ubuntu touchIm a week in to using ubuntu touch on my nexus 5, which wasnt very hard to get dual booted. At first i found it a bit strange getting used to it coming from android although quiet similar its not. The big problem i have is that yes it does chew the nexus battery a bit but luckily enough i managed to grab one of these aquarius e45.

The Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Phone

Dual Sim

SD Card Slot

now ive found a few things like scopes are cool i guess a and niche but i still think more core apps are required like proper sync for google contacts, calendar etc. The phone does bring in google contacts when you first power on but doesnt sync them, the calendar has google calendar in the list but doesnt write to it. No ive tested the twitter , linked in and facebook apps – i added them in settings as accounts but get no notifications.. hopefully will on the real phone or soon on a update.. i tried basic things but couldnt upload pictures on facebook but if you take a picture or have images in your gallery this will share to facebook or text message but no twitter or google or other services in there yet.. I installed ebay and amazon but they are tied to .com so ive asked for .UK versions.. somebody asked me to make them so ive installed the SDK and im looking at writing some scope apps. Ive installed dekko mail client which is very promising works fine just had to change my smtp to port 25 because thats all it currently supports. Document viewer / file manager gallery music / system settings and terminal / forum browser are all great apps. The user interface is good with the ubuntu side bar on left which you can pin apps to that hideDSCN2715s then on the top a slide down notifications bar then to the right you can flick through scopes which you can modify to show you content from different places IE ebay, soundcloud , local attractions about anything really! you add them by sliding up a bar at the bottom. now the idea is scopes just look like apps but just front end to running the app on the webserver which is pretty good for somethings for sure, and you can install apps aswell but not a lot of base apps available as yet.. id say about 7/8 apps and scopes are being added a day of different qualities.. like yesterday i got booking.com and skyscanner so all is good.. i use the unofficial app store which shows you latest add added so you can see them as they come! there is currently 840 and 114 games. Im just waiting for apps for transmission, zoneminder , lifeograph and the usual techie apps like nmap etc but im sure they are being worked on as we speak. Ive setup the SDK and i am looking at building click packages and creating scopes, ive also had ubuntu touch machines running in emulators and ive installed packages which breaks the OTA but im trying to get xmir running so i can run x apps in side the phone. I think it would be great if they would offer us the solid bass with a chroot to install all your wanted apps you use using xmir but keeping the main line base system. You can ssh in to the phone if you setup a ssh key which you have to scp back into the phone, if you change your image to Read write to change ssh settings you loose updates 🙁

So its not clean sailing.. but i remember getting the first android phone – now this is worlds apart 100% better as long as the apps come fast as i dont fancy running my ubuntu phone in read write and loosing OTA im sure there will be ways around this soon > CHROOT 🙂

im just so lucky i got one from the second flash sale so i got one of the real ubuntu phones coming with the fancy casmeizu-350x200e – but if you have a nexus 4 or 5 give this a go what have you got to loose  or get one of these ….

this is the sdk in action on my ubuntu box

Workspace 1_139

 

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