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Ubuntu Cellphones Technology

Ubuntu May Beat Windows 10 To Phone-PC Convergence After All 125

Posted by samzenpus from the all-in-one dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that Mark Shuttleworth plans to have a Ubuntu smartphone that can be used as a PC out sometime this year. "Despite the recent announcement that Windows 10 phones will be able to be used as PCs when connected to an external monitor, Ubuntu—the first operating system to toy with the idea—hasn't conceded the smartphone-PC convergence race to Microsoft just yet. 'While I enjoy the race, I also like to win,' Ubuntu Foundation founder Mark Shuttleworth said during a Ubuntu Online Summit keynote, before announcing that Canonical will partner with a hardware manufacturer to release a Ubuntu Phone with smartphone-PC convergence features this year.
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Ubuntu May Beat Windows 10 To Phone-PC Convergence After All More

Ubuntu May Beat Windows 10 To Phone-PC Convergence After All

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  • Didn't Motorola do pretty much the same thing with the Atrix back in 2011?

  • Why do companies keep thinking people *want* this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jax Omen ( 1248086 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @03:18PM (#49632733)

    I don't want "convergence" between my devices. Why would anyone?

    My phone is used for wildly different tasks than my laptop, which is used for mostly different tasks from my desktop. Any form of convergence is going to hurt at least one of the workflows involved.

    I want my phone software to be as lightweight/minimalistic as possible so my phone's battery can last, for example. A desktop doesn't have to care about that at all.

    Just make the best phone software, or PC software, you can, don't half-ass both.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gweilo8888 ( 921799 )
      This, this, a million times this.

    • Re:Why do companies keep thinking people *want* th (Score:4, Funny)

      by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @03:22PM (#49632761)

      But wouldn't it make devices 50% lighter, 50% smaller and twice as portable if they're half-assed?

    • Re:Why do companies keep thinking people *want* th (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ravaldy ( 2621787 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @03:28PM (#49632815)

      What if you could just dock your smart device and it's now a workstation? To some extend the docking station could act as a feature/performance extension of a smaller device. It wouldn't ruin the flow and would allow you to carry your same configuration/environment everywhere. I know some will counter with "Why not use the cloud?" but the fact is that the cloud doesn't give you the nice smooth response of client side access and you never know if you will have a decent internet access where you go.

      Keep in mind that I'm aware our smart devices are not there yet but 10 years from now it will be a lot closer. The future of having one device do it all is in view. Any company that refuses to get on board with this will possibly miss the boat the same way MS did with the smart phones.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gfxguy ( 98788 )
        Maybe not phones, but tablets are already doing this, and I don't think phones are that far behind. I think it'll be less than 10 years. I'm actually looking right now to replace my "portable workstation" with a dockable tablet. Some of my programming includes GUIs, so remote development hasn't really been all that feasible. If the phone can dock to something with large screen, keyboard, and mouse, and if it's still works great as a smartphone, then why not?

        • Yes, I agree. There are bits and pieces that are already happening but a fully emerged experience is still no here. We aren't far which is very satisfying. I know some will say you can't compete with the power of a workstation and they would be right. After all the engineers at my company get to work with i7 4770 with 16gb of ram, 500gb SSD and $2000 NVidia Quadro video cards. Yes, $2000!!!

          So obviously there are many exceptions but when talking about non specialized requirements it makes perfect sense espec

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gfxguy ( 98788 )
            Exactly - I make the car analogy. I love my car despite the fact that it's not great at anything - I love it because it's good at just about everything. So just because I can't tow a houseboat doesn't make my car bad - I don't need to tow a houseboat; very few people need to tow houseboats! Very few people need NVidia Quadro cards, and NOBODY needs them to surf the web, email, or write papers and use a spreadsheet.

      • I've used my Nexus 7 that way, and it works reasonably well. The biggest problem, as always, is that apps that are optimized for the small displays of most mobile devices simply don't work that well on larger screens. I have used it quite frequently with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and RDP software to work on our terminal services server, and there really isn't any noticeable difference between that and a PC remoting in. It's rather a special case, to be sure.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TWX ( 665546 )
        Years ago I had a laptop that could be effectively turned into a portable hard disk drive depending on some weird keystrokes at boot-time. I can't remember exactly how it worked now (but I think it was Firewire) but I had considered building a diskless desktop computer that the laptop would dock into, where the desktop was orders of magnitude more powerful, so the desktop would boot from the laptop's disk.

        To make this happen I was going to use Linux, as Windows would have thrown a bitch-fit over the dif

        • Years ago I had a laptop that could be effectively turned into a portable hard disk drive depending on some weird keystrokes at boot-time. I can't remember exactly how it worked now (but I think it was Firewire) but I had considered building a diskless desktop computer that the laptop would dock into, where the desktop was orders of magnitude more powerful, so the desktop would boot from the laptop's disk.

          To make this happen I was going to use Linux, as Windows would have thrown a bitch-fit over the differences in architecture and chipset. Never got around to it before the laptop was hopelessly obsolete and newer ones didn't have the feature anymore.

          I could see a dock with all of the accessories that someone would want in a desktop that has storage to mirror the phone's contents in the event the phone is broken or gone, but only if it's not tied to a single model of phone.

          I think any Mac can do that, boot from external storage and target disk mode, but I don't see the utility outside of testing OS releases or doing repairs.
          You could always keep a VM image on a removable drive if you wanted a portable OS and you wouldn't have to shut it down if your systems architectures are all close enough to do suspend/resume. Well... no-go on a phone.

          IDK, unless you are carrying a disk array in your pocket, it seems like replacing local storage would be a bad bet.
          So what I don't get is w

          • I think you nailed it. It should probably be used as external storage but there is value in having the H/W be used. Right now the processing power is not comparable to an i5 4570 but most users don't need that kind of processing power and as it moves forward it will improve as well. At the end of the day being able to replace one device to upgrade your whole world is kinda of neat and less wasteful. Currently in my household there are 10 separate processing units used regularly (2 tablets, 4 phones and 4 pc

    • Re:Why do companies keep thinking people *want* th (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bananaquackmoo ( 1204116 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @03:29PM (#49632825)
      That's nice. I want to be able to carry all of my files with me everywhere. I want the same development environment everywhere and to only configure it once. I want those configuration changes to follow me everywhere. I want to be able to answer the phone on my desktop. I want to have my call and messaging history accessible no matter what device I'm using. I don't want to buy 4 computers (phone, laptop, tablet, desktop) I want to buy 1. Displays, touchscreens, and peripherals should be dummy passthrough devices. I want all of this to be instant (which means no cloud storage until we can make that much much faster). You might not want convergence, but I would kill for it.

      • This, plus voice control. Bonus points for transcription. Super extra bonus points to do it all without invading my privacy.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Network-synced home directories, desktop call answering, and always-available call and messaging history have been around for many, many years. For one of the more recent examples, look at Google's offerings in the space. You don't need phone and PC convergence to get this, it's a matter of writing platform-specific software that pulls data from the same source... which is shit that we've been doing since the seventies.

        You *say* you want the same dev env everywhere you go, but the truth is that a UI built f

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ndogg ( 158021 )

          The software can be built to adjust its interface accordingly to the device that it's being displayed on. That's the point of convergence. No need to compromise.

          • I'd think something like a combination of IntelliJ's presentation/powersave modes. Turn both of those on and you pretty much have a "mobile interface". There have been plenty of times where I was working on some problem, and the solution comes to me when I'm far away from a computer. Just being able to view files and make quick edits would be enough.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        So... cant you just turn your phone into a wireless NAS already?
        Why is there a requirement to do processing centrally, that makes less sense.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Malenx ( 1453851 )

        You don't need to avoid cloud storage for instant access to files, you just need to use one of the many dropbox apps. It's fast enough unless your constantly switching between devices every minute or so.

        Plus, if it's all unified, that opens the door for possible network based copying for faster sync.

      • Yes what an excellent idea, your phone is stolen, lost or broken and then all your data is gone and your peripherals useless. A better idea is cloud (or your own private NAS) sync so that data is available - as you say - "no matter what device you're using".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thsths ( 31372 )

      I do. I want an app to work on different form factors - phone, tablet, laptop, desktop. I want the same app, but suitably displayed on each device. Of course this only applies to lightweight apps, are maybe games.

      Heavyweight apps will remain on the desktop, but that's not what this is about. This is about a new API, and additional API. And that should be different from what we have today.

    • Initially I also thought like that, but isn't that thinking just based on the limitations of current devices? Syncing devices is a nightmare, and hence I switched from a desktop to a notebook, instead of maintaining both devices. Still synching my phone with my desktop is painful enough. The reason why I didn't buy a tablet was again the "sync between all devices" nightmare. Imagine a world, in say 10 years, where you have a device the size of a phone, capable of number crunching what current desktops can

    • Do you really use them for wildly different tasks? Surely you browse the web and check your e-mail on each. Surely there's files you have on each.

      I think the ideal would be a phone that had a single program with multiple modes. When (say) Word was in phone mode, Word mostly let you browse files and make simple edits. When a monitor was attached, you got the full version of Word.

      And I'm guessing the current generation of mobile phone processors are already powerful enough for the desktop for most people,

      • BSOD on a phone, tcp/ip stack corruption. Driveby downloads of toolbars. I can't wait to run combofix on some damn phone because the asshat decided he wanted to bit torrent the tenth installment of Transformers movies.

      • Honestly, I use my desktop and laptop for vastly different tasks than my phone.

        I use my phone only for basic communication. Email, texting, actually talking to people on the phone. I also have facebook, mostly for the messenger app since some of my friends seem to only be able to figure out how to use that instead of texting me directly. It's also my MP3 player since it's good at doing that. I have a few utilities on there like a calculator and a flashlight. And, of course, it has a pretty good camera

        • real work on real computers and we don't want to have to suffer through an over simplified touch-screen/mobile user interface because it gets in the way of us getting real work done. The best course going forward is for the OS developers to understand that and leave us with a choice of UI so that different people can use different systems for different things the way we want to use them.

          An Apple A8 is more than powerful enough for the big important work you do. And Windows 10 or Ubuntu would alter the int

          • First off, you have no idea what work I do on my desktop. Second, the processor, in and of itself, is only one small part of the equation. There's more to performance than how many FLOPS you can crank out. Third, it's people like you who just assume you know what other people are doing and what's "good enough" for them that is the whole problem. Thank you for proving my point.

      • Surely you browse the web and check your e-mail on each.

        Yeah and my bookmarks and email sync to both.

        Surely there's files you have on each.

        Some, but relatively few exist on both. I have terrabytes of storage on my desktop and only gigabytes on my phone.

        And I'm guessing the current generation of mobile phone processors are already powerful enough for the desktop for most people

        If you're just doing simple tasks then sure but most people will have a desktop because - even if only for a very small percentage of the time - they do something other than those simple tasks that cannot be handled by a phone or a tablet or an ultrabook.

    • The funny thing about this is that Apple realized early on that people didn't want a crappy PC in their pocket - they wanted an awesome phone. Say what you want, but Apple and Google have done a great job of making a computer work well with the smaller screen and all that.

      There's a market for this concept, I'm sure, but I don't think it's anywhere near the size of the smartphone market.

      • Untrue. Watch the very first iPhone keynote. The endless claims about it running full OSX are presented in full force.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Untrue. Watch the very first iPhone keynote. The endless claims about it running full OSX are presented in full force.

          Yes, it runs OS X internally. But the UI kit is completely different from OS X. As it should be because a mouse, keyboard, touchpad forces a different style of interactions than a touchscreen. The easiest way to make a piss-poor UI is to pretend a touchscreen is a mouse (what Windows had done traditionally). Because what happens is the UI works with a mouse, but it's finicky and painful to u

          • For a long time, you couldn't right click on a desktop Mac either. Maybe the hover thing can be resolved with technology someday - it doesn't seem unthinkable to discover a technique to tell where a finger is in front of the display but not touching it. Unfortunately it would probably only be available on one brand of phone because patents. I'd say that mobile devices already need it - there are a lot of icons on my phone where I have no idea what they mean.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gfxguy ( 98788 )
        I think that's very shortsighted. If you get what you want in a phone... all the things you want, that great, small, portable device that can do so much for you while your away from your desk... AND not have to buy a desktop or laptop, because when you dock it to something like a large screen, all the features of those applications you'd have on a desktop become available, then who wouldn't want that? I think the vast majority of users would love that - developers and games, not so much, but the rest of t

    • Because current smartphones are more powerful than ancient supercomputers. If it wasn't for increasingly wasteful software, you could already be using your phone as a complete workstation with power to spare. And when at home, there's no technological reason why you couldn't connect your smartphone like a desktop (as some people already do with laptops).

    • My Droid Bionic plus Lapdock have been great for me.

      Granted.. the software IS mostly optimized for phone use. I'm not installing desktop stuff on there. Many apps do change their displays significantly when they are ran on a tablet as opposed to a phone. When using the lapdock they do the same thing which is awesome. They switch back to phone-mode when I unplug it.

      Of course.. for 'real' desktop applications I use a VNC app. That's fine by me though. I already 'babysit' a desktop. (keep applications up t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )
      Believe it or not, there are other people in the world. Some of them would actually welcome a functional combining of the systems. I highly believe it's entirely possible to make the phone itself lose nothing in the process. Sure, a phone would never be able to replace the most power hungry of operations on a desktop. But, it's feasible to see it be able to perform basic desktop functions. Pretty much anything short of gaming and heavy number crunching is already well within the capabilities of current har

    • I don't want "convergence" between my devices. Why would anyone?

      My phone is used for wildly different tasks than my laptop, which is used for mostly different tasks from my desktop. Any form of convergence is going to hurt at least one of the workflows involved.

      Tell that to Microsoft. They have a considerably different point of view by presenting a single pane of glass across all smartphones, PCs, and tablets. In the end, we won't even be manufacturing a traditional desktop like you have today outside of very specialized applications.

      I want my phone software to be as lightweight/minimalistic as possible so my phone's battery can last, for example. A desktop doesn't have to care about that at all.

      Just make the best phone software, or PC software, you can, don't half-ass both.

      Your smartphone will make today's most powerful desktops look like cheap toys in 10 years or less, and battery advancements will likely push it out to lasting at least a few days, regardless of what mode (desktop or phone) you use.

      A

      • news for you, the windows phone flopped. so did their new and improved ui, no one wants that shit

        in ten years desktops will be kicking smartphone's asses, same as now

        people who need powerful desktops that consume more than ten watts will have them, even if it pisses people like you off. there will be no fine. agenda driven crippling of progress and technology by fines is for morons

        • news for you, the windows phone flopped. so did their new and improved ui, no one wants that shit

          in ten years desktops will be kicking smartphone's asses, same as now

          people who need powerful desktops that consume more than ten watts will have them, even if it pisses people like you off. there will be no fine. agenda driven crippling of progress and technology by fines is for morons

          Cute theory here, but go ahead and tell me why the average corporate desktop needs to be anything more powerful than an i5 today.

          Fact is, it doesn't. Hardware started really eclipsing software demand long ago. And smartphones are only getting more and more powerful with every iteration. Desktops are not really on the same linear progression anymore, mainly due to demand.

          Yes, there will be a need for powerful computing but that will live inside the cloud, with virtual server offerings and other massive p

          • The i5 chip alone pulls 70 watts in my desktop.

            Corporate web architecture today is offloading work to the assumed fat and powerful client, big business doesn't want to bear the expense of massive compute if it can be avoided. Serious business apps of ecommerce, logistics, accounting don't assume a puny mobile device.

            • The i5 chip alone pulls 70 watts in my desktop.

              And the i7 in my Mac Mini pulls considerably less. It's called efficient design.

              And if you're only running an i5 in a desktop, then you can likely run an i7 in a laptop, and consume a lot less power during the day.

              Corporate web architecture today is offloading work to the assumed fat and powerful client, big business doesn't want to bear the expense of massive compute if it can be avoided. Serious business apps of ecommerce, logistics, accounting don't assume a puny mobile device.

              Serious business apps are large ERP and financial systems such as Oracle or SAP that run in server farms or hosted in the cloud, which only require a "puny" browser running java to interface.

              And your accounting department still uses Excel and Access as "serious business apps" outside of those la

              • No, it's called "You don't understand the Intel product line", that's a feeble processor for business use.

                Laptops have shorter life and emit toxic batteries into waste stream

                Wrong about my employer, our accounting system is elaborate software on AIX (with various Oracle on Linux DBMS backend) that also needs very powerful client.

    • I don't want "convergence" between my devices. Why would anyone?

      My phone is used for wildly different tasks than my laptop, which is used for mostly different tasks from my desktop. Any form of convergence is going to hurt at least one of the workflows involved.

      I want my phone software to be as lightweight/minimalistic as possible so my phone's battery can last, for example. A desktop doesn't have to care about that at all.

      Just make the best phone software, or PC software, you can, don't half-ass both.

      If convergence means that I have to put up UI like Gnome 3, then please don't coverge.

    • I want my phone software to be as lightweight/minimalistic as possible so my phone's battery can last, for example. A desktop doesn't have to care about that at all.

      I'm just the opposite. I've always wanted a mobile handset to have a full operating system only with a different or scalable front end/shell. There is no longer a capability gap/excuse not to go there.

      I don't buy battery life arguments and see little reason desktop apps would not also benefit from efforts to beat down unnecessary CPU usage including user knobs to freeze unused background tasks/windows.

      Most handsets are currently being drained by constant communication with vendor motherships and assorted

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      If my mobile phone was just a phone, I would not have a mobile phone. That sense of isolation and freedom when you are out and about is worthwhile (except maybe for out going emergency calls). So as much screen real estate and reasonable possible, lots of reasonable and accessible features as possible without installing additional apps. this to make carrying the thing worthwhile. PC convergence, why? When I get home I do not throw my phone in the bin, it is still fully accessible sure transfer data that is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bazorg ( 911295 )

      I don't want "convergence" between my devices. Why would anyone?

      because there's a lot of people out there with their own views and needs that may not match yours?

      Look at office-type tasks on a tablet. People like the idea of turning the tablet on and off instantly, but dislike having to spend extra on a normal PC to get SSDs and still fall short of that kind of performance.

      The applications built for mobile are smaller and optimised for fewer tasks on a device that is less likely to require maintenance, with OS that is updated by someone else.It makes a lot of sense to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cHiphead ( 17854 )

      Too bad you feel that way, since this is what's coming. The future keeps happening, even if you don't want it to.

      Why wouldn't you want your computing device to also be your phone, just plug it into a cradle at your desk for large monitor and beefed up additional processing power.

      Conceptually, it's exactly what our devices should already be.

  • So.... really, how is this different from Windows RT leftovers, warmed up and plonked onto a phone a la Atrix as mentioned above?

    It's got all the overhead of Windows but in a walled garden, etc etc. As before, what's the compelling advantage versus Android (which is faster, less costly, runs everywhere) or iOS (more pretty, more apps, and reliably walled-in)? It seems like they're beating the wall with their collective head.

    More pointedly, the scraps left between the two big players in mobile aren't enoug

  • They had the Atrix years ago which had both a laptop dock as well as a desktop dock.
  • Could it not also get more RAM and CPU when docked ?

  • Can't wait (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @04:31PM (#49633351) Journal

    Does this mean I'll be able to run gedit on my Ubuntu phone? I can hardly contain my excitement.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlogic ( 892404 )

      Not only gedit, but also two extra Operating Systems (systemd and emacs) free of charge!

  • Why don't they just sit at the back of the class and just listen while real companies launch mobile OSs

  • They will not embrace an open platform because they won't be able to lock a user into their sandbox. A user will be able to turn off all the butt sniffing and phoning home. Their revenue stream will not remain intact.

  • Aliens from outer-space have beaten all of man to convergence and Ubuntu will have the same marketshare on this world as they do.
  • Will the drivers work with Debian? That's my only question.

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