Major carrier and CDMA support for Ubuntu Phones is in the far future

sincity · January 15, 2014

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The road to Canonical's Ubuntu smartphone has been long and it seems to only be getting even longer as the open-source software company makes a play for the major leagues.

Canonical's Community Manager Jono Bacon (yes, that is a real and awesome name) admitted that the first Ubuntu Touch smartphone for major OEMs and carriers is unlikely to appear until next year in a Reddit AMA.

"Longer-term we would love to see the major OEM/Carriers shipping Ubuntu handsets," Bacon said. "This is a long road though with many components, and I would be surprised if we see anything like this before 2015."

Bacon continued to say that Ubuntu phones will likely first ship to smaller OEMs looking for lower cost and risk trial devices. As for the buyer, Bacon believes "the ideal customer today is someone who wants a dependable device but does not require a large catalogue of specific apps (as we don't have many of them yet)."

Starting off with small beginnings and high sales, Canonical hopes to send a strong message to OEMs and build from there. So for now it seems that Ubuntu is still on track to release a smartphone by this year as Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth promised in December, albeit with a small mobile net.

Swing for the fences

As for what the Ubuntu phone will actually be able to do, Bacon did not confirm many features that users can expect. Instead, during the course of the AMA, there were more items that we can expect to be missing.

Bacon answered another question pertaining to CDMA support on the Ubuntu Touch OS to which he responded that it is not on the current Ubuntu phone plan; meaning Sprint and Verizon customers won't be able to jump on board with Canonical in the foreseeable future.

Similarly, there aren't any extra touches to add integration between Ubuntu computers and phones on the docket. As Bacon explained, "[t]he primary integration will be getting content and syncing it Ubuntu One, which syncs across devices."