Last week we told you that community ports of Ubuntu for several new handsets, including ones from Sony and OnePlus, are to be be highlighted by Canonical during Mobile World Congress later this month.
Well, it turns out you don’t have to wait that long to get a glimpse of the progress made.
Ubuports’ Marius Gripsgård has shared a photograph (right) of Ubuntu running on his Fairphone 2.
Exciting, right?
Well, hold your horses for although the OS is up and running on the new handset the port is not yet ready for wider use.
It’s very early days for the Fairphone 2 Ubuntu port. Support for critical features like making calls and sending texts are missing as of writing.
Getting Wi-Fi, camera and GPS functionality work is likely to be next on the Ubport teams’ to-do list.
‘Although supported by Fairphone this port is not their work’
By the Community, for the Community
Canonical is supportive of the community ports project but it is not directly responsible for them. Ubuntu Phone ports are developed by the community for the community.
Fairphone’s community manager Douwe also stresses this difference, noting that: “although supported by Fairphone [this port] is not our work. We are really happy with the work of the communities, but we are not always up to date ourselves what and how fast they are making stuff work. They are true community efforts.”
The port does not mean that the ethical phone company will sell its phones preloaded with Ubuntu. Fairphone will live up to customers to decide what they do with their device once they’ve paid for it.
The Fairphone 2 Up Close
The Fairphone 2 has a 5-inch FHD IPS display and runs on a quad-core Qualcomm Krait 400 processor @ 2.26GHz. It has 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC storage. It retails from €525 in the European Union.
If you’ve eyed the ethically produced Fairphone 2 with a view to using Ubuntu on it be aware that the Fairphone 2 does not support MHL (a USB to HDMI technology) so cannot be connected to an external monitor through a cable to drive a ‘converged desktop experience’.
We don’t yet know Ubuntu plans for wireless connection technologies like Miracast which could, in theory, support such a feature.
Do you have a Fairphone 2? What other phones would you like to see Ubuntu ported to?