With the announcement of the Ubuntu Phone OS I'd like to know what phone (and tablet) models are supported at this time.
Note from foss & Oli: We are making this the master question for all future "Will this work on <insert random tablet/phone/device here>?!" questions
These devices have been deprecated and further development & updates may longer be available.
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:
The Developer Preview comes with the following functioning applications:
- Gallery
- Phone (Dialer, SMS, Address Book)
- Camera
- Browser
- Media Player
- Notepad
- Music app
- Calculator
- Weather app
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 of 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 (Check "Saving Android data" section for that!).
Head here for instructions, scroll down to "Install Ubuntu on device" on flashing your device.
- 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 Wifi
- Functional camera (front and back)
- Device accessible through the Android Developer Bridge tool (adb)
- At last check "Next steps"
Instructions are here for you to restore your Android once you have played enough.
Note you need to be using one of the supported devices, or you should have a backup image you created before installing Ubuntu.
NOTE: This answer was quiet 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!
I have started an Ubuntu Touch FAQ in order to have some answers to frequent questions available:
please look here: On which devices does this Developer Preview run?
I wrote about this a while back but I figure this may help those who stumble across this in the future. Top 5 devices you can buy right now that we know support Ubuntu Touch:
It's certainly not slated as a supported hardware and I would say it's unlikely to ever officially become such. The only two tablets supported are the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. Phone support is again only slated for Nexus devices (Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus).
You may be able to hack it on but given the differing hardware, you'd have to do quite a bit of work.
As of tomorow (02-21-2013) there should be downloadable images available that will work on the Google Nexus (by Samsung), Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10.
They will only work on those 4 devices cause they've been specifically compiled for that hardware.
Since the code will be published online it is to be expected that over the coming weeks and month many other devices will get ports – either officially from Canonical or from independent developers – that will allow you to flash it on your specific hardware.
Good places to look for future information regarding 'Ubuntu for Tablets/Phones' (and especially ports) would probably be OMG! Ubuntu! , Phoronix or ubuntu-news
Update:
See this page for more official information of porting Ubuntu touch Ubuntu Wiki as of tomorow (02-22-2013) it will have detailed information of what needs to be done to port to other devices.
On OMG!Ubuntu → http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/01/ubuntu-phone-download-will-be-ready-late-february. Source of Ubuntu Phone OS (UPOS) will be aviaible. But that is build for Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4, don't Nokia.
.IMG file - probably.
N9 is great phone, and UPOS can be installed... also, hardware is same as lot of phones, one of that is Galaxy Nexus, phone where UPOS is presented.
If developers can build Android for N9, developers can build UPOS for N9. Wait, and N9 will be on UPOS support list in future.
Also, Android drivers can be used for UPOS. Android drivers for N9 exist. Android drivers + Nexus UPOS build = N9 UPOS build. That's my mind.
Will Ubuntu for phone run well on a Samsung Galaxy Tab2 with 3G?
Some background:
The Ubuntu for Phone build is for phones.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab2 (7" or 10.1") is a tablet.
A tablet with 3G has mobile 'broadband' data capabilities.
So, with a 3G-capable tablet you can use VoIP, but not make 'mobile' phone calls. (Unless you add some add-on 'device' to the tablet.) That equally applies regardless of what OS is present on the tablet.
A different question (which you did not ask) is whether there will be a version of Ubuntu that will work on the Galaxy Tab2.
"Work on the phone and tablet is also ending, the whole convergence story, really."
Michael Hall, Canonical Community Manager
It is not compatible, and will never be. This is Mark Shuttleworth's (founder of Ubuntu) official blog post on the subject, written April 5, 2017:
(I was also sad)
Ubuntu Touch is currently maintained by UBPorts Team.
The list of supported devices is presented on https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/.
I think you can use any Hardware/Device in as much it meets the following requirements.
The hardware requirements are quite acceptable. The Entry level Ubuntu smartphone needs to have at least a 1Ghz Cortex A9 (single core as the bare minimum), 512MB or 1GB memory, a 4-8GB eMMC + SD for storage, and Multi-touch capability.
The high-end Ubuntu "superphone" is a little more demanding and will need at least Quad-core A9 or Intel Atom processors, minimum 1GB for memory, minimum 32GB eMMC + SD for storage, and Multi-touch.*
I don't know if it support tablet because of screen resolution. it will be awesome though on tablet.
Sources: Click Here
I think the XDA site should also be mentioned here. For a lot of phones and tablets this is a good place where development is done. There is no support, or at least not from Ubuntu or canonical, but there is a large community trying to get it to work. Here they have a list of phones on which development is going on to get Ubuntu touch on it. Be sure to read trough the forums to see whether everything you need works.
What most people overlook is that Ubuntu Touch as it has been running on the officially supported devices until now runs almost two Operating Systems at the same time, not one.
You have Ubuntu Touch running the device and being your interface and you have a LXC container providing Android services. While the LXC container is not a full fledged Android with a UI, this setup consumes a bit more resources and complicates porting for non-Android devices.
Canonical has announced some unfortunate news for those who were hoping to get Ubuntu Touch on some rather recent (and even new) Android devices. Engineers have confirmed that they are dropping official support for three different Nexus devices. That leaves us with the Nexus 4 and the 2013 Nexus 7 as the only two devices that Ubuntu will continue working on for the Ubuntu Touch project.
Canonical gives its specifications on the Operator and OEM Partner page.
