
Ubuntu Edge price dropped to $695 - davidjgraph
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge?c=activity&key=value
======
weisser
I backed the project at $600. Here are some thoughts:

1\. It's getting wishy-washy. I don't know any campaigns that have changed
around rewards this much (both pricing and what you get) and for many people
that may be a turn off. Why would someone get the phone at $695 when it could
go down more? Obviously the said the price won't go down but they had said
that previously when they were above $700.

2\. $695 immediately withdrawn from your PayPal account prior to tha campaign
succeeding is a hard pill to swallow for many even if you are refunded 100% if
(when?) the goal is not reached.

3\. May 2014 is a pretty long time from now and I bet the wait will end up
being longer (I waited almost 1.25 years for my Leap Motion and they had
significant VC backing). Too many people may not be able to think this far
ahead.

Why did I back the project? Well, I liked the idea of making a custom hardware
device and thought crowdfunding the creation was interesting. I've never
actually used Ubuntu (or Android for that matter) but the scale of the goal
and the precedent it could set for people doing very capital-intensive
projects with crowdfunding was what motivated me to back it.

~~~
aroman
I agree strongly about #1. I can totally see where they were coming from (and
frankly they are truly in uncharted waters with this funding campaign --
nobody has really ever attempted a crowd funding initiative quite like this
one), but you're absolutely right. $600-800 is a _lot_ of money for most
people, and the constant fluctuation and uncertainty about pricing and the
fundraising effort is definitely hurting their cause, I believe.

What they should have done, perhaps, was go to Bloomberg et al _before_ going
public with this. Starting out with $500k in the pot and strong corporate
backing locking the price (or at least making the tiers predictable) would
have gone a long way.

~~~
niemeyer
Please note that the support both from Bloomberg and the industry (in terms of
the price drop) are based on hindsight of how supporters and the press have
been covering the case.

It's also hard to predict what having an initial perk of $500 would have meant
to the campaign. The very strong reaction in the first day is also a result of
supporters observing that there was a gap of $230 for the next price level.
It's not easy to really tell what an entirely different price structure would
have meant.

~~~
sirkneeland
Quite true. Were it not for that I would have been in the "wait and see" group
as well, and I suspect I'm not alone. Those "wait and see"ers wouldn't have
jumped in and the whole campaign wouldn't have had such a newsworthy boost
right of the gate.

Either way, very interesting to watch it unfold.

------
jt2190
Hey commenters:

1\. Backing this project is using your dollars to "vote" for this device to
exist. It's not as unimaginative as "buying a phone", it's about helping to
establish a new mobile device os as a real alternative.

2\. This type of fundraising rarely follows a linear growth curve, so there's
nothing to infer about the ultimate success of the project by projecting that
way.

I have not backed the project, and I'm not sure if I will, but I really
appreciate that others are trying to make this happen.

~~~
mcbed00
But are you sure it's a good alternative?

It runs a slow and ugly UI, comes with built-in Amazon ads and privacy
concerns, and will drain battery rapidly when using as a desktop, so you won't
be able to make a call when your car breaks down on the way home.

If this is the future, count me out.

~~~
nrivadeneira
One of the great parts about it being Ubuntu is that you can simply remove the
Amazon stuff: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-
amazo...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazon-
search-results-from-the-dash)

I'm running Ubuntu right now and love it. I do wish that it didn't come with
Amazon by default, but as a free OS, I accept that there's going to be some of
that sort of thing happening.

Regarding battery, I was under the impression that it would charge when being
used as a desktop. Is this not correct?

~~~
mcbed00
That's not good enough. Defaults are extremely important in software, because
that's the experience novice users will be stuck with permanently.

It's not even implemented in an intuitive or user-friendly way. When you
search your computer, you don't expect Amazon search results to randomly
appear.

Compare the Ubuntu dash search to Spotlight on OSX, it looks very amateurish.
Instead of improving it, their developers have to waste their time fudging
Amazon search results in.

~~~
nrivadeneira
You don't expect it because it doesn't occur with other OS's, but it's common
functionality with web search. I'd prefer that it was off by default, but if
the only price I pay for what I find to be an excellent free OS is that I have
to toggle ads off, then I'm OK with that. Your opinions about the UI are
subjective, of course; I find Ubuntu's search UI to be better than OSX's
Spotlight. I also don't find sluggishness to be an issue at all, in fact I
experience just the opposite.

~~~
quadrangle
Please don't defend the Amazon shopping lens. It is indefensibly awful. Ubuntu
should drop it, and it is the primary thing that makes people distrust
Canonical now. Go ahead and promote all the other benefits of Ubuntu all you
like, they are real.

~~~
chappi42
I hold the opposite opinion: if Amazon shopping lens supports Ubuntu providing
their awesome operating system, it's very well they have it. Also I don't see
a distrust point at all, hey it's a click away to disable, some commands away
to uninstall.

Why so particular with Ubuntu, do you e.g. distrust (and stop using) Google
for displaying ads? What about Windows/OSX which are orders of magnitude less
trust-able than an open source OS. If you don't like a more mainstream
consumer Linux then why not install Arch or Debian or Bodhi and refrain from
badmouthing?

------
simias
Mmh, 14 days remaining and only 27% funded, it doesn't bode well. I wonder if
they'll be able to build momentum this late in the campaign.

Maybe this kind of expensive, high volume devices shows the limits of
crowdfunding? Have there been similar projects crowdfunded already (similar
price/target)?

~~~
Shivetya
I saw that as well, its not very realistic to expect them suddenly make up the
difference. Perhaps having people dedicated to spamming popular tech and
related sites might get them a bump.

Specs today promised for 2014 don't mean much to me, its a seven hundred
dollar bet against what other smart phone makers are doing. Considering the
speed at which that segment moves its not a bet I am willing to make.

~~~
sspiff
I backed this campaign, and I don't really care much about the specs. It will
be good enough, and the promise of a more open mobile platform is enough to
convince me of paying the premium and making the bet.

I also believe in their vision of converging different device classes in the
software space, although I'm not sure they'll be the ones succeeding in it.

~~~
3825
>promise of a more open mobile platform

In light of JBQ's quitting AOSP[1], how open is open enough? Will we be happy
if we get "free check" license to use the binary blobs? Will we be happy if we
can see the code but not be able to copy it? Do we require them to publish
drivers and their source code in a permissive license? Many people will think
it is a "shades of gray" issue. I kind of want more convenience than rms
promises but on the surface it seems silly to think we can have the freedom
and openness from Canonical where a bigger (financially) Google has so
miserably failed. Perhaps our interests are more aligned with Canonical than
with Google? Thoughts?

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6174514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6174514)

~~~
sspiff
I've spent some time thinking about this, and for me (and a lot of other
people I've talked with) the line in the sand is "enough for us to be able to
build newer or versions of the userland and kernel." This does not require
that we're able to modify every bit of code.

For instance, the Raspberry Pi has a binary blob of firmware that contains a
lot of the code for using with the graphics hardware. While we can't modify or
recompile this part, the (minimalistic) interface to this firmware is an open
source kernel module. This allows you to build newer or modified kernels, and
build other distributions for the RPi and still have access to the graphics
acceleration. I consider this "open enough."

While Android is fairly open, there is a large part of it still that is closed
source. This includes the front-ends of Google's own services (I consider back
ends out of scope), binary drivers (graphics), binary firmware (radio) and
binary libraries (OpenGL implementations, closely linked to graphics drivers).

The goal of Canonical's project is also to make the drivers and OpenGL part
open source, but I've not seen anything about the radio bits.

------
gregpilling
Can anyone explain why there is no open hardware phone at this point? During a
recent trip to Shenzhen, it was clear that all the components are readily
available.

I have had one person suggest that it was the cost of FCC approval that was
the holdup and not the technology. Any company that could afford the approval
process would not want to open their design. I am not technically versed
enough to know if this is correct, however.

Does anyone else have a clear perspective on the issue?

~~~
yafujifide
Can you give more information on the FCC approval process? What requires
approval exactly? If people designed open-source hardware plans, then made the
hardware, then shipped it, at what point is FCC approval necessary?

~~~
pjc50
I don't believe FCC approval alone is the big bottleneck. You need to test its
radio emissions in defined conditions, and that requires some expensive test
gear (base station simulator ~= $100k), but realistically you need one of
those anyway to debug the device you're developing.

A more serious problem is trying to get all the relevant firmware and radio
software stack without tripping over IP that is (a) patented and (b) will only
be licensed to you under NDA. Qualcomm are particularly bad at this. So you
need to choose a suitable SoC with favourable IP licensing.

Writing your own "baseband" is a substantial piece of work; some people have
embarked on it at [http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/](http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/)

Canonical's approach is sound here and their costs are realistic. Getting it
done for free by people working in their spare time is very unlikely to
happen.

------
asgard1024
I like the idea, and the hardware seems good, and I could afford it, but the
real turn-off for me is that it's just a one-time thing. If I am going to
commit myself to another mobile platform (although I use Xubuntu on the PC), I
want it to have some future. If the thing breaks after 3 years, what I am
going to do? I will have to change the platform again when I buy a new device.

I actually question what the Canonical is doing when it comes to this. I
bought Asus EEE with preinstalled Ubuntu 12.04 recently, and it's great.
However, you cannot upgrade to 12.10 because the proprietary video driver for
X is missing. So what they're thinking? If they want people to switch to
Ubuntu (and I would love that, that's why I bought this netbook), then they
have to commit to it as a long term goal.

It seems that everybody is so impatient nowadays that if success doesn't
happen in one year, they kill the project.

------
lnanek2
They sure are getting a lot of attention by having time sensitive prices and
changing prices. To some degree eyeballs equals cash. What they need is a lot
of orders, though, to make the funding goal and get any money at all. They
really need to drop that price down to be competitive with Google's Nexus 4,
Nexus 7, etc.. I know OEMs that dropped device projects at the Edge's price
point when those came out and it was smart.

------
Zigurd
The whole thing was ill-advised. Even if they reached $32M it would be the
equivalent of a pre-order for a few tens of thousands of phones. That's not
enough to launch a viable handset business.

They should have gone to an ODM or lower-tier OEM and piggybacked on an the
unit volume for some other customer. They could have launched with 20k units
pre-sold.. They also could have had a far shorter lead time, so the risk in
pledging would be much lower.

If they think they can change the world with hardware, they've got that wrong.
The interesting thing about an Ubuntu phone is Ubuntu.

~~~
__alexs
> Even if they reached $32M it would be the equivalent of a pre-order for a
> few tens of thousands of phones. That's not enough to launch a viable
> handset business.

I don't think they are looking to launch a viable handset business.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j166z/hi_im_mark_shut...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j166z/hi_im_mark_shuttleworth_founder_of_ubuntu/cba4x69)

"But we'll stick to the concept-car side of things leaving mainstream
production to our partners in the industry who do it very well." \- Mark
Shuttleworth

~~~
Zigurd
That doesn't make Edge any more rational. Who makes designs their own
"flagship" phone and makes a run of, say 100k units?

~~~
sbarre
I think the approach they are taking is that of sports cars.. You design a
concept device, do a limited run with early adopters and premium buyers, and
then the advances and concept-validations that happen trickle down to the
mass-market devices and everybody wins..

------
tytso
The reason why I'm not jumping at the Ubuntu Edge is that it's vaporware.
Things like "Fastest multi-core CPU" doesn't fill me with much (well, any)
confidence. That says to me that they haven't done any of the thermal
engineering, or the battery life calculations. And they don't know this
information now, 9 months before launch?

If they reach their funding goal, but then miss their delivery date, or the
device has a pathetic battery life, or the device overheats in your hand and
shuts down the moment you try to use the "fastest CPU", what then? Or if the
CPU /GPU ends up being so slow (to prevent thermal meltdown) that you can't
run interesting desktop-class applications, as opposed to using an OS and
applications optimized for embedded/mobile hardware, as opposed to laptop
class hardware, what then?

Call me unconvinced.

~~~
arjie
Half of your questions are answered in the indiegogo fundraiser page.

~~~
tytso
I see some excuses on the fundraiser page, e.g., "it's a journal", but that's
about it. They don't say anything about what CPU (because they want the
fastest), they don't say anything about the thermal engineering, and they
don't say anything about the battery life (they say they want to use some
bleeding edge battery technology, but they don't say anything at all about
what this means vis-a-vis battery life.)

------
pavs
Despite what they say about getting lower price deals on components, it looks
very preplanned "strategy".

Either way the next couple of days will be make or break, if this _last_ price
change doesn't get any significant contribution in short time, I don't think
they can reach the target anymore.

~~~
eterm
If it is planned it's a very cynical way of meeting a target by effectively
lowering mid-campaign.

Having thousands donate at $800 and the refunding the difference down to $695
means that the "target" is met but the actual net amount is lowered by that
amount that needs to be refunded.

It doesn't actually help them meet the lowered target either, it simply lowers
the target while getting them no closer to the target by lowering their
effective amount raised at the same time.

That's why I don't think it was planned. It feels to me less planned and more
reacting to not meeting their target but reacting in a not so clever way.

The thing is, if they can't keep steady during the fund-raising part I don't
trust them to deliver on the hard part of building the hardware.

Either way I also don't believe this is in any way really connected to lower
component price deals, this is marketing but in my opinion it's not clever
marketing.

~~~
ErikHuisman
I think you're right. If they'd truly wanted to build the best speced phone
possible they would've used the savings to build an even better phone.

I can imagine this scenario going on: They got a bit scared to loose the
project altogether. Brainstormed ways to inject some buzz into the fundraiser.
A pricedrop was one of the possibilities (it also lowers the barrier to
pledge). Conveniently it was also somewhat true because early indications from
suppliers. They lowered their expectations from "We want to build the best
fucking phone possible" to "We want to build the best phone with great
hardware"

Nothing wrong with that but dropping the price is still marketing ;)

~~~
Shorel
Shuttleworth already has the money to pay for the phones from this pocket.
Even the best possible phones.

What he needs is to prove there's a market. They are still short of this goal
by a large margin. The price drop helps toward this goal.

------
jlengrand
Am I the only one that sees this as some kind of lean startup applied to
industry? I mean. With nothing but a few renders, they have reached more than
8 millions in backup. This is a HUGE point in terms of marketing, and more
than a lot of free advertisment. All of that for free.

------
null_ptr
I want to know one thing about this phone that the page did not mention.

Can I `gcc-arm -o MyApp main.c` on my PC and run MyApp on any Ubuntu Edge
phone, without having to unlock them or enable them for dev or any other
nonsense? Or is development restricted to QML and HTML5?

~~~
niemeyer
Behind the interface you have a normal Linux distribution, with packaging,
apt-get, and all, so yes you can.

~~~
null_ptr
Will such a program be a first-class citizen though?

In other words, will the user have a harder time using it than using a
QML/HTML5 app? I could see that be if only QML/HTML5 integrate well with the
phone interface.

~~~
niemeyer
If you mean first-class as in look like an app like came with the phone, then
there's no way around using a toolkit that has a familiar theme and behavior.
The story is no different than a Linux desktop.

------
nonchalance
Given that they used indiegogo, do they keep the funds in case the target is
not hit?

~~~
karl42
From the website:

"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. All contributions will be fully refunded."

~~~
Joeboy
Doesn't that mean they'll actually make a significant loss due to Paypal fees?

~~~
StavrosK
PayPal refunds fees when you issue a refund, so you lose nothing.

~~~
eterm
They refund fees to the client, not to the vendor iirc.

This could cost indiegogo a lot.

~~~
KamiCrit
Maybe this is all just a big ploy set up by Ubuntu and Paypal. Set up a $32M
campaign, sure to fail, split the fees!

------
cleis
The Edge is going to be the most successful unsuccessful crowdfunding project
ever

~~~
Joeboy
In terms of funds pledged, it will probably be more successful than the most
successful _successful_ crowdfunded projects ever.

------
sarreph
They need to make $20/sec from now on in order to reach their funding goal.

------
madmaze
I keep wondering whether they still have something up their sleeve, but
judging by them dropping the price, its not the case. This is the pinnacle of
Mark Shuttleworth's "convergence" dream, I wonder whether he will carry the
rest of this campaign if it looks like it will not get funded in the end? Also
if it does fail, it is going to look mighty bad for Canonical.

~~~
sspiff
> Also if it does fail, it is going to look mighty bad for Canonical.

I also thought about this, but I'm not sure that's the case. At the very
least, they managed to collect close to $10 million in a a two week period,
without much of an advertising budget and only some vague on-paper specs and a
few renders.

I think that gives them some leverage when negotiating with manufacturers to
show that there is at least some demand for high-priced smartphones running
their software stack.

~~~
madmaze
point taken.

------
vishvananda
I predict that this will lead to a spike in backers from all of the people who
wanted to back it but thought $800 was too expensive, but it will quickly
level off. Why?

Dan Ariely did some studies[1] showing that people are much more likely to
pick something when there is a strictly worse option available. $830 vs. $600
for the exact same thing is just easier for our irrational minds to compare
than $695 for a phone next year vs. phones today. I think this was a major
motivator for people to "buy" in the early stages of the project, especially
since it was a time limited option.

I personally backed at the $600 level, and while I have a lot of reasons for
why it was a good idea, I suspect that I was influenced my own irrational
behavior and I am just good at justifying my decisions.

[1] [http://realityswipe.wordpress.com/tag/dan-
ariely/](http://realityswipe.wordpress.com/tag/dan-ariely/)

P.S. If you haven't read any of Dan Ariely's stuff before, he does some
fascinating studies showing how irrational humans are.

------
transfire
A 64GB model at $595 from the start probably would have gone a long way toward
boosting the numbers. And a $32 million funding goal is really pushing the
envelop regardless. I would love to have one but $700 upfront? For a phone?
That's pushing the envelop too.

------
knocte
For the mere mortals that don't follow this every day: what was the previous
price?

~~~
henrikgs
$830 with a limited $600 early bird option. Later they added several tiers
ranging from $625 to $820 with limited slots in each. I think $625 and $675
sold out.

------
zakarum009
I would only fund this on the last day if I knew it was going to make it..
$695 is a very steep price, especially for a college student. I would love to
back the device, but to have that much booze money disappear would be a shame.

------
tehwalrus
If I had the money, I'd be ordering one now. A high-spec android phone that
can also dock into a full desktop ubuntu machine? I'd _love_ to be able to
have a development setup in my pocket whereever I go.

------
mtgx
The only way I can see this succeeding now is by getting some carriers or
OEM's or something to back the project, and put the rest of the money into the
project.

I maintain that this could've succeeded if it was priced at $600 from the
beginning, and work their way from that regarding the specs. That's exactly
what Ford did, too. He started with a price in mind, and then forced the
engineers to come up with a product that fits that price.

Canonical repeated Motorola's Xoom mistake, by starting with the specs, and
then selling for whatever price it all added up to.

------
helloNSA_
This meta-phone is still too expensive.

They marketed and priced it for high-end consumers...and then ask these same
customers do something that none of them ever want to do...wait. Wait a long
time for delivery.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Drop the price or up the delivery
date. Better if they did both.

I'd also have more faith if I could have seen a functional prototype not just
a couple of Nexus4's running alpha software. I'm not paying 800 bucks for the
free software...I'm paying for hardware which is still on the drawing board.

------
ibudiallo
At this point I have convinced myself that the goal won't be reached. But I
know for certain every phone company is back to the drawing board, because we
are looking right at the future.

------
burke
The one thing that's bothering me about this is their choice to use sapphire
crystal for the screen. Sapphire is definitely more scratch-resistant than the
Gorilla Glass used by iPhones and high end Andriod phones, but my
understanding is that sapphire is much easier to shatter by applying pressure.
That seems to me a more important factor than scratch-resistance.

(Disclaimer: I'm no materials engineer and the above info was sourced from
google searching, so take that for what it's worth)

~~~
mtgx
I don't know about that. It does seem like a pretty exciting material, but I
agree a 2014 release date of a "full sapphire phone" might be a little too
early. I'm also not sure if it's the best material we can use in the future
for smartphones. I do hope we'll stop using plastic, and aluminum is not
perfect either, and has some major flaws. Glass is terrible, too.

[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512411/your-next-
smartp...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512411/your-next-smartphone-
screen-may-be-made-of-sapphire/)

~~~
bri3d
Vertu have been using sapphire for phone displays for quite some time now (at
least since 2011).

Of course those are low volume, luxury handsets and if one shatters they
probably just replace it, but I don't think 2014 is "too early" for a more
widespread sapphire display by any means.

------
sspiff
As much as I like this project (or pipe dream, depending on your point of
view), I think $695 is a much more realistic price for this device. I
sincerely hope they succeed.

------
dscrd
Of course, if you want a cool phone in 2013 that's built mostly on open-source
software, there's Jolla.

Wayland + systemd + pulseaudio + QT... they're working with the Linux
community instead of against it.

~~~
sirkneeland
Not to mention it's beautiful. They are starting with a billion euros of R&D
that Nokia essentially threw out.

------
shurcooL
Does anyone have any idea about whether we'll be able to write and execute Go
(golang.org) code on the Ubuntu Edge?

I assume I'll be able to both write and execute Go code under Ubuntu desktop
mode. What about Ubuntu mobile OS?

Will the device support WebGL? What about OpenGL|ES and regular OpenGL?

Does switching between Ubuntu desktop mode and Ubuntu mobile OS involve a
reboot with separate systems, or it is one environment with 2 different
interfaces? Thank you!

------
adam12
Sadly, it is still too expensive for me.

~~~
antidaily
If it makes you feel better, I ended up giving away my Pebble watch. They'll
be plenty available on the cheap a couple months after/if it comes out.

------
mariuolo
Still a bit steep for a phone that doesn't exist, yet.

------
progx
And what happen if the goal is not reached? My money gone?

