We’ve long heard talk of an Ubuntu powered smartphone, but the development process has been a long one and hasn’t seen the launch of the device just yet. That will soon change as the sale of the first smartphone running Ubuntu is reported to begin next week in Europe. The bad news for anyone that was interested in buying one from their local retailer potentially, is that the launch will be exclusive to Europe and there was no mention as to when we might possibly see this phone go on sale in other regions. For those that reside in Europe, you’ll be looking at a price tag of about €169.90 to get your hands on one.
€169.90 is a pretty low cost, so although the specs are nothing spectacular when you compare it to high end models, you still end up getting some okay hardware. The Ubuntu phone which is basically the BQ Aquaris E4.5 running Ubuntu instead of Android, will come powered by a MediaTek A7 quad-core processor clocked at 1.3GHz paired with a Mali 400 GPU, and it carries a relatively low, but also likely capable 1GB of RAM as well as 8GB of internal storage space. The camera on the back will be 8MP, so not too flashy but not bad either we presume, and it’ll be able to shoot front facing photos with a 5MP sensor.
The battery is a manageable 2,150mAh capacity which should be plenty given the already listed specs. As for the display, it’ll weigh in at 4.5-inches in size with a qHD resolution of 540 x 960. Another letdown is that it won’t support LTE, so that means slower data speeds for those who live or spend most of their time in areas where LTE could be available if the phone supported it. For users that typically only get 3G there will be no difference. Everything about the Ubuntu phone will be rather budget minded, so it’s clear who they’re trying to target with a first device launch. There could be some opposition from other handset makers, but Canonical who is the creator of the Ubuntu OS, is confident that users will enjoy the experience given from this device as it’s said to pull content to the homescreen in specific categories instead of trying to access content from within applications like on other mobile OS platforms such as Android or iOS. Check out the video below for a little demo of how things on the Ubuntu device will work.