Ubuntu Unity is dead: Desktop will switch back to GNOME next year
Ubuntu phones and tablets also dead, but the desktop, server, and cloud live on.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-desktop-will-switch-back-to-gnome-next-year/

Six years after making Unity the default user interface on Ubuntu desktops, Canonical is giving up on the project and will switch the default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME next year. Canonical is also ending development of Ubuntu software for phones and tablets, spelling doom for the goal of creating a converged experience with phones acting as desktops when docked with the right equipment.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth explained the move in a blog post Wednesday. “I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell,” he wrote. “We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS,” which will ship in April 2018.

Growing Ubuntu for cloud and IoT, rather than phone and convergence
https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and-iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/

The Ubuntu community is UBPorts says that it would launch a new operating system Fairphonelle, because it wants to combine the ethics of sustainability device open platform. Normal operating system in a new Fiarphone2 for Android 5.1.

Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/5823-eettinen-alypuhelin-osa-2-toimii-myos-ubuntulla

THE FIRST UBUNTU SMARTPHONE, otherwise known as BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, has gone on sale.

The first batch of Ubuntu-powered handsets will be made available through a series of flash sales, and the first was announced via Twitter on Wednesday.
However, just a few hours after it went on sale, the Ubuntu smartphone has already sold out

The BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition was announced last week as the first phone to be powered by a mobile version of Canonical’s operating system.

As the price tag suggests, it hasn’t got too much going for it in the specs department.

The handset doesn’t run the latest ‘Snappy’ version of Ubuntu either. It does come with a UI called Scopes, however, which consists of subject-based visual home screens, rather than menus, and reflects the web-app basis of the phone.

Introducing the superphone that’s also a full PC

Backed by Canonical

We provide hardware enablement services to the world’s biggest PC OEMs and,
as a result, Ubuntu now ships pre-installed on many of the world’s new PCs. With staff and offices all over the world, we have the resources you need to deliver Ubuntu on smartphones.

[...]Ubuntu Linux for Smartphones « Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog[...]…

Silber’s point rests on the well known fact that many users, especially large businesses, are still running Windows XP. Microsoft has supported the operating system for over a decade, but the Redmond, Washington software house has said that it will end support for Windows XP on 8 April 2014.

Silber said, “What we are seeing there, particularly with enterprise customers with large desktop deployments in the tens of thousands, [is that they are] taking the opportunity to move to Ubuntu at that point, and they are, in some cases, not even evaluating future Windows desktop operating systems.

Phone makers have been toying with HDMI output for the last few years, but the functionality has been limited. You might have been able to stream some video to a larger display, but controlling the device still meant touching the screen. Starting with Honeycomb on tablets, and continuing with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), Google has started adding the features to Android for it to be a desktop replacement.

Asus has taken advantage of native mouse and keyboard support with the Transformer line of devices, and HDMI-out connectors are becoming more and more common on phones. With a few cables and some peripherals, you can run a desktop-like experience from the Android 4.0 phone that rides around in your pocket.

There are two ways to get HDMI output on your Android smartphone. Some devices have mini-HDMI ports that only require a HDMI-to-mini-HDMI cable or converter.
If your device has mini-HDMI, just plug in your cable, and the video should be up. Make sure you plug the charger into the device as well to mitigate the battery drain from powering the larger display.

Other phones make use of the micro-USB port for video out through a technology called Mobile High-definition Link (MHL). his has become the more common method as it doesn’t require a second plug in the device. Because there is nothing externally different about an MHL-enabled USB port, many users don’t know their device has this capability.
MHL devices like the Galaxy Nexus require you to attach the adapter, plug in the HDMI cable, and plug your power cable into the MHL adapter itself.

Android 4.0 devices should need no configuration to get video up on a monitor or TV.
The Android user interface automatically rotates, and orients itself for easier use on a large screen.

When you tether a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, Android will instantly recognize them as input devices, and integrate them into the software.

When you tether a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, Android will instantly recognize them as input devices, and integrate them into the software.

You’re not going to completely replace a desktop system with this solution, but an Android phone can take over a lot of traditional computing tasks in a pinch. Word processing and web browsing are great, as is video playback. There are times when the interface just feels awkward, like when you have to swipe with a mouse click.

A recent patent filing by Google surprisingly indicates that they’re seriously eying the desktop and notebook markets for Android. Interestingly, the patent seems to focus on similar capabilities now found in Apple’s Multi-Touch Trackpad and Magic Trackpad. In many ways that’s understandable considering that Google is working on the Android for x86 project along with a serious list of other Intel-Android related projects.