Gadgetory

earlier today canonical release the Ubuntu touch Developer Preview I installed it on my Nexus 4 so let's take a look if you have used Ubuntu on a desktop or laptop in the past year so you're not gonna feel very out of place and Ubuntu touch it was designed that way the graphics in the interface are very similar and icons are the same but even if you haven't used Ubuntu in several years you're not gonna feel very out of place the Ubuntu touch experience takes some cues from other popular platforms and implements them quite well the notification shade for instance is a very similar implementation of the notification shade on Android it has some differences it adds some things on top of the experience that you would get from Android but it's the same promise you pull down the notification shade to access your notifications your missed calls emails and other information and some have compared the interface to what you find on the Kindle Fire it's very similar to how the Kindle Fire os looks and works but there are differences in how things are laid out and interacted with so you may be asking yourself why should care about Ubuntu for phones or Ubuntu for tablets the answer to that is convergence and how this will change your workflow in the future canonical has designed Ubuntu to work in different environments when you plug up your phone to peripherals such as a monitor or keyboard or mouse the interface changes to a full desktop version of Ubuntu so basically you have a full computer running in your pocket so long as you have the peripherals to power it canonical calls this a super phone that is also a full PC when installing Ubuntu for tablets or phones keep in mind that this is a Developer Preview not everything is gonna work and there are lots of bugs this is mainly meant to show off exactly how the operating system will work and what it's capable of to developers and people who like us are very interested in how this thing will work I've been playing around with it for several hours now and it's really nice I like the way the interface works I like the way you can quickly switch between applications and different things and I really like the way canonical implemented the notification shape the way you can swipe down from the top of the screen and switch between different things all in a single swipe the thing that immediately stands out about Ubuntu for phones is how quickly you can change between all your applications and multitask a quick swipe from the left side of the display will show all of your favorite applications if you swipe all the way across from the left side you will go back to the home screen but if you swipe from the right side of the display it will bring you to the last application you had opened swiping up from within several applications will show you a settings menu for a back option or different things and swiping down from the top of course shows your notification shade everything is just a swipe away and the idea from canonical here is that there is more content always on the display not navigational buttons when backing out of an application and going back to the home screen you get a list of all of your running applications below that list is a list of frequently used apps and all the ones that are installed and at the bottom of that page you have some that are available for download swiping to the right of this page takes you to videos and any kind of video content you may have swiping to the left side is your actual home page where you will find your frequent apps favorite people and other sorts of content swiping to pages to the left takes you to the people page where you can see all of your activity with all of your friends and people that you communicate with regularly and the far left page is for music navigating between all of these is very intuitive and fluid although I found myself stumbling between all the scrolling content and you can't really customize anything at least not right now switching between these pages is fluid although the animations may make it feel a little more sluggish than it actually is this operating system will struggle in two areas the application support and it's learning curve of course there aren't going to be a ton of applications to begin with this is a developer preview and you have to keep that in mind but that's not what I'm talking about I'm not talking about the fact that there aren't a lot of applications on this device I'm talking about the fact that most of these applications are gonna be html5 so you're not gonna have native applications you're gonna have web apps the Gmail application it is a web app Twitter it's a web app Facebook it's a web app of course Ubuntu supports qml so you're gonna see plenty of applications go native eventually but getting the developers to go all-in on Ubuntu is gonna be a major hurdle and it could be some time before you see any major players on the platform and then there's a learning curve with gesture support not many major platforms have just your input right now especially for the primary source of navigation and even myself who loves in gesture navigation and has tinkered around with other platforms I struggled with navigating the Ubuntu interface because I kept sliding my finger off the screen and it would activate something else or I would swipe to go back home and I would open an application using the favorite apps or from the home screen trying to switch to the far-right panel I would switch to the last application all in all to be a Developer Preview this operating system shows great promise I really love the way the interface works and the way navigation works and I love just your input but there are some major concerns with development support and the learning curve and it's worth mentioning that Ubuntu has been around for a long time yet it's really never broken into the mainstream there's a duopoly in the PC market between Apple and Microsoft and canonical or any other major Linux distro hasn't really broken into the mainstream so it's safe to assume that Ubuntu for phones or tablets may face the same fate that said I've really enjoyed using the preview although it's probably not safe for a daily driver I don't have Google voice support and there are applications that I really need to get by so this has been a first look at Ubuntu touch for phones on the Nexus 4 be sure to give the video a thumbs up if you liked it subscribe to the channel and follow us on your social networks of choice I'm Taylor Martin and I will see you next time