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I have found the exact opposite experience.
When in desktop mode, you will be plugged into A/C power.
You don't have to believe it, but it is true.
I do not think you will be surprised.
Unfortunately, for the planned volume, we won't have much influence with the SoC vendor, and therefore, it is highly doubtful you will see open graphics / radio firmware.
Sorry, it's not our preference either.
Our code runs fairly well on the Nexus 4 today, and through much dogfooding, we've learned that RAM is the biggest limiting factor in performance. So when (if?!) Edge ships with 4GB of RAM, the desktop mode will fly.
Off the cuff though, I'd say the ideal backer is someone excited about open platforms that push the boundary of what we think of computing today.
Arjan and team[1] proved that a 5-second boot on a laptop is a qualitatively different device. When your laptop boots in 5 seconds, you use it differently than one that boots in 10s or 30s. It becomes more device-ish and less computer-ish.
Analogously, I'd say that a single device that has a touch interface for mobility and a keyboard/mouse for desktop productivity is a new category of computing, and user software will need to adapt to the new possibilities opened up by the innovation we're doing in the foundational plumbing layers.
Looking at computing around us today, my observation is that we're asymptotically trying to achieve this vision by nibbling away at the branches, but not attacking the root.
exhibit a) iPad + bluetooth keyboard. lighter and more portable than a laptop but no one uses it as a phone so you still need 2 devices.
exhibit b) Samsung Galaxy Note, the phablet category. I've seen lots of people with these in Korea, but not so much in the States. Actually, walking around the Mission in SF, I've seen more Google Glass than people using Notes. Not sure what to make of that anecdata, but I think phablets are just too large. I use Strava on my phone when I run; I sure wouldn't want to strap on a Note.
exhibit c) Dropbox, one view of your files everywhere. This sidesteps the device problem, but the paradigm is still 'sync'. I'd prefer to just 'have' (and use the cloud for 'backup' or 'extend'). Plus, editing office docs or writing code on today's mobile devices is still going to be painful.
exhibit d) dumb/feature phones; OLPC. The bottom several billion people in the world don't have access to traditional computers[2], but they do have feature phones today. It's not unimaginable to think that they could just skip laptops and go straight to smartphones. It would be nice if these smartphones were enabled to provide a "productivity personality". Teaching a new generation of programmers will be a lot easier if they had keyboards and mice.
Maybe there will never be a one-size-fits-everyone-all-of-the-time device, but to me, the industry trends are pretty clear and one-size-fits-a-hell-of-a-lot is pretty darn good.
If those ideas excite you, then you are the ideal backer for Ubuntu Edge.
/ac, speaking only for myself and not Canonical
1: http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/
2: pre-emptively agree that the 'bottom billion' don't have easy access to enough calories or clean water either, but I don't subscribe to solving those problems in serial
No, we do not think a phone is a collection of parts.
The vast majority of the $32M goes simply to manufacturing. The remainder covers taxes, fees, shipping, certification, and returns.
It does not cover the cost of the development team's time.
So we still use the Android software to drive the camera.
As a photographer though, I have to say that I don't exactly hate the N4 camera. Built-in HDR is kinda nice, and has saved many shots for me.
Edge has 4GB of RAM planned, and will run even better than the N4.
It's a premier, demonstration platform, not a mass market device.
Unrelated: if you simply want to test drive Ubuntu for Phones, it's already been ported to 40+ platforms.
Show me the desktop Linux equivalent of Android, not Cyanogenmod. It doesn't exist - and you can measure that failure with any number of metrics.
If Ubuntu can achieve that type of success and protect the freedom of users with the GPL (instead of the permissive BSD model for hardware makers) then we will have accomplished something in the world.
In the modern marketplace, you can't choose either/or. It has to be both.
Ubuntu wants to do both and additionally add libre.
The strawman fallacy you inferred from my statement has the additional fallacy of incorrect causality.
People are initially attracted to Ubuntu for a variety of reasons, and we hope to keep them because we are fit for purpose, not for whatever ideological reason or niche feature, and certainly not due to any sort of con job.
Desktop Ubuntu has failed to reach that critical mass of users to be taken seriously by industry (our good friends at Valve notwithstanding), and the only logical place to jumpstart the install base is the mobile world.
The mobile market is brutally competitive. Ubuntu will succeed or fail on its own merits, not because of any dishonest manipulation of innocent users.
Except the rest of the (consumer) world doesn't value libre as a first-class feature. They want the shiny.
The way we get to bring our values to the world is to be commercially relevant. Because otherwise, hardware vendors don't care about you, ISVs ignore you, app developers target other platforms, and so forth.
Market share isn't the end goal. It's a means to the end.
Canonical will not migrate to SurfaceFlinger.
Speaking on behalf of myself here, and making an individual decision to prevent the spreading of FUD.
EDIT: And here is the public announcement of what we are working on that I've been waiting for:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec
http://www.olli-ries.com/mir-unity-qml-unity-apis-unity/
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2013-March/03...
/ac, speaking on behalf of self, not employer
- leaf nodes can and should rebase to ensure whatever they submit is "bisect clean"
- everyone else should never rebase because you'll destroy history
As a leaf node, you should always be committing and submitting the cleanest patches possible. The prime directive is "do not break bisect". There's much more wisdom in:
http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
stgit is a nice tool to manage your patches as a leaf node. It lets you go back and clean up individual patches in your history so that everything you submit is clean.
Maintainers don't rebase, period.
And recently (past 18 months or so), Linus has been yelling at them to not merge from mainline back into their proposed branch before pull request. The rationale is that when you do so, your pull request is now based on untested code.
Most dev communities will never scale as large as lkml, so not all the lkml conventions make perfect sense to adopt. However, like I said, there is still a lot to be learned from the community that's been using git the longest and pushing it the hardest.
http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/23/community-driven-ubuntu-...
It's a subtle distinction I wanted to point out.
Not speaking on behalf of Canonical, just in my own capacity.
For a less pretty view (and one that will only make much sense if you already understand how the Ubuntu archives are organized (poorly)), check out http://ports.ubuntu.com/