A while back I blogged about dogfooding Ubuntu Phone; that is, eating our own dogfood by using it on a daily basis. I have been tracking this here.

The phone team were setting the end of May as a goal for getting the phone into this daily driver state, and they have delivered most of what is needed.

In summary:

• The phone OS is reliable and doesn’t crash.
• Making and receiving calls works great. The phone now switches the screen on and off when you get a call/SMS, it switches to the phone app when you get a call, and switches the screen on and off when on a call based upon the proximity of your ear to the screen.
• Sending and receiving text messages works great.
• The messaging menu works great. Missed calls and texts appear there and I can reply or call back directly from messaging menu. I can also view my SMSes in the conversations list in the phone app.
• Connecting to wireless networks works well.
• Mobile data has landed but currently needs manual configuration to be used. I am waiting on the phone team to publish how to test this. UPDATE: Read how to test this here. They will be working on automating this next.
• Power management is much better; when the phone is not used for 30 secs the screen is automatically shut off.
• The camera works great (with flash) and photos appear as expected in the gallery. There is a shortcut from the camera app to the gallery.
• The browser works well, now has a progress bar and overlayed history based upon the URL entered.
• Orientation support has been added to a number of apps (phone, gallery, notepad, browser etc) so when you turn the phone the UI adjusts.
• You can now easily add an unknown number as a contact.
• Most of the fake apps and contact data have been removed.

All in all great progress is being made and I am continuing to use my Galaxy Nexus full time and now most of the bugs that made it a little difficult are fixed. As soon as mobile data arrives that will make life much easier, and the missing link for me is GPS, but the team are working on a location service to serve GPS needs.