Poll: What ‘Alternative’ Phone Would You Like To Try?

Android and iPhone have a duopoly on smartphones, but there are plenty of underdog alternatives. Which one would you like to try?

The majority of smartphones sold run either Google’s Android, or the Apple iPhone’s iOS operating system, and research firm Analysys Mason believes the two will make up 81 percent of the market by 2017. There are, however, plenty of other new and interesting devices to try, including Firefox, Ubuntu and others. Let us know which you think sounds most enticing.

Ubuntu, Firefox, or what?

Last week saw the launch of Ubuntu for mobile phones, and last year, a phone OS based on the Firefox browser broke cover. Do they sound worth a try?

Firefox OS is aimed at developing economies, offering a simple browser-based environment running HTML5 applications, while Ubuntu is a full desktop operating system squeezed into a small device.

They both sound enticing, but then, for different reasons, so do the other major mobile Linux versions, Sailfish (formerly Jolla’s MeeGo OS) and Tizen (replacing Linux Foundation’s MeeGo and Samsung’s Bada). Meanwhile, in China, we have Alibaba’s Aliyun.

Finally, just to be contentious, we give you the option of voting for two operating systems which are either fading or struggling to get a proper foothold in the major league of phone operating systems: Windows Phone and the much-delayed BlackBerry 10 from RIM.

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Peter Judge

Peter Judge has been involved with tech B2B publishing in the UK for many years, working at Ziff-Davis, ZDNet, IDG and Reed. His main interests are networking security, mobility and cloud

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  • Where indeed?
    I did forget to put that one in.
    It's there now.... (with a couple of votes to start you off..)

    Peter

    • Indeed, an instant-runoff vote, Borda count, or even approval voting would perhaps reflect the preferences of the crowd more clearly.

    • Sorry to all of you. We have a fairly limited polling system, so there are some things we can't do.

      I have only just noticed that we actually do have the ability to allow multiple votes, and could turn this on now. It would allow each future voter to tick multiple boxes, while still using cookies to limit people voting multiple times.

      What do you think? Should I switch it on, or will it invalidate the scores so far?

      Peter Judge

  • WP fading or struggling? No, it's on the way to the top, to make the duopoly to triopoly. But I hope that Sailfish and Ubuntu will get some market share also.

    • I really don't aggree. I don't believe WP has any real chance.

      In my personal opinion Windows Phone is pure rubbish. Winsows Phone is so damn restricted and lacks so many important features that I would not even call it as a smartphone OS. It's more like a advanced featurephone OS for the low rangew phones.

      I could give a wery long list of features which are lacking in Windows Phone when compared to Symbian and MeeGo. There is huge list of thibng which work nicely on Symbian and MeeGo, but which are either missing or poorly implemented in Windows Phone. Damn WP7 don't even have a proper multitasking which Symbian and MeeGo do have.

      And lets try to use Wubdows Phone with Linux computer.. I After doing that I almost did throw my Lumia out of the window, because NOTHING worked. Accessing the phone and using phone features from Linux computer really does not work. My Symbian smartphone works really nicely with Linux, I can do LOTS of things with my phone connected to computer. But when using Windows Phone nothing works. I have used Linux since 1998 so I'm not any Linux nwqvuw

      And the UI of Windows Phone is simply ugly, it's tiled home screen is totally useless when compared to interactive widget based home screen in Symbian and Android. Etc. I

      And one important issue is also that people just don't want Windows in their phone too.

      • > Damn WP7 don’t even have a proper multitasking which
        > Symbian and MeeGo do have.

        I meant to say WP, not WP7

        Neither WP7 nor WP8 has a proper multitasking which is ridiculous in year 2013. Both Symbiand and MeeGo have it so lack of ptoper multitasking in Windows Phone is unacceptable.

      • > I have used Linux since 1998 so I’m not any Linux nwqvuw

        damn typos.

        I meant that I'm not any Linux newbie, so that's not causing problems.

        I don't even try to fix other typos :-)

    • I may be wrong, but I thought Maemo was merged into Meego, which is now Sailfish and/or Tizen.

      Peter

      • You are correct. Meego was the attempted merger of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin, but in practice we had two rather similar Meegos - Intel's and Nokia's.

        After Microsoft wrote a billion dollar check to Nokia to switch camps, Intel renamed their Meego to Tizen, which now runs only webapps. The engineers behind Nokia's Meego left Nokia to start Sailfish.

        I personally consider Sailfish to be the "true" Maemo heir, but YYMV. Samsung has announced a Tizen phone, while we're still awaiting a Sailfish product announcement. I'd personally be most happy with Ubuntu or Sailfish (in that order of preference), though I'll settle for Android in a pinch.

      • @ Peter Judge

        Maemo was merged with Intel's Moblin.

        Maemo + Niblib = MeeGo

        Note that the OS in Nokia N9 is actually called MeeGo Harmattan. It is MeeGo compayible OS, but it is not really pure MeeGo. It has a lot common with Maemo 6 Harmattan which was never released.

  • Hmmm. 110 % all the contenders summed up together at the moment. Seems like there's something fishy about the voting calculation of this poll....

    • Don't worry - I just turned on multiple voting for a while as an experiment. I wanted to see how the plug-in would handle the extra votes cast.

      As you can see, it handles the votes rather clumsily, giving rise to confusing results. I think multiple voting probably doesn't add much (and the question is "which would you most like to try"

      The total is now at 115%, and we currently have 2913 votes, so that means we've had 380 "extra" votes.

      The logs will let me separate those, and apportion them according to the overall statistics, or else roll back to when I switched on multiple votes (neither is perfect obviously).

      We are now back on single voting.

      This has been one of our most popular polls, and one of the most interesting results.

      It's clear that there is some energetic voting by enthusiastic supporters of one system of another - but I've not found actual vote rigging (feel free to 'fess up if you have).

      Peter

      nd I'm in the market for a better poll-handling Wordpress plug-in.
      As you said, the votes now total to 114 %

  • There are lots of other alternative mobile OSes, mostly Linux based, like SHR and QtMoko. There are also people who use normal Debian, as its repositories contain everything needed for full-featured mobile UI and GSM support.

    I feel like some kind of hipster. "Alternative" systems in poll are much too mainstream for me ;)

  • From current to future:

    As a application developer I really love to develop using Qt and QML. I like both Symbian and MeeGo which both use Qt as a application framework. I also have wery high hopes on Jolla. Jolla's Sailfish OS is definetely thr most interesting new smartphone platform.

    My current most favorite smart phone OS is still Symbian, and especially it's latest version: Nokia Belle feature pack 2. It's available for the users of the Nokia 808 PureView. IOlder Nokia Belle (originally knowns as Symbian Belle) was really nice too, but in Nokia Belle feature pack 2 the UI transition to the new Qt based Symbian UI is MUCH more complete and finished. In original Belle there was still lots of the old AVKON UI visible, but in Belle feature pack 2 the new Qt abd QML-based UI is usaed everywhere. I really love the latest Symbian and those bew style apps for it. In my opinion Elop made a huge mistake when he switched Nokia to Windows Phone.

    My second favorite OS is MeeGo on N9. One of the biggest reasons is tha tboth MeeGo and Symbian use Qt as a application framework and both have QML based UI. Most of the new QML applications look and feel atleast identica on both platforms.

    Because both platforms use Qt, QML, Qt Mobility and Qt Quick Components. So it is wery easy to build aoos which support both platforms.

    It was wery sad day when Elop killed MeeGo and Symbian. I'm wery happy there is now Jolla who is continuing the great MeeGo development.In my opinion Jolla's Sailfish OS sounds like a good dtram come true. I don't really care what happens to Nokia anymore, Jolla is the future :)

    When Jolla releases it's SDK and first smartphones, I definitely will start to develop fot yjr Sailfish. Sailfish will be the most important platform for me as a developer and as a user. But I will not abandon Symbian and original MeeGo.

  • I have a tablet without 3G but with Wifi and BT.
    What I need is a simple phone with a simple B/W LCD and good mechanical keyboard to make calls. B/W LCD is visible in direct sunlight too and the batter lasts for days. On the other side it should have a good battery to feed the net, 3G or 4G and both Wifi and BT.
    BT is important in the car to feed the handsfree, no more. Wifi is there to give the net to the tablets, my and my wife's.
    While I'm travelling, I have just one SIM card in the phone, not another for the tablet.
    Most of the time the phone can stay i my pocket while I'm using the tablet in my hand and my wife her own.

    The operating system is not important here. I have various Android tablets and Linux mini laptops while I'm mobile and Linux and Win laptops, desktops and servers to be used while I'm near home.
    Most people don't differentiate between various OS's. They only see the beautifull scin.

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