Built for the phone industry

We have the needs of network operators, OEMs and ODMs
in mind in bringing Ubuntu to the phone. It offers great performance on handsets with a low bill of materials, while opening up new opportunities for phone and PC convergence at the top end of the market. And its amazing user experience can be tailored to your brand, integrating your custom services, content and apps.

Stunning design, even on the leanest smartphones

Ubuntu provides a fast and beautiful experience, even on inexpensive hardware. It doesn’t have the overhead of a Java virtual machine, so all core applications run at full native speeds with a small memory footprint. That gives the UI a luxurious, responsive feel without the requirement of premium hardware components.

And on the high end, Ubuntu paves the way for a new category of superphones, with a full PC desktop accessible just by docking the device to a monitor and keyboard. A truly handheld PC is the future of personal computing.

Learn more about the Ubuntu experience on smartphones ›

System requirements for smartphones	Entry level Ubuntu smartphone	High-end Ubuntu "superphone"
Processor architecture	1Ghz Cortex A9	Quad-core A9 or Intel Atom
Memory	512MB – 1GB	Min 1GB
Flash storage	4-8GB eMMC + SD	Min 32GB eMMC + SD
Multi-touch
Desktop convergence

The phone with the heart of a PC

High-end smartphones have a brain as powerful as ultra-light laptops. Ubuntu uniquely enables a new category of convergence device – phones that dock to become full PCs and thin clients – enabling enterprise IT departments to replace phones, thin clients and laptops with a single secure corporate device.

Operators targeting the enterprise market with LTE can now deliver a full laptop/phone solution, with Windows apps delivered over LTE from the corporate data center. And operators in emerging markets can deliver desktop applications to the converged device over LTE as a premium data service.

Customise to your needs

Operators have room to enhance Ubuntu with their own services, content, apps and branding without breaking compatibility with the broader Ubuntu app ecosystem. Canonical engages with OEMs and operators to enable them to ship phones with custom capabilities, or offer exclusive items for their audience.

Content can be surfaced in the home screen and search, apps can be pre-installed and there are ample opportunities for branding the device. With an extensible cloud framework on every Ubuntu device, you can deliver custom services to your audience that fit neatly into a global cloud ecosystem.

The developer’s favourite OS

Existing web properties can be installed on the Ubuntu phone, where they can run as web apps independent of the browser, with full access to the system just like native apps.
Ubuntu is already a wildly popular platform for web developers and savvy users.
The standard Android development environment is Ubuntu.

HTML5 is fully supported but Ubuntu is not limited to HTML5. To use the full power of the hardware, you can develop native apps, using OpenGL and QML, with C or C++ and Javascript compiled for extra performance.
Major game developers like EA, Valve and Unity Technologies are now committing to Ubuntu.

Learn more about developing apps for Ubuntu ›

Easier hardware enablement

We have teams based in Taipei, Shanghai, London, Beijing and Boston to engage with your engineering and factory operations – and their sole focus is to deliver a crisp Ubuntu experience on your device.

Ubuntu has already been adapted to run on chipsets using the ARM and Intel x86 architectures relevant for mobile devices, with the core system based around a typical Android Board Support Package (BSP). So chipset vendors and hardware manufacturers do not need to invest in or maintain new hardware support packages for Ubuntu on smartphones. In short, if you already make handsets that run Android, the work needed to adopt Ubuntu will be trivial.

If you already
make handsets that run Android, the work needed to adopt Ubuntu will be trivial

Hello written in a number of languages in Ubuntu speak bubbles

A truly global solution

Ubuntu is already used in over 70 countries and has been translated into over 40 languages. With 20 million desktop users around the world, it is both an established platform and an established global brand.

Backed by Canonical

Canonical is the global software vendor that provides commercial and design support to the Ubuntu project. Today, our hardware enablement team supports the pre-installation of Ubuntu on millions of new PCs shipped worldwide, annually.

Thanks to Canonical’s relationships with its OEM partners, Ubuntu has an enormous retail presence in key emerging economies, with branded merchandising and trained retail staff in over 1,000 stores.

Learn more about how we support Ubuntu ›

Partner with us

If you are going to MWC, stop by booth 8.1D30 in App Planet - Hall 8.1 or, contact us to arrange a meeting.

Get in touch

Find out when it’s here

If you’re not in the mobile industry, but you’re as excited as we are about Ubuntu on smartphones, we can let you know when the first phone is released.

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