Canonical has revealed the latest component of its mobile strategy for the Ubuntu operating system, unveiling what it is calling 'Ubuntu for Android'. This is a hybrid mobile/desktop platform that the company hopes will enable a smartphone to become your sole computing device.
Ubuntu for Android runs alongside Google's mobile OS on a smartphone, only activating when placed in a dock that's connected to an external monitor via HDMI. This is reminiscent of the way Motorola's Atrix provides an external web browsing experience when docked. However, Ubuntu for Android goes much further.
"Ubuntu for Android is a capability to have your desktop and smartphone converged on a single device," Jane Silber, chief executive of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday. "It is not an Ubuntu application on Android, it's a full Ubuntu desktop experience powered by the smartphone, which you interact with when it is docked in a desktop environment."
The platform also detects the kind of device to which it is being connected. For example, when placed in a TV dock, it boots into the Ubuntu TV UI rather than Ubuntu for Android. Despite its chameleon-like nature, some level of Ubuntu's common look-and-feel is retained — for example, the launcher on the left-hand side of the screen pictured here.
Image credit: Ben Woods/ZDNet UK
Read Behind Ubuntu's shift into mobile on ZDNet UK.
Talkback
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As a person who uses Ubuntu almost everyday I am very happy. Ubuntu is going to shake things up! The word CompPhone needs to be coined.
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If they can pull it off with phone manufacturers, this could be the back door for relatively widespread adoption of Ubuntu: who wouldn't want a free desktop computer as well as a phone?
this would llitterly be a pocket pc!!!!!