The New Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition
bq.com
bq.com
This phone, which I assume is not too different than the E5: * ships with openssh (not enabled by default). * ships with the phablet user account as a sudoer * has a terminal app in the Ubuntu App Store * BQ publishes all their source on their github repo
You will need to change the rootfs to rw or else apt-get fails. This breaks the OS image diff update mechanism. It comes with the ubuntu-touch repo, which is accessed via the standard dpkg apt-get and aptitude tools. Strangely, there is no git in this repo, which I built from source. Ships with a standard toolchain in the repo also. From this I was able to compile nmap and other tools I needed.
The OS is in its very early days. Overall its a great platform and hope that it becomes a major player. It won't replace my iphone just yet (it lacks any kind of block based encryption to protect the phone contents).
As a hacking mobile platform... it's a nice toy :)
I doubt I'm in major market segment, but I'll ask all the same: can you ssh into these devices and run standard unix tools? Can you plug a USB-to-ethernet adapter into them?
Yes: http://askubuntu.com/q/348714/7808
> run standard unix tools
Yes. What you get is a shell prompt that pretty much matches what you'd expect. bash and readline, GNU coreutils, tab completion, etc. The ssh client is available.
> Can you plug a USB-to-ethernet adapter into them?
No idea. This might be tougher as it would involve some level of interfacing with the kernel (which is a bit special as it's Android-based) and perhaps interference with the phone's network management UI (Network Manager based).
Also, you don't get working apt-get unless you remount the root filesystem read-write, in which case you lose image-based updates (the only supported update mechanism). But your home directory is read-write and you can do what you like in there.
If you currently run Android, you can do this with apps such as Linux Deploy as well. I really love being able to browse my phone's filesystem over sftp (ssh ftp) from my GNU/Linux laptop, being able to back stuff up using rsync, etc.
Is there a reason for this, or is this simply to slow down the demand until they make it available in other countries?
It seems to me the "official" Ubuntu phones (from Meizu and BQ) are reluctant to come to the North American market.
The cost of litigation in the US is very expensive, and players like Microsoft and Apple have legal teams that could litigate forever into destroying any small competitor.
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Yes, but you have to switch away from read-only mode, and then image based updates won't work. So it isn't really recommended.
On the other hand if you just want the hardware to hack on and customize, then sure, you can do that.