LONDON: Canonical has announced that the first Ubuntu phone will be on sale soon. The phone will be released only in Europe, that too via online flash sale model, which is followed by the likes of Xiaomi to retail their devices. The phone is priced at 170 euros (about $190).
If fans are expecting to see the Ubuntu Edge as the first Ubuntu smartphone, they are out of luck. The Edge, which broke the crowd-funding records, but was still not able to garner enough support, is dead. Instead, the company is going to release a variant of Spanish manufacturer BQ-made Aquaris E4.5, which is normally sold with Android 4.4.
The smartphone features a 4.5-inch qHD display, 1GB of RAM, 1.3GHz quad-core processor, and 2150 mAh battery. It also comes with 8MP rear camera, 5MP front shooter, 8GB of internal storage and microSD card slot. In addition, the smartphone includes dual-SIM card slots, 3G and Wi-Fi support.
The major differentiator for the Ubuntu version of the phone will be the Ubuntu Scopes feature, which instead of app icon gird, shows content aggregated from various services into type-specific screens, such as music, video and news, noted GIGAOM in a report. The phone, however, won’t include the converged smartphone/ desktop function, which was promised with Ubuntu Edge and allowed the users to operate the desktop version of Ubuntu, when the smartphone was connected to a keyboard and monitor.
The final pricing of the Ubuntu phone is a mystery at this point, but it is likely to retail around 170 euros, which is the current price of the Android version of the smartphone.
