Rob. S.

If that's why you came here, you came to the right place! 😉

The PCB supplier is the one who also sources the SoC for the customer, and for the PCB the customer wants. If the PCB supplier can't get more pieces of that SoC, that's it. After all, the customer can hardly source the SoC elsewhere and solder it on the PCBs themselves. Also, when a SoC has been discontinued, it can hardly be expected that anyone could still purchase it just because some other PCB manufacturer might still be lucky to have some in stock. And a tiny company like Fxtec with such small quantities of their single (!) product doesn't have a choice. They can't go to Samsung

There are some small advantages. The perhaps most obvious were already mentioned by Fxtec, even lower battery consumption and support for newer, substantially better cameras (one of which will be be in the phone, too). And there are others, like better hardware video decoding (I think there are two more hardware-supported formats, one of them being H.265).

I do, I clicked the wrong button 😉 And I don't think 25 votes say anything, they're not in the least representative for all those who are waiting for their Pro1 and Pro1 X phones... Also, the decision has been made, I don't think there's anything we can do about it except just commenting it.

I see your point, and I even might offer to pay for the difference, too. Still I guess it would mean additional expenditures for Fxtec to handle those new payments. More importantly, other poeple might not want to pay the difference and would rather go with what Fxtec has announced. Fxtec can hardly do both, which would mean developing two new phones with even lower quantities than one new phone would imply. So they have to decide which way to go, and as it would be worse making people pay who don't want to, they go the cheaper route. Personally, as I said, I don't care for "benchmar

For me it was clear right from the beginning in 2019, even though the original Pro1 already seemed a good offer at the time (and still seems one today, if you ask me), that it couldn't have been anything but a first shot at a great keyboard phone that would bring us over the waiting time until they have their refined and upgraded Pro2 ready 😉

I see. I'm not much updated on that. I'd still rather have those and go forward than this bate and switch from Qualcomm who took the money and then didn't deliver to f(x)tec. Maybe any of those ones would be easier and faster to work with... I just wonder if Qualcomm blocked F(x)tec from using them. Fxtec doesn't just have to prepare a new phone, they also have to calculate their costs... Even if they could use one of the 7xx series of SoCs without needing a complete redesign of the hardware, it wouldn't help them much if the device's production costs would eventually exce

From Fxtec's communications I gather that one of the reasons for the original choice of the SD 835 as "last year's high-end SoC" instead of something that would have been "this year's midrange SoC" back then was that high-end chips get longer manufacturer support, so existing owners may get lucky there. (Two years later, now a recent midrange SoC like the 662 will have a support advantage over the now-old 835.)

Yes, I need that certification. I don't buy a $700 phone just so that I have to carry yet another phone for the important things like communicating with my health insurance. By the way, I voted "Other option", but I really meant "5 months but worse SoC" – it may sound worse, but if someone doesn't buy the Pro1 as a gaming device they won't even notice. I don't care for benchmark figures on paper. I've been using a Moto Z3 Play for 1½ years. It has a SD 636 which is slightly slower than than the 662, both in CPU and GPU, and it's been more than enough for anything I'll do in the fore

If anything is a true statement, this is 😉

Here's a small update. Got the "Chargie" today and the first tests are encouraging. The device seems very much thought through, so far everything works as expected, without much setup at all. The app is well designed and user-friendly. For us geeks, it keeps three hours or so of statistics about what actual charging power is being used to up the charge to the configured limit. If someone insists on quick-charging their phone even though it has a tendency to be detrimental to the battery health the "Chargie" is supposed to preserve, it does that, too, it is even compatible with the non-standard

Not really true; cameras are still increasing pixel count, with currently 60 MP being the maximum for full-frame system cameras... And even 60 MP. And for equally sized prints, they're not worse than those 24 MP cameras. Just like 48 MP smartphones are no worse than 10 or 12 MP smartphones when looking at the results at same sizes, whether on a smartphone display, a computer screen or indeed even a print. Indeed, that's totally true. But the main reason for that is the small sensor size, not the number of pixels...

It won't be outdated, on the contrary, it is a much more recent chip. It's just that now it isn't even a "former high-end" chip, it has been a "midrange" chip right from the start. That said, I've searched the net for benchmarks, and I don't expect to even notice the difference in anything I expect to do with it. Just as the 835, or so it has been reported in reviews, was hardly slower in real-world applications than a current high-end chip like the 865, either. I guess that highly demanding graphics applications (i.e. games) might be the most likely candidates for noticing a differ

Seems one early promise that related to my September 2019 order might finally come true – I might actually get my device before Christmas!

You might get lucky and still get that replacement, if they still have a small volume of replacement devices stacked...

You're not up to date there. More megapixels tend to mean worse image quality per pixel, but not necessarily per image. Also, phone cameras using such sensors usually operate in a special pixel-binning mode that combines four physical pixels to one, resulting in very good (for smartphone standards) 12 MP images, and so does Sony's IMX586. This chip is definitely better than the one Fxtec previously used. I can tell; it's the same camera that's available as a DIY upgrade for the Fairphone 3 (which originally had something more like the Pro1's former camera) of which there is one in my household

From Update 12 on IndieGogo: A similar note went out to those who are still waiting on their Pro1 (non-X) phones. Their orders, so it says, will all be changed to a Pro1-X and be prioritised before the IndieGogo Pro1 X orders.

@Montal8179 Did you see my private message from 07 Feb? 🙂

I don't even have the Pro1 yet, but I'm quite sure that the image of that cereals shelf is proof enough that it's not a focus problem, it's that the camera's lens is decentered, internally slanted. There's no way a correctly adjusted lens on such a small sensor (with such a large depth of field) could see the left part of the shelf (halfway) in focus and the right part, which is only marginally further away, already totally out of focus. I'm sorry to say this has to be a defective camera.

Maybe it is no mistake. If they'd give less optimistic forecasts, like "we don't know when you'll get your device, maybe in a few weeks, but more likely in nine or even fifteen months" instead of "7-10 weeks" or whatever they have on their homepage, nobody would be ordering anymore, and you know what that would mean in the end, not just for Fxtec, but also for those who are waiting on their already paid-for phones, and for those who are looking forward to buy further improved keyboard phones in the future. Also, in individual forecasts, being optimistic will keep more customers from giving up

Well, that's of course a reasonable decision. Me, on the other hand, I'm not dependent on getting an ordered device at a specific point in time. Until I'll get it, I can do without a physical keyboard. I will be happy to get a Pro1 (ordered Sept 2019) if and when I get it – instead of having to see a brave new startup with a brilliant new smartphone design fold without me getting either my device or my money back. And instead of probably never getting a such a phone again. While I'm still positive that my device is actually coming within reach now...

Yeah, but in which company isn't some such stuff? Now the difference between this company and others is that this this one is new and tiny and has everything to lose, one mistake can mean its very existence*, whereas others would only have a dent in their next financial statement. With the imponderables of what seems to be a rather fragile structure of them as a company, a contract manufacturer, several suppliers and other entities like the warehouse management contractor, a company like Fxtec simply has to be as careful as possible in what they publicly say – in which less always te

It's for a reason that I said "over-optimistic", not just "optimistic". And in an earlier post I also said, yes, over the 1½ years I've been following this forum, there's no denying that there seems to be a pattern. Yes – still neither you nor I have proof that it wasn't the factory where that promise originated in the first place, with Fxtec just repeating it publicly, and then something didn't work out in the factory, with one of the suppliers, whatever. Without real proof, Fxtec still should have the benefit of doubt, as every accused should 😉

I had jumped on the Moto Z too early – just when availablity of the Keyboard Mod seemed to come around the corner, because my BlackBerry PRIV had just officially stopped getting security updates after only a few months of usage (and, as the most secure Android device ever invented, couldn't get a newer, up-to-date free ROM). So I stayed with the Motorola, hoping that the Q-Device would materialise one day...