Over the years, we’ve seen companies show off a number of awesome phones that had a lot of potential, but were doomed by their makers’ poor decisions.

A bunch of them weren’t released in the U.S. — the largest global market for smartphones — or weren’t released at all.

From attempts to raise $30 million to release a high-end phone for free-software-loving Linux fans, to investing millions into a phone with almost no apps, these are examples of great phones we’ll never see on the market.

Nokia’s N9 had a beautiful design and an operating system unlike anything on the market. Unfortunately, Nokia never worked out a deal with U.S. carriers — so most Americans never even knew it existed.

The Ubuntu Edge raised more than $12 million via crowdsourcing site Indiegogo this summer, but it still wasn’t enough to bring the device to market (they needed $30 million). Which is a shame, because it would have given us a high-end device running Ubuntu, a Linux distribution with a pretty wide range of apps available.

The Project S is another bold attempt to raise money for a high-end smartphone via Indiegogo. Don’t expect to see this any time soon: while they’re asking for far less than the budget of the Ubuntu Edge, it’s also not getting as much attention because it’s basically just another Android phone.

 

Click here to see the Project S Indiegogo page >>

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