I feel "smart-phones" are computers, but none of OS is made to support desktop applications. Will Ubuntu Phone have that feature in near future. Will we be able just to connect phone to a monitor and work with it in office ?
Ubuntu – Ubuntu Phone as PC
monitorphoneubuntu-touch
Related Solutions
Supported Devices
- Nexus 4
- Nexus 7 2013 WiFi
- BQ Aquaris E4.5 (announcement)
- BQ Aquaris E5 (announcement)
- BQ Aquaris M10 (announcement)
- Meizu MX4 (announcement)
- Meizu PRO 5 (announcement)
Previously Supported Devices
- Galaxy Nexus
- Nexus 7 (2012)
- Nexus 10
These devices have been deprecated and further development & updates may longer be available.
Porting to Other Devices
Directly quoting from the Ubuntu Wiki (obsolete URL removed!):
We want to port Ubuntu Touch to all kinds of devices. If you have experience in porting code to Android devices or are generally knowledgeable in terms of porting, working with the Kernel and other core bits and pieces of a distribution, this might be interesting to you.
Moreover, there's really no way to tell which future devices people will choose to work on, however there is a working list of devices that the community is working to enable here:
Release Notes in the blog
- Be sure to check for Known Issues before you proceed.
- And Device Specific Issues as well.
Applications Available
The Developer Preview comes with the following functioning applications:
- Gallery
- Phone (Dialler, SMS, Address Book)
- Camera
- Browser
- Media Player
- Notepad
- Music app
- Calculator
- Weather app
Installing Applications
- Download application from store. Supported Application can be found in App-Store!
- Or you can use The SDK to create an application of your own.
Only for Evaluation
Quoting from Ubuntu Wiki (obsolete URL removed!):
The Touch Developer Preview project provides the open source code for enthusiasts and developers, to familiarise themselves with Ubuntu's phone and tablet experience and develop applications on spare devices.
It is currently work in progress and intended for enthusiasts who want to contribute testing and building the platform.
Further quoting from their Install page (obsolete URL removed!):
It does not provide all the features and services of a retail phone and cannot replace your current handset.
This process will delete all data from the device. Restoring Android will not restore this data.
So be sure to do a complete backup before venturing out.
Flashing the device
Head here for instructions on flashing your device.
What to expect after flashing
- Shell and core applications
- Connection to the GSM network (on Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4)
- Phone calls and SMS (on Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4)
- Networking via Wi-Fi
- Functional camera (front and back)
- Device accessible through the Android Developer Bridge tool (adb)
- Daily use of the phone
- Advanced usage
More Ubuntu Touch Documentation
NOTE: This answer was quite old, with many obsolete URLs! Many of them are migrated and that data not available on newer portal, I have tried to keep original answer as it is with this edit. Help this answer to serve better!
Best Answer
Unless phones move away from the ARM processor architecture and are equipped with HDMI or VGA outputs, we will always have separate apps and OSes for them. The reason many apps aren't available for phones is because developers don't want the extra work of compiling their apps for ARM. Normal Ubuntu can't be installed on phones because of how they work. If mobile devices went to Intel or AMD processors, then normal Ubuntu would work, but until that happens fully (which will be a while) we're not going to see normal Ubuntu on phones anytime soon.