$600 is a lot to go all-in on a phone that won't hit the market until May 2014. The specs look great, but who knows what will happen in 6-8 months.
Ubuntu Edge
101–110 of 390 posts
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#102I am not the right person for this, I guess. I constantly break my phones by smashing them (by mistake) into various solid things or water, so I never buy any phone more expensive than 200 dollars. I really won't buy a phone for 830 dollars.
sapphire screen. I am in love with the idea of a sapphire screen. It's the same material as higher end watches, and those don't get scratches. I wonder how that affects its strength under dropping.
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm wondering if the ambitious goal of $32M is part of their strategy. Given that a higher goal is less likely to be met, I (and others who might consider backing) may be willing to adjust our risk function for the $600-800 such that we are more likely to back the project. Assuming that after 30 days only $20M is raised, then the outcome is as follows: 1: Nobody is actually charged for supporting the project 2: Other…
Yeah, it's quite possible they realise how unlikely the target is, and it could just be a way of attempting to demonstrate the market (given $830 is likely at one end of the bell-curve, it's a potentially interesting data point). I find it a bit baffling. I refuse to believe Canonical want to enter the hardware market, but maybe there is a Nexus-like role for this hardware in terms of getting the ODMs to up their gam…
I also thought Light Table was insanely over-ambitious for a 1-man software project and it got funded.
Maybe Ubuntu can pull this off.
If I had not very recently bought a high end smartphone I'd chip in. I might chip in anyway.
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UI is not based on HTML, it's QML. It's a GUI declaration language similar to XAML from MS. The whole QML described UI is an accelerated OpenGL scene backed by Qt technology so the performance should be much higher than that of HTML5.
When I last read about Ubuntu Phone, they were offering two choices for UI, QML, and HTML widgets, but perhaps QML is their preferred option? If so that's a shame but not a huge issue for me. All these XML markup languages for views (xib, XAML, QML) offer very little over html IMHO and end up tying you in to one set of tools provided by the vendor. I'd rather they just focussed on improving the OpenGL backed performa…
QML isn't XML-based. It's synxtax is compatible with ECMAScript and it allows embedding ECMAScript expressions and code (but it's style is generally declarative with procedural code discouraged).
And it has a lot to offer over HTML. It has a better layout model for one, sane integration of concepts like animated property transitions and behaviors, makes it far easier to put custom objects backed by native code into the scene, and many other advantages. A lot of these things aren't possible declaratively in HTML, and HTML isn't set up to be extensible enough as a language so you could make up for it yourself. Yes, you can jam everything into a HTML document somehow, but that doesn't mean it's always a pleasant way to go, or that HTML is the peak of UI technology.
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#105As a successful crowdfunder myself, I almost cringed when I saw how many "rules" this campaign was breaking. Extremely high fundraising goal, long video, and almost no compelling reward options for people who love the idea but don't have $600 to spend. However, I think they've done at excellent job of understanding their target market. They know that early adopter/open source community relishes cutting edge hardware and a chance at becoming a consumer test group for the next step in mobile computing.
Additionally, they explain their thought processes around how they will choose the display and camera specs, which is much more powerful than explaining what the specs will be. I truly feel like I am funding an intelligent group of decision makers rather than a large scale manufacturing process.
I can't wait to see the results of the campaign and to hopefully have one of these phones in my hand!
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#106The $32 million fundraising goal might seem overly ambitious, but it's actually more realistic than it appears at first glance, because at $600+ per unit the campaign needs only around 50,000 buyers worldwide to be successful -- or a bit over 2% of Ubuntu's enthusiastic user base, which was estimated to be greater than 20 million in 2011.[1] PS. I just ordered one, as I LOVE the idea of an unlocked phone designed and…
i have to wonder how many ubuntu users are using ubuntu simply for the cost of owning it ($0). If that group is high, which i think it is, it may imply that a lot of those same users, might not want to put money into a project. Speculation.
I think your speculation is quite wrong. Linux users are typically the highest payers for games, on average.
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#107is it possible to download this "Ubuntu for Android" application that they are showcasing in the Software video, running on Nexus 4? Can't find anything about it...
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#108"For a phone to run a full desktop OS, it must have the raw power of a PC. We’ll choose the fastest available multi-core processor, at least 4GB of RAM and a massive 128GB of storage" I would love to be wrong but I'm not buying the promise of a (real world functioning) PC on a phone. ARM based chips are 1 order of magnitude slower than a desktop x86 counterpart, currently there is no such processor to perform as desk…
> full desktop OS
Maemo (full-fledged Debian-based mobile distro, now dead, thanks Elop) user here.
Is Ubuntu Phone really running a full-fledged desktop-as-we-know-it GNU/Linux-derived distro? Because, after I heard about bionic+libhybris stuff and some chroot kludges I start highly doubt it. It's as "Ubuntu desktop" as chrooted Ubuntu install on Android, except for more optimized (compared to VNC-to-localhost, huh) video pipeline.
My perception is that it's neither typical-GNU neither Android but something partially (in)compatible to both.
Would be really nice if I'm wrong on this matter.
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#109Is it just me, or does it seem like Canonical is taking all of their design cues from Microsoft at this point? Ubuntu's mobile OS uses all the same kind of edge swipes that Windows 8 uses and this phone looks like a small Surface.
At this point, everyone in the mobile OS, whether it be Android, iOS or Windows Phone is "inspiring" something from one another. I am just glad there are new competitions in the mobile space along with the fact that they are encouraging HTML5 apps.
Re: Ubuntu Edge
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many of us are going to watch the site for a few days, track the average hourly funding rate, then decide if we want to commit based on the likelihood of the round being successful? Sort of Victor Vroom outcome motivation.
Why do we do that? if you are interested commit, if the project fails you get the money back for sure.
That may or may not be true. Indiegogo (unlike Kickstarter) offers a flexible funding option which lets fundraises keep what they raise, regardless of whether or not they meet their goal.
[EDIT] - Never mind, just saw the fixed funding underneath the fundraising target :)