Canonical announced today their intent to make Ubuntu available on Android.  Yes, on Android.  So, what does that mean?  We’ve all probably seen Ubuntu booting on a mobile device before, but this is completely different…

The new project allows you to dock a phone to a display, mouse and keyboard, while utilizing the unused cores in your phone to provide a full desktop environment.  From the project’s homepage:

 Ubuntu for Android gives mobile workers a compelling reason to upgrade to multi-core handsets with more RAM, more storage, faster GPUs and CPUs. It’s not just a phone they are buying, it’s a desktop too. While mid-range phones can deliver a perfect Android experience, it takes high-end horsepower to drive a phone and a desktop at the same time. Newer multi-core processors are up to the job, and Ubuntu is the killer app for that hot hardware. It’s the must-have feature for late-2012 high-end Android phones.

Here are the features:

• Secure full-featured web

Ubuntu will, of-course, use your 3G/4G connection so you can browse the web and tweet about how amazing this all is!  Ubuntu is able to share bookmarks and browsing history with your Android browser to create a seamless roaming experience.

• Unified Contacts

Ubuntu goes so far as to sync your Google contacts locally, and even sync with a standard contact list on your phone.

• Calendar coordination

Like unified contacts, Ubuntu is able to sync with your calendar as well!  If ever there were an indication that Thunderbird will finally play nice with Google Calendar, this is probably it.

• Messaging and calls

This is the big one guys!  Calls and text messages from your phone will be integrated with the message center in Unity.  Never miss a single thing…

• Simple integrated settings