Gadgetory

I've been using the Ubuntu touch Developer Preview since went live last week I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is what I love and what I hate about Ubuntu touch for phones I first installed Ubuntu touch on my nexus 4 when the developer preview images went live I've been using it off and on ever since and I've noticed some things that I absolutely love about the operating system and I've also discovered some things I absolutely hate so to start with we'll go over the first four things that I found that I just cannot stand about Ubuntu touch a feature canonical lists on its website for Ubuntu 4 phones is being neat and organized however I feel the interface is a little more cluttered and disorderly than anything the far left page is music but the far right page is videos why would those not be closer together the next page over is people then you have home and apps but there's no real organization to it that's just kind of there and if you don't like the way it's organized there's no way to change it everything is set where it is there's no way to reorganize things remove things add things everything is set in its place there's no customization at this level and there's no way to organize things better to your liking which gets me to my next point the interface and maybe this is just how it is for the Developer Preview but the interface is extremely extremely redundant for instance your people page has your most frequently contacted people that exact same list of people is shown one page over on the home page there's also a page of frequently used applications on the application page but if you swipe over one page to the left they're also there on the home page your recently played music is on the home page and also on the music page there is just redundancy all throughout this operating system and it's very annoying the problem is you can't change it there's no way to delete one area of frequently used applications from the home page or maybe the applications page it's all there set in stone for now at least another part of the operating system that I can't stand is search there is a search bar on the top left part of the interface but it's relative to whatever page your own if you're on the music page it'll search music if you're on the peoples page it searches people and if you're on the videos page it searches videos the cool thing is that it searches online databases so you can pull video and music searches from Amazon straight to your home screen that's really cool but it's relative - whatever paid your own if you're on the homepage if you're on the apps page it just doesn't search anything it doesn't search at all there should be a universal search that would show local search results at least for the home page the fourth and final thing that absolutely drives me up the wall about Ubuntu for phones is the gesture navigation it's also one of my favorite features about the operating system it's one of the most distinguishing features but it's so clunky an average usage that it makes navigating kind of difficult in some scenarios for instance if you're an application and you want to go home you swipe from the left side of the display to access your favorite applications you also swipe from the left side of the display the difference is how fast or how slow or how far you drag your finger the problem with that is that it's hard to get it just right every single time so sometimes I want to go home and I open one of my favorite apps or I want to open a favorite app and I go home or somewhere in between they're the favorite apps drawer stays open but nothing happens the rest of the gesture navigation swipe in from the right side of the display to switch back to the previous application works great gesture navigation can be great but canonical really needs to focus on how to make it better it's very clunky right now and they're trying to do too many gestures with only four edges of a display I've also found some things about the operating system that I just absolutely love assuming the redundancy issues will be fixed and that some sort of customization will come in the future I love the way it looks it looks and feels sort of like web listed in the very beginning there are obvious differences in the way webOS and Ubuntu for forms look but there's also a lot of similarities in the interface and how user-friendly it truly is once you get past some of the quirks another feature I love is the quick access to your favorite applications a simple gesture from the left side of the display will unveil a short list of your favorite apps scroll to the one you want and let go the app you selected will launch and you can do this over and over it's very quick and simple actually loved it so much that I found an alternative for Android called Club box and it works almost exactly the same another feature that is hard not to love is how easy it is to switch back to your previous application simply swipe from the right side of the displayed left and your previous application will appear do this over and over and the previous applications will appear sequentially starting from the most recently used to the oldest last and most certainly not least is the notification shade much like on Android you pull it down from the top of the display but that's where the similarities really end with Ubuntu you can sway down over different status icons to open different parts of the notification shade it's sort of like a paginated notification area swipe down over the messages icon and you open your messages swipe down over the battery icon and you get your battery status and your brightness toggle you can tap the time and see all of them at once and quickly jump to whatever page you need and if you pull down over the wrong status icon you can simply swipe from left to right to jump to the page you need to there's a lot to love about Ubuntu touch for phones and there's also a lot to hate canonical has their work cut out for them but this is a great start if you liked the video be sure to give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel and find us on your favorite social networks you can find us on google+ at + PocketNow twitter @ pocket now sweet and facebook at facebook.com slash pocket now I'm Sayla Martin and I will see you next time