Simon Raffeiner, better known as "sturmflut", is an ex-worker in the Ubuntu Phone project, a project that promised a lot, but that has been ruined, along with the Unity desktop. A few hours ago, Simon explained the reasons why the project failed.
Among the main causes mentioned, there is the one that was a project that was not sufficiently open to the community, as is the case with desktop operating systems. Also, fierce competition with Android and iOS hasn't helped much either.
Simon Raffeiner explains that Canonical was unable to target a specific market niche and that the phones did not have a good user experience. In addition, Ubuntu Phone was only available in some terminals of brands such as Meizu and the Spanish BQ. These terminals were hard to come by and offered features that weren't very innovative.
Really the only positive aspect of Ubuntu Phone was the convergence, which promised a lot, creating a Unity 8 desktop that worked the same on mobile as on PC. However, this, as we already know, came to nothing and both mobile phones and the desktop have been put aside.
Simon too accuses Canonical of not having sold wellSince in this market, it is more important to carry out a good marketing campaign than to offer many technical characteristics. For this reason, only the lovers of the Linux world knew about the existence of Ubuntu Phone and many people did not buy because they did not even know it.
Simon he was one of the key men in this project, since he was from 2013 to 2016 being responsible for several areas such as the creation of error reports or creation of tutorials. For this reason, we can give credibility to his words, which he originally published here.
Regarding convergence, even though Ubuntu has discontinued the project, there are still people who do not lose hope. If you bought an Ubuntu Phone or tablet and you don't know what to do with it, you can visit the project website ubports, which keeps alive the dream of having a 100% converged Ubuntu.
I was waiting for a ubuntu phone distro that could be installed on any terminal with android.
We also Adrián. I personally expected a lot from this operating system, since in my opinion, Android totally wastes the powerful resources that terminals now have. However, for now we can only expect some ubports with the Ubuntu Phones that were released.
A greeting.
I agree with your vision, currently Android ROM projects like Lineage, Slim, Omni, Aokp, etc. They have standardized the way of installation and flashing of android terminals. I was left with the desire to find a .zip with Ubuntu Phone preloaded ready for installation.
Although the reality is that the project never reached a good port, the endless delays, the lack of homologated standards (remember that unity 8 and mir were strongly criticized by the community), the distance from canonical and its secrecy, among other problems that mark the item; It caused the community to gradually lose interest in the project until it simply died.
He believed that Canonical forgot a basic principle that Eric Raymond established in his book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and that in short he states that in the field of development and dissemination "the community is your greatest ally. A shame and we hope that this company regains its leadership at the desk and returns with that spirit of innovation that characterized it in 2004.
I take this opportunity and send a question to those of you who want to update your mobiles with ubports ...
I tried to go into recovery mode with my meizu mx4 (with ubuntu, of course). But I couldn't even get into recovery mode!
When pressing the volume keys (up) and turning on, the terminal says that it is entering recovery mode, but it does not show menu options, it only shows the logo.
Does anyone know what can happen or how to recover the recovery options? Without recovery… I won't be able to update… and worse still, I won't be able to change the OS ever xD
It didn't work, because… Who wants a phone that you can't install Wathsapp on?
Someone who accepts that the use of a tool like that represents a vulnerability for your privacy and understands the following formula
privacy> comfort
If your friends are not able to understand the principles why you do not use proprietary applications due to their privacy policy, they will not be such friends :)
From my point of view it failed because of something very simple. He did not have WhatsApp. When it came out is what everyone told me. I obviously prefer to use Telegram, but the vast majority use this program. I was very close to buying it, and I guess a lot of people thought the same as me. Needless to say, there was no decent GPS
The truth is that I waited a long time for a version for the htc one m7, they were lazy adapting to the different terminals, they should have associated with cyanogen or lienage or any of the team developers of roms, as it may be that teams of almost amateur android adepts, manage to adapt a rom with nougat (example) to almost any device out there while cononical only did it for three models, leaving a huge gap in the users that we could have installed it in our mobile phones, on my part it was just atrocious negligence…. .