Cramming a desktop environment onto a smartphone is a fun project that promises very little actual usefulness. Smartphone screens are too small for desktop OSes, and connecting a keyboard and mouse is usually out of the question. But now Canonicals Ubuntu for Android takes a different approach, surfacing the desktop OS only when it actually makes sense.
Canonical announced today that it will seamlessly integrate Android with the Linux-based Ubuntu distribution. A device running Ubuntu for Android loads Android during typical smartphone use cases, then switches to Ubuntu once its been slid into a dock that connects to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
Samsung seems to have got their strategy down pat in the world of smartphones theyre doing gangbusters where the Android scene is concerned, selling more than 10 million units of the Samsung Galaxy S2 to date despite being launched rather recently, and while their own set of bada-powered phones arent doing too hot, Samsung still finds the time to support another operating system Windows Phone, where the latest model to be announced would be the Samsung Omnia W that will be the first Samsung device that runs on Windows Phone Mango, the latest version of Microsofts mobile operating system.