Tired of Android? Try your luck with Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch, and Firefox OS

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Article from Issue 179/2015
Author(s):

Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch, and Firefox OS are mobile phone operating systems that all want a piece of the smartphone market. We try out these ambitious mobile alternatives on a Nexus 4 phone.

Android and iOS command a colossal lead over everyone else who has tried their hand at a mobile operating system – including Microsoft's own Windows Phone, which is stuck in a distant third place. The other systems that exist in the huge mobile space are asking what it will take to be number four. In this article, I tour some alternative mobile operating systems, including Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch, and Mozilla's Firefox OS. I tested each of these alternative systems on my LG Nexus 4 (Figure 1).

In the following sections, I'll show you how to set up each system on a Nexus 4, and I'll offer some observations on the user experience.

If you have a spare Nexus 4, you might want to follow along and try this experiment. (At the end of the article, I explain how to get your phone back to Android.) Who knows? You might discover you like one of the alternatives better than Android.

[...]

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

comments powered by Disqus