HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Ubuntu Edge was a proposed
high-concept High concept is a type of artistic work that can be easily pitched with a succinctly stated premise. It can be contrasted with ''low concept'', which is more concerned with character development and other subtleties that are not as easily summa ...
smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
announced by
Canonical Ltd. Canonical Ltd. is a UK-based privately held computer software company founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. Canonical employs staff ...
on 22 July 2013. Canonical was seeking to
crowdfund Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...
a production run of around 40,000 units through Indiegogo. It had the highest target of any crowdfunded project to date, $32,000,000 over a one-month campaign. The Edge was not intended to go into mass production after the initial run, but rather to serve as a demonstration for new technologies for the industry. The Edge fell short of its funding goal, raising only $12,733,521 with 27,633 backers to purchase the standard model of the handset. The Edge was designed as a hybrid device, which would function as a high-end smartphone (with both
Ubuntu Touch Ubuntu Touch is a mobile version of the Ubuntu operating system, being developed by the UBports community. Its user interface is written in Qt, and is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, ...
and Android), or—when used with a monitor, keyboard and mouse—be able to operate as a conventional desktop PC running
Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...
. The Ubuntu Edge was also designed to support dual boot, and was to run along with Android.


Fundraising campaign

Reaction to Canonical's announcement was mixed; while it raised over a million dollars in the first five hours, one commentator has noted the unclear market for the device, with a large number of smartphone operating systems already available, and no precedent showing demand for a "single device" combining the phone with the user's primary computer. The first devices were offered for $600 against a main cost of $825; following the initial launch, this was revised to offer $625, $675 and $725 tranches as earlier ones were filled. Further revisions to the pricing came on 8 August, making it a flat $695 per unit. The first major company to make a pledge was by
Bloomberg LP Bloomberg L.P. is a privately held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was co-founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, Charles Zegar, and a ...
, which pledged $80,000. On 14 August, with 8 days until the deadline, the campaign passed the $10 million milestone. This milestone put the Ubuntu Edge as the second highest funded crowdfunding project at the time, behind
Star Citizen Logo Cloud Imperium Games ''Star Citizen'' is an in-development multiplayer, space trading and combat simulation game. The game is being developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games for Microsoft Windows. An extended retry of unrealized plans ...
, a space trading and combat simulation video game which had raised $15 million that year. The campaign ended on 21 August with a final sum of $12,809,906, but was not able to meet its goal of $32 million to start the project.


Technical details

Ubuntu Edge was a proposed smartphone with high-end specifications, often called a "superphone".Miot, Stephanie, "Canonical Crowdsourcing $32M for Ubuntu Edge 'Superphone', PC Magazine, 22 July 2013
/ref> Edge would have been powered by a multi-core processor and at least 4GB of
RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...
. The internal storage would have been 128GB. A micro-SIM slot would have been available. An 8 MP rear camera and 2 MP front-facing camera would also be available. The screen would have been a 4.5" sapphire crystal display (claimed to be scratchable only by diamond) with 1280 x 720 HD resolution. On the connectivity side Edge would have included Dual-LTE, dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4 and NFC. GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor, compass, barometer etc. would be included from the input side. It would have had Stereo speakers with HD audio and allowed use of a dual microphone recording system with active noise cancellation. Edge would have had an 11-pin connector providing simultaneous MHL and
USB OTG USB On-The-Go (USB OTG or just OTG) is a specification first used in late 2001 that allows USB devices, such as tablets or smartphones, to act as a host, allowing other USB devices, such as USB flash drives, digital cameras, mouse or keybo ...
. A 3.5mm jack would have been included and a silicon-anode Li-Ion battery would power the device. The software would have booted
Ubuntu Touch Ubuntu Touch is a mobile version of the Ubuntu operating system, being developed by the UBports community. Its user interface is written in Qt, and is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, ...
along with Android. The Android part would have also shipped the
Ubuntu for Android Ubuntu Touch is a mobile version of the Ubuntu operating system, being developed by the UBports community. Its user interface is written in Qt, and is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, ...
technology, and according to the campaign Ubuntu Edge would have been the first phone to
dual-boot Multi-booting is the act of installing multiple operating systems on a single computer, and being able to choose which one to boot. The term dual-booting refers to the common configuration of specifically two operating systems. Multi-booting may ...
between different
operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...
out of the box, it would also have been able to be used as a fully integrated Ubuntu desktop PC when docked with a monitor. In physical dimensions, the device would measure at 64 × 9 x 124 mm.


References


External links


Ubuntu Edge's Indiegogo pageUbuntu Homepage
{{Android smartphones Android (operating system) devices Canonical (company) Indiegogo projects Smartphones Ubuntu