As I mentioned earlier. I jumped off the deep end and dove into the world of Ubuntu Touch. One of the principle hangups I found was that there was not a FICS chess app. While this still remains to be solved, there was a great web-app for Chess.com.
Overall, the mobile interface for Chess.com works great. Just like playing on any chess server, there are buttons and doo-dads that allow you to pick different game types and lengths, as well as tons (and I mean tons) of options to change the graphical view. The view you see above is my mix/match version of the numerous options available. There are superior looking themes, backgrounds, pieces, and boards, but I wanted to focus on the game, so that’s why I chose this setup.
There was a few problems when using it with UT. You can see one here:
This pop-up appears before the start of every game, which is a little annoying. Fortunately, just tapping anywhere on the screen makes it go away, so that’s no problem. The other two issues are a bit more of a hassle, but as you will see, only if you really needed them.
The first is that I cannot upload my profile picture from the UT phone. Every time I click “change image” on my profile screen, it asks me to choose an app, if I choose gallery or the file manager, the picture can be chosen, but it never actually uploads.
The only other issue is strangely related. After a game is over, you can download or share the pgn/gif of the game, but with UT, I couldn’t download it. A little annoying, but overall not really a show-stopper. The tap and drag interface worked flawlessly, and the availability of games seemed much quicker than on FICS. I might be hooked!
Linux – keep it simple.
So, is that just another proprietary “Web app” downloaded to your browser when you visit the chess.com site? Or is an actual free software app that your build/install on your device?
It is just a web app. I would have to check if chess.com is open source, but I doubt it. I am working on other avenues as well, like using pychess or something similar and connecting to FICS, but for now this is my only phone alternative that works.