Hello everyone,
Got some fresh news on the launch of Ubuntu Phone devices in India.
Canonical just held a couple of hangouts with us, Ubuntu Insiders, to share some news on the launch of Ubuntu Phones in India.
BQ will be launching the same two European devices:
- BQ Aquaris E4.5: http://www.bq.com/gb/aquaris-e4-5-ubuntu-edition and
- BQ Aquaris E5: http://www.bq.com/gb/aquaris-e5-ubuntu-edition
with black variant in India on snapdeal site, 2 weeks after launch there will be an Ubuntu Store on Snapdeal where other Ubuntu products will be available.
We haven't got a precise date for the launch, but it will happen probably in the next two weeks.
For the Indian launch, Ubuntu Phone will not be released on devices with a specific Indian image but there will be specific apps content available from an Indian specific app store.
There will also be sources relevant to India to be put in aggregate scopes, you will be able to tag feeds so to put them in specific scopes, and tag scopes so to make them come out in the right aggregator scope.
For the moment there is not specific content for India on the nearby scope, but there will be a new cricket aggregator, Indian-specific news (NDTV, TOI) and a Bollywood scope.
Aggregate scopes allow brand owners and developers to bring their content to the end user.
Lately there has been news about BQ selling devices with Ubuntu Phone installed world wide, but for the US there are radio limitations so the device will not work everywhere, Canonical still has to find a partner to sell device in the US.
OTA's will be released with a 6 week cadence.
In the next OTA (OTA 6) there will be improvements for web apps (web apps will not have to be second hand apps for developers), accelerometer, push notifications, camera, connectivity, better social integration, further plugins, power management and increasing performance.
Other work in progress is being able to watch videos and play media in scopes, have sound controls in the indicators, improve synchronization for calendar and contacts, improvements on bluetooth profiles (audio and monitor plugging in).
We are going towards convergence, we will probably have some convergence features in OTA 7.
Thats all for the moment :-).
