600 USD for a phone that only runs some kind of Ubuntu on an ARM SoC? Canonical has to be kidding right? You can get the best user experience you can get with an android phone for under 200 USD, and get a PC-on-a-stick to run Fedora (Fedora 20 is going to be an equal ARM and x86 release)/Debian/Arch and get as good a desktop experience you can get from an ARM device for 40 USD lmao. A top of the range smartphone costs under 200 USD to make, and Ubuntu is entirely based on Open Source software, why the hell do they need a 400 USD premium on that crap. I'm thoroughly offended by this to be honest. But now I know what they pulled the plug on their Ubuntu forum this weekend stating it was an attack, they had probably hoped on getting some headlines for their phone launch lol.
And forget about installing another GNU/Linux distro on it, it's going to be canonical proprietary.
Even Jolla phones are cheaper and make more sense in my opinion.
But as with so many things, to each his own, if it rocks your boat, then by all means, it's good to have choice, I was just expecting something that would at least resemble some kind of competition for Android, but I guess that won't happen soon.
I don't understand the reasoning behind the launch. Canonical needs to raise money, and they can only count on hipsters, it's not like they have a locked in customer base like Apple, and it's not like any real linux user can't switch distros in a few minutes without breaking a sweat, and then they come out with a 600 USD phone with the ailing Ubuntu on it? To sell such a device, they'll have to count on subsidized sales, because few people shell out that kind of cash for a phone with unproven functionality. It's not like selling a 40 USD Raspberry Pi! My guess is that they have deals with providers that will fund most of their Indiegogo, defying the goal of "Indie"gogo, to make it look good in the press ("successful indiegogo campaign" and all that crap), but I would like to meet the real individual that shells out 600 USD for something that only exists on paper. Subsidized phones may be the norm in the Anglo-American common law world, but in most civil law countries, package deals were strictly regulated, and it took a long time (and a lot of free iPhones to politicians) for the laws to be changed so that subsidized phones were possible, and just when they became possible, that's where the European Union started putting pressure on carriers to lower the prices of communications, or where emerging communications markets had a really good market competition going on, and people started getting prepaid cards because there is no contract and you can always chose the cheapest formula, so people didn't get subsidized phones that much. Some got it because a restrictive contract would provide extra control over the use by the phone for their teenage children, and they got a nice smartphone with it, and companies always made deals with carriers that were mutually beneficial, but never a goldmine for the carrier like consumer contracts. So the Ubuntu phone is targeted at the US/UK markets only basically. And with Fedora 20 being released on ARM and x86 as equal importance releases, and RedHat being the official GNU/Linux provider of China (RedFlag linux) and Russia (Russian Fedora), respectively the place where all the tech crap is built and the largest emerging smartphone market, Ubuntu will not be selling a lot to companies or to a lot of Chinese and Russian companies in my opinion. I don't understand Canonical to be honest. They've had such a great success with Ubuntu 7-10, but for instance the French military and police being still on Ubuntu 10.04, and a lot of corporate users moving to Debian or RPM-based distros, the flak they're taking from the Open Source communities all over the world, etc... all of that should be a wake up call that they're not moving in the right direction with their product.
In my opinion, there is no phone in the world that is worth 600 USD. The first iPhone was worth that, so were the old Sony Ericsson P990i or the even older Nokia "the brick" Navigator phones, but now, where you get a smartphone for free when you buy a pack of laundry soap on every corner of the street, and where dual core smartphones (even the new Moto X will be dual core) have proven to be in the sweet spot of practicality, having full functionality with long battery life, I think the concept of a 600 USD phone is crazy.
Look at the old cell phones, how that went: Nokia phones were predominant, with the 150-250 USD 5110 everywhere, which is replaced now with 150-250 USD Android devices by Samsung/Huawei/LG/etc, and with the 300-400 USD Nokia 6110 for the pro market, which is now 300-400 USD Android devices like the Galaxy Mini and HTC One Mini. The radical drop in iPhone sales has shown that there is no market for expensive niche operating system devices anymore. The reality is that the platform is old already, with 1.5 million android device activations per day a smartphone is nothing special anymore, and it will take a radical new design to get people buying premium stuff again. Maybe an Atom Phone, like Wendell suggested in the Tek, maybe a new interface with a "wearable" device, who knows, but a smartphone has become such a generic product that it's hard to convince people to part with 600 USD for a cardboard box full of promises...
Anyway, that's just my opinion. As I said, to each his own.