A Preview of the Ubuntu Smartphone OS from CES

News
By Marcus Yam
published

A promising contender in the smartphone OS space.

Even with the continued strength of iOS and the growing dominance of Android, there's still room for innovation in the smartphone OS space. Just as how Ubuntu finds its place among Mac OS X and Windows, Canonical has revealed a version of its Linux-based OS for smartphones.

We were fortunate enough to go hands-on at a demonstration at CES. Overall, we were extremely impressed with the polish of the OS. It manages to do something different from both iOS and Android, and while those systems are tried and true, there's still plenty of room for innovation.

Check out the video below for what we saw:

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Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • burnley14
    It's nice to have competition, but this interface looks a little clumsy. Even in the demonstration she had trouble swiping to the left without pulling out that "launch menu." I'm sure it will be more polished before final launch, but this video wasn't enough to make me abandon the old phone OS's.
    Reply
  • antilycus
    Yes Please. Now just dont update stuff for the sake of making something new. That's the one thing I dont like about Ubuntu. Stability is sacrificed for "new" (and people have a tendancy to think new is better, just look at win8 for why that's not true).

    If this can replace my current Andoid OS I'll be all over it. Though I dont know if I like having to hold my thumb on the left side to toggle through apps.
    Reply
  • aicom
    Heh, reminds me of Windows 8 with all the gestures.
    Reply
  • phate
    antilycusYes Please. Now just dont update stuff for the sake of making something new. That's the one thing I dont like about Ubuntu. Stability is sacrificed for "new" (and people have a tendancy to think new is better, just look at win8 for why that's not true).If this can replace my current Andoid OS I'll be all over it. Though I dont know if I like having to hold my thumb on the left side to toggle through apps.
    I'm curious how much of that is your fault? I too find myself trying out each incremental Ubuntu release, but regretting it half the time. I've finally steeled myself and now just use the LTS releases.
    Reply
  • freggo
    hydac7If i ever see anymore of that unity gui crap (like linux though) I'm gonna .. I'm gonna kill the neighbors or something ...
    Now why would you make someone else or something else 'pay' for your dislikes?
    Seems very egoistical to me.

    :)
    Reply
  • warbler boy
    I love Unity. I have no idea why people complain about it. I'm using it for this message & it's my favorite desktop OS. It reminds me a bit of OSX before it started to look like an app.
    Reply
  • TomsSound
    The problem with this and windows ... the new gestures are not quite as intuitive as they'd like us to believe. The person showing off the phone was fumbling around quite a bit. (umm which side do i pull or push... hmmm).
    Not that it's a bad system.. it's just something that would need a little bit of playing with to remember what to do or which gesture to use.
    Reply
  • GhosT94
    looks nice , certainly not easy to use like the other but Initiative and could be gotten used to
    Reply
  • tuch92
    I got rid of Ubuntu on my desktop in exchange for Fedora because I didn't like the way Ubuntu was heading with the Amazon connection and Unity (I use Gnome 3). However, even with having tried out plenty of Android ROMs on my Galaxy S 4G, this looks more of what I want out of a phone than anything I've played with thus far (including Windows Phone 7.5 & 8 and iOS).

    I am a linux user through and through and while I would love this as is, I hope this also helps other linux developers to get into the phone OS. Having the option between say a Ubuntu, Fedora, Puppy( for old phones) and even a few new comers, would be great.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Been waiting for a smartphone that's not going to spy on me, not overpriced & from a company in bed with the content industry, and is not from Microsoft.

    I was sad to see Nokia drop Maemo. Now, finally something to take its place.
    Reply