Can you give me a small list of goods and bads youve seen so far with ubuntutouch? Im not talking about “its missing [insert google specific feature]” but more general. Whats the UX like? Any glitchyness or crashes? How is the desktop mode when connecting external displays? Things like that.
ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 19 hours ago
Sure why not:
There are weird quirk that you simply don’t encounter in Android, like the UI not really tailored for displays with rounded corners or with a camera in the top-middle blocking icons, or the side drag areas being too small for my taste. Or the keyboard’s haptic feedback seemingly not going away when you disable it, because there’s also a general touch haptic feedback that’s well-hidden in the settings menus, that you didn’t know about.
All this is fixable with enough time and minor hackery, but it still requires time and hackery you don’t need in Android.
I haven’t tried an external display. I have a computer for that.
Waydroid - the Android emulation - is very slick and quite stable. Integration is quite good: when you install an Android app, it shows up in the UT menu immediately. Sometimes they show up twice: just refresh the menu by pulling down and the extra instance disappears. At least in my extremely well-supported Fairphone 5, there’s no issues with access to camera, networking, NFC… But the camera has a quirk: you have to open the native UT camera first, otherwise Android apps won’t be able to use the camera for some reason.
Sharing files between UT and Android apps isn’t a thing natively, but you can download Waydroid helper apps to do that in the Openstore.
If you want long-winded Android apps, you have to leave the window open. If you close it, the app stops if it was the only one running in Waydroid.
There’s a thing called Libertine to run native desktop Linux apps in UT: I find it crashy at best. But it’s there.
Most important apps like calls, SMS, browsing, emails are handled quite well by native UT apps. Other things like maps are handled by web apps, and while I intensely dislike web apps, I must say they work really well.
All of this is easy to live with if you’re willing and persistent enough. But if you want a phone that Just Works™ like most people do, This won’t cut it. That’s why I’m saying, Apple and Google have absolutely nothing to fear from Linux phones: most people aren’t willing to spend a tenth of the time I’m willing to spend on a quirky phone for the sake of principles.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 15 hours ago
Nice nice, thanks a lot. I got a FP4 and have been wanting to try out UT for a while. Now that CalyxOS development has paused im really considering giving it a shot. This gives me a good idea for what to expect. I used SailfishOS for a few years and it seems very comparable to that with some much needed improvements on top.
ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 15 hours ago
That’s the same reason why I gave Ubuntu Touch a go: CalyxOS going stale on my FP4. But I decided to buy an FP5 to give it a whirl and leave the FP4 alone, because I can’t really do without a reliable phone while I make sure the kinks are worked out.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 14 hours ago
Yuup thats exactly what has been holding me off from it so far.