Ubuntu For Phones Announced

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Today Ubuntu announced a new phone operating system. Ubuntu for Phones.

This is the introductory video by Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, Canonical

Swiping and Gestures

Ubuntu for phones depends very much on swiping gestures. I know I know, all the new ones rely on the swiping features like Sailfish OS and BB10. Chapeau for Nokia's original Meego team for creating such great concept in Meego for Nokia N9 and N950.

Development Environment

The OS will support HTML5 development allowing web apps integration with the system and will also support native development. Currently the native development environment is based on QML for developing interfaces. QML has OpenGL ES support. Ubuntu managed to partner with big names like EA to release games that support this new OS.

What about the supported devices ?

The OS will support android kernel and android drivers, so if you have an android device it'll be most probably supported by the new OS. I hope that there will be some kind of support to Nokia N9. This guy deserves a lot after Nokia has left it alone.

Is it a good piece of news ?

I believe yes. The most beneficiaries in my opinion are mobile operators. Now operators have a strong competitor to android that will be completely open. Something with a strong ecosystem and with a huge pool of open source developers to support. Operators can now build mobile app stores for this OS and sell apps directly to users. If I was google, this wouldn't have been a good piece of news for me :) .. the second beneficiary is the user. Having a great open-source alternative to android will raise the competition bar. It's no longer a 3 Horse rase as Nokia describes it. Although laws of marketing tells us that at the end every race tends to be a 2 horse race.

How do you find this piece of news? Let me know your opinion in the comments. To find more info about ubuntu for phones click here.

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