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 $695 immediately withdrawn from your PayPal account prior to tha campaign succeeding is a hard pill to swallow for many even if you are refunded 100% if (when?)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.

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.

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)?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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/

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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!

Sadly, it is still too expensive for me.

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

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