The number of devices will increase in 2015

Jun 24, 2015 13:57 GMT  ·  By

It's been a long journey for Canonical, but the company finally has its Ubuntu system in the wild and in the hands of users. In fact, you can get three Ubuntu phones right now and here they are.

We sometimes forget that not everyone follows Ubuntu news and developments on a daily basis, and there may be some new users out there that are just finding out about the Ubuntu phones. It's difficult to discern from all the coverage that was done in the past two years what's been happening exactly, so here is a short history.

Canonical announced more than two years ago that it was planning to make an Ubuntu operating system for smartphones, and they finally managed to complete it this year. When we say complete, we mean that it's stable and in a shippable state for phones that can be sold in shops, but that doesn't mean that it's a complete platform. In fact, all the mobile platforms like Android, iOS, and Windows had been very limited when they first appeared on the market. The same is happening with Ubuntu, which is still being improved as we speak.

What are the Ubuntu phones

If you are looking for an operating system that doesn't resemble what has been done so far, then Ubuntu is what you want. It's an OS that uses swipes from edges for most of the tasks, and it doesn't rely on buttons. The OS is easy to use and pick up, and there are already quite a few apps for it, although not as many as you might expect. In any case, here are the phones, from the cheapest to the most expensive.

The Bq Aquaris e4.5 Ubuntu Edition was the first to make an appearance and it's the cheapest of them all. This is an unlocked dual-sim phone with a 1.3 GHz MediaTek Quad-Core Cortex A7 processor, 1GB RAM, an 8MP back camera with flash and a front-facing 5MP camera. The display is 4.5 inches.

Bq Aquaris e5 Ubuntu Edition has a 5-inch IPS HD display with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels (380 cd/m2), a MediaTek quad-core Cortex A7 CPU at 1.3 GHz, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage. It's also packed with a 13MP BSI sensor on the back and a 5MP camera on the front.

The phone that's launching tomorrow in Europe, on June 25, Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition, is the latest one to join the fold. It comes with a MediaTek 6595 CPU with eight cores (customized by Meizu), and it's separated into an A17 2.2GHz processor and an A7 1.7GHz processor. It also features 5.36-inch Sharp/JDI display (1920 x 1152 resolution), a contrast ratio of 1100:1, 500cd/m2, Corning Gorilla Glass 3. Also, a PowerVR G6200 GPU is also used, along with 2GB dual-channel LPDDR3 RAM at 933MHz.

So far only the Chinese and European markets have been covered, but there are some promises that a phone will be made available for the US as well, this year. These are the Ubuntu phones available right now and be sure to check back for a review to all of them.

Ubuntu phones (3 Images)

Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition
BQ Aquaris E4.5BQ Aquaris E5 HD
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