Hands on: Ubuntu for smartphones review
The tech landscape is dominated by the smart phone, and increasingly,
the tablet. These in turn are lorded-over by two competing operating
systems familiar to us all, namely Apple's IOS and Google's Android,
which can never be deposed, not even by Microsoft's millions. Right?
Not
so. While Apple and Google slug it out with periodic updates to try and
outdo each other, and in doing so, hopefully tempt us tech buyers to
swap from one major operating system to another, there are other smart
phone centric platforms out there vying for to be dominant in the longer
term.
Can Ubuntu cut it in the mobile OS space?
In recent months we've seen the debut
of BlackBerry 10 and although both have impressed us, we all know that
it's not the future of the mass-market handset or tablet. Ditto Windows Phone, which is hamstrung by its muddled tablet and desktop variants, and hasn;t had much of an impact so far.
And then there are a the smaller and virtually unknown mobile platforms such as Jolla's Sailfish that are now starting to get some attention, with probably the most well-known being Ubuntu.
Several
operating systems are fighting for the title of up-and-coming 'third
ecosystem', and Ubuntu is bound to be one of those.
Ubuntu
was demoed to us on a Samsung Galaxy smartphone amid impressive crowds;
there's obviously interest for something that takes the mobile
operating system on another leap.
It can run both web apps and
native apps concurrently and seamlessly, and it's a unique interface in
that it uses no buttons.The tap is no longer the main way to navigate
the smartphone; it's time for 'edge control'.
Edge control
Everything
in Ubuntu is designed around the edges of the smartphone screen, and
its first act is to transfix us with the way it relies on gestures and
drags rather than taps on apps. Consider the way it manages those
time-sapping tasks such as changing the Wi-Fi network you're on.
Anyone
with an iPhone will know how irritating it is when the device swaps
from 3G to any old dodgy pub Wi-Fi network that might be around;
swapping back to 3G, or deactivating Wi-Fi, is a long-winded process
that can make even the most loyal Apple devotee let out a small, angry
yelp of frustration.
On
Android the same task involves a similar amount of pages and fumbling
about with demanding menus. Ubuntu speeds-up the process by making
barely used utility settings, such as Network, Date, Message sand Sound
and sound parameters, speedily accessible merely by dragging a finger
across the top edge of the phone.
A rapidly changing carousel of
settings appears, and when you get to the one you need, you simply drag
drag that finger down to select it and blow it up to full-screen. It
gets rid of taps, yes, but it makes things quicker and much cleaner. The
'across, down, select option' idea isn't new, and feels much like how,
say, Microsoft Word works on a desktop computer, though on a Ubuntu the
experience is both compressed and – unless you want to see it –
completely hidden from your everyday use of your smartphone. Gone are
lists, menus, pages full of options, and other admin annoyances – and
even soft-key buttons. Yum.
Home page
But what does the
Ubuntu OS for smartphones look like from the get-go? Since Ubuntu is
designed to be a visualisation of each user's digital life (woah, there)
the start-up screen is empty and ready to be customised.
If
you want to send a text, surf the web or make a phone call (as if), you
pull-in a top-to-bottom line-up of apps by touching the left side of
the screen; the likes of Gmail, Phone, Camera, Facebook and Twitter
appear as familiar-looking app icons. So does a link to Home, which if
pulled to full-screen shows a linear, grid-like area of app icons for
the core apps you use.
Under
that is a brief summary of your last few phone calls and messages. Next
– and we're swiping down a continuous page now – is your next important
updates; in our demo it was new movie releases, each represented by an
app icon-like thumbnail image and nothing else, though it could just as
easily be football results, or a news feed.
360° design
Scroll
left from here to People, with Favourites above Missed Calls and
Recently In Touch, where everybody is represented by their profile
picture, their name, and the day (no meaningless dates – just
'yesterday' or 'tuesday') they were in contact.
Beyond
is Music, where all albums and songs are represented by cover art icons
and title only. Scrol right back to the Home page and beyond to Apps,
again classified on a quick-look basis; Running Apps is above Frequently
Used. Beyond is Video, where again all media content is organised by
thumbnail images.
Native apps
A neat trick of Ubuntu is
that it can run both regular smartphone apps and native apps. One of the
platform's own apps is Gallery, an effort to create a
timeline-organised history of your life through photos. Yes, it's a bit
like Facebook, though don't get us started on that particular social
media app for smartphones (grrr … adverts). Gallery draws in images from
wherever you choose, and orders them by date.
Unless
you delve a lot deeper, it's all about content to the exclusion of
little-used control; pictures are shown as thumbnails, and by 'event'
(time taken), are scroll-able left and right, and can be made
full-screen, but unless you then touch the bottom of the screen you'll
never need to see controls to share, enhance or crop it.
Early verdict
Will
Ubuntu make an impact? For anyone who has become frustrated with both
major operating systems, the streamlined and more intelligently
designed, intuitive interface of Ubuntu for smartphones shows more
attention to detail than either iOS or Android, though whether it's
revolutionary enough to succeed is debatable. A lot will depend on how
it operates on tablets, but Ubuntu's concentration on content over
control makes it an OS that it clearly designed for the mass market.
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