I was in Shenzhen in the spring, and there are many companies offering to make electronics for you. Minimum Order Quantity 1000. Many phones were available for under $200 that looked fairly deluxe, clones of the Samsung Note 2 and Galaxy 3, as well as some with more features like FM, TV, Dual Sim.
Why did this project need to raise so much money? And why so high of a price for the handset? I think that this project would have succeeded with lower goals. We are reaching what Bunnie Huang suggested, the era where screens are pixel-filled, batteries are long lasting and improvements are incremental. http://boingboing.net/2011/09/27/bunnie-huang-the-best-days-...
Surely they could have done a phone in the $300-$400 range?
Lots of phones that look good, yes. I have one of the SIII clones, and while it's good value for money, and looks exactly like a Samsung (down to the wallpaper/screen saver, and optional fake Samsung logo if you want it) all the models I have seen are cheaper for a reason. E.g build quality and performance are substantially lower end than Samsungs originals.
You can get iPhone clones too, down to about $20. Naturally they're nothing like the real deal - the cheapest are feature-phones, and you'll find quite a few Android phones, some even with a skin mimicking iOS...
In other words, going by looks tells you nothing in that market.
Phone models that are actually Samsung level quality also cost about as much as the Samsung phones do in equivalent quantities.
(Dual SIM is pretty much "standard" on the Chinese phones - some have up to at least 4 SIM's)
Then, presumably, it wouldn't be any different from other phones that exist on the market already, which completely defeats the point. This project is for better phone hardware, not just "Ubuntu on a phone" for which you can already run the development preview on existing phones.
But I agree with gregpilling. Why did they have to add all of those untested features to the spec. Is sapphire glass really better or is it just a fancy sounding gimmick? And what's up with "Silicon-anode Li-ion?" More RAM sounded good to me and the whole ubuntu in your pocket thing also sounds great, but premium pricing and new hardware technologies that are unproven worry me.
Is sapphire glass really better or is it just a fancy sounding gimmick? And what's up with "Silicon-anode Li-ion?" More RAM sounded good to me and the whole ubuntu in your pocket thing also sounds great
As far as I understand, that was the entire point. To see if that stuff was worthwhile in a phone. To push the boundaries. If all that stuff was a gimme, then phones would already have it.
Presumably there were certain feature requirements for it to work as an effective desktop computer that are missing on many smart phones.
I mean, the early adopters paying for the Edge are probably have desktops with quad-core 1GHz+ processors, 2GB+ of RAM, 100GB+ of hard disk space, connector and graphics card for a WSXGA+ resolution monitor, USB host capability and so on. My smart phone has none of these features.
Sapphire glass will be used on several new upcoming high-end smartphones, and is already used by Vertu. So, yes, it is just a fancy sounding gimmick and will be commonplace in 2014.
Sapphire glass is far from being a 'fancy sounding gimmick'.
It is, in fact, the "transparent aluminum" from Star Trek. Which was an elaborate joke on the fact that pure aluminum oxide is harder than anything except elemental boron and diamond.
Keep emery boards away from your sapphire screen and it simply will not scratch. I can't wait, personally, and have been disappointed that the camera lens on iPhones is not yet sapphire since the 4.
I haven't heard many people complain about scratches on their smartphone screens, but I have seen a lot of people operating phones with shattered screens.
I'm sorry if I was being unclear. By "Fancy sounding gimmick" I meant it's not something that special. Many quality watches have used sapphire for a long time, and the use on phones is a result of scaling up production.
Scratch resistance is not the only measure of a desirable screen material. It has to bend and resist breaking due to flexing and impact. Sapphire is unlikely to take over all phone screens because it is unlikely to have superior properties for all parameters.
Why did this project need to raise so much money? And why so high of a price for the handset? I think that this project would have succeeded with lower goals. We are reaching what Bunnie Huang suggested, the era where screens are pixel-filled, batteries are long lasting and improvements are incremental. http://boingboing.net/2011/09/27/bunnie-huang-the-best-days-...
Surely they could have done a phone in the $300-$400 range?