[On the pre-production status]

Plastic actually makes phones more resistant to drops thanks to better shock absorption than metal. On the N900, the plastic is kind of soft, with detachable parts, a brick form factor, bezels, and a soft resistive screen. All this probably made it a very decent stunt phone; I have not seen many pictures of N900 heavily damaged after drops.

I expect the Pro¹ to be a lot less drop resistant with his harder body, much larger screen area, and curved glass with no bezels. Not planning on trying.

[On the pre-production status]

9 minutes ago, kashif said:

How can it last for decades?!

even if we assume we keep it in a glass case and never drop of damage it, even then in todays world the technology for both hardware and software/os changes so rapidly that after 3 to 4 years it will be an obsolete technology and wont keep up with all the new tech.

Unless you use it with Sailfish. it is far less demanding in terms of performance, partly because it is not cluttered with feature updates eating more CPU at each version, and most of all there is no hardware limitation past a certain version. Of course there are drawbacks, and SFOS on the Pro¹ won't even be official. But it is worth mentioning that the short-term obsolescence is mostly a software issue with today's hardware, since we already reached somewhat of a plateau a few years ago.

Most flagships now put forward new gadgets or marketing gimmicks instead of performance leaps. Since the Pro¹ already has plenty of RAM and storage, I can see it lasting quite some time if running Sailfish.

[On the pre-production status]

9 minutes ago, Raksura said:

See, my main issue with this phone so far was the curved screen. Not only can you see that it leads to ugly light reflections in every single photo we've seen of the device, but it also means that the screen is going to be very fragile. Nearly everyone I know with a screen this size has cracks on it. I don't have this problem at the moment, my six years old Q10 falls regularly and doesn't have a single one.

Now, I wasn't too worried: they clearly thought this through by ensuring that a protection case would exist, as they themselves would make it. It was even their reply to that criticism (in addition to "it makes it easier to reach the top buttons). Thing is, the "it's altering the mechanism" excuse falls flat there: the design of the mechanism and the design of the protection are not done by separate entities, they could (and should have) definitely ensure that one works with the other. There are ways to protect curved screens (one was show earlier in this very thread), but there's extremely little chance of a third party making one for a niche device.

I understand your concerns and the frustration any change of plans on the case may cause. I do realize that the case, be it free or not, was a very important asset in the bundle that made some people commit to payment. However, I am afraid that those who did so because a case would be included were a little light when taking this decision, given that they knew nothing about the case, its thickness, whether it would protect both sides, and what are the real solutions for phones without bezels. And compromising the phone design to make it work better with a case would not necessarily be a good move for other customers.

For those people who consider they cannot use the phone without a proper hard case, I believe pre-ordering was a bad idea. If they pre-ordered, then they did so knowing there might be surprises when the hard case is revealed, maybe bad ones compared to their expectations, and that can be an issue if the case was the one thing that made their decision in the first place.

[On the pre-production status]

People have to realize that a clunky case — and they said it was altering the mechanism — wouldn't make anyone happy either. The potential shitstorm on social medias could even be worse if cases are carefully manufactured but make the phone hard to use. Sometimes, sticking to the initial plan when first trials show that it just won't work is beyond reason, even if deciding to alter plans is tough.

I trust F(x)tec and believe small companies with low inertia know how to do what is best given the constraints. F(x)tec already demonstrated their attention to details and priorities when designing the phone, the keyboard, the sliding hinge, and doing everything they could to make a true hardware keyboard phone, not yet another phone with a gimmick keyboard like bluetooth keyboards are. And they were proud enough of their product that they put sweat into organizing events to reach to just a few individuals in the community.

Maybe they could have communicated earlier and better, though I remember Liangchen mentioning on Twitter that he was not satisfied with the first iteration of the case. It is true that the sleeve decision was not clear until now. Well, now it is. Knowing earlier would have been nice, but would it have changed much for pre-orderers since all pre-orders were placed before knowing anything about the cases? We don't even know what would have been the price of separate cases, maybe we're talking about 10 USD for a cheap plastic plate collecting dust on everyone's shelf. I don't think anyone really serious about the absolute necessity of a case would buy one without seeing it first, as we all know the quality and usability of cases can vary greatly from one brand to another, and from one phone to another.

I'm happy with a sleeve. What matters to me is that the part that cost 667€ in my order, hence 100% of what I was asked to pay, is carefully designed. And reviews show it is.

[On the pre-production status]

16 minutes ago, Erik said:

We typically don't have an answer to that, as the logistics team drafts up the CSV files needed by the warehouses minutes before the warehouse starts processing them. Factors such as when the payment was received and whether it's an Indiegogo compensation determine in what order devices are shipped.

As for @Jhonny B, we are trying to confirm which order reference he has, due to privacy reasons we can't confirm why, but we're struggling to locate it.

That's actually reassuring, I was starting to think you had opened the Pandore's box there. 😮 I didn't follow @Jhonny B's case, I'm merely a TMO member who's keeping an eye here now and then, but not very actively.

[On the pre-production status]

34 minutes ago, Erik said:

 

Jhonny, we contacted you 4+ times requesting your order information to chase it up for you. We are unable to confirm your order, hence we are unable to make a suggestion when your specific order is going to ship. Could you please get back to us as mentioned several times?

*Wave of e-mails from people realizing they could have sent a message to ask whether they are in the first batch.*

*Pain*

*Error 404 on fxtec.com*

[On the pre-production status]

Can we just let the 29th happen and draw conclusions afterwards, instead of writing pages of complaints on the 28th following a message that stated that they are still on schedule? Of course the vague communication can be annoying, partly because it shows a lack of confidence in what customers could interpret from more details, but our tendency to speculate on the hidden truth every time they say something is partly proving them right. I would love to have more details too, but the overall hostility here suggests that more transparency (including on bad news) could be used against them just the same way.

I mean we can complain for the extra delay between payments and deliveries, or the unknown size of the first batch, but do we really want to do that on the exact day when they confirm that shipments are starting as planned since a few weeks? I understand that some see in this statement a trick to claim that shipments have started for just a few customers and conceal that they have not started for the majority, and perhaps, but how about checking first?

Big companies with red carpet access to factories have delays too, except they barely communicate about their next flagship until it is nearly done, nor do they communicate about any delays, and none of them have bothered building such a device in the past ten years. We're speaking here about a start-up of a handful of employees that are a few weeks late when taking the risk big companies don't take. Yes they can improve and they surely are clever enough to have noticed what customers didn't like along the process, but if we want to support companies like F(x)tec or PlanetComputers, then I believe the sustained anger even when things are shaping up nicely does more harm than anything else, and it would be sad if the community ended up discouraging them from trying again in the future.