Two days ago, Canonical unveiled its next gambit to push Ubuntu into the hands of consumers: The Ubuntu Edge smartphone. If the Edge Indiegogo project can raise $32 million before August 22, 40,000 Ubuntu Edge smartphones will enter the mobile ecosystem in May 2014 — if the project fails, Canonical says that it will instead focus on bringing Ubuntu to commercially available smartphones, and that the Edge will quietly disappear into the digital ether. And trust me, the Edge will fail.

The Ubuntu Edge is what I like to call a desktop replacement smartphone (DRS). In theory, the Edge runs the Ubuntu Phone OS (or Android, your choice) — then, when you connect it to an external monitor via HDMI and attach a mouse and keyboard via Bluetooth, the Edge automatically switches over to a full version of the Ubuntu Desktop OS. The idea is that, on the move, the Edge is a normal smartphone — but at home or in the office, it becomes your desktop PC. All of your files and settings are synchronized between the mobile and desktop OSes, and it seems you can even access mobile features — such as making and receiving calls — from the desktop.

As I have said before, I believe that the desktop replacement smartphone is the future of computing. The future simply isn’t here yet, though, and the Ubuntu Edge is destined to fail. Putting aside the fact that it will almost certainly not reach its funding goal (current estimates put the total at around $20 million after 31 days), there are a slew of hardware and software challenges that cannot be overcome for the next few years.

a sapphire glass screen ), and all of the usual wireless, sensory, and camera gubbins. So far, so good.

The SoC, however, remains unlisted, with the project page merely stating that the Edge will have “the fastest multi-core CPU,” and no word at all about the GPU. There’s also no mention of battery size. These are by far the most important factors when discussing the validity and usefulness of a desktop replacement smartphone.

We know for a fact that it won’t have the fastest multi-core CPU, because it simply isn’t feasible to squeeze an Intel Xeon into a smartphone. What Canonical must mean is that it’ll try to squeeze in the fastest ARM or Atom chip. Based on its expected shipping date of May 2014, this probably means that the Edge will be powered by Intel’s Silvermont-based Merrifield SoC, or perhaps something along the lines of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. Both of these chips will be best-in-class for mobile use, but their ability to run multiple, windowed desktop apps is questionable. Can you imagine running a word processor, video player, and numerous smaller apps side-by-side on a smartphone?

And then there’s the battery. While the battery obviously doesn’t matter when you’re docked, it plays a huge role in defining the power envelope of the SoC and other components, because this is still a mobile device that will be used on the move. To achieve adequate performance for desktop computing, Canonical might have to squeeze a quad-core Bay Trail chip inside — but when you’re unplugged, you might not have enough juice to power that beefy SoC for more than a couple of hours. Ultimately, without a decent battery, you end up with the smartphone equivalent of a desktop replacement laptop — you know, one of those gonad-melting beasts that doesn’t last more than 30 minutes on battery power. For a $830 device that will primarily replace your existing smartphone, that just won’t fly.

The post-PC utopia

Perhaps we’re being too hard on the Ubuntu Edge, though. Maybe it’s more than enough to start with a smartphone that can be plugged into a monitor for some big-screen word processing or web browsing. As hardware and battery life improves, a true desktop replacement smartphone that can multitask and play PC-quality 3D games might become feasible. As is often the case with Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects, you are basically buying into something that isn’t quite ready for prime time — you are brute forcing the development process with your consumer dollars, in effect — and it would be silly to expect the first version of a product, produced in tiny quantities with little hardware experience, to be perfect.

The Ubuntu Edge, as perhaps the name suggests, is a bleeding-edge device for people who want to be first in line to experience the consolidated, carry-your-desktop-with-you future. In that regard, it’s a very exciting device indeed. Even if it does fail miserably, it lays the groundwork for an exciting new breed of converging post-PC devices — and, ironically enough, we’d finally have a Linux desktop that’s capable of gaining significant market share.

Now read: Before Ubuntu Phone OS: The checkered history of open source phones