Rob. S.

Latest info from Fxtec was on June 4: That said, another update wouldn't hurt. Nor would sending me my phone 😉

Which goes to show how much this outdated device with its outdated CPU etc. is not worth its list price...

If I had to guess, I'd think, even if the number of Pro¹ phones out there is comparatively small, the company that pushes the software updates (IDEA international Development Ltd., Shenzhen) has a much larger number of devices to serve everytime they have new security updates to roll out; they cannot serve all devices at the same time, so they'll probably distribute the updates over a substantial time interval, perhaps even over a few weeks.

I think there are at least two examples so far which allow installation of (some) Chrome extensions in an Android browser: Kiwi and Yandex. My experiences (with the latter) are mixed, though (not even wanting to get into the subject of data protection here) and I have no idea how the developers accomplished it, either.

I beg to differ 😉 Android wasn't really designed to be rooted by the user, and if it can be in a device, it's by no obvious or openly available means. Means which neither Android itself nor the device's manufacturer openly provided. Some devices are not rootable at all, like the Priv. Properly done, root access would have been implemented like other operating systems do, as temporarily elevated privileges with no need to put the whole device in a permanent state of being unsafe. The fact that it wasn't done like that can only be attributed to Android as the operating system, and its

I don't know if that still holds, but beside the obvious criteria, most obviously date of purchase, since those corona-caused supply shortages also type of keyboard, specific shippings sometimes were also being grouped by destination region. And whatever it was – although I suppose Fxtec really tried, it became clear quite soon that they couldn't really guarantee that shippings unfailingly follow date of purchase (it never was order number anyway, but in this case it is obvious that there must be many #3xxxx orders still open which were paid before any #48xxx order, too, mine being one of them

I'm from Germany with order #36xxx for a QWERTZ device, though mine wasn't in this batch yet. But I got this new message: Hello! We hope you are well and keeping safe. With the factory returning to normal production speeds, we are making steady progress working through remaining orders. The factory has confirmed a small batch of Pro1’s is ready to leave the factory, and those that have been allocated stock should now have received a shipping update. We are currently negotiating shipment releases on a 2-3 week basis with the factory, and will be in touch when the next shipment is ready.

Indeed... Me, I never wanted to use a no-keyboard smartphone, and I never did, until I bought the Moto Z in early 2018 which wasn't even supposed to be one, as the first few pre-production samples of the Moto Keyboard Mod to clip onto it were just being shipped to customers. It was unfortunate for all involved that those samples remained the only ones. The promise of a future phone from the same people, instead of just a keyboard attachment, was my only hope to get another keyboard phone again anytime soon. Some fifteen months later, about a year ago, I grudgingly bought my first sm

Beside, thanks to corona, things having become even slower than they've already been last year, I don't see any signs to back such pessimism. Actually the signs there are point to the contrary, as at least a few of those who hadn't received their product until a few days ago now got theirs. This is clearly a sign that there is a factory and phones are coming out of it.

Just on a side note 🙂 and well aware that the SafetyNet issue may prove to become a showstopper for me regarding the Pro¹ (still I'll try) – a few days ago, an old tablet that I was using strictly in-house, mainly for editing the household's shopping list which is stored on a self-hosted Nextcloud instance, became unusable because it tried now outdated SSL/TLS versions to connect, and so I swapped some tablets, and of course one needed to be replaced with a new one. The new one became a cheap Amazon Fire HD 8, and I was (as I only read later) lucky to get an old enough serial number which stil

Hello! We just wanted to let you know that Pro1 production is well underway, and we expect to ship more units over the next few weeks. Continued restrictions on the movement of goods around China has resulted in some processes taking longer than anticipated and at slightly higher costs, but overall the situation in China is improving and we now have almost 100% of our factory staff back to work. This means that we can ramp up production as we work our way through the backlog of orders pre Covid-19. As always, thank you for your continued patience and support. Sincerely, Team F(x)tec

Is this in-call volume thing really a general issue in all shipped devices? I ask because I saw only a few complaints so far. And because it would totally prohibit me from using the phone as a daily driver, perhaps make me carry a second device just for phone calls, requiring a monthly payment for a second SIM card if I want to keep my phone number...

I guess the problem is, while it would work perfectly with screens that contain only icons and square-sized widgets, it couldn't rotate widgets which aren't square-sized... Which of course wouldn't be a problem for users who don't use non-square-sized widgets or don't mind rotated non-square-sized widgets, but I guess a launcher developer would expect these to be a small minority, meaning there would be complaints from everyone else to be expected...

I've so far found Nova (on the Moto Z series of phones) to be ok if: I don't try to squeeze too many lines and columns on a screen, so that there's enough space between icons regardless of orientation, even though that means wasting some space I add more screens instead of letting a screen become too crowded I'm very selective in what widgets I add – there are some which work well enough for both orientations, too, like a weather app I use or my preferred calendar app (DigiCal) I'd prefer a "better" solution, too, but every other launcher I've tested so far has some other

Only if not even having the hardware counts as a hardware problem!

Not necessarily for everyone. As I said, it depends. Until a few days ago, one of my regularly used devices was a tablet running Android 4, and I only replaced it after my Nextcloud kicked it out because of the outdated encryption schemes it tried while connecting. I agree, though, that Android 6 for a 'daily driver' smartphone is not acceptable. Neither was BlackBerry's stopping security updates just a couple of weeks after I bought the device. A device that was marketed as the world's most secure Android phone for some time.. And that was once big BlackBerry. Now, as far as i

That is something that can hardly be specified objectively. It depends on 1. how much someone cares for always getting the latest stuff (instead of asking which real-life advantages that latest stuff actually brings over the less recent stuff and how much or how little that objectively affects whatever they're doing with the respective gear) – and 2. how much someone cares for the keyboard. Me, when I ordered the phone half a year ago, I looked at RAM and flash memory (just to make sure they exceeded my minimum requirements as they did and as I already expected) and whether there's a

Interesting! Where do you get it? It doesn't show up in my Play Store, although Play Store search suggest several versions of it while typing.

Noone ever said otherwise. My "estimation" was not about what they might want to do, it was about what I expect they can do.

That doesn't mean anything. Because we neither know when exactly it will be "not difficult to get one" (it's obvious now that it wll be many weeks before even last year's orders will be completely shipped), nor how long it will be in production after that, even if we don't want to talk about the possibility of a company going out of business. So good luck with trying to get one cheap. Of course that will be possible at some point, but personally I would hazard no bet naming a date.

If you get it, you will probably be able to sell it for significantly more than what you originally payed, so not all is lost even if you consider a near-high-end smartphone that was announced a bit more than a year ago, with a flagship CPU from two years ago "uselessly out of date", which of course is a position you're totally entitled to.

And, most notably, with a substantial margin of error, too. Although they seem to have been trying hard to be as just as possible with the shipping order, it sometimes didn't work out in the previous shippings, either, and there are many possibly reasons which can thwart such plans...

Seems it depends on locale. In English, I see 'Fulguris', in German, I see 'Lightning'.

Just for the record, on my Moto Z3 Play it seems Fulguris registers itself as 'Lightning' (so it may be you have to choose 'Lightning' to open something with)!

It isn't pocket money for me, either, even though it didn't tear as big a hole in my budget as in yours. And for me, seven months later, the money isn't missing much anymore, but I would still like to get that phone. But in our case, your second paragraph really is what matters – if a company that goes bankrupt has no assets, which tends to be the reason for going bankrupt in the first place, noone gets their money back. So it is in every orderer's immediate interest to help the company stay alive. Public rants against the company are no such help – being directed against the company's r