World’s First Ubuntu Phone to Go on Sale on 9th February

Ubuntu, a powerful, fast, and clean operating system (OS) debuted over two years back, but failed to make space in this over-flooded market. But finally, the operating system has got direction and an Ubuntu Phone is coming out next week.

  Titled Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, the phone is built by the Spanish company BQ. The low-budget handset sports a 4.5-inch qHD display. It is powered by MediaTek Quad Core Cortex A7 processor clocked at 1.3 GHz paired with 1 GB of RAM and a Mali 400 GPU. The device has an internal storage capacity of 8 GB along with a battery of 2150mAh. An 8MP rear shooter and a 5MP front snapper sits on the handset.

The phone is expected to be priced at $195 (somewhere around Rs. 12,000) and will go on sale in Europe on February 9 via flash sale model.

     Ubuntu Phones will come with a new user interface (UI) called Scopes that will change the way we interact with our phones. “A new UI paradigm, designed to deliver content and services directly to categorized home screens, giving users a rich, unfragmented experience.” Scopes will give categorized home screens to pull content from multiple sources. Users can get the content from YouTube, Vimeo and other sources on the same page.

      A new operating system means native apps need to build up. But Canonical, the company behind the operating system, doesn’t want its users to wait that long. It is making a way to port apps from its desktop Linux distribution Ubuntu to the Ubuntu Phones. So, around 1,000 apps would be available to download. It has been learnt that WhatsApp is not backing Ubuntu, so the instant messaging service will not be a part of it for now.

        Canonical is planning to release it in the US market soon. An Ubuntu-based smartphone is a big step by the company and was much-needed to bring it to mainstream. It would be interesting to see how users respond to the new OS.