Meizu keeps on teasing the MX4 Ubuntu Edition, due to be unveiled at MWC

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BY Unknown 23:30 0

Meizu keeps on teasing the MX4 Ubuntu Edition, due to be unveiled at MWC

For almost two weeks now Meizu has been teasing the upcoming release of the Ubuntu-running edition of its MX4 smartphone. At first, things were pretty cryptic, but yesterday the Chinese company published the first official screenshots of Ubuntu running on the MX4 – so all was clear. Today it’s keeping the teasing campaign going with the image you can see below.

So we get yet another confirmation that the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition will finally become official during MWC next week. Meizu even found time to take an ever so subtle jab at the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, which was the first ever handset to run the mobile version of the OS. But indeed that is no “premium device”.

We expect the Ubuntu-running MX4 to come with the same specs as its Android-touting sibling. That means it will have a 5.36-inch 1,920×1152 touchscreen, a 20.7MP rear camera with dual-LED flash, a 2MP secondary shooter, 2GB of RAM, and a 3,100 mAh battery. At the helm should be MediaTek’s MT6595 SoC, coming with an octa-core CPU with four 2.2 GHz Cortex-A17 cores and four 1.7GHz Cortex-A7 ones.

Meizu teases Ubuntu phone ahead of MWC event

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BY Unknown 22:40 0

Meizu teases Ubuntu phone ahead of MWC event

Ubuntu on mobile phones has been a long standing project for Canonical and quite an ambitious one. Much like Microsoft and its new One Windows ideology, Canonical hatched the scheme for a unified cross-device application ecosystem long ago, but progress has been rather slow.

Meizu has been a vital part of the new OS development with various demo builds and rumor of Ubuntu-powered Meizu handset popping up ever since the MX 3 was the company's flagship offer. Today the Chinese smartphone maker posted a rather interesting teaser on Facebook. The image hints at a new OS, which will join the ranks of Flyme and YunOS and probably be unveiled at this year's MWC.

We can instinctively point a finger towards Ubuntu Touch, which we will hopefully see in mass-production devices. This hunch is further backed up by rumors of an Ubuntu MX4 hitting the market early 2015. The current flagship device has been a long-standing candidate for the Ubuntu experience, but we can definitely expect surprises.

Last week Canonical threw a quite unexpected curve ball by announcing that the BQ Aquaris E4.5 will be the pioneer of the Ubuntu on a Smartphone. Keeping that in mind it is not certain if the MX4 or MX4 Pro will offer a high-end hardware home for the new OS or Meizu will bring an entirely new phone to the scene.

In any case the news is exciting. The Ubuntu Touch platform itself is an interesting brain child of Canonical Ltd. The main idea behind it is a uniform kernel and set of base technologies that form a cross device application platform. What this implies is a high level of uniformity and compatibility, allowing you to use pretty much the same set of applications, both on mobile and desktop devices. To further add to the excitement, Ubuntu touch also promises a full desktop experience and perhaps even in the future a full desktop Ubuntu session running straight from the phone or tablet once hooked to a bigger screen.

The latter, also known as "Full desktop convergence" is kind of experimental at this time, so it might be a while until we are actually able to dock our phone and use it as an everyday work PC replacement for example. There are also some hardware requirement for the feature to work but they are definitely not out of reach for current gen mobile devices so here's hoping we finally see a full-featured Ubuntu experience on a Meizu device in Barcelona.

BQ Aquaris E4.5 is the first Ubuntu phone,on sale today

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BY Unknown 23:11 0

BQ Aquaris E4.5 is the first Ubuntu phone,on sale today

The wait is finally over for the Ubuntu OS to become commercially available on a smartphone. As planned, the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubunto Edition is being launched today in Europe.

The Aquaris E4.5 is not an entirely new device, it's been available for some time booting Android KitKat. The specsheet of the smartphone is nothing to write home about, but it's still a balanced package.

The name reveals the screen size of 4.5 inches, and the qHD resolution of the IPS panel results in a pixel density of 244ppi. Running the show is a Mediatek chipset with its Cortex-A7 CPU clocked at 1.3GHz. A single gig of RAM is onboard as well as 8GB of internal storage, of which 5.5GB are available to the user. A microSD slot offers expansion up to 32GB.

The dual-SIM phone is limited in connectivity options, only packing radios for 850/900/1800/1900MHz GSM bands and 900/2100MHz 3G. Battery capacity is 2150mAh, stuffed in a 137 x 67 x 9 mm body weighing 123g.

Hardware is not the main topic here, though, the new OS is. The Ubuntu for smartphone has long been in the works, and after years of development British company Canonical has managed to bring it to market. The new mobile OS is unique in concept, ditching the common app grid in favor of content-grouped tabs. Dubbed Scopes, the innovative interface learns from previous experience and aggregates user-specific content in easy to navigate panes.

The BQ Aquaris E4.5 will be available online starting today for a price of €170. Stay tuned to the @bqreaders and @ubunto twitter accounts to find out how and where you can grab one.

BQ Aquaris E4.5 is the first Ubuntu phone, launches next week

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BY Unknown 02:44 0

BQ Aquaris E4.5 is the first Ubuntu phone, launches next week

The ever elusive 'Ubuntu phone' concept is finally about to become reality. After the failed Ubuntu Edge campaign, Canonical (the company behind the OS) turned to partnerships with mobile device makers in order to get its software into the hands of consumers.

We've been hearing that the first Ubuntu phone will launch soon for a very long time now, but that's actually going to happen next week, believe it or not. That said, the first Ubuntu smartphone will be anything but a flagship.

Meet the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition. It's basically got the exact same hardware as the already available BQ Aquaris E4.5, only that runs Android. Hence the "Ubuntu Edition" moniker.

The phone has a 4.5-inch 540x960 touchscreen, an 8 MP rear camera with dual-LED flash, and a 5 MP front-facing one. Powering things up is a MediaTek chipset with a 1.3 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 processor, aided by 1GB of RAM. Internal storage is 8GB, and the handset comes with dual-SIM support.

Interestingly, BQ will make the Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition available through a series of flash sales, the first of which will happen sometime next week. This emulates the model successfully employed by many Chinese companies, especially Xiaomi. The phone will only be out in Europe.

It will be sold unlocked for €169.90 (that's around $192). You'll be able to get a "SIM bundle" at purchase from one of the following carriers: 3 Sweden, amena.com in Spain, giffgaff in the UK, and Portugal Telecom. The device will obviously work on other networks too.