Canonical had an idea, but now they have the tools as well

Jan 19, 2016 08:39 GMT  ·  By

The Ubuntu Edge was an incredible concept, and Canonical wanted to make something really unique. It didn’t happen, but the technology has progressed sufficiently to get to the level of what the company wanted to build in 2013.

It’s funny to see that it took more than two years to reach the same level of hardware specifications to even match what the Ubuntu Edge was trying to accomplish. They wanted a device with a quad-core processor, at least 4GB of RAM, and internal storage of 128GB.

Let's take the latest Nexus 6P phone as an example. This phone comes with two quad-core processors that can work in tandem, if necessary, there is a version with 128 GB available, and only 3GB of RAM.

Canonical wanted to implement the best processors available at that time. In 2013, they thought a quad-core would do the job, but if Ubuntu Edge were to be built today, it would probably ship with an octa-core. Also, the Ubuntu Edge had 128GB of storage by default and wanted to ship with 4GB of RAM. All of these should have happened in 2013.

Ubuntu Edge or something like it

A phone with the specifications of the Ubuntu Edge is probably coming in 2016, and it would be amazing if Canonical would make Ubuntu Touch work on it. Ideally, it would be nice to see Ubuntu Touch running on Nexus 6P, and there is a good reason for that.

Beyond what Ubuntu Edge was planning to incorporate from a hardware perspective, the phone was also going to be the herald of a new era in personal computing. Canonical was talking about Ubuntu convergence long before it became a “thing.” They wanted to have a powerful phone that can be used as a PC when connected to a display, and the main function of Ubuntu Edge was to provide just that.

In 2013, the convergence was just a word and maybe some ideas on how to achieve it. In 2016, convergence is here, and it can be tested. Most likely, users will be able to use it in a much better and stable form in 2016.

Canonical doesn’t need the Ubuntu Edge anymore, but it does need to have the Ubuntu OS running on a beast, like the Nexus 6P or whatever else Google is planning for this year. It would make a great addition to the Ubuntu family of supported devices, and it would be like Ubuntu Edge finally shipped, sort of.

Ubuntu on Nexus 6P
Ubuntu on Nexus 6P

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