“Samsung are making the first Ubuntu Phone!” screams the subject field of the latest e-mail to arrive in the OMG! tips inbox.
“I can’t believe you haven’t mentioned the U1000!!” the sender protests – albeit with more capitalisation than I’m willing to convey, but adding to an ant-sized avalanche of mail along similar lines.
What’s stoking their enthusiasm? This:
It’s called the Samsung U1000 and, if half of the internet is to be believed it’s the first officially announced mobile handset to run Ubuntu Touch.
Only, that’s not the case.
The U1000 is a concept phone designed by one Suman Chatterjee. Suman is nothing if not prolific. Recent designs by him include a Facebook Tablet, a Nexus 5 design, and interesting concept for a dual-OS phone running Android on one screen and Windows Phone 8 on the reverse.
Suman’s design is nothing to do with Samsung. It’s not a real phone. The story has simply snowballed from an original posting by the Concept Phones website, in which Suman goes into detail about what hardware his concept “runs”, to what we have today: people throwing money at their screen hoping it will stick.
Of course, this isn’t to say that Samsung aren’t working on an Ubuntu Phone. Despite making a mint from flogging Android handsets a “well known industry rumour” suggests that the company are looking to start placing eggs in another basket.
So while this Samsung Ubuntu Phone might be a load of old cobblers, the idea of one possibly isn’t.