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Canonical has announced that it plans to give Android smartphone owners the chance to turn their handset into a fully fledged desktop PC.
The idea is to merge Ubuntu (Linux) with the Android mobile OS, the latter being used for normal smartphone operation.
The Ubuntu OS, which apparently fits “cleanly alongside the rest of Android”, can be switched to when you dock your phone.
The user will need to plug in a display and keyboard along with a mouse, but most higher-end Android phones have an HDMI out and USB port to facilitate this desktop conversion process.
A seamless integration of desktop and mobile will mean you don’t have to worry about syncing anything such as contacts, emails or bookmarks across your devices, as you’ll only have the one device.
And today’s Android phones have powerful multi-core processors, GPUs and enough horsepower to easily run a desktop PC environment. In fact, Canonical argues, the desktop option is one of the most productive ways to use all that smartphone power which is, let’s face it, rarely tapped by checking Facebook while queueing for a bus.
Canonical further adds that the Ubuntu desktop could also be a driver not just for faster processors in phones, but also 4G LTE support.
Canonical notes: “Ubuntu for Android is a complete desktop with a full range of desktop applications including office, web browsing, email, media and messaging. Personal information like contacts, calendars, photo galleries and music can be accessed from both the phone and the desktop interface.”
“SMS texts arrive on your desktop if you are docked when they show up, and calls are handled like VoIP if you want to stay working while you chat. Ubuntu for Android brings the desktop world together with the phone world, seamlessly.”
We should see Android-Ubuntu devices arriving later on this year, or that’s the current plan.
Of course, Canonical isn’t the first company to try this combined solution approach. Motorola’s Atrix phone was designed around it, for example, although that features a “webtop” or web-based desktop experience.
Canonical sees this as the wrong approach, however. The company noted: “Markets have not responded to web-only environments. The desktop is a high-productivity mode, not a media consumption mode or a browsing mode. That’s why we’ve brought the full power of a native desktop to this solution.”
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