On the pre-production status

[robert.prior1985 97]

38 minutes ago, glumreaper said:

It's good that support have given you that relatively comprehensive response. Not wishing to jump straight on the negative, but last week they told me that the second batch is following 'mid November', not 'by the end of November'. It may be that the support person is referring to a different stage of what people here have clearly identified as a complex, multi-stage, shipping process. I wish they'd get their terminology correct in that case. I, and I know many others, don't really care when the devices leave the factory. I just want to know when mine will be with me.

#Preach 🙏

[ksal95 227]

8 hours ago, kin9 said:

Where are the guys which protected fx team in September and said "why you guys cannot be patient and just wait one more week?"

July -> September -> late September-> early October -> Nov -> ???

They do not respect their customers at all.

Finding better things to do than constantly complain about existing issues we know won't be fixed anytime soon.  😒

[Zamasu 258]

8 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

Maybe most of us got tired of saying the same thing over and over to the same people:

This is a startup, with a lot of things out of their control, doing a device of a type no one has offered for many years.

Why is it that people do not find it odd that a company as huge and experienced as Samsung could announce their foldable device to come "next year" for five years, and when it finally was announced it took half a year for it to become available, after cancelling all their pre-orders. And on the other hand expects Fxtec, to predict every obstacle, and work smoothly by the plan?

Sure their communication has not been stellar, but get real.

If you want a finished product, you might save yourself a lot of grief, by not doing pre-orders

Maybe people find Samsung's actions bad as well? Besides, a flexible screen is an unsolved problem compared to slider phones, which have existed in the past in some form. And I respect Samsung's choice to just flat out cancel orders when they couldn't ship in time more, but I fully realize they could take that risk and abandon it like that purely because they're a giant of course.

And the fact that this is a pre-order should've meant that this was a finished product, that they wouldn't need to string people along to still figure out the design and whatnot. If they needed more flexibility, it should've been a crowdfund, and I wouldn't have pre-ordered. In my opinion it's precisely because it's a pre-order that these actions are so annoying, they're classic crowdfund actions which I wanted to avoid.

Saying that they're a start up, and that they're smaller than Samsung should not free them of criticism. I think small companies are generally faster and more open about internal decisions anyway. These arguments are just straight up fallacies.

[mcdinner 375]

20 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

And the fact that this is a pre-order should've meant that this was a finished product, that they wouldn't need to string people along to still figure out the design and whatnot. If they needed more flexibility, it should've been a crowdfund, and I wouldn't have pre-ordered. In my opinion it's precisely because it's a pre-order that these actions are so annoying, they're classic crowdfund actions which I wanted to avoid.

How do you come to the conclusion that a pre-order Product hast to be completed and finished? When they started accepting pre-orders it was totaly clear the only existing devices were pre-production and testing. You should be happy that the did pre-ordering with the (confirmed) option to cancel instead of the common practice of kickstarter and others to just rip off a huge percentage of the money for doing nothing and then give the rest to the backed company where you have no chance to get you money back.

What made you expect that a small company with no existing production loine and small production quantity would keep track of the original  timeline. That's a bit gullible IMHO and does absolutely not match any of my real life experiences.... 
I have waited longer on the fidget Cube than I am waiting now for my pro1.

 

[Hook 3,021]

30 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

Maybe people find Samsung's actions bad as well? Besides, a flexible screen is an unsolved problem compared to slider phones, which have existed in the past in some form. And I respect Samsung's choice to just flat out cancel orders when they couldn't ship in time more, but I fully realize they could take that risk and abandon it like that purely because they're a giant of course.

And the fact that this is a pre-order should've meant that this was a finished product, that they wouldn't need to string people along to still figure out the design and whatnot. If they needed more flexibility, it should've been a crowdfund, and I wouldn't have pre-ordered. In my opinion it's precisely because it's a pre-order that these actions are so annoying, they're classic crowdfund actions which I wanted to avoid.

Saying that they're a start up, and that they're smaller than Samsung should not free them of criticism. I think small companies are generally faster and more open about internal decisions anyway. These arguments are just straight up fallacies.

No one said they shouldn't be criticized.  But the same people repeating the same criticisms over and over begins to border on Troll behavior.  We got it the first time. 🙄

I'm still here.  I'm still excited about my Pro 1. I don't feel betrayed, lied to, or even misled. I trust Chen to come through in the end.  The communication is bad, but it isn't going to get fixed right now. 

And, oh, by the way, I find nothing weird or misleading about it taking a little over 2 weeks to get from shipping from a Chinese factory to getting a tracking number from a logistics hub since the tracking number isn't created until the domestic hub scans them.  At least, that's, as far as I can tell, how the US carriers work.

[mcdinner 375]

2 minutes ago, Hook said:

I'm still here.  I'm still excited about my Pro 1. I don't feel betrayed, lied to, or even misled. I trust Chen to come through in the end.  The communication is bad, but it isn't going to get fixed right now. 

thx

[VaZso 1,998]

10 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

Maybe people find Samsung's actions bad as well? Besides, a flexible screen is an unsolved problem compared to slider phones, which have existed in the past in some form.

If something similar was existed in the past it does not mean it is easy to do it again or even adapt older concepts.
A lot of things have changed. There are a lot of newer technologies, the number of supported frequency bands have greatly improved, the antenna system have to be highly different which may also affects other design considerations.

Remember if a mechanic has a lot of metal parts, it is absolutely not trivial to put antennas to appropriate places where transmission and reception is also good even in open and closed condition of the phone.

The whole process is a rather complicated thing which is really hard to be done.

Also design the mainboard well is a really hard process which need experienced engineer(s) - put the SoC into a schematic together with some power supplies and other components then wiring them 'somehow' is not enough at all. There are a lot of design considerations should be done and we are still speaking about schematics and the same of PCB design. Designing antennas need "another profession" with another considerations and experiences. Then the mechanical part is clearly another profession and these groups are have to work together to have good mechanics, good electronics and good antennas together.

Also test measurements should be done in order to see if everything are right (antenna transmission / reception, EMI, EMC), test if the phone meets specific regulations (and that is where also other design considerations of earlier phases are mandatory) and redesign things if something works other than expected.
Also redesign things if final (more expensive) tests have failed and be happy if they are also find it is within specific regulations like your other (cheaper but not cheap) tests showed.

Also it is another process (which starts earlier than the previous paragraph ended) is that the hardware is need to be waken up, the first Linux kernel should be compiled with appropriate (device-specific) settings / configurations applied, running the first Android on the device, waking up every components one by one, testing stability, fine-tuning some components, testing the device, repair bugs, etc, etc.

...and that point you only have some working units but far from mass production, which is an other long story.

This is really a hard (and really, really expensive) way and if we are able to hold the phone in our hands, then they finally did it.
Also, I am not surprised if they are a bit tired (physically and mentally) at this point - see everything written above and elaborate it.

[Zamasu 258]

6 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

How do you come to the conclusion that a pre-order Product hast to be completed and finished?
 

I don't remember the specifics, but I remember somewhere the distinction being made that this wasn't a crowdfund. Finished may have been the wrong words specifically, I more meant the difference between a crowdfund and pre-order. One to me seems they only have a concept really, while the other has most things figured out, with gradations between them obviously.

7 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

You should be happy

This is another fallacy.

10 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

What made you expect that a small company with no existing production loine and small production quantity would keep track of the original  timeline.

What makes you think I expected that?

11 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

I have waited longer on the fidget Cube than I am waiting now for my pro1.

That's a crowdfund I think, obviously those should take longer than pre-orders.

[Zamasu 258]

10 minutes ago, Hook said:

But the same people repeating the same criticisms over and over begins to border on Troll behavior.  We got it the first time. 🙄

That seemed to be that persons first post like that though, aside from maybe one post that borders on that sentiment. I wouldn't call that over and over.

 

11 minutes ago, Hook said:

I don't feel betrayed, lied to, or even misled.

Good for you, but I that just makes it seem like you missed something, or are intentionally ignoring parts. They've contradicted themselves at least via "personal" channels, and if you dismiss those we hardly have any info at all.

 

13 minutes ago, Hook said:

but it isn't going to get fixed right now. 

Why not though? I think there's still a possibility for them to just blurt out all the info they have, or to hire an intern or something to do that. We also don't know enough to know that this would be impossible either.

15 minutes ago, Hook said:

And, oh, by the way, I find nothing weird or misleading about it taking a little over 2 weeks to get from shipping from a Chinese factory to getting a tracking number from a logistics hub since the tracking number isn't created until the domestic hub scans them.  At least, that's, as far as I can tell, how the US carriers work.

Depends, you can definitely get tracking directly from China. But then you'd be on the hook for customs and such I think. I don't think the actions they're going through are weird per se either, I find it annoying when they say one thing and do another.

[Zamasu 258]

11 minutes ago, VaZso said:

If something similar was existed in the past it does not mean it is easy to do it again or even adapt older concepts.

I didn't say it was, I just said it's easier than to invent new concepts. Which is also why I said "in some form", to compare it to flexible screens, which haven't had some form, at least not in commercial use that I remember.

[mcdinner 375]

10 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

22 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

How do you come to the conclusion that a pre-order Product hast to be completed and finished?
 

I don't remember the specifics, but I remember somewhere the distinction being made that this wasn't a crowdfund. Finished may have been the wrong words specifically, I more meant the difference between a crowdfund and pre-order. One to me seems they only have a concept really, while the other has most things figured out, with gradations between them obviously.

I don't think there is a defined difference between preorder and crowdfound, It's just another way of collection money.

10 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

22 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

You should be happy

This is another fallacy.

yea, right. You should feel whatever you feel about that :)

10 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

22 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

What made you expect that a small company with no existing production loine and small production quantity would keep track of the original  timeline.

What makes you think I expected that?

My interpretation of your post, why you pre-ordered and would not crowdfund

10 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

22 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

I have waited longer on the fidget Cube than I am waiting now for my pro1.

That's a crowdfund I think, obviously those should take longer than pre-orders.

Why ? 

[Zamasu 258]

1 minute ago, mcdinner said:

I don't think there is a defined difference between preorder and crowdfound, It's just another way of collection money.

Well, you're wrong then. There are definite legal differences.

1 minute ago, mcdinner said:

yea, right. You should feel whatever you feel about that 🙂

Sure, just dismiss it. Just because something isn't the worst case, doesn't make it good or acceptable.

2 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

My interpretation of your post, why you pre-ordered and would not crowdfund

Again, you're wrong then. I fully expected them to slip dates. I just expected more openness about this, and not this many slips. 1 large slip would make more sense even.

3 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

Why ? 

Because they generally still need to design the device. Even the Pro1 had a working prototype at the point of ordering.

[mcdinner 375]

1 minute ago, Zamasu said:

6 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

I don't think there is a defined difference between preorder and crowdfound, It's just another way of collection money.

Well, you're wrong then. There are definite legal differences.

could you pleas show me ? I'm really interested in that.

1 minute ago, Zamasu said:

 

1 minute ago, Zamasu said:

6 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

My interpretation of your post, why you pre-ordered and would not crowdfund

Again, you're wrong then. I fully expected them to slip dates. I just expected more openness about this, and not this many slips. 1 large slip would make more sense even.

Communication, which is indeed really bad, was not the main issue of your post.

1 minute ago, Zamasu said:

6 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

Why ? 

Because they generally still need to design the device. Even the Pro1 had a working prototype at the point of ordering.

most of them have prototypes in the first place.
As example FidgedtCube had videos with their prototyping work

[Zamasu 258]

1 minute ago, mcdinner said:

could you pleas show me ? I'm really interested in that.

I really can't be bothered to be the search engine lackey of some random dude on a forum which has been wrong about so many things.

2 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

Communication, which is indeed really bad, was not the main issue of your post.

True, my main issue in that post was people being wrong in this forum and posting fallacies. That's not really an F(x)tec issue though.

4 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

most of them have prototypes in the first place.
As example FidgedtCube had videos with their prototyping work

Engineered to a lesser extent. They generally haven't made a working phone.

[mcdinner 375]

10 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

I really can't be bothered to be the search engine lackey of some random dude on a forum which has been wrong about so many things.

So, there is just no difference you can tell here.

Quote

True, my main issue in that post was people being wrong in this forum and posting fallacies. That's not really an F(x)tec issue though.

 

This forum is just full of speculations, because of the lack of information. 

Quote

Engineered to a lesser extent. They generally haven't made a working phone.

yes, still took a long time for a plastc toy with buttons.

working phone prototype is not FCC approved and cannot be sold on free market. You need to do that first, so everything takes more time.

[ksal95 227]

10 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

True, my main issue in that post was people being wrong in this forum and posting fallacies. That's not really an F(x)tec issue though.

And you're right how?  Do you work for Fxtec?  How are your posts any different from anyone else's regarding any sort of truth?  All we know is the communication is anything but optimal and that at some point in time we will receive phones.

[Zamasu 258]

6 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

So, there is just no difference you can tell here.

No there are, like I said, I can't be bothered for you.

7 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

This forum is just full of speculations, because of the lack of information. 

I'd say there's a couple of truths as well.

[Zamasu 258]

6 minutes ago, ksal95 said:

And you're right how? ... How are your posts any different from anyone else's regarding any sort of truth? 

You can check how fallacies work yourself, and find out them I'm right about those fallacies.

 

8 minutes ago, ksal95 said:

Do you work for Fxtec?

Obviously not. Weird question. I don't think I made any claims about their inner workings.

 

9 minutes ago, ksal95 said:

All we know is the communication is anything but optimal and that at some point in time we will receive phones.

If you completely dismiss what I was saying, sure. Again, most of my post wasn't about the phones or when they'll be received.

[VaZso 1,998]

24 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

I didn't say it was, I just said it's easier than to invent new concepts. Which is also why I said "in some form", to compare it to flexible screens, which haven't had some form, at least not in commercial use that I remember.

I think it is hard to have "easier" a real meaning in this case.

None of them seems to be easy, but Samsung has experience in phone manufacturing and has relatively high amount of money to work with.
It is really not a cheap thing and someone had to make a risky decision to create a flexible display keeping in mind that if the project fails or taking too much time, it causes loss for the company but when they can really come up with a working solution, it places the company at a higher rank.
This way, the worst case loss can also be payed by the company without a general breakdown.
The OLED technology is here for a while, they had to solve it to be foldable which was definitively an expensive process and had to have specific knowledge and ideas, but we still don't really see how durable it is - however, I hope they did real-life tests till final release.

So manufacturing a phone for Samsung (as a company) is easy as they have experience, working (and available) internal knowledge of older phone models and relatively high amount of money.

For F(x)tec, they had to build a new phone from scratch which is a hard process from this viewpoint and it is even a risky project.
If they fail, they would most likely loose a high amount of money which would really hurt them.
Also, it was much higher risks in their investments when the phone was in much earlier state than the state it is now.

Currently it seems they are near a specific point which they have to overcome to succeed and it seems to be very close now.

[mcdinner 375]

18 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

No there are, like I said, I can't be bothered for you.

But you came up with the legal differences. I can't find em.

Quote

I'd say there's a couple of truths as well.

To tell only half the truth is to give life to a new lie.

Edit: Sure there are. There are also official statements here and confirmations of successful cancellation and received unit assignments

Edited November 12, 2019 by mcdinner
addition to the truth...

[ksal95 227]

12 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

If you completely dismiss what I was saying, sure. Again, most of my post wasn't about the phones or when they'll be received.

I haven't dismissed what you're saying, I quoted your main issue which is people being "wrong".  We all want better communication and the phones, which we've yet to receive on either front.

[Zamasu 258]

Just now, ksal95 said:

I haven't dismissed what you're saying, I quoted your main issue which is people being "wrong". 

And then say the only thing we know is some stuff about the shipment of the phones, while there's plenty of opinions and such on this forum which lie outside of that. For example, that some person posted a certain opinion time and time again, which is wrong. You dismissed that.

[Zamasu 258]

9 minutes ago, mcdinner said:

There are also official statements here

Pretty sure the only "official" statements we have are by people who have since said that those aren't official statements. Unless you're talking about shared customer support emails.

[ksal95 227]

3 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

And then say the only thing we know is some stuff about the shipment of the phones, while there's plenty of opinions and such on this forum which lie outside of that. For example, that some person posted a certain opinion time and time again, which is wrong. You dismissed that.

I did not mention the shipment of the phones, I only said that at some point in time we will receive them.  

[Hook 3,021]

8 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

For example, that some person posted a certain opinion time and time again, which is wrong.

To be honest, when I was talking about that, I wasn't referring to you specifically (and I'll admit that wasn't clear) but to the thread in general, though I'm not sure it isn't beginning to apply to you now.  😉