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“Can I borrow your phone?” Hands-on with Mark Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu phone

At the Canonical booth at Mobile World Congress, I had a chance meeting with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and spiritual leader of Ubuntu. I was actually at the booth to try out the new Ubuntu Edition of the Meizu MX4, a mid- to high-end smartphone, but all of the untethered devices had run out of battery—every phone, that is, except for Shuttleworth’s.

“Can I borrow your phone for a while, then?” There was a brief pause while he processed the question, no doubt wondering what a perspicacious journalist would do with his phone, but then he nodded his assent and handed it over.

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