The modest price is matched by this first Ubuntu phone's barebone spec sheet. The 4.5-inch display has only qHD resolution (540 x 960), the processor is a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek chip, there's no LTE option, and the onboard storage is limited to 8GB. To offset these restrictions, the Aquaris allows memory expansion via a microSD card and also has two micro-SIM slots for added flexibility. If there's one spec indulgence here, it's the 5-megapixel front-facing camera, which BQ highlights as a major feature on the Android variant of this phone.

Though obviously aimed at the budget-conscious phone buyer, the Ubuntu phone faces tough competition from cheaper alternatives like the excellent Moto E on Android and Microsoft's latest Lumia devices running Windows Phone. Canonical, the company in charge of Ubuntu, believes it has a unique proposition to offer with its concept of Scopes. It eschews the traditional app-based interaction model in favor of "a new UI paradigm, designed to deliver content and services directly to categorised home screens, giving users a rich, unfragmented experience." This sort of content aggregation — serving web videos from YouTube and Vimeo as well as your own recorded media on the same screen — has been tried previously and never really succeeded. Canonical is therefore embarking on a highly ambitious project, but that's to be expected from the company that once sought $32 million to build the Ubuntu Edge smartphone that never materialized.