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.
that’s a great step forward, hoping to see basic features up and running like charm so that developers can get their hands dirty.
Providing a phone working/having all small things up gives a push to the new dev joiner.
I am using it as a daily driver, the only main problem I face is the phone can at times get extremely hot, causing rapid battery drain. Other things are working quite reliable on Nexus 4 for me.
Is there support for Calendar sync already? Which types of accounts?
Not yet, but the Calendar developers are re-working the backend storage so that syncing will be possible in the near future.
Hope that sync to U1!
I’m really looking forward to use Ubuntu Touch 🙂 Are there plans to support dual sim, or is it already supported by the android parts of it?
I never heard anything about dual sim support, I don’t even know if my crappy phone will be able to run Ubuntu, it’s a galaxy s duos :p
if only I had capabilities to port Touch for it, that ‘d be great
Have you seen this page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices
I have, my phone is not there 🙁
I read the porting guide too, but I’m afraid it’s beyond my capabilities
It’s true, Dual Sim would be great! There is the Idea in the forum since February already, but nothing happened yet: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/30491/
Hi Jono,
Does video recording work? That is the only thing apart the mentioned that I need 🙂
Some stuff landed, but it’s not hooked up yet
Jono, instructions for 3G data were published already at https://plus.google.com/u/0/100264483712374857174/posts/3o1tjYo9Ghx
Enjoy.
I guess it should land in the mailing list too 😛
Thanks, Ricardo! I updated the post to reflect this. 🙂
I’m waiting for a status which makes possible to update phone daily without flashing and wiping all user data. Have we reached this yet?
Bump! Actually I was wondering the same thing.
Will this work on a Sony Ericsson corrosion play?
Jono, After 30 seconds we do more than turn the screen off, we also suspend the CPU, unless Android is still holding a wake-lock which happens on some models.
I’m looking forward to this! I gave it a test-drive on my Galaxy Nexus for a bit and it’s definitely great progress so far.
A way to get to the conversation list from the messaging indicator pull-down would be nice.
Great work!
So what about Dual Sim support? It seems as if the development on this idea is kind of pending: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/30491/ That would substantially increase the possibilities for Ubuntu on phones for the internationally mobile community