Ubuntu Phone Insider's Event - London UK

Friday 6th February  at 13:00 at Ham Yard Hotel in London the Ubuntu Phone Insider's Event finally took place.

I was so lucky to be invited as an Insider, so let me tell you about this wonderful experience.

I left Italy on Thursday morning with  +Dario Cavedon as he lives near me so we decided to go to the event together.

While we were driving towards Marco Polo airport in Venice it started snowing a lot and so our plane left late and we arrived in London two hours later than expected, fortunately in London the weather was fine.

This is me at Venice airport, it was snowing a lot when we arrived there

 +Dario Cavedon  and +Carla Sella on the plane to London

Friday morning we went to see Canonical-Ubuntu headquarters in London, +Alan Pope showed us around, that was really a cool experience for us and I wanted to thank Alain for being so kind showing us around.

me and Alain

Canonical/Ubuntu headquarters

In the afternoon at 13:00 all the insiders moved to the Ham Yard Hotel where the event started, I was so exited that after so long waiting the event finally was going to begin!

We first had lunch together, all the insiders with some of Canonical and Community fellows that have been working on the Ubuntu phone in all these years, it was really nice to see the persons I have been working with on IRC and hangouts in person.

After lunch we all moved to another room for the presentation of the launch of the first Ubuntu Phone and we were the very first persons to have the Ubuntu Phone world wide, what an honor !!! I was really proud to have been chosen among the others.

Cristian Parrino  - Vice President, Mobile and Online Services at Canonical

Rodrigo del Prado from bq

Jane Silber - Chief Executive Officer at Canonical

Well, finally after having received my phone, I could open the box and here is what I found in it:

The Ubuntu Phone "box, beautiful, indeed!

Inside: headphones and the bq Aquaris E4.5 box

The headphones, what a wonderful surprise didn't expect them

Inside theAquaris bq box: charger, usb cord and leaflet with Ubuntu Phone instuctions

Power button and Volume button

SD card slot and headphones jack hole

The back of the phone with camera and flash light

The bottom of the phone with USB connector and speakers

The front of the phone 

Two SIM card holders (the phone is dual SIM)

Another nice unexpected surprise in the box was a letter from Mark Shuttleworth:

Letter from Mark Shuttleworth

I won't tell you about the specs of the phone as you can find them here:
http://www.bq.com/gb/products/aquaris-e4-5.html.

The first thing I noticed switching on the phone was it's speed, indeed the phone was crisp and smooth, I was used seeing Ubuntu Phone on a Nexus 4 while I wrote autopilot tests and here I had a nice surprise finding out how it was faster and more performing.

After un-boxing our phones we all stayed at the hotel to celebrate and play booling :-).

I left London with Dario the day after in the afternoon.

Well guys, stay tuned, I will tell  you more about the Phone in the next days, for now this is all about my experience at the Ubuntu Phone Insider's Event in London. 

If you want to see more about the phone check this  Ubuntu Phone walkthrough video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TShKZLeZzWE&feature=youtu.be