ubuntuphone1

Yes, our guesses were right and for some, the prayers were answered! Canonical backed Ubuntu finally has its own Smartphone OS. What we see here is no ordinary Galaxy Nexus, its a Nexus running the Ubuntu OS for smartphones. The long awaited mobile OS finally announced today at the official Ubuntu website and boy its a delight! The OS looks very clean which was one of their major things to talk about at the video presentation keynote given by Mark Shuttleworth . For starters, it runs on a native version of Linux that means no UI layering by different manufacturers(for now). The OS just like other mobile systems of the moment features an all gesture control system(yes u can do the comparisons) that means no physical buttons or even on-screen ones.

rsz_ubuntu-hands-on-620

 

The “all edge swipe” gesture UI shares much resemblance to Windows 8 by switching between apps by gestures. The Ubuntu app store is in works, which means a different set of apps and a new store . What would drag your attention the most is this line

Introducing the superphone that’s also a full PC

What It really means is though, with a dock connector, a user could use the phone as a full fledged PC powered by the phones CPU itself and all the user data and applications stay intact . That’s something remarkable . You would hear Mark say in the keynote ” We wanted to design a family of interfaces for all of these devices which could be handled by a single device” meaning their interpretation of the “Superphone” which could be your phone as well as your PC and also your HDTV playback device.

ubuntuphone3

We’re told that the Galaxy Nexus-compatible build will be available for download within the next few weeks, and Mark Shuttleworth is optimistic that actual devices will ship sometime in early 2014 , which is quite away from now.