With Ubuntu, Canonical has had in its portfolio one of the most successful Linux distributions for end users on the desktop or notebook. Thanks to the semi-annual release cycle, the company provides a constantly updated distribution that is easy to install and configure. Now the company wants to expand into "Ubuntu on Smartphones." We took a close look at the Ubuntu phone Canonical presented at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Hardware

Canonical demonstrated its newest offspring on a commercial Galaxy Nexus from Samsung that runs on a 1GHz dual-core processor. Canonical considers this phone, with a Cortex A9 and more than 512MB of RAM, as its entry-level device. Only smartphones with quad-core CPUs and more than 1GB of RAM provide sufficient power to run Ubuntu smoothly on larger displays.

In the presentation, the Nexus proved a bit overwhelmed by Ubuntu. The kind of fluid animations and transitions typical of the Android were absent on the Ubuntu Nexus. Mika Meskanen of the Canonical design team attributed the sluggish behavior to the not-so-current state of the software. Subsequent builds were to run more smoothly but had not yet fully gone through quality control by the time of CES 2013.

Chic or Schlock?

The look and feel of the system is very similar to Canonical's own Unity desktop environment, which is not surprising because Ubuntu on Smartphones is based on the same code. Under the hood, Canonical's mobile spin-off of the Android system is closer to it than you might think: Both systems use the same kernel.

After startup, the smartphone initially displays a "Welcome screen." There is no lock screen (Figure 1) as with Android or iOS; instead, the screen is unlocked through swipe gestures from each of the screen's edges. Depending on which edge you swipe, you can open the key apps or settings, or switch among running applications.

Figure 1: The Welcome screen isn't a true lock screen, because you can open the app overview at any time.

Ubuntu places the launcher bar along the left edge (Figure 2), with the most often used apps ready for a quick start and the currently running apps as icons. You can activate the sidebar with a finger swipe, and you can switch among running apps by swiping to the left or right. A swipe up from the bottom of the screen opens the menus on what is essentially a button-free display. Unlike Android, Ubuntu on Smartphones does not have virtual buttons, which provides more space for screen content.

Figure 2: The sidebar lets you start apps in the typical Ubuntu desktop fashion.

The so-called lenses, with which you will be familiar from the desktop home screen, also come into play. Unity gathers various information in lenses to give you an overall view. There are lenses for installed apps, photos, videos, and contacts.

Together with contacts, lenses show the locally available media files, but they also lead – through a search mechanism  – to music, books, and videos offered by various online providers. The app view includes all installed apps along with those ready to be installed from the Software Center. The latter is similar to the Google Play store and shows apps with short descriptions and ratings from the user community. With a few clicks, you can have an installable app on the device.

Apps

The app world on the Ubuntu smartphone corresponds to the device's still early development stage. The only currently native Canonical app is the preinstalled Gallery. It's supposed to be a demo of what the Ubuntu mobile apps are capable of.

The application selection also includes HTML5 web apps that run like normal programs on mobile phones. Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail are ready to go. The web apps integrate with native apps on the system: They get an icon in the user menu and can access the system routines, such as event notifications.

For external developers, Canonical offers Ubuntu's QML toolkit, with which you can create native apps. Developers with a knowledge of QML and Qt thus have an edge (see the QML Toolkit article on page 65 for a quick introduction).

Ubuntu Everywhere

With its latest developments, Canonical wants not only to conquer the smartphone but to have a presence on all digital devices. The company also wants to take its Ubuntu for Smartphones to tablets. Unity also runs on TVs as "Ubuntu TV" and works with your remote control. Laptops and desktops are already in the Ubuntu domain. However, mobile phones are currently Ubuntu's center of attention.

Newer smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S III, have enough power with their quad-core CPUs to run the larger displays, and you can connect the Ubuntu phone via HDMI to a PC monitor to put the Unity interface on a big screen (as shown in Figure 3). The phone itself doesn't necessarily need to run a Unity instance but can run Android instead.

Figure 3: A smartphone shows the popular Unity interface when connected via HDMI to a monitor.

Conclusion

Before Ubuntu on Smartphones is ready for users, it needs to overcome a few hurdles – not least of which is the currently sparse selection of apps. According to the company, Canonical is working with a few partners from the gaming industry to offer more native applications. The freely available SDK should also help by attracting developers from the open source community.

It remains to be seen whether putting so much emphasis on gestures is going to pay off. Although gestures keep the screen uncluttered of unnecessary controls, they are not always easy to discover. You need to learn them beforehand to make things work fluidly, which is in sharp contrast to the successful Android and iOS operational philosophy.