ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Robert Park <robert.park@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 11, 2016 11:29 AM, "Lorn Potter" <lorn.potter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/01/16 04:56, Stephen M. Webb wrote:
>>
>> 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."
>
>
> Form factor is the basis for how we use and interact with these things.
> This review even points out use cases for desktop/phablet mode, detected
in part with the accelerometer (yay!):
> http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5377754/lenovo-yoga-2-pro-review
>
>
>>
>> There is just no such thing as a phone or a desktop as separate entities.
>
>
> Maybe not below the UI, but the UI sure needs to be different. In this
respect they are different, in the least to the user.
>
>
> 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.
>>
>
> I think you just argued for having phablet/desktop mode and a need to
detect it, otherwise your phone would already just be a desktop and would
not need to 'be turned into' one. It's a dynamic thing. and it's because
there is only one Ubuntu Personal that we need mode detection to allow
developers to optimize their apps for the different use cases of different
form factors.

But the point is that you can't have coffee that says "if desktop: x; if
phone: y" because it can change at any time and you can't rely on that.

**MUCH** better user experience if you do feature detection, eg "if
push_notifications_available: enable_push_notifications()", this way they
work everywhere they exist, rather than trying to guess whether or not they
exist by making assumptions about what is a "phone" vs what is a "desktop".