Two Ubuntu phones with top apps in 2014

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My only wish is that bunnie huang had designed a fully open source phone to run it on.

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How prevalent are HTML5 apps, these days? I seem to recall Facebook making a big deal about going to an HTML5 app, and then abandoning the approach for performance reasons.

As a full time linux user for the last decade let me say that this is a total waste of time. Seriously? A phone with no maps and palm-pre style html/javascript “apps”?

This is nothing but a rich man’s folly.

They stink. Facebook ate a lot of crow over that one.

I would assume that they wouldn’t be limited to strictly running HTML5 apps… There must be a SDK for native apps – looks like a QML based API.
If they can attract some skilled developers, there should be some great stuff… The old Linux-based Nokia phones/MIDs had some wonderful enlightenment/python-based apps – looked better and had better function than most of the dreck I see on Android/iPhone. There were open streetmap programs/etc and some GPS programs that had become at least as useful as Apple’s offering. Since they were linux-based, it didn’t take much effort for developers (even tinker-level programmers) to port Linux programs to the devices.

Canonical, the company that publishers Ubuntu (a free/open operating system based on GNU/Linux)

Can I be a pedantic freetard zealot and point out that it’s technically incorrect (the worst kind of incorrect) to call Ubuntu a free-as-in-freedom or open-as-in-OSD OS? There’s a swag of non-free stuff installed by default. You might feel that it’s ‘pragmatic’ to do so, but you still can’t call it free/open without prefixing it with ‘mostly’.

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If they could supply it with support for the android API I would be interested.

You can try out Open Maps data via “offmaps” on ios. I have, and it is no substitute.

I’m sure native apps are possible, but platforms live and die by name brand apps. Facebook, Angry Birds, whatever the kids are into this week. Selling a phone without these in 2013 is nigh impossible as Blackberry and Microsoft have learned.

Since it’s lineage is from Nokia’s maemo/meego devices, I am looking at Jolla for my next Linux phone… It supports the Android API.

Ubuntu Touch’s apps can be native or HTML5. There is a SDK.
http://developer.ubuntu.com/apps/

the company is seeking to have the top 50 apps for Android and Ios ported to its phones

That will almost certainly include a maps app.

Here is an early example of a maps app running in Ubuntu Touch last year.

I didn’t mean to imply that Ubuntu can’t do native apps. It’s just that, they probably won’t get very many native apps. Top 50 is not so many, and probably not attainable.

As for maps, It’s not the app that’s hard – its the data. It’s updating the data, all the time, for ever. The app in the screenshot is probably using a data source (google most likely) that Ubuntu won’t be able to use in the real world.

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