I just heard about Ubuntu's new phone concept and it looks pretty sick. I love the design of it and the ideas behind the phone and hardware promises are very good. It is doing a sort of kickstarter type of thing right now to see if the phone will get produced, with a goal of 32 million Dollars raised in 1 month. A goal I didnt think would happen, but in 12 hours this already broke the 1 million Dollar mark. I myself just ordered the phone for $600 and they still have a few left (5000 at the $600 price) so if you are interested you should put in your cash to get the phone made. No official word on carriers yet, but it does say it will support GSM/3G/LTE which I assume means pretty much any GSM network such as ATT and TMobile. I really hope it comes to verizon as well since they have far better 4G service in my area on the west coast. Anyway, here is the web page: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge/x/4038356
Looks nice, but they can't even be bothered to add Canada to the free shipping list, even though they have the UK on there. That alone makes me pass on it.
That's a pretty huge sapphire sheet...and a glassy-metal chassis? Also, silicon anode Li-Ion battery don't really exist yet commercially. One company says they're about to, but the technical hurdles to long-lived Si-anodes haven't really been overcome yet (Si has lots of volume expansion so it disintegrates itself on charging - patents and papers don't show that as having been solved at a scale that can go into production), so May 2014 is pretty bold. 830 bucks unsubsidized should be a screaming deal. But i don't care about phones, I'd take the chassis with more middling specs and vanilla android (hell, a 4-inch screen). That's my lament: I want quality build, a good camera and Android but not a giant 5-inch screen and the requisite crap battery life that comes with being razor thin.
Actually it does exist partly, probably the same thing you are talking about being about to release but it actually did release a few months ago now. The generation 1 battery is available, and the target goal from the company doing it is to have gen 2 ready either by the end of the year or early 2014 that will give an even larger increase in battery. What they did was instead of a full silicon anode design, is to use silicon micro-particles within the anode to enhance the battery capacity. Right now the gen 1 is just 5-10% more density than the highest density li-ion batteries. Gen 2 is supposed to bring another 20% increase. I think it was this company who released the stuff: http://xgsciences.com/releases/new-battery-anode/ In another year or two the generation 3 was supposed to use some tech by Standfard with silicon nano particles to solve the expansion problem of a true silicon design.
Yeah they've shown increased density but what I'm saying is LiIon has degradation problems now and Si is orders of magnitude worse. Amprius's batteries have a 20% loss in 500 cycles. That's completely unsuitable for anything you want to be long lived. The nano-wire technology, which sort of solves the problem, relies on chemical vapor deposition with gold particles as a catalyst - which is super expensive to do over the large areas you need to make a decently sized battery. Fixing either issue, at industrial scale, by early 2014 is highly optimistic.
What is the loss rate on Lithium Ion over 500 cycles? I thought it was right about the same, with a maximum life rating of something like only 1000 charges.
I feel like this phone + this homemade screen would be a great combination. It would be great if this thing were to come to market regardless of what happens with this campaign. I'm not even sure how to put into words how great of an idea for a phone this is. It would all but solve the small form factor pc needs of most people out there while giving you a completely functional cell phone at the same time. Of course, this is all assuming you can load it up with the open source productivity stuff most people use. I love the direction they want to take this phone in.