BARCELONA, Spain—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. We chatted for a while (he had some interesting things to say about the Ubuntu Edge, and I’m happy to report that he’s an Ars reader) and then headed off for a meeting.

The Meizu MX4 is a shipping Android phone; it can be yours today for $450. Just like the Aquarius E4.5 that we wrote about a few weeks ago, Canonical is working with Meizu to make an Ubuntu Edition of the MX4. Inside the MX4 there’s an octa-core Mediatek SoC, 2GB of RAM, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, LTE support, and all the usual bells and whistles you’d expect on a modern non-budget smartphone. The 5.3-inch, 1080p display is pretty darn impressive for a $450 device. The MX4 isn’t as thin or light as the latest Apple or Samsung superphone, but it still feels like a solid, premium, well-balanced device. It doesn’t have an SD card slot unfortunately, but it does have a removable battery.