Ubuntu Edge

Ever wish that you did not have to carry your laptop all over the place? Ever wish that your phone had more storage space, more RAM, more processor speed? What if your phone could actually do everything that your laptop could do and more?

Well, your wishes could be granted soon! Meet the Ubuntu Edge super-phone.

Quote from Mark Shuttleworth:

“In the automobile industry, you have F1 to test new and innovative technologies.
The Ubuntu Edge will be the new F1 of the phone industry.”

This Canonical-backed phone has not been released yet. A crowd-funding campaign has been started on Indiegogo to raise USD 32 million towards making the phone a reality. It will only be available to backers of the project, who have paid for one of the available phone-perks. A cool USD 830 will definitely land you one of these phones, as long as the campaign reaches its 32M target. This is a Fixed Funding campaign. It means that if the target amount of funds are not raised by the end date (August 21. 2013), then all the funds will be returned to the backers and Canonical will not receive any thing.

When the campaign was announced more than a week ago, a USD 600 perk was being offered to 5000 backers. This perk got claimed rather quickly. It was followed
by more lower-priced perks in the USD 600-800 range, most of which were quickly claimed as well. As of this time, the USD 725 perk is already sold out and the other lower-priced perks are selling out like hot cakes. Also, each backer who receives the phone will get a one year subscription to LastPass Premium, free-of-cost! In the sub-600 range, a USD 50 pledge will get the backer an awesome Ubuntu Edge T-shirt.

In fact, this crowd-funding campaign has already smashed many records.

Quote from the Indiegogo Blog:

“First, it raised $135,483 in its first hour — an Indiegogo record. Receiving nearly 3.7 contributions per minute, Ubuntu hit $1 million in about four hours. It passed $2 million just after 4pm PST (in 8 hours), crossed through $3 million — 12 hours after launching — and hit $4 million in 45 hours.”

Currently, the campaign is sitting at a whopping USD 7,756,268. The most-funded campaign, in the history of crowd-funding, is the Pebble smart-watch at USD 10,266,845. With around 21 days still to go for the Ubuntu Edge campaign, it might just be looking at becoming the highest-funded project ever!

But what is the Ubuntu Edge?

It’s not a smart-phone! It’s a super-phone!

When, and if, the phone is manufactured, it will have the latest multi-core processor (probably an 8-core processor), 4 GB of RAM and at least 128 GB of storage. It will dual-boot into Android and Ubuntu mobile (also called Ubuntu Touch), on the phone. So, those of you who have already invested heavily in the Android ecosystem, can continue to use your favourite apps. But the real power comes when the phone is docked! Connect this phone to a HDMI monitor/TV and you have a fully-fledged Ubuntu desktop. As this is the usual Ubuntu desktop, you will have all the apps that are available on Ubuntu and much more. This is called the convergence story, an idea around which the latest Ubuntu Touch is currently designed. The same User Interface is available on the phone, tablet, computer and the TV. One Operating System to rule them all! The phone can be connected to a HDMI monitor using a standard MHL connector over the USB host port. It can easily run HTML5 apps, so it will already have a huge collection of apps from day 1. For super performance, native apps can be developed in C++/QT5/QML. Want to scratch the screen of the phone? Sorry, you will need diamonds to do this as the phone has a sapphire crystal display. It will have an 8mp low-light camera for all those amazing shots and a 2mp front-facing camera for your video calling requirements. With dual-LTE antennas, it will work in many countries. It has something for audiophiles as well. And finally, to be able to support all the above, it has a pretty-solid silicon-anode battery!

So, thinking about pledging a few bucks towards this awesome super-phone? Hit this link to go to the campaign page. At least I am sure where my money is going…to kickstarting a better future!

Note: All images provided courtesy of Canonical.