After an initial flurry of interest and financial pledges, crowdfunding for Canonical's Ubuntu Edge phone has slowed to a crawl. There's currently $8.7 million raised toward a goal of $32 million, and it's more than halfway through the Indiegogo campaign. Even the late boost that crowdfunding projects often get isn't likely to be enough.

But Canonical still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Today, the company said, "we’ve been negotiating with several major component suppliers who are keen to see the Edge reach its goal and drive the adoption of new mobile technologies. This is one of the key benefits of keeping some of the core specifications open: as a result of these negotiations, we can now produce the same state-of-the-art device for less than we originally estimated."

Because of that lower cost of manufacturing, Canonical is fixing the price of the Edge at $695 and eliminating the limits on quantities available. A one-year subscription to LastPass, a password management service, is included in the price. The Edge price was $600 for first-day backers, with any backers thereafter initially asked to pledge $830 to reserve a phone. Canonical quickly introduced new pricing levels at $625, $675, $725, and $775, but it placed limits on how many phones could be purchased at each level.

With the price now fixed and no limits on buying, Canonical said that "anyone who’s already pledged more than $695 for the phone will be offered a refund of the difference." The company claims that Ubuntu Edge will be exclusive to the Indiegogo campaign and not "available to buy anywhere outside of this campaign, even at launch."

While hitting that $32 million goal is looking less likely each day, Canonical did sign up its first $80,000 pledge, with Bloomberg LP putting in that amount for a bundle that provides 100 phones for business use. "We expect more businesses to follow suit," Canonical said. "To make it even more appealing, we’ve raised the number of phones included in the bundle from 100 to 115."

The Ubuntu Edge will dual-boot Android and Ubuntu Touch, and it will turn into an Ubuntu desktop when docked with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It will have 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 4.5-inch screen coated in sapphire.

If the Indiegogo campaign is successful, the phones are scheduled to ship in May 2014. Other Ubuntu phones are expected to ship in Q1 2014, but they likely won't be quite as impressive. If nothing else, the negotiations Canonical held with component suppliers during the Indiegogo campaign could bode well for production of lower-end Ubuntu phones.