Saucy Salamander Ubuntu 13.10 was release for phones a couple of days
back and I tried venturing into this on my phone. The Ubuntu Phone has
pretty good support for Galaxy Nexus(maguro). Here's some notes and my
experience with it in a day
For Tl;dr folks, the one liner review - Overall I liked the different
interface but the responsiveness is a turn off, I am considering a
dual boot now or worst case going back to CM until Ubuntu is faster,
responsive and supported with a lot of apps.
back and I tried venturing into this on my phone. The Ubuntu Phone has
pretty good support for Galaxy Nexus(maguro). Here's some notes and my
experience with it in a day
For Tl;dr folks, the one liner review - Overall I liked the different
interface but the responsiveness is a turn off, I am considering a
dual boot now or worst case going back to CM until Ubuntu is faster,
responsive and supported with a lot of apps.
PC requirements
Requires adt-bundle for having fastboot/adb binaries. I am on Ubuntu Desktop and downloaded the adt bundle from developer page for android.
Phone requirements
- Rooted! Your phone should be rooted, if not just stop reading from here.
- TWRP Team Win Recovery Project for recovery
Backing up your Phone
- Nandroid Backup Nandroid Backup is a full ROM back up - With this backup from a recovery you could just come back to the same state of your phone as you started off with before trying in all this messy stuff. One can use TWRP for this - Just backup everything, system, cache, data, dalvik - everything.
- Titanium Backup A paid app for backing up your App data + Sys data. You will need Titanium Backup App+ Titanium Backup Key Pro.
Back up all your user app + system data I would recommend to be doubly backed up with all your data. So Titanium backup. Worst case, I willg go back to installing a CM release candidate and restored from this Titanium backup.
Installation
Installation is quite simpler, just follow the instructions on the the Ubuntu website. Note that you SHOULD be on a running CM mod or any other version and NOT in recovery mode for installation
Quick Summary of Ubuntu ROM install commands
Reference http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/install
Run everything on your Ubuntu computer with your phone connected to it via USB
> sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools
> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get install phablet-tools android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot
> adb shell
> su - phable
> sudo phablet-flash ubuntu-system --channel devel-proposed --no-backup
Note there are quite a few channels from where you could install use the --channel switch for option what channel you want.
List of channels that I tried
Run everything on your Ubuntu computer with your phone connected to it via USB
> sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools
> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get install phablet-tools android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot
> adb shell
> su - phable
> sudo phablet-flash ubuntu-system --channel devel-proposed --no-backup
Note there are quite a few channels from where you could install use the --channel switch for option what channel you want.
List of channels that I tried
- devel-proposed : bleeding edge builds (not QA tested)
- devel : release candidate I suppose
I got to Ubuntu 13.10(r101) using devel-proposed but thats a bit faster as compared to r100 build(devel).
What you think are Errors during Install
- Once you execute the above commands, you might see errors indicating some autodeploy.zip file not present - Ignore these
- The ubuntu flashing takes quite some time, "quite" here means around 5 minutes or even more. Just be patient and once installed your phone will boot into the "Ubuntu Unity UI", if that's what its called.
On Install
Syncing your google contact
You will admire Google for keeping your contacts synced - With your contacts your phone just seems so dead.
With Ubuntu running on your phone and connected to your Ubuntu
computer, use the following
> adb shell
> su - phablet
> syncevolution --configure --sync-property "username=email@gmail.com" --sync-property "password=secret" Google_Contacts
> syncevolution --sync one-way-from-server Google_Contacts addressbook
You might have to do this multiple times, since it only syncs 50 contacts per run of the command - seems frustrating - try putting it in a loop with a shell command :^)
computer, use the following
> adb shell
> su - phablet
> syncevolution --configure --sync-property "username=email@gmail.com" --sync-property "password=secret" Google_Contacts
> syncevolution --sync one-way-from-server Google_Contacts addressbook
You might have to do this multiple times, since it only syncs 50 contacts per run of the command - seems frustrating - try putting it in a loop with a shell command :^)
Keyboard layout
Update keyboard layouts if necessary
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/ReleaseNotes#Keyboard
I couldnt' figure out the $ key initially but then its on the "second" symbols tab. Press 123 once to get the first symbols window with numbers and press again for more special characters. Coming from a SwiftKey user experience, this feels primitive again.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/ReleaseNotes#Keyboard
I couldnt' figure out the $ key initially but then its on the "second" symbols tab. Press 123 once to get the first symbols window with numbers and press again for more special characters. Coming from a SwiftKey user experience, this feels primitive again.
"Friends"
I used this app for browsing my twitter stream - I could manage to compose a tweet and it was easier than the twitter app itself. There is a twitter app separately but really messed up, very slow again for composing as well as reading out tweets.
My 1st day experience with Ubuntu Phone
Slow and Unresponsive
Initially it was very slow - mostly to do with running apps. Without any app running, the browsing across app is pretty fast. The way to close apps is to hold them apps in the "Recent Applications" area and it shows up a "X" indicating close application on each of these apps.
Reboot
I couldn't figure out a way to execute a reboot, it was just pop your battery out :^) wait for 5 secs and put it back in and hold your power button until you see "Google" indicating a boot on the screen. Note - wait for 5 secs would actually mean wait for a while, I had tried putting the battery back on immediately and it never booted
Contact Sync
Mentioned a whole lot in the previous section on this.
Camera
On r100 release, it was real real slow, but I think it got better with r101. Pretty decent options on the camera and the clicks were pretty okay. By the way, I just came across a wall clock at a store with Sachin Tendulkar endorsing Pepsi on it. Sure, Sachin looks a lot younger on it :^) clicked this with Ubuntu Camera. You can't see it because I couldn't upload it on G+ or twitter, that bad is the sharing. yes, that bad.
Other basic Apps
Terminal
There is a inbuilt terminal application that runs basic Linux utility commands. I could run "top" with it to check what processes are consuming CPU and memory.
Browser
It's got a browser app inbuilt but then its quite slower, especially when you have multiple tabs opened up.
Networking
- WiFi - pretty straight forwards - put in my password and it just worked.
- 2G just wasn't working initially - it just started working on reboot. At times its jittery, toggle the data ON/OFF to get connected again. And yes, 2g/3G data worked on my Galaxy Nexus without any hassles
