Ubuntu Touch dropping support for Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 2012 and Nexus 10; won’t support Nexus 5
Don’t look now, but Canonical has announced some unfortunate news for those who were hoping to get Ubuntu Touch on some rather recent (and even new) Android devices. Engineers have confirmed that they are dropping official support for three different Nexus devices, including the following:
- Nexus 7 2012
- Nexus 10
- Galaxy Nexus
What’s more is that the company has no immediate plans to support the newly-launched Nexus 5 (though they didn’t rule it out for future versions of Ubuntu Touch). That leaves us with the Nexus 4 and the 2013 Nexus 7 as the only two devices that Ubuntu will continue working on for the Ubuntu Touch project.
Their official excuse was that they wanted to scale down focus in order to work on the latest version of Ubuntu, version number 14.04. Had they committed to supporting all the aforementioned devices, they likely would have had to push back the launch of Ubuntu for Phones 1.5 that is set to happen this April.
It’s unfortunate, but Ubuntu Touch is still a very new platform and the team wants to ensure they take the time and care necessary to bringing us a solid, stable product. It’s best that they don’t get too far ahead of themselves as they figure out how to best traverse this rocky mobile landscape.
Builds will be officially discontinued on the final day of this month, so you’ll need to look to the third-party development community to keep the open source project going for those devices (something we imagine will happen with the active and vibrant community that surrounds Ubuntu).
[Ubuntu Launchpad via OMG Ubuntu]