The release date and exact platform are not known

Jun 2, 2015 12:53 GMT  ·  By

Canonical is still quite eager to have a "convergence" device out into the wild and it looks that BQ will be the company to build it.

It's been a long time since Canonical was showing us Ubuntu for Android and its capabilities. Having a phone that is powerful enough to transform into a full PC when docked with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse could be a game changer, but Canonical is still working to make this happen. They haven't abandoned the idea of having this kind of device, but they are going about it in another way.

Ubuntu for Android has been shelved and forgotten, but Canonical is working on its Ubuntu Touch operating system more than two years now. This system is using the new Unity 8 and Mir display server, and those technologies will soon land on the desktop flavor. In a short while, both the mobile version of Ubuntu and the desktop flavor will share the same underlying code, which will make the "convergence" idea much easier to implement.

BQ will built the new convergence device

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical, said just a month ago that a phone capable of convergence would be out this year, but he didn't give any information about it, nor about the company that was supposed to build it.

In the announcement made by BQ regarding the launch of the Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition, the company also said that they were the ones to deliver that device although they didn't say when or what platform is going to be used.

The only thing that we do know is that it's coming this year and that it needs to be a rather powerful device or at least powerful enough to run the desktop flavor of Ubuntu. And, of course, it needs to have a dock or some kind of mechanism that allows users to connect it to a monitor and charge it at the same time.