After originally debuting in 2013 and shipping to consumers in 2015, it looks like Ubuntu for phones is done for.
Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth today announced that Canonical is ending its investment in Unity8, which was used for Ubuntu for phones. Instead, Canonical will focus on using GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on the desktop.
“I took the view that, if convergence was the future and we could deliver it as free software, that would be widely appreciated both in the free software community and in the technology industry, where there is substantial frustration with the existing, closed, alternatives available to manufacturers,” said Shuttleworth. “I was wrong on both counts.”
What this all means is that we’re seeing the last of Ubuntu for phones following years of work from Canonical focus on mobile and convergence.
When it was announced in 2013, Ubuntu for phones was focused on hopping around the OS quickly using edge gestures and universal search, while also offering an OS that could be used in a PC mode when you connect a keyboard and mouse. By the time that the first Ubuntu phones shipped in 2015, though, Ubuntu faced a stiff battle against the low-cost Android phones that’d proliferated. There were a handful of Ubuntu phones that eventually came to market, including a couple higher-end models, but the OS never seemed to gain much traction.
Did you ever try Ubuntu for phones?