[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu phone

[Liam Proven]

On 4 December 2015 at 16:52, Barry Drake <ubuntu-advertising at gmx.com> wrote:
> I took a further look this morning.  It is impossible (almost) to get
> Android apps without going via Google Play.  In order to use Google Play,
> you have to give a Google login, and that  means a Google account with all
> the information grabbing they do.  The outside sources (Amazon is one), have
> a very limited range of apps, most of which are not for serious work.
>
> I've looked at both Tizen, and Sailfish
> Maybe that's a good reason for Ubuntu's lack of enthusiasm for an Android
> layer.


Er, I don't see how this is a comment or reply to what I said, but
hey, whatever.

Android consists of 2 parts:

* The OS -- Linux kernel, userland, Java runtime, GUI etc. FOSS, no licence fee.

* Google Mobile Services -- the value-added Google apps including the
Google Play services. Proprietary, freeware, licensed.

Android is entirely usable and moderately useful without GMS, but you
can't install apps from the Play store.

The Blackberry 10 OS includes an emulator for Android apps, including
an installer and the Amazon App Store. Few useful apps are in there --
lots of crappy little freebies, dumb games, and trial versions of paid
wrappers around websites. But, they all seem to work.

GMS adds, or enables, the useful stuff: Gmail, gMaps, gCalendar,
gContacts etc. But they don't all work on BB10 and they wouldn't all
work on Ubuntu either.

You can't licence GMS on its own. Without GMS, Android compatibility
isn't much use. This is a deliberate move by Google to protect its OS
and I can't entirely blame them.

I am told by a friend who has both BB10 and Jolla Sailfish phones that
Sailfish has much better GMS compatibility. But then, Sailfish is
Linux and BB10 isn't.

BB10's based Android compatibility is great. But GMS is a naughty
hack, only some apps work and most moan about missing Google Play
services -- some then crash or abort, some display an error but work
if you ignore it, some display an error and you must press OK at which
point they crash.

But it's a suboptimal experience.

I see no way around this unless Google and Blackberry did a deal,
which seems vanishingly unlikely. But then, BB is now an Android
licensee with the Priv, so maybe...

Similarly, I don't see Ubuntu signing up. It would be strongly
disadvantageous to them as a company to do so: if Ubuntu Mobile ran
Android apps officially, then there'd never be many native apps & the
whole point of the OS would go out the metaphorical window.

The USP of Ubuntu Mobile is that it's a full Linux OS and can run full
desktop apps. Android apps don't do that. Android on the desktop is
not a good experience.

Android compatibility would thus be a Very Bad Thing for Ubuntu Mobile.
-- 
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