Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ubuntu Edge

indiegogo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 390 posts

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#121

Post by DocG »

ealexhudson wrote: post #2

I upvoted this because I think it's an interesting experiment. Attempting to raise $1M+ every day for a month, though, I think is insanely ambitious. Asking people for $830 for a device that they won't get for a year is asking a lot, particularly since the specs aren't worlds away from current phones (two years time, and probably $500 would get you a device with those specs, unlocked). Worse, I just don't even get th…

The first paragraph explains it.

let me quote: "In the car industry, Formula 1 provides a commercial testbed for cutting-edge technologies. The Ubuntu Edge project aims to do the same for the mobile phone industry -- to provide a low-volume, high-technology platform, crowdfunded by enthusiasts and mobile computing professionals. A pioneering project that accelerates the adoption of new technologies and drives them down into the mainstream."

It is not for you. If you want good phone, there are plenty out there to choose from.

formula 1 car is impossible to use in everyday life. It has really specific place where it excels. Edge is probably medicore phone and medicore pc, but it is probably really good at being both at the same time.

It is wrong approach to compare it to mobile users.

Edit: quote from comment section: "It's a premier, demonstration platform, not a mass market device." -achiang

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#122

Post by rhp »

drcode wrote: post #11

Does anyone really still want a phone you can plug into a monitor? This would have been a dream product back before broadband and wifi became ubiquitous, and before extra PCs became so cheap. Nowadays, it seems like a much better design is to have multiple devices with different form factors that can access shared data via a cloud. (unless this product is meant as an NSA-proof system, but I don't see that it makes a…

It's an idea that might be a little ahead of its time yet, but I think the potential is there for tomorrow's phones to drive every aspect of our digital lives.

The little geek in me that wants to live in the Jetsons' future is going to be pretty disappointed if, 5+ years from now, I'm not unplugging my phone from a dock at home and plugging it in to one at work to meet all my computing needs.

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#123

Post by mariusmg »

Regarding the desktop side....hardware wise we're not there yet but personally i'm convinced that this is the future (maybe in 5-10 years if Intel and AMD keep it up ? ). Single device which will be desktop, phone, game console, ebook reader etc.

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#124

Post by unsignedint »

dkokelley wrote: post #16
aram wrote: post #5

Dummy question: "Dual LTE antennas" Does this also mean double the radiation?

I think this means that the phone is equipped with antennas for different "LTE/4G" frequencies. This makes the phone work with different carriers throughout the world. The second antenna is for compatibility. It's unlikely that the phone will spend power activating antennas that are not in use given the carrier/geographic standard, so my best guess is this: No. You will not see double the radiation. (I could be compl…

This actually confused me, too.

I did preorder, now that hopefully it will work on T-mobile network. (Which uses somewhat oddball frequency...)

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#125

Post by DocG »

rocky1138 wrote: post #73
drcode wrote: post #11

Does anyone really still want a phone you can plug into a monitor? This would have been a dream product back before broadband and wifi became ubiquitous, and before extra PCs became so cheap. Nowadays, it seems like a much better design is to have multiple devices with different form factors that can access shared data via a cloud. (unless this product is meant as an NSA-proof system, but I don't see that it makes a…

I'd love that. The biggest problem for me is that I have a number of monitors and laptops that don't support HDMI. If there was a sub $10 adapter I could get for VGA->HDMI<-VGA then it would be a perfect world.

Luckily this is still a year in the future. It is good amount of time for a)sub $10 adapter to appear b)you might change your hardware for unrelated purpouse c)you might change your hardware for this purpouse over the course of the year for monitors that support vga+hdmi(or DVI+cheap adapter)

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#126

Post by macspoofing »

rocky1138 wrote: post #73
drcode wrote: post #11

Does anyone really still want a phone you can plug into a monitor? This would have been a dream product back before broadband and wifi became ubiquitous, and before extra PCs became so cheap. Nowadays, it seems like a much better design is to have multiple devices with different form factors that can access shared data via a cloud. (unless this product is meant as an NSA-proof system, but I don't see that it makes a…

I'd love that. The biggest problem for me is that I have a number of monitors and laptops that don't support HDMI. If there was a sub $10 adapter I could get for VGA->HDMI<-VGA then it would be a perfect world.

>The biggest problem for me is that I have a number of monitors and laptops that don't support HDMI

That's not a problem for anybody else. It's practically a non-issue.

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#127

Post by mateuszf »

sho_hn wrote: post #104
grey-area wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Well, using Angular.js in a good way would actualy make possible to have the same flexibility without adding any code to the view layer.

That said, it is possible but still not that easy to do. Native solution will probably be faster, more energy efficient and easier to use.

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#128

Post by shurane »

mromanuk wrote: post #68

"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…

Macbook Airs aren't as powerful as desktop Mac Pros, but they offer a great convenience to the owners. It's "good enough" for most things. I see the Ubuntu Edge as a similar device.

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#129

Post by lettergram »

The price for one of the phones doesn't seem all that outrageous, I know if you wanted to buy a Samsung Galaxy S4 it's like $700 without a contract.

Being a college student I currently can't afford it, but I up voted and hope it works out. In the future I would love to buy a phone like this, it looks awesome.

Re: Ubuntu Edge

#130

Post by grey-area »

sho_hn wrote: post #104
grey-area wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

QML isn't XML-based.

Thanks for the correction, I was thinking of xib, XAML, Activities etc. haven't used QML, though I have used Qt, a while ago now. One thing I do think HTML got right is to separate content and code, so putting my UI markup into a js-like format which potentially mixes in code is even less appealing :)

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.

While there's a lot wrong with HTML, and I agree there's much to be improved in its layout model, learning and keeping in our head a new layout model just to place some buttons and UI controls on a page every time we switch platforms is painful, and leads to fragmentation and lock-in where people choose a platform and stick with it, because they've had to invest so much time learning those platform specific tools. I think that's a shame and it's not a pain I look forward to when moving platforms. Depends on your focus I suppose - if you plan on using one platform exclusively or using Qt everywhere, it won't bother you.

From my perspective doing work for clients on content-heavy apps, often with web integration, there's an awful lot of content already in html, it provides good control over text styling (typically far better than native equivalents), and it means content is portable between the web and apps, so for those pragmatic reasons I find HTML more appealing for presenting content, even for many UI controls.

For example if I have an Android app, an iOS app, and an Ubuntu Phone app, I have 3 different platforms to manage, each with their idiosyncrasies, differing features, layout language, and blessed platform language, and then I have a load of content which I have to let users generate, manage and get into apps on each platform, using web tools to do so is significantly less painful.

It's not a huge deal as you can obviously use webviews and frame html content with native controls for each platform, but I wish Ubuntu had taken a step towards the web instead with the phones rather than focussing on desktop technologies. I see why they'd want to tie it in with what they're doing on the desktop though. Sorry for the thread hijack!

Post reply on HN