This, or something like it, is the future: the computing device is portable, and adapts itself to the forms of input available. There's no reason why your display should have to be permanently attached to the device that drives it, and increasingly, it won't be.<p>I don't know what the implications are for Ubuntu or Android. But genuine support for a first-class computing experience is one of the few things that would tempt me back onto those platforms.
You could push the ease-of-use even further with wireless HDMI, A2DP, and Bluetooth HIDs. Imagine: <i>sit at a desk, without your phone even leaving your pocket. The wireless HDMI monitor, Bluetooth keyboard, and Bluetooth A2DP speakers automatically pair up with your phone. You just start using the device, eg. show a video to your friends, or start working. Stand up and leave. The phone unpairs itself from the monitor/speakers/keyboard, free to be used by the next person.</i><p>(If security is a concern, make this less automatic, eg. make the pairing require pressing a button on the phone.)<p>I have been waiting for precisely that concept to take off for years, namely using your cellphone as your portable computer.
Canonical may not have the resources or funds of Apple or Microsoft but they are innovating better than both at the moment. Unity is daring to be different on the desktop, and Ubuntu on Android is a simple idea that could really change the way people think about the PC. The ideas might not all work out in the long term but for sheer creative thinking you have got to applaud what they are doing.
I know it's immature of me to note this, but what's up with the logo to the left of "Ready to talk?". Is it just me, or is it faintly reminiscent of... well, something else?
We have struggled to get a BIOS that is Free / Libre
And where does this leave us now? Just because Ubuntu is free, if the phone manufacturers start to get trusted mobile computing (tm) disease, we are still in trouble.<p>"Curated" is still not free<p>And there are some obvious holes - you cant carry a monitor around with you. So you need docking stations to plug into. Do you trust the keyboard in the Public library not to watch your keystrokes?
Not 100% sure but I think this is a chroot.<p>From the features page [0]:<p><pre><code> Ubuntu and Android share the same kernel. When docked,
the Ubuntu OS boots and runs concurrently with Android.
This allows both mobile and desktop functionality to
co-exist in different runtimes.
</code></pre>
[0] <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android/features-and-specs" rel="nofollow">http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android/features-and-specs</a>
Reminds me of doing the Debian chroot on the Nokia N8x0. That's been around for quite awhile. It's nice to be able to apt-get whatever you need. It's prohibitively slow to use on a device from 2007 though and overclocking is a bit risky and drains the battery quickly.<p>(Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but I still use one of these things rather than the brand new 1.2 GHz dual core Android phone sitting next to it in my bag.)<p>I don't really see this panning out unless Ubuntu runs on the mobile screen as well. I'd also hope that the curated experience can be replaced with, well, anything else. Ubuntu is increasingly becoming a forced experience and reconfiguring things is a waste of time. Configuring something to how you want to use it is also a lot more educational than trying to figure out where to disable the new configuration.
If Microsoft was smart, this would be <i>exactly</i> how their Win8 tablets should work - plug it into a dock and it turns into a Desktop PC. Ubuntu and Microsoft are in an awesome place here that Apple is going to miss out on.
Is this going to be available to end users to install themselves, or is Canonical holding out for handset makers to respond to this and partner with them?<p>Sadly, since so many of the big Android guys are also in bed with or paying some kind of extortion to Microsoft, I would expect there to be some amount of pressure and possibly economic incentives for the big Android ODMs to NOT to ship this.<p>Beyond that, is any carrier going to be interested in offering subs Ubuntu? (Idk, maybe?) Put this into the hands of end users first even if it's a "sloppy" / hack-ish install. That's the way to get it out there.
I admit, this would get me to bite the bullet if integrated with one of the existing laptop dock solutions for Android phones such as the Motorola Atrix 4G Lapdock or the ASUS Transformer Prime. Ubuntu is enough for me to do everything I need a computer for, except for some rare book keeping that has to be done over a VPN only supported on Windows/Mac. Instead of bringing my phone and laptop on all trips I'd just have my phone and laptop dock. The laptop docks seem much lighter and having the same stored data and same wireless data connection without tethering would be handy.
I can see this working really well for younger users, non-power-users, and non-techies who want to carry around their desktop environment and whose needs are met by web apps like Google Docs.<p>I can also see its potential in developing countries where many people have a phone and a TV but not a PC.<p>The medium-term goal is sort of obvious: Ubuntu running on the phone with the ability to display Unity on its own tiny screen or on larger external displays and allowing the user to interact with it via touch or via external input devices like keyboards, mice, etc.
I think this is a great step in the right direction, and we've already observed a compression of devices recently. Consider the Laptop, Desktop & phone. Who still uses a desktop? Its really just a matter of time until we compress the laptop and phone, we're a long way off in my opinion (in terms of actually usable hardware) but once we have the power and portable input devices (i think one could already structure an argument to say we have them) i don't know what would hold it back.<p>Good to see we're headed in a sensible direction.
There is a video, showing the functionality. [0]<p>Now I begin to understand why Canonical made those recent changes. The Ubuntu part of it seems kinda slow, but smartphones are going to get faster. [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUXUjjg9qQ0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUXUjjg9qQ0</a>
[1] <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5559/qualcomm-snapdragon-s4-krait-performance-preview-msm8960-adreno-225-benchmarks" rel="nofollow">http://www.anandtech.com/show/5559/qualcomm-snapdragon-s4-kr...</a>
<i>"Ubuntu is the killer app for multi-core phones in 2012"</i><p>This text is displayed as if it's a quote, but as far as I can tell, it's not: <a href="http://goo.gl/vKHOI" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/vKHOI</a> (link is to a Google search for the above text). If there's anyone from Canonical here, can you comment on why that is presented as a quote, or what/where it's a quote from, if it is in fact a quote?
Its the obvious extension of the current model. Kudos to Canonical for giving it a go.<p>I was expecting Apple or MS to move in this direction and I seem to recall a POC/patent application/Mock up from a few years back showing an iMac with a removable iPhone/iPod as the home directory. Maybe I'm misremembering.
Can I only use Ubuntu when the phone is connected to a large monitor?<p>Even having access to some command line packages on the phone would be a big improvement over the minimal busybox stuff that comes with Android.
I know this is Ubuntu on Android, but all I can think of is Windows 8. Doesn't this seem like an inevitability for Microsoft? Intel even has x86 mobile chips on the way.
This is pretty cool, but it's an OEM-driven product, dependent on the phone maker to enable it. For over a year I
've been working on a port of X to Android as an application, running as a non-privileged user, displaying to a surface allocated through the Android Java API. The port is at <a href="http://github.com/tmzt/androix" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/tmzt/androix</a> along with build instructions. (see the readme)
And, with the "Cotton Candy" Android-on-a-thumbdrive, your next desktop could hang on your key chain.<p><a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/news/fxi-tech-cotton-candy-usb-exynos-computer,14471.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.tomshardware.com/news/fxi-tech-cotton-candy-usb-e...</a><p><a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/news/fxi-android-ubuntu-arm-angry-birds,14035.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.tomshardware.com/news/fxi-android-ubuntu-arm-angr...</a>
Look at the place I live:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvUXFav7aDk" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvUXFav7aDk</a><p>You do not want to "have everything" with you in your mobile while you are in a public place. I have a notebook and an iPad, and, of course, my 4 year old shitty Compaq laptop I take outside when I have meetings. I keep my files inside a truecrypt file vault just in case.
Yesterday on reddit headline was something like "I can't believe you can play Grand Theft Auto on a _phone_" and my response was "I can't believe we call them phones, they are powerful pocket computers that just happen to have the ability to send and receive phone calls"<p>I wonder when they are going to come out with portable OLED display sheets and ultralight paper-based keyboards.
I am so excited about this idea, being able to dock and have a full desktop with full applications and keyboard would be awesome. I have BusyBox on my Android phone but it usually isn't enough to make it function like a real Linux desktop. However, I hope that Canonical will stay true to itself and develop and release this as truly open software.<p>Edited for clarity.
Did I just come out of a 40-day coma? What month is this?<p>"Android was designed for touch only, and has its hands full winning the tablet wars."<p>Be careful. I think Steve Jobs might've patented the reality distortion field.<p>"The Ubuntu desktop sets the standard for ease of use." Compared to what?<p>"And imagine TVs that become home PCs when you dock your phone: perfect for the emerging market where LTE will be the normal way for new users to connect to the Internet."<p>Great. My home connection's going to come with a 4GB monthly cap now too?<p>In a lot of ways this is actually a neat idea, and I could see something close to this catching on. I see a few problems though:<p>* As fast as my laptop is, I still sometimes wish it had a faster CPU, a better GPU, and more RAM. Modern phones are still around an order of magnitude slower and have a fraction of the RAM. They're not exactly desktop replacements.<p>* 64GB is an impressive amount of storage for a cell phone. It's pretty weak for a laptop.<p>* "The Cloud" is an order of magnitude or two slower than my local disk, and my local disk doesn't have a monthly data transfer limit.<p>* Normal people have no clue what Ubuntu is, and they're not exactly adopting it in droves, even without having to buy new hardware to support it.<p>So… neat idea, but I don't see this getting off the ground. If it does, though, I see a lot more idle sword fighting in my future.
I never got my jet pack, but I DID get my handheld supercomputer. I love this. I love the idea of it and the 7 year old in me who had his world rocked by that TI-99/4A is stoked. I just can't be upset at any aspect of this - our computing dreams just keep coming true.
Reminds me of this from 2011 <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/motorola-atrix-4g-hd-multimedia-dock-and-laptop-dock-hands-on/" rel="nofollow">http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/motorola-atrix-4g-hd-mult...</a>.<p>Which I think is <i>awesome</i>.
So it doesn't seem like I can actually run this right now. Am I missing the link to actually get it and set it up? If there isn't one, why are they making an announcement?
This is cool from a gee whiz/novelty standpoint, but in practice this will have very poor usability. Why? Good touch apps have terrible UI for keyboard & mouse interaction.<p>For example swiping, pinch to zoom, etc. Many apps use a swipe to the left or right to perform and action. How would this work with a mouse?
Shut up and take my money. This is what I've been dreaming of since I got my smartphone. Why should I even have a netbook for general purpose computing? I want to go anywhere with my MID (mobile internet device).
I strongly believe, this would be just the beginning. Mobile phones give you three things - (recently, Horsepower), Mobility and Identity. And there are a plethora of things that could be powered with a combination of the three.<p>Weirdly, wrote about something like this, back in 2008. <a href="http://www.vijayanand.name/2008/10/the-future-of-living-how-3g-could-help/" rel="nofollow">http://www.vijayanand.name/2008/10/the-future-of-living-how-...</a><p>... in a nokia centric world, be it.