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Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones
Canonical's much-hyped January 2 announcement is the
availability of a version of the Ubuntu distribution for mobile phones; it
will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show starting
January 7. "Your phone is more immersive, the screen is less
cluttered, and you flow naturally from app to app with edge magic. The
phone becomes a full PC and thin client when docked. Ubuntu delivers a
magical phone that is faster to run, faster to use and fits perfectly into
the Ubuntu family." There is no word about uptake by any handset
manufacturers.
(Log in to post comments)
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 18:55 UTC (Wed) by djs_tx (subscriber, #29646) [Link]
The current business model of phones in the USA puts as much control of the phone in carrier hands as possible. They lock the software done, install bloatware, and control software updates to the point where buying a new phone is often the only way to get a bugfix.
I am cautiously hopeful this might be a lever that some capitalist / entrepreneur can use to disrupt that model. Maybe offer subsidy free phones with competitive user experience on cheap enough hardware?
Going to be hard to make a dent in the carrier control with LTE frequency fragmentation forcing phones to be built to one or two carrier compatibility.
Choice is good but this is not in the interests of those who (tightly) control the pipes. They don't want to be commoditized.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 19:24 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> I am cautiously hopeful this might be a lever that some capitalist / entrepreneur can use to disrupt that model. Maybe offer subsidy free phones with competitive user experience on cheap enough hardware?
You mean like Google did with the Nexus 4? (they even compromised on LTE to get out of the carrier mess).
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 21:45 UTC (Wed) by davide.del.vento (guest, #59196) [Link]
http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/5/3138711/five-years-after...
I moved to the USA from Europe 6 years ago and I was literally shocked by how bad the phone situation was here.
Dunno how Europe is doing right now, but maybe Canonical (UK-based) is doing what I would have done myself if I were in that business: first launch in Europe [1], then advertise in the USA and let the customers push the carriers give them what Europeans had.
[1] In Europe customers buy handsets and the carrier contracts separately, and carriers cannot refuse service to anybody who pays and has a handset following the standard for telecommunications
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 21:55 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> In Europe customers buy handsets and the carrier contracts separately, and carriers cannot refuse service to anybody who pays and has a handset following the standard for telecommunications.
That's only partly true ... not sure which part of Europe you are talking about but here in Austria it is like that:
You *can* buy a phone and a contract separately or buy a locked phone + contract from a carrier.
In the former case you have to pay the full price of the phone upfront but the contract will be cheaper and your phone will be unlocked.
In the later case you get the phone from the carrier at a subsidized price but get higher rates for your contract, a locked phone and usually can't cancel the contract until after 24 months. If you want to unlock your phone you'd have either to wait for 24 months and pay a small fee or some allow the unlocking earlier but charge a rather large fee for that.
As for the "carriers cannot refuse service to anybody" I don't know if they cannot do that (i.e legally) but they would be stupid if they do given that they would just lose a customer to the competition.
What is that much different in the US?
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 22:03 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> What is that much different in the US?
In the US almost all phones are subsidized with contracts.
you don't get cheaper service if you have a phone that you paid full price for.
many phones are unable to work on competing sytems
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 22:12 UTC (Wed) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
In US the situation is starting to improve. T-Mobile for example offers lower priced plans for non contract / non subsidized devices. However that's about it - all others don't have such options.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 6:54 UTC (Thu) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]
T-Mobile has a $30 no voice all data plan that is tempting for an information dork like me who wants mobile Internet but no mobile phone. No contract, no device subsidy.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 5, 2013 23:39 UTC (Sat) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]
Do you have a link to this plan? The closest plan I can find to what you describe gives you 100 min talk and 5GB full speed data for $30. Was that what you had in mind?
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 22:32 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> you don't get cheaper service if you have a phone that you paid full price for.
WTF? That makes zero sense.
> many phones are unable to work on competing sytems
Well the CDMA/GSM thing is a technical issue.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 23:47 UTC (Wed) by cwillu (subscriber, #67268) [Link]
This isn't the CDMA vs GSM thing, it's an actual lock on the phone preventing it from connecting to a competing provider unless you unlock the phone.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 6:48 UTC (Thu) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]
Entertainingly enough, in the USA there's now a service called Straight Talk that lets you use a locked GSM phone as long as it's locked to an AT&T or T-Mobile network. We just picked up a barely used AT&T network Samsung Galaxy S II for $150 off craigslist (new they're $350 on the shelf with no contract) and then bought the $15 AT&T-compatible SIM and everything is working fine.
They offer SIMs for T-Mobile, AT&T, and unlocked GSM phones. The CDMA option at top is there to notify you that "This program is not available with CDMA (i.e. Verizon, Sprint, Metro PCS), TracFone, SafeLink, NET10, Straight Talk or BlackBerry phones.":
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 13:16 UTC (Thu) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
This isn't different in other countries ... when you buy a phone from a carrier it is locked. My question was what is different in the US. That's not different at all ;)
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 22:09 UTC (Thu) by fdrs (subscriber, #85858) [Link]
Here at Brazil, it is mandatory that Carriers unlock the phone for free.
You still has the contract shackles though.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 2:23 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
>> you don't get cheaper service if you have a phone that you paid full price for.
> WTF? That makes zero sense.
It makes perfect sense for the carriers (they get more money)
it makes sense for users because they don't see it as a phone subsidy, they see it as 'getting a free phone"
but any way you look at it, same price for service with a carrier provided phone or a phone you purchase independently is the reality in the US.
As such, there is a significant disincentive to using an unlocked phone, you have to pay full price for the phone and get no discount off of your monthly bill.
from another comment T-Mobile is starting to buck this trend, and there are a growing number of prepaid options that don't care what phone you use (and are happier if you use your own), but they are still currently exceptions
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 9:35 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] The whole thing works only because prices for mobile connection in US are exorbitant to begin with. My monthly mobile phone bill was under $10/month for years. Now I've gotten smartphone and with "unlimited" Internet (which is severely limited if I go beyong 1GB/month, of course) I pay $25/month (for voice and data: $10 for voice and $15 for "unlimited" data). It's not possible to hide phone subsidies with prices like that. That's why most of the world pay for the phone upfront while in US (and some other countries) people pay 3-4 times more and think they use "free phone". Sadly most affluent buyers are gated by carriers thus carriers still can control the future of mobile handsets. Only middle-range phones are created for carrier-uncontrolled world (think Dual-SIM phones).
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 16:27 UTC (Thu) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
N9 is high end, and is carrier uncontrolled. Same story would be with Jolla handset for sure.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 5, 2013 14:50 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] N9 is high end, and is carrier uncontrolled. N9 is the exception that proves the rule: it was designed by a company with excellent relationship with non-US carriers but at the time when it was actually presented these relationships deteriorated. That happens (see Palm, RIM, etc), you are correct. I admit my mistake: I only think about somewhat sustainable trends, when some company finds the seed money do develop something only to fail in marketplace these rules don't apply, obviously. Same story would be with Jolla handset for sure. If I understand correctly Jolla works with Chinese carriers. We'll see how much what it does will be influenced by them.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 13:22 UTC (Thu) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> It makes perfect sense for the carriers (they get more money)
Sure but it isn't needed any one of them can start to stop doing this and have an advantage over the competition (like t mobile is apparently doing now). So this should fix itself over time.
> it makes sense for users because they don't see it as a phone subsidy, they see it as 'getting a free phone"
They are just naive .. there is no such thing as a "free phone".
> As such, there is a significant disincentive to using an unlocked phone, you have to pay full price for the phone and get no discount off of your monthly bill.
For someone that is used to a more sane environment where such nonsense does not exits (ex. me) this really sounds odd.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 4, 2013 13:24 UTC (Fri) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]
> > it makes sense for users because they don't see it as a phone subsidy, they see it as 'getting a free phone"
> They are just naive .. there is no such thing as a "free phone".
It has been my experience over many years that most people prefer a fixed monthly charge over a large upfront cost and low monthly cost even when the former version costs a great deal more over any period longer than about a year.
This seems really odd to me, but it's true.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 4, 2013 17:49 UTC (Fri) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
It depends on users' expectations. If they plan to change their devices every year or two - then subsidized method can look attractive, but if they plan to use devices longer (and in many cases people do), then there is an obvious benefit in paying more upfront and getting a lower monthly fee for several years.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 23:25 UTC (Wed) by Fowl (subscriber, #65667) [Link]
Most (all) Australian carriers either don't lock or have unlocking available for a nominal fee (sometimes free) for the phones that they sell on a contract. If you think about it this makes sense - they already have your money, if you don't want to use their network, hey costless revenue. Of course in most cases the handset is not "subsidised" per se, just offered on credit. That's not to say that the every sans handset plans are actually good value.
Prepaid is another matter as the handsets are actually sold below cost - though even there all the carriers offer unlocking for semi-reasonable fees that often decrease over time.
Mandatory number portability probably also helps consumer (carrier) mobility. The advent of pentaband devices removes the last technical barrier.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 13:58 UTC (Thu) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]
> The current business model of phones in the USA puts as much control of the phone in carrier hands as possible.
I can offer some hope, this is a reversible situation: in France this was exactly the same situation until a fourth carrier arrived (Free Mobile) with aggressive pricing and an offer without prepayed phone.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 8, 2013 18:06 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> The current business model of phones in the USA puts as much control of the phone in carrier hands as possible. They lock the software done, install bloatware, and control software updates to the point where buying a new phone is often the only way to get a bugfix.
I wish somebody told me.
I have owned several smart phones and before that I had a java phone and each and every time I was able to change the firmware and do what I wanted with it.
What am I doing wrong here?
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 19:24 UTC (Wed) by heijo (guest, #88363) [Link]
Is the code actually ready? Where is the code?
Can it be installed on any shipping Android devices or any about to be shipped?
How does it coexist with Android? Can it just run Android apps? Dual boot? Virtualization?
Can it run Firefox OS apps?
How come they have a working phone system considering that Ubuntu for Nexus 7 doesn't seem to be ready, and that phones are obviously harder to support than tablets?
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 22:13 UTC (Wed) by bjartur (subscriber, #67801) [Link]
I'm pretty sure this mobile version of Ubuntu will ship a JavaScript implementation, yes. And Ubuntu just might ship Alien Dalvik. Even if not, given enough tinkering, you might install it yourself.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 22:13 UTC (Thu) by fdrs (subscriber, #85858) [Link]
It will not run dalvik, it will just leverage the hardware drivers (HAL libraries).
It will be Qt5/QML based
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 7, 2013 9:07 UTC (Mon) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]
So it's using Jolla's libhybris ?
No hardware, no operator Posted Jan 2, 2013 19:34 UTC (Wed) by Tester (subscriber, #40675) [Link]
What's most interesting in this announcement is what is not there.. There is not talk of any hardware or any operator.. So even if the software already exist, it's mostly hot air.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 19:56 UTC (Wed) by trey (subscriber, #37500) [Link]
Hands-on w/ Mark Shuttleworth:
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 20:13 UTC (Wed) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
> yet it uses the same drivers as Android.
http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone
How is it exactly? Or it's Ubuntu UI on top of Android and it's not a real Ubunutu?
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 20:56 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Looks like they're using a chrooted Ubuntu with X/Wayland server running on top of SurfaceFlinger. That's been possible for ages.
What's interesting is integration and handoff between two various stacks. Probably they had to write quite a bit of glue code for that.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 21:45 UTC (Wed) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link]
Interesting - where did you find technical info? Did they post code?
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 22:41 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
There was a story on LWN about it a year ago or so.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 22:57 UTC (Wed) by kklimonda (subscriber, #60089) [Link]
It doesn't seem to be the same project though
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 22:14 UTC (Wed) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
So far I didn't see any details. May be they are using libhybris or something the like.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 20:02 UTC (Thu) by sciurus (subscriber, #58832) [Link] That is what they're doing for Ubuntu for Android. Ubuntu for phones is a different product. I suspect that it uses their own userspace with the android kernel.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 3, 2013 20:22 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]
Somehow this doesn't sound like something I would want to run on any embedded device.. chrooted Ubuntu, X running on top of something else, glue code...
Alex
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 20:31 UTC (Wed) by Hanno (guest, #41730) [Link]
Actually, I'm still waiting for Ubuntu for TV and Ubuntu for Android, which were both announced to be released and shipping on actual devices in 2012.
I really do like Ubuntu and use it as my main/only desktop OS since several years. But it appears that Canonical loves to announce vapourware products every now and then.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 20:39 UTC (Wed) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
I'd expect Jolla to ship a Sailfish device before Canonical would ship theirs.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 5, 2013 0:12 UTC (Sat) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]
I don't know, but I think FirefoxOS will be first to market (in their case Brazil) of the 4 new Linux-based phones. Because it is planned for Q1. My guess is, Tizen will be second and Jolla 3rd. Ubuntu phones is planned for 2014. It will be the last to enter the market.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 2, 2013 20:43 UTC (Wed) by krakensden (subscriber, #72039) [Link] I'm excited about this sort of thing. My personal future vision is a phone that I can plug in to a monster dock, either with an eGPU or something similar, or just... using the phone's flash as a hard drive. Portability, privacy, performance.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 2, 2013 22:32 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Privacy? On a phone? Oh, you are talking about someone else's meaty paws, not about actual computer privacy.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 3, 2013 1:52 UTC (Thu) by krakensden (subscriber, #72039) [Link]
I'm not a Verizon or AT&T subscriber- I could bring my own hypothetical Ubuntu phone with no carrier spyware.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 3, 2013 12:28 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] OK, you are right: removing Android (and thus Google) from the picture is a big improvement. Ubuntu is moving towards invading its users' privacy (see the recent "Amazon search lens" stories) but it's not there yet.I would not be really happy until I could install my own distro on the phone. Having Ubuntu as an option would probably be a major step. I am not sure if Google services as Maps can have a free replacement though -- even for webmail I depend on them. To be honest I have not even bothered to install Cyanogenmod yet -- I suppose I am no Stallman when it comes to privacy vs convenience, and life inside the Mothership is not so bad. Now if I could choose a fully functional Debian...
Computer privacy Posted Jan 3, 2013 13:15 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
This is why it was so sad for me to see Nokia go down in flames. The N900 was not exactly Debian, but it was pretty much Debian for all practical purposes. It's too bad the Meego efforts are all based on something else, because finding my next phone when I get fed up with the bugs in my N9 is going to be a problem. It's hard to go from "I have root and apt-get out of the box" to anything less.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 3, 2013 16:30 UTC (Thu) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
Package management is a minor thing to adapt to, in comparison to general flexibility. Having root and zypper isn't any worse than having root and apt-get.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 3, 2013 17:48 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] apt-get is just an example, there are a lot of little differences between distributions and on the N9/N900 they pretty much all come out the Debian way which I both like and am very familiar with.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 3, 2013 22:24 UTC (Thu) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
Mer based ones (like Nemo) come out of Meego, and have no direct relation to Debian. And actually Nemo is the only one actively developed distribution which can run on N900 and N9.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 3, 2013 21:12 UTC (Thu) by cjwatson (subscriber, #7322) [Link]
For all practical purposes other than building packages, maybe - I gave up after a few hours of scratchbox hell, although I love my N900. I have considerable hope that building packages for an Ubuntu phone will be much more sensible, given the work we've been doing on multiarch and cross-building. (34% of Ubuntu main cross-builds out of the box at the moment ...)
Computer privacy Posted Jan 3, 2013 22:25 UTC (Thu) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
Did you try Mer SDK and OBS?
Computer privacy Posted Jan 4, 2013 0:01 UTC (Fri) by cjwatson (subscriber, #7322) [Link]
No. Life is too short.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 4, 2013 15:49 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Life is too short to try tools that save considerable time?
Computer privacy Posted Jan 5, 2013 11:05 UTC (Sat) by cjwatson (subscriber, #7322) [Link]
As far as I can tell, the Mer SDK only builds for RPM-based systems. I'm unlikely ever to recoup the time spent in converting my phone from Maemo to Meego or one of its descendants.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 4, 2013 0:02 UTC (Fri) by cjwatson (subscriber, #7322) [Link]
And incidentally I'm not interested in running (and especially not in developing) anything non-Debian-based.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 4, 2013 1:22 UTC (Fri) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
Up to you of course. I personally use Debian on the desktop as well, and would prefer something Debian based for the mobile as well. However Debian as a project is rather slow to advance much in the mobile sphere. Mer on the other hand moves fast and is optimized for mobile, being well ahead of others, so I see nothing wrong with using it. Learning different tools like RPM vs DEB or some architectural differences and etc. isn't a scary or unworthy effort.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 4, 2013 6:50 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
It isn't particularly hard to put Debian on a random mobile device:
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2012/12/03/debian-mobile/
Unfortunately due to Linux mainline not supporting random mobile devices, Debian can't either. You can help get Debian on your mobile device by becoming a kernel developer and helping fix, rewrite and send upstream all the Android drivers from random kernel forks. Likewise for bootloaders. We could also use some help packaging the various mobile GUIs and applications:
Looks like Fedora and other distributions are discovering the kernel stuff too:
http://cedarandthistle.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/android-j...
Computer privacy Posted Jan 4, 2013 18:00 UTC (Fri) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
Yes, that's understandable, but that's exactly where Mer has an advantage. They explicitly separated the hardware adaptation bits from the rest of the system. I.e. hw adaptation is pluggable, and the rest of the core distribution stays the same (within the same arch like ARMv7, MIPS and etc.). Since putting all kind of wild mobile kernels differences in the mainline doesn't sound like a practically rapid approach, Mer just doesn't dictate it, and hw adaptations are up to the vendors to provide. It allows moving fast and be flexible with it.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 9, 2013 16:31 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
I never understood what Mer people were on about with that. Does "explicitly separated the hardware adaptation bits" mean that they just don't include kernels for most devices? If so that sounds exactly like what Debian is forced to do. If not, could you explain what you mean? Sounds like they will be facing the same kind of bugs in crappy, blobby, non-mainline kernels that I did with Debian or that CyanogenMod do. Trusting hardware vendors doesn't sound like a good plan in the slightest.
Computer privacy Posted Jan 12, 2013 12:40 UTC (Sat) by juliank (subscriber, #45896) [Link]
They just package up the kernel and other libraries for each target separately, not much more. So basically each device has its own kernel + userspace libraries.
That's still better than Android though, where the complete system is built for a specific target and no sharing happens at all (not even userspace components).
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 9, 2013 7:21 UTC (Wed) by akeane (subscriber, #85436) [Link]
hehe, even Canonical recommend (nay, insist) you don't use Unity:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/in-which-ars-is-al...
A real unix phone of course would do nothing but bring up a VT220 terminal, then you could do stuff like:
echo $PHONE_NUMBER > /dev/keypad
The scripting possibilities are endless!
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 9, 2013 19:17 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Please tell me you are not joking about this. I don't know how many times I have had to read a phone number from a computer and dial it on the stupid phone dial which doesn't even follow the same standard as my computer's numeric keypad. Not to speak about dialing weird codes to get to everyday functions, and then redialing and getting back the whole absurd string of numbers. I don't know why computer phones are not widespread yet in this era of VoIP apart from the very inane Skype software.Dialing from the console on a computer would be much better than having a separate phone.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 9, 2013 23:12 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
I wonder if there are any Android keyboard apps which allow flipping the number pad around. If they want to replace computers, could we at least get the saner number pad?
(A quick look around has come up with nothing so far.)
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 10, 2013 1:10 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the hacker keyboard has the number pad (on the fn screen) in the computer (123 along the bottom) format.
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 10, 2013 1:24 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
The one I see is based on the Gingerbread keyboard. I suppose I could file a bug against Android for a checkbox about it (hopefully it would affect the phone app as well).
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 10, 2013 1:26 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Now that I think about it, ATM keypads are also wrong. Probably the ones at the register at stores too (I don't use those for numbers, so I don't remember exactly). Little hope in getting those changed :( .
Canonical to demonstrate Ubuntu on phones Posted Jan 10, 2013 13:22 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I have seen ATM keypads with both formats: 123 at the top and 123 at the bottom. And there are also those with a full keyboard, which follow the computer standard. So not everything is lost!
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