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    • Few thoughts regarding coming back after several years

      Hello all!

      Few years ago (in 2015 probably) I bought Meizu MX4 with Canonical's Ubuntu software and I was pretty happy how the software was working on it - with a hope for a real Convergence. Unfortunately, I broke my phone after year of usage, also Canonical dropped the Ubuntu for Phones project - so I used Android & IOS till yesterday.

      For a now, because I remembered that there is something like Ubuntu Touch, I decided to go back and see what changed for last 6-7 years. I bought Pixel 3A, downgraded Android to 9.0 and after that, installed UT - It was a very nice and pleasant experience - I installed it without any problems and run the UT on my phone.
      Then I started to look around to see what had changed in terms of the interface - luckily almost nothing! I found that using this OS is still very convenient.
      After that, I decided to set up my phone as primary (and configure must-have features in my opinion) - and then, problems starts:

      • There is no out-of-box mail app that could work with Gmail with push notification;
      • Importing Google Contacts also not working.

      So these two are a regression in comparison to few years ago usage while I had MX4.

      • Lack of native open-source Firefox (used in most linux distros) (fragmentation of software continues....) - in my opinion, the resources should be utilized to port Firefox on UT instead of creating new Web-browser.
      • Plenty of apps in Store are out-dated or not working properly anymore (or are only simply web bookmarks)
      • Support for Android apps still require a lot of work (e.g. GPS is not working).

      Above list is based on my personal needs and unfortunately, excepts open source and privacy aspects of using UT, I don't see any advantages for myself from using this phone 😞

      Do this phone has really some Convergence features? I'm not sure - to achieve it, we need to get most famous apps to be working (like Libreoffice or Firefox) with this.

      From my perspective, it looks like it's a system where bugs are patched and pre-existing options are keeping alive; I haven't noticed any significant options added in the last 7 years in UT. And in addition, the App Store has fewer and fewer valuable apps.

      Many years ago, while using MX4, I took an active part in the development of this system (mainly by reporting bugs and doing translations to my native language) - I would also like to change something now to make UT better, but I am not able (I don't know how to code).

      I wrote this post to pass to you all my thoughts and observations from a user's perspective. I've been using linux on a desktop computer for 20 years, but unfortunately on phones we didn't make any spectacular success. This OS isn't for me (as for now).

      The world has changed a lot over the last few years, the way we use our smartphones has also changed - and UT probably hasn't kept up with it 😞

      posted in General
      K
      ktatar156
    • RE: Few thoughts regarding coming back after several years

      @domubpkm Thanks for your message 🙂 And just curious, what Focal version will change? (I know that is a new base for the whole OS, but from the new features / usage of UT?).
      Is there any features lists available?

      posted in General
      K
      ktatar156