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Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by rglullis on Monday August 01, 2016 @05:18AM (#12201061)
I got the BQ Aquarius 5 a few months ago, after my Moto G2 SIM card stopped working. So when comparing two budget-but-capable-phones, I can say that the hardware on the Ubuntu phone is not the problem.

The software they have is great, and I haven't seen any half-backed features. The updates are consistent and always bring something interesting. The idea of lenses and scopes are great as an alternative to the lack of common apps. I didn't miss not having a weather app or yelp, or youtube or whatever.

The one thing that is lacking on Ubuntu Touch are the things that are core to mobile use cases. For example:

- I understand that I won't get a decent Google Maps app, but there is no real alternative. Here Maps comes installed, but I could not find a way to get public transportation data. uNav seems to do the turn-by-turn navigation, but they don't have voice, which is useless when I am on a bike.

- There is no decent story for messaging/VoIP: You can have Telegram, but also is just a webview wrapper. Messenger, Whatsapp? Nothing. And if at least they had half-decent XMPP/SIP clients, I could try to drop the closed services and try to switch my friends and family with me. But what good is a smartphone that I can't use to talk or chat?

Because of these things, I was basically forced to always be walking around with two phones: the Ubuntu one for connectivity and basic media and as a hotspot for my broken Android, which I would then use when I needed to look into maps or call/message someone. The hassle was enough for me to find a replacement board for the SIM card and go back to use only Android for everything. The Ubuntu phone now is in a drawer, waiting for me to get some time to play with application development for Ubuntu Touch.

All-in-all, my feeling is that Canonical is close to get its break and make Ubuntu a compelling alternative. It is just not there yet. I also hope that this Moto G was my last Android phone.

Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by dmca on Monday August 01, 2016 @05:50AM (#12201173)
I can't speak for this OS but I use OsmAnd (http://osmand.net) in place of google maps on cyanogenmod and it does do a reasonable job of voice navigation (using the same OpenStreetMap data as uNav). It's open source so it should be able to work in principle.
Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by Brakenshire on Monday August 01, 2016 @06:48AM (#12201385)
I agree there are good applications available, but OSMAnd is an Android app, you'd need some sort of compatibility layer for it to run on stock Linux. I think there is work going on for that happen, but it's not there yet. The project I can recall is Shashlik, there are one or two others as well.

I think Android app compatibility is necessary for a Linux phone. You won't be able to use Play Services, but a lot of apps do not require that. Android compatibility would for instance give you WhatsApp. It also gives you access to hardware like activity monitors (Garmin and Withings apps don't require play services), which otherwise is very unlikely to be supported. And also sophisticated public transport apps like Moovit.

Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by dharma1 on Monday August 01, 2016 @09:56AM (#12202374)
Hopefully Google will open source the container based approach they use for enabling Android apps on Chrome OS

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/05/chrome-os-android-a...

Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by dmca on Monday August 01, 2016 @08:28AM (#12201817)
There's a (presumably unofficial) desktop port of OsmAnd (called offroad) although I don't know how stable it is/how it's implemented. I agree that a fully functional and more general compatibility layer could be rather useful.
Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by luxpir on Monday August 01, 2016 @06:30AM (#12201308)
> - There is no decent story for messaging/VoIP

I have many gripes with my Ubuntu phone, but this isn't one of them. Aside from my personal preference of opting out of Whatsapp, they do have the webapp version so you don't need to carry that Android around once registered.

They also have Signal, which works well. I SSH/tmux into a box with command line Finch (pidgin for CLI) and IRSSI when I really need to IM 'on the go' and I don't have their number for a message. Which is a rare situation.

Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by rglullis on Monday August 01, 2016 @07:41AM (#12201620)
The web version of whatsapp does not do calls, only messages. And when you have family/friends scattered around 3 continents, traditional PSTN calling is not an option.

About Signal: especially now that Whatsapp has adopt their encryption protocol, it is very hard for me to convince everyone else to switch to Signal, and AFAIK Signal does not do group messaging, so I would have to convince other people to switch to an inferior solution with no extra value to justify the tradeoff. If I had decent XMPP/SIP clients I could at least try to sell the extra value of having your communications outside of control of any single company.

Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by r080 on Monday August 01, 2016 @08:03AM (#12201713)
Signal has group messaging.
Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by CaptSpify on Monday August 01, 2016 @12:44PM (#12203845)
As this is just linux under the hood, can you not just run Google maps via the browser?
Re:DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review by chromalife on Monday August 01, 2016 @08:03AM (#12201719)
What about linphone for VoIP.