Submitted by After the first few Ubuntu smartphones, it only made sense for Ubuntu to find its way to a tablet as well. The Aquaris M10 can now be preordered, and has the ability to switch between tablet mode and desktop mode, providing an interface for each.
When you switch to desktop mode, the scopes become windows which you can navigate using the touchscreen or with a mouse. You can also connect the tablet to a monitor to view your work on a larger screen. This convergence facilitates multitasking and expands the tablet’s possibilities as a work tool. What’s more, it includes apps like LibreOffice and GIMP Image Editor, so you can use it without restrictions in a professional environment.
We’re getting ever closer to an interface which automatically adapts to whatever screen or input devices it’s connected to, which is something I personally would go for in a heartbeat. I find it incredibly silly that we’re lugging around a phone and a laptop, have a desktop at home, and maybe even a tablet, when many of these devices are more than powerful enough to take on almost all computing tasks of any of them.
The Ubuntu tablet comes in two flavours, and starts at €259.
Do we know if they actually have units in manufacture, or if this is another Jolla?
Two things:
Canonical does not build hardware, this is a BQ thing.
Jolla’s issue was not that they did not get
manufactured (tablets were ready in warehouse to ship), but could not pay the ODM for the hardware they had built.
So? People still didn’t get their tablets now did they?
People still didn`t recived theire hardware? What Jolla have to say about that?
As someone who lived in Spain for several years (until a couple of years ago), I regard BQ as a reputable company for mid-range devices – I have two BQ Android devices and have found their support to be very good. If they say there will be an Ubuntu tablet, then there will be an Ubuntu tablet.
However, I don’t know what sort of presence they have outside Spain (I didn’t even know they had an English language website until recently). I would expect to be able to walk into any MediaMarkt in Madrid and buy an Ubuntu tablet when it comes out, but outside Spain, I have no idea how easy it would be to obtain one and what sort of service and support to expect.
Good to know. Thanks. I’m always rather skeptical of preorders, and watching what happened with Jolla didn’t ease that feeling in the slightest.
BQ already sells this tablet with Android: http://tiendas.mediamarkt.es/buscar?query=bq+m10
So hardware exists and they will sell it with another OS.
BQ already did this with their Ubuntu Phones, which are same hardware as Android ones.
I don’t understand that these people are thinking, using low-end CPU and presenting it as work environment. Bad experience out-of-the-box is guaranteed.
Ubuntu is so slow on in-order ARMs like A7 or A53 (like this device), it is barely usable. There is a large performance gap between “little” and “big” ARM cores.
and only 2 GiB of RAM! This is definitely DoA!
Agreed. I like the idea, I’d buy it if not for two issues:
1) Is it unlocked? Are the drivers widely available in other distros ( Ie, can I just install suse or fedora? )
2) It needs better spces for generic gnu/linux work. I’m not really sure its okay for normal tablet usage with those specs.
I’d gladly pay maybe twice the price if those conditions were met. But, there probably isn’t enough of people like me to make that worth their while. Oh well.
I’d think there would be enough people like you who want that, since the tech community are probably the only ones who will even give an Ubuntu tablet a second glance. It’d be in their best interest to know their market and cater to it.
Well, here were the contenders for that market:
The kde tablet vivaldi, dead before arrival
The jolla tablet, dead before arrival
I don’t think the market exists, and the previous attempts have left a bad taste in the mouths of many. They had two flaws: Software that wasn’t ready. Hardware that was under powered. And getting OEMs to build to their unique specs was a trial in and of itself.
Its really difficult, risky and expensive to do, and the reward is probably very limited.
I think if the risk was lower, we might see other options in the future. I’d really like the 96 boards spec from linero to take off, and to become a base for future tablet designs.
All you say is true, however the other market is gone too. iOS and Android have it, whether we like it or not. If Microsoft and Blackberry couldn’t get a decent foothold, I doubt Ubuntu stands even a chance no matter how much money Shuttleworth has to throw at it especially considering how well it did on your average consumer’s pc.
Well, here is where it gets nebulous. Microsoft, I would argue does have a decent hold on this kind of tablet/laptop hybrid. Better than anyone else, including ios and android.
I’d prefer a surface or any other windows device over an andoroid laptop or ipad pro.
I think the only decent “tablet”-like family is the Surface; you have a full blown operating system with all its capabilities available.
The rest, are artificially mutilated OSes ready to information consumption only.
Edited 2016-03-28 21:11 UTC
This tablet aims to solve that, the whole Convergence idea is about that.
Whether this hardware delivers or not, I don’t know, but I wish it does.
FWIW: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fiEkCaA_P7c
You mean like those responsive design web sites that display a phrase and a pretty picture on your 27″ monitor, just because that’s what fits on a phone screen?
Of course, the responsive crap frames the 3 to 10 words beautifully on both the monitor and the phone, but that doesn’t make the site any more useful.