I dropped my android phone at congress, I was trying to figure out which
direction to walk in the compass was spinning wildly being absolutely no help.
I slide the phone into my pocket missed and the screen cracked on contact with
the ground. The phone had a terminal diagnosis then, but I soldered on for as
long as I could.
Eventually the nexus 5 dropped the cellular network and I travelled 40 minutes
to a vet when I didn't need to. The next day I jumped on to the bq site and
ordered my ubuntu edition E5.
The BQ sales process was just terrible, it didn't help that my email
provider decided I didn't need to receive email that weekend. The BQ site is
really badly laid out, confusing and proactively difficult to login to and view
your orders. They don't offer tracking number, so I don't know where the extra
€10 'international' shipping went.
The ubuntu touch os out of the box is annoying as any other smart phone, you
are run through the standard dialog that asks mostly pointless questions. The
version of ubuntu touch that ships on the E5 is "really old" (with really old
being may 2015, 9 months prior). I was unable to install anything from the
ubuntu app store (well I installed a hex colour picker, but that doesn't count).
I tried to check for updates, but the phone was happy believing it was all up
to date. I searched for a while, but any search term with 'ubuntu touch'
results in ubuntu users having issues with their touch screen laptops.
Eventually I fell into the #ubuntu-touch irc channel and asked.
And I waited...three hours later on my third time asking someone suggested I
try updating. There isn't wifi at work, I wondered if the ubuntu touch os is so
broken it won't acknowledge user settings and will only
look
for updates on
wifi. I tried at the hackerspace later that night and I managed to update to
OTA9.1. This is the latest release version.
I don't know how this operating system is for. I have been using free unix
desktops for a decade, I can't see anything in ubuntu touch that I want. The
default system shows a collections of scopes, scopes are an advertisers dream.
There are default scopes like, weather, music, video, news and the scopes are
populated by scope apps that create a feed for each theme. There are loads of
different input services for them as well, so if you use facebook, instagram,
flicker, 500px you will have a nice full feed. If you use one, or none of them
you won't have anything. I saw the scopes and thought of windows crap wear.
I turned off all of the scopes as soon as I could.
Here is a short list of issues I encounter:
Out of the box
-
No updates were shown as available on 3G
-
Updates became available to download on wifi
-
Unable to download apps from the ubuntu app store
-
Unable to run any software other than browser
-
No way to find out the phone was an entire naming scheme behind without wifi
-
The UK (and English) support site doesn't mention the Ubuntu Editions at all. The Austrian one does.
General System issues
General App usage
Specific Apps
Other
people agree
, I have
installed android
and life is better.