ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

["Stephen M. Webb" <stephen.webb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 16-01-11 01:26 PM, Lorn Potter wrote:
> 
> imho, we need some way that contained apps know if the device is desktop or phablet mode, which I assumed the QInputInfo
> API was helping to detect. Right now, phablet mode becomes desktop mode when adding a bluetooth keyboard. Where as it
> probably should be keyboard + external display on small display, because windowed mode on small screen is horrible to use.

We need contained apps to be written in such a way that they don't need to know if they are on a phone, tablet, a
laptop, or a desktop.  They should only need to know that they have a certain size of display surface to render to.

Yes, there are exceptions for things that need certain hardware.  A step counter needs an accelerometer, for example.
Just the like one I have in my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro laptop.  Detecting available codecs in a gstreamer pipeline might also
qualify.  None of these are phone/desktop checks, they're checks for available system functionality.  *Thats* where
solutions need to live, not in an unreliable and poorly-defined proxy like "form factor."

There is just no such thing as a phone or a desktop as separate entities.  I can turn my phone into a desktop at any
time, and I have laptops I can turn into a tablet at any time.  There is only one Ubuntu Personal.

-- 
Stephen M. Webb  <stephen.webb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>