Community collaborates on new convergent Ubuntu phones

Today, we’re celebrating the arrival of two new Ubuntu phone community ports! If you’re the lucky owner of a Sony Xperia Z1  you will soon be able to download an image to turn it into an Ubuntu phone and PC! Alternatively if you’re the owner of a OnePlus One you will be able to flash and use Ubuntu on your phone. We’ll be showcasing both devices at Mobile World Congress (Hall 3 Booth 3J30) and will be certain to share a few pictures.

Since the latest Ubuntu release many developers have been asking when we’d see the first phone offering a full Ubuntu experience: a phone when you’re on the move, a PC when you need the full Ubuntu desktop power… Some couldn’t wait and ported Ubuntu to new devices to enjoy Ubuntu and the converged experience. We’re really excited to see Ubuntu becoming available on more devices, and even more excited to see what the community will create around these devices!

We owe a big thank to the Ubuntu community for porting Ubuntu to these devices and especially Marius Gripsgard for his work on the OnePlus One! More widely, this is a meeting of the minds  with phone vendors who have been pushing open source in their devices and their developer community for a while. The Sony open source efforts in particular have been essential to this work. Similarly OnePlus’ commitment to open source has helped tremendously towards this port becoming available.

But with any porting work, we know this is just a beginning. We would like to help make sure that these ports are finalised, remain up to date, and  bugs are addressed. For this reason we will be collaborating with OnePlus and participating and contributing to Sony Open Devices community  to make sure that the open source community continuously gets all the information, code and tools they need to keep this exciting project going! Get ready to flash!

Here’s a link to the ports

If you want to see both devices live, you come and join us at MWC in Hall 3, or follow us on @ubuntu

Pictured: combo of Z1 and One plus One seen from the back..screens to be revealed at #MWC16