I think they're going to fail for sure. Hopefully, there's enough people that just want a general purpose computer with and open source operating system that just happens to include cellular internet connection (bonuses for me would be a a hardware keyboard, is at a size that actually fits in your pocket and has a hard switch to disconnect it from the network). I would also gladly pay more, even with the inconveniences that might come with such a device. I hope they target something like that and there are enough people that want it.

    Hopefully, there's enough people that just want a general purpose computer 
    with and open source operating system that just happens to include cellular 
    internet connection (bonuses for me would be a a hardware keyboard, is at a 
    size that actually fits in your pocket and has a hard switch to disconnect 
    it from the network)

There aren't. I'm sorry, but the number of people who actually truly care about "general purpose computing" and privacy just isn't high enough to form a viable market segment for any but the most specialized of hardware vendors. If it were not the case, we'd have seen a lot more phones with truly open hardware and software stacks.

That said, if you're willing to relax the "pocketability" requirement, a laptop running GNU/Linux and tethered to your phone fulfills every other requirement.

(PS: What is it with the "hardware keyboard" requirement? It's not like you're going to be writing the next great American novel on your phone. For text messaging and short e-mails what difference does it make?)

"What is it with the hardware keyboard"

Just typing in a simple search with any words that don't autocomplete is excruciating. URLs, user names, passwords, anything that isn't a dictionary word, are impossible to type. The only things touchscreen is good for is infrequent single taps, panning and zooming.

Folks interested in what you describe should probably look at the Neo900 or the Pyra:

https://neo900.org/ http://pyra-handheld.com/

>Another good answer is all the benefits of Free Software, but many of those are benefits the general public doesn’t yet realize they need.

So if they don't agree those benefits are needed, it's because they are wrong/inexperienced/misled/stupid/...?

You think people should care about privacy and "openness of the software", whatever that is (most people can't code, so they rightfully don't care about the availability of the source code of the OS or apps).

What most people (including myself) care about, instead, is ease of use and reliability. You'll never catch up with the ease of use and reliability of iOS (not even Android can, and then not even Microsoft could catch up with Android), that's why Firefox OS failed and your mobile OS will fail as well.

> You think people should care about privacy and "openness of the software", whatever that is (most people can't code, so they rightfully don't care about the availability of the source code of the OS or apps). What most people (including myself) care about, instead, is ease of use and reliability.

If you talk to inexperienced computer users, probably the most common complaint you will get is that software they are using is being changed underneath them, after they have got used to it. You could turn around your argument 180 degrees, and still be equally valid in saying that it the walled garden 'we will do what is best for you' attitude is actually about saying that users "don't agree those benefits are needed, because they are wrong/inexperienced/misled/stupid/...?"

>If you talk to inexperienced computer users, probably the most common complaint you will get is that software they are using is being changed underneath them, after they have got used to it.

Open source projects do that all the time too. Think of GNOME 2 -> 3, and compare it to iOS 6 -> 7.

>the walled garden 'we will do what is best for you' attitude

If we take Apple as an example, their attitude is "we will do what makes us sell more", which aligns with what users will want the software to do, otherwise they lose a sale. On the other hand since nobody uses Ubuntu Phone, Canonical will do whatever they want with it, knowing they'll get almost no complains. So which one serves the user better?

Yes, that is why Apple released the new MBP, with a touchbar perfectly aligned with what users desperately wanted.

Those who complsin the most don not really want anything except to rant—that's the cheapest way for them to appear smart.

I don't see how "inexperience" have anything to do with it.

Sure, experienced users may be more adaptive. But that does not mean they enjoy it. In particular when they have been through the process a few times, and it always ended up feeling like a red queen's race.

"What I find most interesting thing about this discussion is that it is the original reason that Google bought Android. They were concerned that with Apple controlling the smartphone market they’d be in a position to damage Google’s ability to compete in services"

Google bought android in 2005. Apple release iPhone in 2007.

Do what now?

I'd love a truly linux-based phone. Though it's unlikely that you'll ever get "root" on a commercial offering. Mobile phone providers don't like you being able to monkey about with the phone too much.

Rumours of Apple making a smartphone were strong for years before they actually announced one.

They only started working on a phone in 2005 according to the wiki page.

Yes, there were rumours for years ... ever since the Newton.

IIRC first prototypes were made in 2004 and were more iPads than iPhones

Google bought Android to prevent a Microsoft monopoly.

Android phones are Linux-based and you can often get root via fastboot or some exploits.

I also liked the concept of Firefox basic phone.. It was interesting to have smart features in a feature phone

What we really need is a good device. A device with proper open standards so that we can install Ubuntu or Jolla or Cyanogenmod or any other future OSs. We can get some standard devices by some OEMs.

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