It’s 2021, and it’s time to upgrade your smartphone. Maybe it’s getting slow, it might be damaged, or your device’s OEM refuses to update your version of Android. Whatever the reason, you set your budget and full of hope and starry-eyed about all the possibilities, you go to your preferred electronics store (or carrier, if you’re American) – and as you scroll through the possible phones, your hopes are shattered and your heart sinks in your shoes. Your choices are between an endless array of black slabs, and while you can technically choose between Android and iOS, you will have most likely made that specific choice ages ago, and switching platforms is hard.
Cosmo Communicator running Ubuntu Touch shows what should have been
JC Torres - Jan 27, 2021, 3:56am CST
We basically have a two-horse race in the mobile market but there was never a shortage of attempts to have a third contender. There’s Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Windows Mobile attempts, of course, as well as Nokia’s spiritual successor Jolla. And then there’s Ubuntu Touch, so far still the most successful attempt to bring a mainstream Linux OS to commercial phones. Canonical basically giving up on that effort ironically caused Ubuntu Touch to become available on even more devices and the Cosmo Communicator is probably one of the best examples of what an Ubuntu phone should have been.