Canonical has given developers an early Christmas present by offering them a dual boot option between Ubuntu Touch and Android.
“We are thrilled to announce a preview of a new feature for developers: Ubuntu on mobile devices can now run alongside Android on a single handset”, announced Canonical.
Canonical announced the official dual-boot support, but it is still in a developer preview stage and is meant for developers who are well informed about partition layouts and ready to reflash their handsets as the Android recovery partition is erased.
“Dual boot rewrites the Android recovery partition and those installing it should be intimately familiar with re-flashing it in case something goes wrong”, Canonical warned.
Currently the tool has only been tested on four Android device including Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10; however, Canonical is confident that it should work on fifty odd other devices including Samsung Galaxy S2, S3 and S4; Sony Xperia Z and Tablet Z, Xperia ZL, S and T; first, second and HD Kindle Fire among others. You can find the entire list here.
The feature is still far from mainstream considering it’s just a developer preview release, but providing dual-boot option right of the bat for in a mobile operating system sounds a whole lot promising and will go a long way forward as hardcore Android fans will be able to dip their toes in the Ubuntu pool every once in a while right on the same hardware without have to switch to another phone.
