Canonical adds a $625 and $675 UbuntuEdge reward level
indiegogo.com
indiegogo.com
I'm excited about the possibility of a genuinely hand held, pocket sized device that I can hook up to behave like a full desktop.
It's a format that has been tried before but the power/price ratio has never been favourable - this feels like the first real chance for it to work.
If your travelling there won't be a screen available unless you lug one around. In which case you might as well carry a laptop.
At home and work you probably have a computer.
I think it is an interesting concept but I don't quite see the practical use. Unless it had like a stand and a projector or something.
Currently I work from two fixed locations and also from home. If I can just have a fixed screen, keyboard and mouse there and take this around with all my current working stack ready to go that'd be ace!
That's how we do it at my company. Each workstation is just a dock, screens, and mouse and keyboard. You can move around anywhere really easily.
I think you'd be surprised at the uptake of this kind of device in the corporate world if it was marketed correctly.
Honestly, I'd probably fund this project right now if they had a tablet or notebook docking accessory in the plan.
Our code runs fairly well on the Nexus 4 today, and through much dogfooding, we've learned that RAM is the biggest limiting factor in performance. So when (if?!) Edge ships with 4GB of RAM, the desktop mode will fly.
Interface with google glass or use a pico laser projector. MYO or one of the myriad one-handed keyboards (eg Twiddler, Kee4, CyKey) for input. It's not going to be easy at first but I'm not keen on spending the rest of my life sitting down in a stuffy office.
A bluetooth keyboard + HDMI cable can fit in my pocket.
EDIT: And part of the point is for this to eventually replace your desktops too, so you don't need to have everything spread out over multiple computers.
Some people just want a tiny computer for a bit of email, a bit of social media and some cat videos, with the occasional office document creation and reading.
BYOD could really use something like this.
Additionally resolution just isn't there yet. They're currently testing better screens for the consumer version but its all a matter of what they can source (as with the dev kit they had to move from a 5in to 7in screen due to sourcing problems).
Finally, before I received mine I had thought about using it similarly to how you are. However I've come to realize that strapping a TV to you face changes up the interaction enough that you sometime have to rethink fundamental design concepts about the UI.
Random Rift tidbit: The people behind the [Minecrift](https://github.com/mabrowning/minecrift) are doing some awesome work and its development is a great example of people learning how to adapt a game to VR. Plus the ascetics of minecraft makes the pixelation of the Rift less noticeable.
I have docking stations for my Thinkpad. I also have my Nexus phone in my pocket.
What I want is a pocket-sized device which has multiple docking stations for various purposes:
0. Baseline phone for being a phone or small computing tasks. 1. Tablet for couch-surfing or communal content sharing. 2. Laptop for on the go larger computing tasks. 3. Desktop for long work sessions.
It would be great if stages 2 and 3 could also include additional computing, graphics and memory resources.
Tires becoming useless after 15 laps is probably the better analogy.
I'd like to hack on the software, build my own, try to install Debian on it instead etc. All that is going to be much harder if I have to use whatever kernel version their binary blobs target.
Unfortunately, for the planned volume, we won't have much influence with the SoC vendor, and therefore, it is highly doubtful you will see open graphics / radio firmware.
Sorry, it's not our preference either.
You're unlikely to see an open-source firmware for the 3G/4G cellular radio, the WiFi, or the low level Bluetooth stack (up to the HCI layer). Ever.
The reason? This stuff costs a lot to develop, and the major chip vendors don't want to give any help to their competition.
As for graphics... I had heard an announcement by one SoC vendor who was just putting in more general-purpose processor cores, and they had planned to do all the video decoding (such as for H.264) and OpenGL graphics in software (using Mesa?). This was allegedly going to be possible with a power budget not too much larger than the typical hardware implementations of these blocks. What ever happened to them?
Usable as a desktop is a cool idea, but more of a "linux on your wristwatch" idea than one with real use. I mean, if you have a keyboard & monitor handy, how hard is it to have a PC too? Cheap micro desktops are coming out all over the place. Cheap.
Am I missing the point entirely? Is this all about Ubuntu mobile itself with android & ubuntu desktop as extras?
I hope this doesn't sound like hating. I actually want this to succeed. It's cool. Crowd funding a major player in the OS/mobile space is even cooler. Lots of potential spinoffs down the road (like the iOS laptop I've wanted to get my dad for years). That said... Can anyone explain this to me? What are they trying to do here?
I think it's a very cool idea (dual boot and everything). Hardware specs look top notch.
One thing I find really interesting is that for a galaxy 4S or iPhone5 the cost is somewhere between $650-$800 for a uncontracted phone. That being said, this Ubuntu phone would be both a Cheap micro desktop as well as a presumably good phone running either android or Ubuntu mobile and both for roughly the same price as the other "nice" phones out there.
Beyond this specific phone, I am guessing their real purpose is to break into the mobile OS industry using this Ubuntu phone because it would make headlines and in turn give a nice PR campaign. Not to mention it would prove that there is a sizable market for higher end phones which can support the Ubuntu desktop/cell phone idea and push the technology forward quicker.
If your phone supports use as a full computer, then the need for a PC is obviated. In my case, I have roughly 3500 employees, of which approximately 2000 have computers. Almost all of them carry smart phones. I envision a future state where those smart phones are also their PCs...they become more mobile and can easily access their data at any of our locations and I've just cut 2000 computers out of my budget. Sure, an Ubuntu desktop won't work for all, but it would work for many of our staff...70% of what we do is web-based already.
- Getting an account takes most of the one day you're there
- None of the software you use is there
- It's not even the OS you use
- There are restrictions on the machine
- There are viruses on the machine (if it's a home machine)
Carrying a laptop is pain, because you need to look after it and so you don't have it everywhere you go. You don't with a phone - it's in your pocket - all the time.
Future: I just dropped my whole fucking life in the toilet. I had shedloads of work on there amounting to many times the cost of the phone!
Near Future: Ah it's okay - I backed up my phone to my computer. Error: Too Much Recursion.
In fact, they're even considering full-blown AES 256 encryption on all your devices backed-up data.
> Am I missing the point entirely?
I believe one of the key points is that multiple computers suck. You have to sync/merge data, you have to sync/merge emails (unless you have your private IMAP server), you have to sync/merge chat logs, you have to upgrade software in multiple places…
I am really happy I got rid off my desktop a few years back and am now using only a notebook with a docking station at home and a phone. If I could only have a phone, that would be heaven on earth.
It's a phone! It's a computer! It's both!
More seriously, imagine a phone that is always a phone unless you want to make it a computer. Plug it into a TV/Monitor/glass and you have a full computer desktop.
I travel quite a bit. I have in my bag at the moment a laptop, a phone and a tablet. With this, I need just the phone.
I also used to work in an office. When I went home, I had a computer at home. If I never wanted to do anything, read an email or what not, I needed to VPN in or sync something. Things ALWAYS got out of sync. Now, I can just plug into a monitor and have my work system at home.
Or, say, you are a corporation. You have 10,000+ people. Assuming you are a normal corporation of that size, many of those people have phones AND computers/laptops. It is highly likely that a very large number of those people could get by with one device: a phone that is also a computer. Cost savings for those corporations would be huge.
You still need the keyboard and monitor, don't you?. If you are traveling, it would probably be best if they snapped together into a nice, book-like shape. Like a laptop, but with the computer conveniently removed?
Regarding money-saving at a 10,000 PC corporation.. really? First, they would have to use Ubuntu, and they use Windows. Second, its not really that much money. Even if this is free in the sense that they need to have a phone anyway, they still need the monitor & stuff. If they were happy with an ubuntu appliance PC, I'm sure they could get the computer part of the computer in micro computer form for $200 or so every 3-5 years if the saving was worth it. Most importantly, phones break, get lost or stolen.
I don't see it.
Find me an equivalent in a cellphone form for 830$.
Now find me an equivalent that do both.
I don't think it's a really good idea to replace everything with a single device, but you can't say that it's not less expensive.
What about the ease of deploying apps? It's a full Ubuntu, so you don't need to really deploy, just write and use. And you can use any programming languages, any libraries.
I am thinking of (i) a hobbyist who for whatever purposes want to write some apps that he can use on his phone on-the-go, or (ii) a medium business that wants to provide some tailor-made apps for the employees.
How much easier is it to develop for a full Ubuntu, compared to developing for Android or iPhone? 1.1x? 1.5x? 3x?
I still think Shuttleworth will eventually top-up with his own money, but this should reduce his exposure somewhat ;)
Mind, it's all speculation at this point.
I'm not saying it can't be done but I'd be very surprised if they meet the target.
I can't imagine that spec sheet, at the end of 2013/beginning of 2014, is going to be cheap. They'd be hard pressed to manufacture this phone at all, let alone with sapphire screens and such.
Think of it this way, Samsung won't even broker a discussion about RAM unless you order >100k units. If they sold 32M of phones at $600, that's about 53k handsets, which is about half of an initial production run for any serious manufacturer.
I'm bearish, but I'd be thrilled if we had another competitor against iOS and Android. Blackberry and WP8 are not real contenders, Canonical could easily get the 3rd slot.
They've got a lot to gain from meeting their goal. It will show the big phone manufacturers that there is demand for this new phone OS.
Might come off but it feels like a marketing "cock-up" to me.
/s
(I ordered one yesterday: I am a sucker for this sort of shiny.)
[1] I'm pretty sure I've got this right. The text I'm referencing is from their FAQ:
> What if you fail to reach the funding target?
>
> We appreciate every bit of support we receive during the
> 30 days, and every backer will be welcomed into the
> Ubuntu community. If we don’t reach our target then we
> will focus only on commercially available handsets and
> there will not be an Ubuntu Edge.
What I was trying to get at is that there's no guarantee of a phone even if the project is funded.
Guarantee from whom?
Normally I'd agree, because the fundraiser is typically a startup, perhaps a limited company, with no existing business with which to back refunds. So they could burn through the money and end up with nothing to issue refunds with. So from your perspective, there's no guarantee, since suing them would certainly do you no good anyway.
But what about an established company? If they want to guarantee it, why can't they? But, of course, are they? I'm not sure whether they're saying they are, or whether the law would say that they are. But I don't think it's as clear cut as the new startup case.
> Normally I'd agree, because the fundraiser is typically a
> startup, perhaps a limited company, with no existing
> business with which to back refunds.
This is very different from the mindset of a consumer, who is purchasing the product that was created with the investors money. If the investment doesn't pan out, the consumer has nothing to buy. The investor looses their investment.
My concern is that by offering product in exchange for investment (essentially a forward contract[1]), consumers are lured into taking on the risks of investors. The language on the fundraising page is, unfortunately, quite vague about this.
Again, I'm not saying that Canonical can't deliver, and I'm certain that they'll do their best to make this work out. I do wish that they'd make a better effort of warning off people who think they're simply buying a phone that won't be delivered for many months.
40-bit Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) addressing up to 1 TB of RAM. As per the x86 Physical Address Extension, still only 32-bit address space is available per process.
A quick google suggests you could be liable for around £90 in duty & VAT[1]
[1]http://www.dutycalculator.com/popular-import-items/import-du...
We're all forced to use windows, I might even be able to make a profit :-)
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/07/ubuntu-edge-uk-tax-positi...
Note the comments where someone claims Canonical responded to a query by saying it includes VAT. Seems almost too good to be true though.
They really ought to make their $20 founder level a lottery.
And then after that was publicized, make two more tiers.
$20 - 1 ticket
$50 - 3 tickets
$100 - 8 tickets
And then throw in some of the $10,000 one of a kind prizes in the drawing.
This seems quite low. With thirty days they must achieve over a million dollars per day. I would assume that the first 40 hours brings way more money than the days 3-27 but that's only double than the required average income. I hope they reach the target, but I doubt it.
I think with their new tiered offers they might just get there...
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Samsung-Galaxy-S...
Suggests 400$ is achievable, which should leave them plenty of room for profit at 600 USD. Given the dropoff when the price goes up to 675 from 625 here: http://vertior.com:9000/ and the lack of marketing / distribution costs you'd think they'd do better just to leave the price low.
I do not think you will be surprised.
Maybe I'm missing the point.
If all the pledge levels 'fill up' (Only $830 and $20 do not have caps) They hit about 11 or 12 million. That leaves about 20 million to be supplied by the $830, $20 levels - or just random goodwill givings. Is that correct?
*edit, an illustration of what I was seeing: http://pastebin.com/8GfXRzbY
You'd get an indication of volume and free money. Not many companies get the chance to charge potential customers.
Also, if this suggestion brings you more than $1m, I'd like a free phone please.
Reader: if you'd like this option too, why not chime in here.
(and I'm not jealous, I actually gave $630 on the day one)
Edit: Although, the $625 level is now "1296 out of 1250 claimed" - so I'm not sure what that is about.
the phone seems too high and the founder too low. I'd like it to happen but I would rather wait for a second batch.
"The Ubuntu Edge is an exclusive production run, available only through Indiegogo."
http://movebits.net/2013/07/23/ubuntu-edge-funding-level/
you can really see how the new "deals" really helped it take off again.
That is pretty far away from the 32 million they need
We are in the era of Ben Bernanke free money for everyone. Getting credit should not be that hard.
Financing is a top priority thing for selling phones and cars in the real world. Probably not in Mark Shutterworth's land thought.