UBports

Reader supplied reviews for UBports Average rating 7.9 from 10 review(s) What are your thoughts on UBports? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 24.0420.0416.0415.04 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 20.04 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-03-17 Votes: 35 I daily use Ubuntu Touch on a Redmi Note 9S. It's a completely free and open source GNU/Linux OS. The weak point is the catalogue of natively available applications, which stands at between 400 and 500 apps. Also note that the installation process may be challenging depending the used device, especially because one needs to reflash a specific Android version before to install Ubuntu Touch (which benefits from an installer software available on Windows, Mac and Linux) Natively, Ubuntu Touch offers all the basic functions of a smartphone including: phone calls, sms/mms, web, emails, Bluetooth (audio streaming + data transfer), location, WiFi, cellular data, photos, videos, music, media, notifications, online/offline charging, double tap to wake, lock screen, Roaming management, etc... It also provides numerous utilities software such as an address book, document viewer, alarms, clock, gallery, weather app, YouTube client, Email client, timer, text editors, online sync calendar, Telegram client, its own app store, music recognition, scan to PDF, change currency app, translators, files manager, tweak settings, calculator, pass manager, navigation app with online and offline maps and guidance, music instruments tools and tuners, QR codes reader and creator, and many more...You can also get some pretty nice webapps, and even create them very easily (ex: Facebook, Whatsapp web, transportation apps, etc...) What's more, the hardware on the supported devices (26 devices at the time of writing) is very well managed by the system, including vibrator, fingerprint reader, sound, videos playback, GPS, cameras, torch, sensors, haptics, proximity, screen auto rotation, compass, power management, Bluetooth in vehicles, automatic brightness adjustment, hotspot, microphone, flight-mode, external SD card, audio output, screencast, NFC, etc... However, it's worth to note that banking applications, payment applications (parking, public transport, entrances) and all the multitude of other applications provided by companies, retail chains, e-commerce, etc.... will not work natively. If you need to be able to use them, you can install an Android container using ‘WayDroid’. To do this, simply download the ‘WayDroid Helper’ application from the Ubuntu Touch OpenStore and follow the nice GUI to install the service. Note that WayDroid can lead to a massive increase of battery consumption as well as slow even more the system. Hopefully we can manually start and stop WayDroid when needed. Also note that interactive screen mirroring protocoles such as Android Audio or Apple Car Play does not work at all yet. The system's uncluttered interface is based on the graphical lines of Linux Ubuntu. The GUI launcher, "Lomiri", is based on Uniti DE. It's extremely basic, but beautiful. The visual line is very clean, pure and elegant. Personally I love it. Overall, the system is stable and efficient, although it's quite slower and somehow less responsive than Android or IOS. System updates are regularly published, and can be easily installed via OTA. By now, some technologies are not fully well supported, such as 4G/5G calling (VoLTE) or VoWiFi. But those are heavily developed. By the way, the QT web engine is at the time quite obsolete and will need to be renewed later in 2025. In conclusion, although Ubuntu Touch is clearly no substitute for a traditional Android or IOS OS, it is very pleasant to use for enthusiast people, for example during holidays or bank holidays, or whenever you want to be calm. It's also pretty exciting to use a complete opensource and privacy OS developed by a small community of volunteers... In my opinion, it's a good compromise for taking a break and leaving away from all those annoying stressful common notifications while still staying connected to the outside world. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 20.04 Rating: 9 Date: 2024-06-13 Votes: 26 Mileage will vary widely based on the device you use. The correct order of operations, unless you're willing to port the OS onto your phone, is to visit the devices.ubuntu-touch.io and cross reference which devices work well and which are locally, affordably available for you. For my purposes, it works shockingly well. Shockingly considering it's a community maintained non-spyware smartphone OS that does everything I need it to. I just didn't know how good a phone running could be. On my Oneplus 5T, by no means the top of the list of most functional Ubuntu Touch phones, it works as I need it to, and is super nice to use. It's the phone I use every day, and it does what I need it to do. Apps run sandboxed by default, with user allowing sharing of data between apps as desired (camera to messaging, for example, to send photos). Apps can't run in the background unless you give them permission. The OS is convergent to run in desktop mode if hooked up to monitor, keyboard and mouse. You either need a phone with video output over USB or a Miracast adapter for this to work. The gestures on screen are different than other OSes, but very quickly one gets accustomed. I like them a lot. Telephone works perfectly, but only if you live somewhere with good 2G/3G cellular network. VoLTE and 5G are works in progress (though purportedly coming soon)! SMS messaging works perfectly. MMS works for photos and videos, with some tinkering on APN setup, except for group messages, which do not work properly on any devices. Sometimes my MMS goes wonky, but a quick Terminal command fixes it. No RCS support at this point in time. Camera, selfie camera and video all work well, without all the fancy processing of iOS/Android. Significantly better image quality than Lineage on this device. Fingerprint reader works well. GPS works only after a long initial location procedure. There is presently no assisted GPS, so after any reboot/power on, it takes several minutes, ideally outside or near a window, for the GPS to find itself. Afterward, live navigation at highway speeds works fine. Browsers are presently all based on Qt WebEngine, which won't be upgraded soon. This is causing difficulty with certain websites (only one that I use). Broadly I can use the web just fine as normal. Banking, buying things, it all works fine for me. There's recent work on a WebKit based browser which is early but very promising. Battery often gets you less far than with other OS. On one hand, apps not running in background can help. But something about the way that the device must stay awake to listen for messages limits battery. Flight mode cuts down battery usage significantly. I get about two days out of mine, having recently replaced a battery. Good enough for me. App ecosystem is small, but has all that I need. A passable Matrix client (Cinny), a passable Telegram client (Teleports), decent email app (Dekko), Nextcloud/Owncloud support. Good map apps including live GPS directions with PureMaps and UNav, offline mapping with OSM Scout Server. open-store.io, to browse the apps. UT Tweak Tool allows you to change scaling on device, control which apps do/don't get suspended when in background, and many other useful things. Waydroid as an android emulator sounds better and better. Some use this to get other browsers, other messaging apps, banking apps, etc. I don't need it. Snaps support is newly underway but immature. The community is friendly, and needs more users and developers! Try it out! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 20.04 Rating: 6 Date: 2023-05-22 Votes: 13 Tested UBP on a FairPhone 4. Installation simple and smooth. The interface is simple and very effective. However, the ecosystem behind is not mature : many apps install successfully but don't work OOB. Worse for me : the display. No HiDPI management : everything is so tiny it's barely legible (I'm wearing glasses). It's a preview of things to come (and a fantastic one) but still immature. I reverted to Lineage. But be warned!! UBP did something on the /persistent readonly folder and the fingerprint sensor was not working anymore. Needed to boot a root flash and 'restorecon -FR /mnt/vendor/persist" to get it back. Testers should be forewarned of such incongruities.. The 6 is for usability as of today. Will give it another try sometimes later : it's well beyond the proof of concept and looks sooo promising! Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 10 reader reviews of UBports...