Anbox already works on the OnePlus One device

Apr 18, 2017 21:00 GMT  ·  By

Continuing our coverage on the UBports' Unity 8 and Ubuntu Touch plans, we've got word from Marius Quabeck, who's now the new community manager for UBports, about some of the aspects that remained unclear since the last Q&A.

The guys did another Q&A just before the Easter holidays, which you can watch entirely at the end of the article if you don't feel like reading all that follows, but we will try to keep things to the point, informing our readers only about the most important aspects they need to keep in mind about the future of Ubuntu Phones.

So, regarding the future of existing Ubuntu Phones/Tablets, UBports said that, except for the Meizu PRO 5 and BQ Aquaris M10 devices, they'd offer legacy support for older models too, which include BQ Aquaris E4.5, BQ Aquaris E5 HD, and Meizu MX4. Legacy support meaning that these devices will only receive security fixes.

However, to continue updating your older Ubuntu Phones, you'll most probably need to reflash the device using the instructions provided on the UBports website. If you want to switch to a newer Ubuntu Phone, UBports recommends buying the Fairphone 2, OnePlus One or Nexus 5.

"All devices but the Pro 5 and M10 will be in 'legacy' mode, getting critical bugfixes and security updates. These will be in-between due to their closed Android source tree," said the devs. "You should probably buy one of the stable devices: Nexus 5, Fairphone 2, or Oneplus One."

Mir on top of Wayland is a go

We told you last time that UBports plans on creating their own Ubuntu Store to provide access to Ubuntu Touch apps to users, and the plan right now is to fork OpenStore at openstore.ubports.com, but this can't be done without the approval of the developers of the respective applications hosted there.

The future is not very clear about Canonical's Ubuntu One sign-in services, if they will be used or not, neither for the Ubuntu SDK, but it looks like Mir on top of Wayland is a go because Canonical will only continue to improve its display server for IoT (Internet of Things) devices instead of desktop and mobile.

As for the new Anbox project, which promises to let users run Android apps on their Linux-based operating systems, the UBports team is very confident that it will be a success on Ubuntu Phone devices, and it appears to already work well on OnePlus One. We'll keep you guys updated as soon as we have more info.