I've skimmed through now.

My view is that actually convergence is the only thing that may become the selling point someday. Of course there is a number of obstacles which I also listed in my post.

Why? Well, without convergence how does Ubuntu differ from Android or iOS?

It's free, open source, privacy focused. But Sailfish is too, Firefox OS was as well. None of them succeeded as well. Given the Android and iOS have so many users, unfortunately few people care about those. It more tweakable and less locked. Well, hardly a good selling point as well, unless its target are developers only. It has different UI, navigation patterns. Again, it depends on individual preferences. Existing Android and iOS users may be very hard to move away from OSes they are used to. The entirely new thing you can do with your phone

I believe that mobile market is a very hard one and the only way to jump in and get a significant share is to find a niche where noone is present yet - and to show people that with Ubuntu Touch they can do things which they cannot do neither with Android, nor with iOS etc. I don't mean things that they cannot do this way or that good, that fast, etc. I mean a quality change - things that they cannot do at all. I see convergence and an option to ditch laptop for some people such a thing.

Relased before it was ready

Also please note the other reasons that are mentioned in the post you linked: convergence was marketed as it was actually done and ready, but in fact it was far from it. Unity 8's functionality is far from finished for desktops, UITK as well, many desktop apps looked bad or didn't run properly when M10 tablet went on sale. I think that was a huge mistake to try selling convergent devices without having delivered the minimum viable product in terms of convergence.

Hardware

And again, the hardware. As Miracast has failed as an alternative to HDMI and few phones provide the MHL, the convergence usability is limited with what we currently have. No to mention the problem of convergent mode with charger cable plugged in. This is why I said that we are not there yet and the correct way is to sell the convergence is to make it work flawlessly first, then create the device that allow users to use the full potential of convergence and then market it and show off the value that convergent phoneputer adds to their lives.

Ubuntu Edge

On the other hand - Ubuntu Edge didn't get funded, but it has actually broken croudfunding record gathering more then 12 million dollars. I believe that the goal was set extremely high (and probably needed to be in order to make it happen), but still the traction it gained hints that there might be a future for converget devices or phoneputers.

Please see the separate thread i just opened on a potential temp solution: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/929/update-meizu-pro-5-baseband

@sverzegnassi do you have any ETA or that design won't be released any more to the OpenStore app?

On a sidenote, we indeed haven't done our best yet to provide all the information about our needs for UX.
The website is currently going to be refreshed, so we'd ask you to stay tuned for further updates 😃

As you all properly pointed out, one of first goals is to provide consistency. Or, at an higher level, coherence.

At the moment we're approaching a transition from Ubuntu Vivid to Xenial, and we will be tied to a different toolkit (QtQuick Controls 2, shortly QQC2[1]).

Our effort is to port the Suru design to QQC2; in this regard, we're creating a new style for the components. Here's a very early video, the style is based on Vanilla Design[2].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ahCT7yqr08&feature=youtu.be

With the new toolkit, which offers less control on how components behave, and all the features that convergence brings, including the ability to run apps that hasn't been designed for Ubuntu Touch, we can expect some obstacle in fully implement the current set of specifications.

Our hope is that it could turn in an opportunity to refresh our Suru specifications.

The full documentation for the current Suru design is not available or, in some parts, outdated (mid-2013, when Suru was still using those odd gradients).
The same documentation available on docs.ubuntu.com has never been completed during the last four years.

In the meantime, we have seen the raise of new UX trends, one of the controversial components (the bottom navigation) has been officially adopted by the Material guidelines, and Canonical decided to drop its Ayatana project (i.e. Unity 7) and adopt the GNOME 3 HIG.

What we need is help and guidance through these multiple inputs, in order to fix some of the current issues in usability, and eventually validate the design of new UI components. In a longer term, we might want to support an effort to revisit the current design guidelines.

I saw you've been interested by the recent changes in clock-app.
Feel free to open a new issue, or join existing discussions at: https://github.com/ubports/clock-app/issues

Thank you again!

======

[1] https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquickcontrols2-index.html
[2] https://github.com/ubuntudesign/vanilla-design

@kugiigi I've only just got used to how things work now in OTA 8. I believe it would be almost impossible to judge from a textual description whether an alternative approach would be better or worse. There are so many use cases that it would take weeks to properly evaluate an actual implementation.

I think @sverzegnassi has been working on the Suru style for QQC for some time. Would you share some information on what the status is and if anything has been done not only to style, but also SDK components (bottom edge, headers, swipeable list items etc.)?

I decided not to take up any work in it currently and focus on an idea that might someday evolve into a decent app. I'll not shere more information though, as there is still a long way ahead and the entire thing is uncertain.

But if the app will approach to materialization, I'll definitely consider implementing in QQC2 (if Suru style and component set is in good shape enough by this time), and maybe help out with the SDK in that time.