The Coolest Phones You Will Never See
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.
