Ubuntu Touch Experience

Ubuntu touch experience¶

Ubuntu Touch offers a unique mobile experience and a viable alternative to Android and iOS. It provides a free and open-source GNU/Linux-based mobile operating system. A list of all supported devices can be found here . I managed to Flash Ubuntu Touch as Custom ROM in Mi A2 which at the moment was one of the highly suppoted device with most of the common things working out of the box.

User Interface(UI)¶

Rating: 8/10

The user interface of the Ubuntu touch in Mi A2 was extremely smooth and polished. Anyone who has used Ubuntu as their Linux distros can immediately have a great feeling about it. The apps are nicely arranged to the left side of the screen giving it a different look from all the regular Android phones. While this is good looking, the layout makes sense in laptops and desktops because the screen realestate is larger horizontally than vertically. In mobile phones though it takes up space from the side which already is on the smaller side.

Even then the look seems very nice.

Calling Experience¶

Rating: 6/10

In Mi A2, the calling worked like it should have in any phone. It supported 2G/3G and 4G as well. Although at the moment it doesn't suppport VoLTE and hence I could not use Jio as my service provider.

App Experience¶

Rating: 4/10

This is the weakest point of using a Linux phone in general. The lack of apps and inability to run even the most popular Android apps is one of the biggest reason why this cannot be a first choice of anyone.

DOES NOT WORK - Online payment apps like BHIM, Gpay etc. - WhatApp: NO - Popular video call apps

WORKS BUT NOT BEST EXPERIENCE - Email clients like GMAIL - Telegram - Youtube

There is a software called waydroid which can open an instance of android inside the Linux phone wherein all the regular android apps can be run. Unfortunately in Xiaomi Mi A2, waydroid was extremely unstable and completely unusable. Once this is working Linux phone could be a viable alternative to Android

Screenshots¶