Ubuntu Edge Smartphone Funding Trends Low

alphadogg writes "The first heady rush of support for Canonical's crowd-funded Ubuntu Edge smartphone appears to have tapered off, as donations for the eye-catching device have slowed substantially over the past several days. The project sits just above the $7 million mark at the time of this writing – a large sum by the standards of crowd-funded projects, to be sure, but the $32 million goal is still a long way off. The Edge is slightly, but measurably, behind schedule – by about $600,000, according to a tracking graph made by Canonical's Gustavo Niemeyer. However, there's speculation that wealthy Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth might contribute some of his personal fortune to the project." The campaign has already broken records with its spectacular first few days. I hope that Shuttleworth does kick in to make production feasible, because the idea and the design are impressive — but I'm leery of spending quite so much on any phone.

Looks nice; way too expensive

[sanosuke001]

The design is interesting and I'd love a dual-boot android/ubuntu device but I can't spend $600, let alone $830 on a phone.

No SD Card Slot? No thanks

[tdp252]

The trend of omitting an SD Card slot so that people are funneled through cloud services is disappointing. I personally won't be buying any device where I am forced into being Cloud-walled.

Re:Cheaper Options....

[homey of my owney]

And even if it weren't... The enormous amount of money Google/Apple/Samsung/Nokia/Microsoft/every other company spends on marketing, immediately puts this at such a disadvantage that money invested is money lost.

Re:Shuttleworth

[Xicor]

that would be a really stupid business move on canonical's part. it wont be a budget phone, because they have no reason for it to be one. we arent buying phones here, we are funding the production of a limited edition superphone, which will be the basis for years to come. we are all tired of budget phones... instead of being a pessimist, you should fund the project and hope that it changes the market and we will be able to buy decently powerful phones at some point in the next decade.

Re:Shuttleworth

[Xicor]

you are such a pessimist, lol... they cant do that, everyone in the linux world would hate them for it. if they realize later during production that they cant do it with just the 32M, canonical will front the rest to realize its goals.