DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review • Hacker News Board

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#91

Post by snuxoll » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #58

It seems kind of mad to think Ubuntu could succeed where Microsoft failed. I just can't see any way they will convince third party developers to write apps for it.

The thing is, it doesn't necessarily HAVE TO. I loved my Windows Phones, my wife and grandmother both have a Lumia 950 and they do everything they need to do, they don't require constant maintenance like every Android device I have supported and didn't cost a small fortune to get a device with an acceptable amount of storage (plus the camera is great, good combo for my wife). Ultimately though, the entire product is driven by Microsoft, and they maintain an Apple-like grip on their devices.

With a "proper" linux-based phone anyone (assuming the hardware isn't crazy locked down) can contribute to the success, even if it remains a niche not everyone cares about snapchat or the hippest app of the month, if I can connect to my work VPN (this is actually where I ended up switching to an iPhone, there's no AnyConnect client for Windows Phone), use an email client with Exchange support, and have a modern web browser I'm mostly set for a daily driver - sure, it's nice to be able to use Netflix, Amazon Video, PlayStation Vue on my phone, but I've got my TV, my desktop or my tablet for all of that.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#92

Post by twblalock » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

darklajid wrote: post #71

twblalock wrote: post #23

> When I first started using the phone I noticed the Today scope showed temperatures in the weather forecast in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. This can be adjusted by changing our selected language in the device's settings panel and restarting the phone . Really? You have to restart to change the temperature units? What a joke.

The real issue is "You have to change your language to change the temperature units". There's no correlation between those. That is one broken scope/widget if the author is correct.

Well, sort of. It makes sense to bundle language and display features, such as date and temperature formats, into a single locale. That's what other Unixy operating systems do.

However, a locale is a display formatting issue. If the entire system needs to be restarted after a locale change, that's a sign that display issues are too tightly coupled to stuff going on in non-display code, perhaps in kernel space, and that should not be the case.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#93

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 7:01 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #15

lake99 wrote: post #6

> About 1GB of memory is required to run the phone with its default scopes and settings, leaving us about 2GB of space for applications and other features. I did not see this coming. I was under the impression that moving away from a JVM would have lowered the memory requirements. A comparison of the two versions of Meizu Pro 5, Android and Ubuntu, would have been useful too. I am curious if the move away from the An…

As of Android 5, there is only ART, which is no different than using Go, D, or any other AOT compiled language with a GC enabled runtime. Also many Scopes are actually written in either JavaScript, or QML with C++ and Go as possible code-behind languages. https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/phone/scopes/ So overall the runtime requirements aren't much different, unless you are writing a pure Qt/C++ scope (without QML).

[deleted]

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#94

Post by benbristow » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

Sylos wrote: post #69

IshKebab wrote: post #58

It seems kind of mad to think Ubuntu could succeed where Microsoft failed. I just can't see any way they will convince third party developers to write apps for it.

Well, a few things which might help: - There's going to be developers who will develop for Ubuntu Touch in their free time, just because they want the platform to succeed, similar to desktop Linux. And essentially no one will do that for Windows Phone, meaning that Windows Phone depends much more on developers to be able to make a profit off of it, and therefore much more on having market share to begin with. - Ubunt…

> And essentially no one will do that for Windows Phone, meaning that Windows Phone depends much more on developers to be able to make a profit off of it, and therefore much more on having market share to begin with.

Totally incorrect. There's loads of developers making Windows Phone apps that are compatible with services that don't have an decent official app yet (See, for example, Rudy Huyn).