The really huge question is what will the battery life be. A pocket-sized device which only has 3 hours of battery life is not going to be interesting to me.
A HDMI port can provide 5V at a maximum current of 50mA. This would not be enough (or rather practical) to charge a mobile phone. It's less than the 100mA offered by USB2 (before device enumeration).
I'd rather not need a computer at home and work (and all the syncing issues that entails).
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!
You would not believe how many of my managers complain to us about how heavy and uncouth their laptop is to carry around. We actually had one guy apply for workplace compensation after his back caused him problems - he blamed it on carrying around a laptop + case.
I think you'd be surprised at the uptake of this kind of device in the corporate world if it was marketed correctly.
You're never somewhere where there's a TV screen with HDMI?
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.
> ... there won't be a screen available unless you lug one around
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.
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.
I have screens at home, and I have computers at home, but I'd be happy to get one of these so I can do stuff in the garden, or at a coffee shop, and then carry on at home.
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.
Personnaly I would use it at school, that way I can avoid to bring my laptop at school. I don't like to use school computers for any development because it's not my environment (configurations, git, etc..). That way I already have screen/keyboard/mouse but I also have my own environment which will never change.
I wonder the same thing. But I would be really interested in trying a small Mac Air sized screen/keyboard shell that had a port that I could slide such a phone in to. Sort of a portable docking station.
Reminds me of my old Motorola Atrix [1]. It had a laptop docking shell that booted a restricted version of Ubuntu alongside an instance of Android. It was totally cool, and everyone that saw it was amazed. However, actual usage was another story. Tegra2 just wasn't powerful enough to drive Ubuntu and Android concurrently in a usable manner.
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.
Why not? Right now, I basically always have my iPhone with me. Often, I also have an 11" Air with me. But there's a lot of redundancy between the two, I have to keep them in sync, and tether the phone to the Air when off WiFi. This sounds like a credible solution to eliminate that redundancy and it wouldn't mean carrying an extra device.
Honestly, I'd probably fund this project right now if they had a tablet or notebook docking accessory in the plan.
So you don't go places where there might be a display already? No hotels with a TV already in the room, never go to a friends or relatives who might have a screen that you could borrow?
Keyboards with touchpads are available in sizes ranging from no larger than the phone. And if this type of device takes off, you might see hotels etc. provide keyboards and mice in the rooms at least in places catering to business travellers.
Current Rift dev kit owner here, the device isn't really what you would expect. The screen connects to a box that then does either DVI or HDMI out as well as USB for the head tracking. This box also needs separate power from an outlet. So its not really ready for a mobile experience.
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.
Is there any information on whether the drivers on the phone will be open source as well? I'm on the fence, but the main thing stopping me is that I'm not very keen on buying yet another phone powered by a bunch of proprietary binary blobs.
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.
We plan on an unlocked phone, with an unlocked bootloader.
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.
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?
I don't quite get what's going on here. Is this an idea for a major commercial product or is it a quirky fun thing for the ubuntu community? The scale they're aiming for seems to imply the former.
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 mean, if you have a keyboard & monitor handy, how hard is it to have a PC too?
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.
I just wonder why aren't you investigating existing smartphones for that. Many of them already have HDMI connection, multi core processors and can be connected with bluetooth keyboard. The software most probably will not be problem with Android (not sure about other OSes).
In my view, none of the Operating Systems available on current phones are suitable for the kind of desktop work I do. This is an actual Linux based phone, not just a Linux kernel with a VM that runs some phone apps. As a Linux hacker I feel like I could do quite a lot with this phone.
You'd need a fully fledged desktop to make it work. Is there a project like that in existence which you could just install on a random smartphone? I haven't heard of one.
> I mean, if you have a keyboard & monitor handy, how hard is it to have a PC too?
> 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.
>Am I missing the point entirely? Is this all about Ubuntu mobile itself with android & ubuntu desktop as extras?
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.
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?
The problem is that if you go to some random machine, you'll most likely have the following problems:
- 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)
For these reasons people often use carry around a laptop.
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.
It's somewhere in between, I'd say more towards the latter. At around ~60k units it's hardly a "major" commercial product considering even Microsoft sells millions of their Surface RT tablets in a quarter.
I think it's a very cool idea (dual boot and everything). Hardware specs look top notch.
I think the idea is that it is both a PC and a phone. This allows you to plug in your phone as your PC (like those cheap micro desktops), and have a working cell phone.
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.
Shuttleworth's interview about how they are going to keep the long term future of Ubuntu's phone OS from fragmenting while still allowing complete manufacturer customization was a really disappointing string of non-answers. I am really confused about how this is going to shape up. Maybe this will set a precendent for a Nexus-style standard device with the blessing of Canonical itself.
The general message is this: you don't put a new UI over the top, you add your own services (videos displayed, music store, books, mags, etc, etc). There is a small amount of leg room for making minor UI tweaks such as the welcome screen layout, general colour scheme, etc - but that's it.
At current levels they need more than 30,000 people to commit to buy an $830 dollar phone which is not expected to released for at least 10 months and with next to no marketing clout.
I'm not saying it can't be done but I'd be very surprised if they meet the target.
To me, this isn't so much the problem as the realities of producing a phone with a Bill of Materials like the one they're intending.
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.
OR some last minute corporate padding. Either by lots of in house $20 donations or if its a lot left then Shuttleworth saying "Oh we were so close... you know what, I'll write a check for the balance!"
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.
There is a lesson there - you cant sell a lot of kit (available at some future date) at a price that is over 30% more than a ton of other folks got it for. The reward price "spread" is an attempt to reproduce that initial enthusiastic sales surge but I wonder...
Might come off but it feels like a marketing "cock-up" to me.
This isn't buying a phone. This is making a donation to support the project [1], and, if all goes well, you'll be rewarded with a very cool phone.
[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.
(edit: I picked a terrible FAQ item to support the point that I was trying to make, which is that the phone may take longer than predicted to produce, and there's even a possibility that it'll never be produced. I think that Canonical is being very responsible by raising a lot of money as a hedge against the risks, but still, there are some risks.)
No, if the campaign doesn't succeed, Indiegogo won't take your money. The campaign is only funded if they raise the full $32m, so there is no worry of not paying and not receiving the phone.
> 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.
What type of entity is raising the funds (startup, limited company, etc.) is irrelevant. The point is that they are asking for an investment, and yes, as you point out, there are no refunds if an investment doesn't work out.
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.
While this is true, I think most people treat Kickstart/Indiegogo et all as pre-order services. They're definitely "buying a phone" rather than donating to a project, you only have to look at the comments section of overrunning projects to see people demanding to know where there "order" is.
I doubt that anybody else will have more than 4GB of RAM or 128GB of flash in 10 months. There may be some phones that match it, but I would be willing to give great odds that there won't be a mainstream phone with more.
PC's can/could via PAE. Each application could only address 4GB (of which some would need to be set aside for mapping in other stuff than application data). Don't know if 32bit ARMs support hacks like that, though.
It looks like the latest 32-bit ARM chips have this capability [1]:
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.
And even if the software sucks, it's got a screen made of synthetic sapphire and a body made of an alloy so hard that when civilization collapses around you, you can use it as a hand-axe!
(I ordered one yesterday: I am a sucker for this sort of shiny.)
I'm really surprised they wrote that, as it seems bound for legal issues. They cannot possibly guarantee the fastest multi-core CPU (what, a Haswell? Oh, just "mobile" -- well what if Apple or another non-seller has the current fastest multi-core mobile CPU at the time?)
I doubt it would be superior.. . Seems to me the specs for the processor are not set yet and Apple, Samsung, HTC etc don't currently have a phone up to par. Meaning AT BEST they would be equivalent.
"[Kogan] LivePrice allows you to purchase a product while we are in the process of manufacturing or shipping. The price of the product gradually increases... " http://www.kogan.com/au/liveprice/
So long as a Paypal account is required to make a > $500 contribution, I won't be contributing at any of those tiers. I know I'm in the minority though so I doubt this will have a big impact on the overall funding.
I'm wih you on that. While we're probably in the minority, at least in the U.S. PayPal is not a monopoly with Stripe and other services around, so I make it an effort not to use PayPal and it's easy to do so. I havent't logged into PayPal in years and probably don't even remember my password.
Done. £419 for a phone that good, that I only need a screen and a keyboard for to turn into a mobile workstation. Fingers crossed that enough people find this as compelling as I do and sign up!
Its says free shipping in the US and UK, so I'm guessing, as Canonical is based in London, they'll do the importing and deal with duty, so the price you see is the price you pay! I'm guessing.
Good question. No idea! If I get charged the VAT and duty, I think I might be able to make up the £90 by charging the other geeks in my office a "fondle fee".
We're all forced to use windows, I might even be able to make a profit :-)
Man, what a bummer. Can't make a purchase without a paypal account. Guys - please enable credit card payments and you'll have a horde of buyers from India :)
This is most definitely illegal in the US. Lotteries have all kinds of rules associated with them, and online lotteries are specifically outlawed. That's why sweepstakes rules normally all begin with "NO PURCHASE NECESSARY" -- it's to legally distinguish the sweepstakes from a lottery.
Nope, I don't think that will ever happen, there is no incentive for him doing that. Mass production of 40-45K phones really need capital, and if he put 7 million, how he is going to avoid a loss, let alone profit.
"The last few days have been absolutely incredible -- over $3.5 million in the first 40 hours."
This seems quite low. With thirty days they must achieve over a million dollars per day. I would assume that the first 40 hours brings way more money than the days 3-27 but that's only double than the required average income. I hope they reach the target, but I doubt it.
Crowd funding generally receives the bulk of it's funding in the last few days. Many projects succeed when they at < 50% funded a couple days prior to the end.
They can still keep all the money they've raised if they don't hit their target. They just need to give IndieGoGo a large slice of what they have raised.
I'd say its a good move (even if it is a fluke). Think this way, people saw 600$ and 830$ initially. So in our subconscious mind, 830$ IS THE price, rest will be played by psychology, anything less than 830 would be at a discount and most probably I'll be TEMPTED to buy it.
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'm all for an Ubuntu phone, almost to the point of shelling out, but I'm not sure I'd get a commensurate benefit from this phone. I would probably go for it if it weren't for remote desktop apps like iTeleport. Pull out whatever mobile device you've got (this morning it was my iPad), launch the app, and there's your home desktop (assuming you've got a cell or WiFi signal). It's laggy, but such things improve over time.
Their goal of $32M seems impossible, unless I'm not understanding how indiegogo works.
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?
You didn't count the $600 level and there is no cap at the $830 level. I have a feeling they'll keep finessing the levels throughout the campaign to keep the money coming in.
I'd like to see another reward level: I would pay $50 for an option to buy the phone at $650 at launch or soon afterwards. Say 2 months after launch to give the people who have paid outright up front an advantage.
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.
Why do they have the same exact item/reward point at $625, $675, $725 and $830? It seems to me they're realizing there's no way they can reach they goal selling at the $830 price point, but why have all other levels simultaneously? Are people really going to pick 725 over 675 for the same thing?
The idea is to create the same sense of urgency for people on the fence that they had with the initial $600 tier. Their biggest danger right now is losing momentum and people concluding it's just not going to happen.
One of the important points here is that each price level (aside from the last one) has an allotment of 1250 units. So, while most people won't buy at $625 vs $675, so long as $625 is available, it provides incentive for people to buy now vs later and risk the lower level selling out.
Edit: Although, the $625 level is now "1296 out of 1250 claimed" - so I'm not sure what that is about.
Looks like they're probably letting people through if they've entered the pledge process while there were free slots even if all were filled by the time they completed it.
I've donated useless $20 for nothing(except goodwill funding of the project), so additional $50 for the device would be something I'd choose any day without hesitation.
But nobody is suggesting that. It'd be an additional $605. You didn't feel that the 625/830 price of the phone was worth it to you. The people who did already chose to donate for the "goodwill funding of the project" -- with $625+.
They've missed their target, I don't think a single kickstarter has been successful having only reached 20% on day 1. (Most successful drives have well over 50% done day 1.)
Here they haven't even reached that after a few days.
Unless shuttleworth decides to stick the money in himself this won't be happening.
Very curious to whether that's allowed or not. Run a Kickstarter campaign, buy your own product to fill in demand. You'd think that if they get within 90% of total and the option is there they'd take it - the 10% of the items they buy themselves they'll get to sell on anyway.
I wonder if they have arrangements for corporate donors to jump in and buy the top tier at scheduled times... I am thinking not, since it's through PayPal, but never know.
Even in the US, financing for phones is becoming more unfashionable with time. Prepaid plans and bring-your-own-phone is now on most if not all major carriers. Google is selling their Nexus phones directly rather than carrier subsidy. People are starting to wise up to the fact that financing is unsustainable.
They are currently cheap, at least from Europe - an iPhone is £529, the Edge is less than £450. If they really make it and get some carrier interest, prices will go further down.
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.