Ok, I had a “spare” Nexus 4 available to me for a few hours yesterday so I installed the Ubuntu Touch preview on it. It was the main reason why I bought mine in the first place, so that I could install it. It just looks so different than Android, or iOs, or anything (that I’ve seen). It took me awhile to figure out how to get it installed (who knew, my bootloader WASN’T unlocked).
At first I was fascinated by it, trying to figure out how to do stuff. Once I was satisfied with how to navigate around, I started to look into the apps that it came with. Like Android it has the ability to add accounts (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc) but unlike Android. when you add an account, it tries to connect via the web browser, which, even though it was connected to my wifi, was exceedingly, painfully slow. I didn’t clue in to anything wrong until my son comes out of his room and asks me if I was downloading something as our entire network was slow. I vaguely remember network issues like that with Ubuntu. Don’t know if thats what it was. In any case it took a long long time for anything to be done so most of the time I just gave up and went on to try something else.
After awhile I was able to see the Facebook app. Didn’t impress me. You couldn’t tell what it was doing. There never was any indication of busy-ness or that it was trying to do something. It would just sit there, then if my patience was relaxed, it would eventually come back with some sort of update with whatever it thought it was doing.
After using Android 4.3 for awhile now, navigating around is so intuitive, but using Ubuntu Touch, just wasn’t. I realize its a developer preview, but it was pretty painful to use. I may try again with a different release to see if it would be any faster, or more responsive. I was pleased to see that I was able to install Ubuntu Touch, play with it, then re-install the Android OS without too much difficulty. I am going to look into having them dual-booted. Supposedly that can be done. Maybe I’ll also see if there are any usage guides out there (I am sure there are) that may alleviate some of the pain.
Doooh Head 
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