Author Topic: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone  (Read 10396 times)

Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #100 on: July 30, 2013, 07:02:57 AM »
And yes, it does look like you're talking shit about something if you're not talking at what it is but what you perceive it to be - ARM, for example, or the specs that you think are outperformed by today's devices.



I think so too, purely from intuition. You get all the trigger-happy people early on, but the longer people wait, the less likely they would end up buying it.

I hope Canonical has something interesting planned for the later days of the campaign, like revealing certain things that they haven't yet, which could kick up the momentum a bit again when they need it.

It'd be pretty cool if some CEOs decide that their companies need that batch of 100 Edges that they have a special for.
now that you're being thoughtful i don't mind your bashing.

you're missing some facts, they're being vague of which processor they'll use and they're only considering silvermont as of late for a potential choice, but "fastest processor" literally weights which has the highest performance by Q1~Q2 2014(production run).

facts are, silvermont is the only thing intel has that fits the bill for being fastest, but thats only with today's competition.
silvermont's baytrail-T target is A15 claiming 30% faster than it is, but in a sense theres a pending ARM processor at which has 26%~36% roughly more processing power than A15, which is A57.
theres no announcement of a latter development in intel's case, they haven't even released silvermont yet, so the likelihood of having intel being "fastest processor" is doubtful at best.
handset processor isn't baytrail-T but merrifield which is a dualcore silvermont with an even slower clock, its possible that they'd fit a baytrail-T quadcore in their handset but you're looking at much higher consequences.

weight these facts and you end up with higher odds for ARM developing the fastest by Q2 2014, unless intel does manage to follow up something at least 20% more powerful and 20% more power efficient (pushing perf:watt up so it can match ARM performance while pushing TDP down even lower).

i'm not entirely saying its junk but for the price it is inferior, the massive storage and larger ram does constitute to being superior, but on everything else its either the same or inferior.
current paper specs weights it as being inferior all together, camera is inferior, screen is inferior, connectivity is inferior(not exactly, its possible that they aren't being specific).
consider these at the price of $830 or even $700, i don't see it being a better purchase?



i think they've made the mistake of having it at a rough start, they only opened the lower-price plans a bit too late and too little slot, they managed to pull in hesitant buyers but they aren't pulling in anything else.
if you look at the current pledge count theres hardly anything on the upper prices, which means they're selfdestructing on their decision.
in either case they need to settle their estimates, otherwise they can't justify the $830 pricetag, even $700 is asking for too much.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 07:28:54 AM by kitamesume »

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Offline Saras

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #101 on: July 30, 2013, 08:22:14 AM »
They haven't chosen the CPU, because they don't know what'll come by then and what prices it'll be by then. They have a budget set, and they'll choose whatever they can get for it. Same for other parts. You can't plan all of them out, when the phone won't be produced in this year. The phone market is too fickle for that.

Also, I must've missed something. But why are you certain that it's running an x86 platform?

And what concerns crowd funding, it's very unlikely to get financed. You basically need to get two thirds of the sum in the first 10 days, if you want it to succeed. As the rate of money betting tends to slow down over the time of the funding. With the last the ~18-28th day bringing little in. But I suppose, this could be a unique case, in it requiring a high premium for the bid. Making people far more cautious and thus extending the funding process down the line. But I wouldn't bet on it.

I think so too, purely from intuition. You get all the trigger-happy people early on, but the longer people wait, the less likely they would end up buying it.

I hope Canonical has something interesting planned for the later days of the campaign, like revealing certain things that they haven't yet, which could kick up the momentum a bit again when they need it.

It'd be pretty cool if some CEOs decide that their companies need that batch of 100 Edges that they have a special for.

Except there's one problem with that. It's cheaper to get 100 single devices, as it is now. Than getting a batch. As one phone costs 700$ for two now, and 600$/pop if you acted fast. Yet they intend to sell a batch at 800$/pop. Yes, I know that they offer special services, but that's still ridiculous. Make it 60 000$ for 100 devices. Then you'll have a customer. Enterprises don't outfit their employees at retail prices. They do so at whole sale prices. And if you can't offer them that, well then, they ain't interested.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 09:51:38 AM by Saras »

Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #102 on: July 30, 2013, 08:47:28 AM »
They haven't chosen the CPU, because they don't know what'll come by then and what prices it'll be by then. They have a budget set, and they'll choose whatever they can get for it. Same for other parts. You can't plan all of them out, when the phone won't be produced in this year. The phone market is too fickle for that.

Also, I must've missed something. But why are you certain that it's running an x86 platform?
wait what? i'm not the one saying its gonna be on x86 platform, i'm even leaning to ARM being the processor of choice.

the only thing that has an alternate to ARM at the moment is intel's atom, theres no leads to a successor by Q2 2014 (which they always do announce roadmaps in advance).
on the other hand theres AMD, but they're in a sticky situation about their TDP levels, they can fit in a tablet but the TDP portfolio for handsets is too small for them to manage.

edit: speaking of which, the successor ARM processor does outperform silvermont in both performance(slightly) and power consumption(greatly, due to how ARM is configured).
edit2: atom medfield(current gen atom) - http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel-Launches-2-GHz-Atom-Medfield-with-Disastrous-Performance-293186.shtml
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 09:06:54 AM by kitamesume »

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Offline Saras

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #103 on: July 30, 2013, 09:38:41 AM »
Yes, then why the fuck are you talking about it? And why does it matter?

If they intend to run an x86 platform, for the desktop software compability, it's going to be an x86 chip. No questions, no comparisons. It's the only option. It won't matter that it's not yet on par with next gen ARM. Because its the only fucking option. And it's going to be chosen because of the software requirements and not the capabilities.

If they run an ARM system, the comparison won't matter either. We can discuss which ARM would be likely, but that's it. There is no reason to compare intel atoms performance whatsofucking ever.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 09:44:01 AM by Saras »

Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #104 on: July 30, 2013, 09:43:52 AM »
Yes, then why the fuck are you talking about it? And why does it matter?

If they intend to run an x86 platform, for the desktop software compability, it's going to be an x86 chip. No questions, no comparisons. It's the only option. It won't matter that it's not yet on par with next gen android. Because its the only fucking option. And it's going to be chosen because of the software and not the capabilities.

If they run an ARM system, the comparison won't matter either. We can discuss which ARM would be likely, but that's it. There is no reason to compare intel atoms performance whatsofucking ever.
thats not the case here, ubuntu can run on either platform, which means ARM is an option. on the other hand the only way to weight which processor has the advantage is through comparison of performance and practicality.

in which case i'm just merely replying about kira's question of why i'm thinking of ARM as a candidate.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 09:48:24 AM by kitamesume »

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Offline Saras

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #105 on: July 30, 2013, 09:46:06 AM »
Yes, then why the fuck are you talking about it? And why does it matter?

If they intend to run an x86 platform, for the desktop software compability, it's going to be an x86 chip. No questions, no comparisons. It's the only option. It won't matter that it's not yet on par with next gen android. Because its the only fucking option. And it's going to be chosen because of the software and not the capabilities.

If they run an ARM system, the comparison won't matter either. We can discuss which ARM would be likely, but that's it. There is no reason to compare intel atoms performance whatsofucking ever.
thats not the case here, ubuntu can run on either platform, which means ARM is an option.

Ubuntu, yes. Software, no. It's not really a desktop computer if you only have apps available to you, now is it? Or are you going to imply that the whole debian repository can run equally well on a RISC architecture.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 09:47:58 AM by Saras »

Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #106 on: July 30, 2013, 09:49:57 AM »
a translator can be used, how else do you think apps that were meant to be used for ARM instruction sets could be ran on a desktop with an emulator?
the same thing can be done in reverse - http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1262609
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 09:53:24 AM by kitamesume »

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Offline Saras

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #107 on: July 30, 2013, 09:54:24 AM »
Yes.

Which makes the whole point of going ARM moot. Unless you can prove that ARM emulating x86 is faster than x86 running x86. To which, yet again, the comparison between ARM and x86 is pointless. Because it's current gen ARM emulating x86 vs x86 that's the important question.

The fact that it can be done, doesn't mean that it's a good idea to do it.

Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #108 on: July 30, 2013, 09:57:09 AM »
the emulation has risen to a target goal of 80% of ARM's capability, in which case ARM would perform on-par with baytrail-T but still consume less power.
that is against baytrail-T, theres still the chance of merrifield being used, which then concludes to ARM being superior.

pricepoint of chips themselves should conclude comparison, based from previous releases ARM tends to be a cheaper choice, this would be irrelevant though.

edit: a question though, of what software are you even planning to run? i doubt a handset level of processor performance would be enough for typical desktop usage.
i'll keep those softwares in mind on the next time i assess the possibilities.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 10:05:33 AM by kitamesume »

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Offline Saras

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #109 on: July 30, 2013, 10:04:53 AM »
the emulation has risen to a target goal of 80% of ARM's capability, in which case ARM would perform on-par with baytrail-T but still consume less power.
that is against baytrail-T, theres still the chance of merrifield being used, which then concludes to ARM being superior.

pricepoint of chips themselves should conclude comparison, based from previous releases ARM tends to be a cheaper choice, this would be irrelevant though.

Of course ARM is cheaper. It doesn't require anywhere near the amount of transistors that x86 requires.

You're also going from a reduced instruction set to a complex one. You're not going to do the same operation in the same amount of cycles. And I sure as fuck ain't going to believe that it's at 80%. Not when the two architectures are that fucking different one from another.

Desktop implies desktop work. If it can't run Libra Office how it's run on a desktop, it's useless. It will also have to be powerfull enough to run a few systems in wine.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 10:08:02 AM by Saras »

Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #110 on: July 30, 2013, 10:08:11 AM »
Libra Office supports ARMel and ARMhf, so it can run on ARM.

edit: i think all of the office suits does support ARM instruction sets.

Quote
It will also have to be powerfull enough to run a few systems in wine.
thats not even remotely possible even with Baytrail-T, wine is too inefficient.

edit2: this got me thinking, what can you do with a PC thats as slow as a pentiumII o.o
the things i were doing on the pentiumII i had were DOS games and a few word and paint, internet didn't exist at that time for me.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 10:16:08 AM by kitamesume »

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Offline Saras

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #111 on: July 30, 2013, 10:14:41 AM »
I checked. Unless I greatly overlooked it. It's not the full suite. You get draw, database and equation, that's it. And I'm not even sure it has the complete capabilities of the desktop version either.

A lot of shit is ineffient. PC code comes in here too. But basic wine support is imo a must. You can't run Linux as a main system without it.

Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #112 on: July 30, 2013, 10:19:25 AM »
i've had first hand experience of wine on a D525 atom, since we were trying to cut cost down by not purchasing a windows OS while keeping the machine legal, it couldn't even emulate anything without locking up or crashing.

considering that it would be possible that baytrail-T to be around the same performance of it, unlikely for merrifield though.

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Offline sawakosadako

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #113 on: July 30, 2013, 04:08:24 PM »
I think this is a good articles that mention kitamusume's objection about chips.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2284272/canonicals-crowdfunding-of-ubuntu-edge-stretches-credibility-to-the-breaking-point

While this one is pure bad. Being Guardian and supporting cloud without mentioning about the snowden case at all, is just pure bashing. Plus there's a lot of misinformation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jul/23/ubuntu-edge-crowdfunding-analysis

So I wonder if the edge is killed prematurely by this kind of articles.
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Offline xShadow

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #114 on: July 30, 2013, 05:23:00 PM »
For some reason I'm getting this "watching people argue about sports" vibe from the chip debate here. Not sure why...

Also if you're gonna run wine you may as well put windows on the phone as an OS, unless you have a good reason for keeping Ubuntu as main os and then emulating the one you find necessary... Just my 2 more cents.


No really I'd fucking love it if you'd make a phone that I could play eroge on.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2013, 01:24:08 PM by xShadow »

Cute, huh?

Offline sawakosadako

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #115 on: July 30, 2013, 08:37:23 PM »
They added the shirt perk for $50, and answer some comments/email they received.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge?c=activity

Quote
We’ve also had a lot of emails and comments over the past week, so we thought we'd address the most common questions here in the update.

What networks are supported?
The Ubuntu Edge is an unlocked device that works in all countries with GSM/3G/LTE network services. For GSM, which covers a lot of countries but not all operators, the Edge will support the 850, 900, 1800, 1900 and 2100 MHz frequencies. You can check support in your country here.

The Edge will support LTE standard frequencies and multi-band support for roaming. Yes, you can use the Edge on Verizon and Sprint.

Will the phone work with my Mac?
Ubuntu Edge can be connected to any laptop via USB and will appear as a mass storage device. You can transfer files as required.

Will there be an Ubuntu app store?

Yes, you will be able to download free and paid-for applications.

Will the Ubuntu Edge be sustainable and/or hardware hackable?
While we will do our best to keep the hardware as open as possible, these are not the main focus of the project in its first generation. Hardware that’s capable of convergence is the priority.

Have you chosen a CPU/GPU?
We have not chosen a supplier or an architecture yet -- whether x86 or ARM. The decision will be taken before production to ensure the fastest available components, and will be driven by benchmarking.

Are you going to make a 64GB model?
We firmly believe that to offer a fully converged experience you need 128GB. Cutting down the specs goes against the ethos of the campaign. You can still access cloud storage and external HDD via USB 3.0.

Why is your screen 4.5 inches and 720p?
At 4.5 inches the move from 720p to 1080p brings little noticeable benefit and puts a greater strain on the hardware and battery. We’re more concerned with photo-realistic colours and contrast.

What are you doing with audio?
With stereo speakers and dual-mic stereo recording, adaptive noise cancelling technology, and a solid DSP, audiophiles should have everything they need.

Where and when is the unveiling event?
We will confirm the unveiling event later this year, subject to a successful campaign.
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Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #116 on: July 31, 2013, 01:16:25 AM »
doh http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/11/nokia-lumia-1020-specs-leaked
41 megapixel camera, thats better than my cheap DSLR o.o

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Offline zherok

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #117 on: July 31, 2013, 01:22:47 AM »
Pace seems to have slowed down pretty considerably. $32M just seems completely outta the question at this stage for crowd-funding.

Offline Saras

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #118 on: July 31, 2013, 06:57:42 AM »
doh http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/11/nokia-lumia-1020-specs-leaked
41 megapixel camera, thats better than my cheap DSLR o.o

Why are you bringing that up here?

Offline kitamesume

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Re: $32 million Crowd Funding for Android/Ubuntu phone
« Reply #119 on: July 31, 2013, 10:12:21 AM »
doh http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/11/nokia-lumia-1020-specs-leaked
41 megapixel camera, thats better than my cheap DSLR o.o

Why are you bringing that up here?
no apparent reason.

it came from sawako's 2nd link, so in a sense its a reply to sawako.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jul/23/ubuntu-edge-crowdfunding-analysis
Quote
Innovation? Where?

That the phone and PC business hasn't been innovating much will come as news to people such as Nokia, which earlier this month was showing off its Lumia 1020, which has a camera with 41 megapixels, the ability to retrospectively zoom into elements of a picture, and amazing low-light optics.

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