14 DAY TRIAL // Plasma Mobile is a new project from the KDE developers that is based on Ubuntu Touch, among other technologies. It took everyone by surprise, including the Ubuntu developers who were working on the initial project. Now we have a few new mockups for Plasma Mobile, and they look absolutely stunning.
One thing you need to know about Plasma Mobile is that it’s still in the early stages of development and it will take a while until you can use it as a regular user. As it stands right now, only the Nexus 5 phone is supported, so that's just another thing that developers need to work on. You can think of Plasma Mobile as an Ubuntu phone that's been stripped of Unity and is running a new Plasma shell from KDE built specifically for mobile devices.
We already saw a video with the new operating system and it's pretty different from what's available right now. Sure, it can run regular apps, along with Ubuntu Touch and Android apps (in theory until now), and it's still very young. This means that the way it looks will probably change as the design team refines the interface. It also means that we'll get to see a lot more of these mock-ups in the months to come. Who knows, maybe the KDE designers will get inspired by them.
Plasma Mobile is cool in theory, for now
It's impossible to deny the fact that Plasma Mobile is an extremely interesting endeavor and that people will probably want to examine this project more closely, especially since it uses Ubuntu Touch as a base. It's not clear whether the devs will keep this base from now on or if they will work towards something else in the future, but that is of less importance right now.
KDE is evolving, and its developers are finally taking this huge step towards platform convergence. A lot of work remains to be done, but make no mistake about it, Plasma Mobile is here to stay, and it's going to surprise us even further.
