Ubuntu Touch

Previously I happened to mention that I had tried out Ubuntu Touch.

I was pretty excited at getting something new to try, so I decided to turn my trusty Nexus 4 into a Ubuntu Touch device by grabbing the images and flashing.

I go the images from the Ubuntu Touch images repository and used the Nexus 4 Toolkit to fire the files over to my Nexus (which was already rooted and running PA). I flashed using TWRP after doing a factory reset.

After a while the new OS was flashed (this seemed to take a lot longer than flashing Android ROMs) and I was able to reboot. The initial boot was fairly slow but then typical of a new flash I would guess. I had no issue with loops and eventually Touch fired up.

First impressions were good; I like the way Ubuntu is styled anyway, and this styling is carried over rather nicely to the phone screens. The ubiquitous Ubuntu colours and fonts were there, and it all seemed rather familiar which was rather nice.

Navigation took a little while to get to grips with, but after a while it was second-nature, the "swiping" system certainly worked for me.

Webapps was something of a surprise, as with my Firefox phone. They all looked pretty good and operated really rather well, though some better that others. Facebook was decent, as was Twitter for social networking, Tumblr was ok, but areas definitely need work. And navigation needs sorting on the Touch as there didn't seem to be a working "back" button for everything and sometimes you would end up stuck.

The main apps were decent too, but were definitely a work in progress, especially integration with other accounts such as Google, Facebook, etc, to pull through friends and contacts.

I was hoping to use this as my main device, and weather out the problems as best I could as the OS evolved into a more polished product. This is where I started to have issues; and the deal-breaker? An alarm that didn't work for me. It was such a shame as I could live with the other issues. However as the main device to get me up in the morning, I had no intention of resorting to using the old clock radio, and I think many smart phone and normal phone users use this feature daily as well. To find it broken was really very surprising. I reported the bug, which was quickly acknowledged and put on the list of things to fix, but I wasn't given a timescale so I am now back on Android, and Android KitKat at that.

I was looking forward to the ride, and reporting minor bugfixes along the way, but sadly the OS is too broken at this stage. Surprisingly Firefox (who I'm sure has been at work on their OS a fraction of the time of Ubuntu) delivers a working solution that is far better in my opinion, one which I could probably live with if a higher-end phone was available to run it on. But that is another story.

I think I will probably try Touch again next year, when version 14 comes out, assuming of course it still supports my hardware. I think one device for everything is a fantastic idea, and I support it all the way, but without a "test" device I cannot recommend this as an everyday OS just yet.