On the pre-production status

[anonim001 105]

3 hours ago, Gorden said:

Have you opened a repair ticket and gotten this adress or have you send it without contacting customer service first?

if You read my previous posts You would know, that I did contact them previously.

[d 27]

My fingerprint sensor broke just two weeks after I got the phone. I've sent them an email asking when they would have replacement parts and devices and waited until 20.01.2020 before I sent it in for repairs. The phone arrived a couple of days before the 29. Since then I've gotten no updates, but a couple of replies after asking about it.

I've been waiting for six weeks now and had to buy another phone.

[anonim001 105]

4 hours ago, d said:

My fingerprint sensor broke just two weeks after I got the phone. I've sent them an email asking when they would have replacement parts and devices and waited until 20.01.2020 before I sent it in for repairs. The phone arrived a couple of days before the 29. Since then I've gotten no updates, but a couple of replies after asking about it.

I've been waiting for six weeks now and had to buy another phone.

<picture>

there are 2 options: 1. they don't care about after-sales service; 2. they don't have enough people to handle the business. So far I'm going for the no. 2...

About the fingerprint sensor: I've noticed the poor mounting of it within the first few minutes after unboxing, I even mentioned it here on the forum but it didn't seem to be a problem for others so I thought maybe it's just about me and tried to ignore it, but it couldn't unlock the phone at the first try even once... What I mean is, at first the phone itself looked robust, but after a closer look and an hour of usage it started giving me the feeling that it will "wear out" pretty quickly. The badly mounted fingerprint sensor, flimsy/jiggly SIM tray, hall sensor failure in my case, other hardware problems mentioned here at the forum... it all makes me feel like it's gonna fall apart in a few months (not due to bad materials, those are good, but due to "cheap" workers at the manufacturing site). I'm gonna give it a chance, but when the hardware fails one or twice more I sure will sell it and go for a (-)software keyboard but (+)solid alternative.

Edited March 7, 2020 by anonim001

[EskeRahn 5,460]

... Or the more realistic 3) , they don't have anything they can send currently. If you should have missed out on it, they still have not got neither all the phones nor alle the parts they need.

[brunoais 334]

I wonder how good the QA is. Not that those two guys want bad QA but because it is made in China. All big manufactures have to impose good QA because they don't want to waste money with in-warranty repairs. I wonder if F(x)tec was/is able to impose good QA also.

Edited March 8, 2020 by brunoais

[Zamasu 258]

On 3/8/2020 at 1:18 AM, EskeRahn said:

... Or the more realistic 3) , they don't have anything they can send currently. If you should have missed out on it, they still have not got neither all the phones nor alle the parts they need.

If that's the case they should just send a reply to tell them that, it wouldn't explain the inability to reply to emails.

[Erik 1,487]

On 3/7/2020 at 2:28 PM, d said:

My fingerprint sensor broke just two weeks after I got the phone. I've sent them an email asking when they would have replacement parts and devices and waited until 20.01.2020 before I sent it in for repairs. The phone arrived a couple of days before the 29. Since then I've gotten no updates, but a couple of replies after asking about it.

I've been waiting for six weeks now and had to buy another phone.

Sorry to hear you had to buy another phone..

As you may or may not know, our factory in China, including their supply chain, has pretty much been off for the past 2 months. We are told they are back operating at some capacity but it's still nowhere near the efficiency and speed before the Coronavirus outbreak. Although very slowly, devices are being produced, but what can we do about that? We don't have 5+ factories like Canon, and we don't have the comfort of moving manufacturing to Taiwan like Apple did.

We would be happy to replace your device, but how do you do that when half of your workers can't get to work to make the device?

It's unfortunate, but the best we can do right now is to patiently wait and help our factory as much as we can. Every startup to medium sized businesses manufacturing in China is affected. 

As for your messages, I can see a new response to our previous reply was made on Saturday. We know your repair is waiting to be processed, we are not going to forget about it, even if we don't periodically acknowledge it's still with us. Pretty much everything is in hold until the stock is ready, which is what we need to send you a new device :).

[auvo.salmi 135]

On 3/7/2020 at 4:28 PM, d said:

My fingerprint sensor broke just two weeks after I got the phone. I've sent them an email asking when they would have replacement parts and devices and waited until 20.01.2020 before I sent it in for repairs. The phone arrived a couple of days before the 29. Since then I've gotten no updates, but a couple of replies after asking about it.

I've been waiting for six weeks now and had to buy another phone.

Not really important, but just asking: Did you buy a new phone to replace your Pro1 just because of broken fingerprint sensor? I mean, if the phone is otherwise perfectly usable, why didn't you use for example a lock code instead? I don't even use my fingerprint sensor (or any lock actually), so I could have swapped devices with you.

[Rob. S. 1,660]

8 hours ago, Erik said:

We don't have 5+ factories like Canon

Neither seems to have Nikon, or if they do, it didn't help, either, as their new D6 flagship camera has now been announced to be introduced no earlier than May, instead of March...

[Slion 1,201]

7 hours ago, auvo.salmi said:

why didn't you use for example a lock code instead?

To me that would be a show stopper too. Can't live without fingerprint reader anymore 😁. 
Luckily mine has been working flawlessly and I even like its placement.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Slion

[anonim001 105]

@Erik why didn't FxTec inform us about change of office address? It would be good to know, normally companies inform everyone who may want to try contacting them much earlier... I understand that "going through half of the city" may not be comfortable to get the device sent to an old address, but come on, it's not like I have found the address somewhere on the Internet, it's what I got from the support.

[Erik 1,487]

13 hours ago, anonim001 said:

@Erik why didn't FxTec inform us about change of office address? It would be good to know, normally companies inform everyone who may want to try contacting them much earlier... I understand that "going through half of the city" may not be comfortable to get the device sent to an old address, but come on, it's not like I have found the address somewhere on the Internet, it's what I got from the support.

When we request a device for service, we typically expect it to be sent within a week. In this scenario, we waited 1+ months for it to be sent in for service alone as far as I know.

[Erik 1,487]

22 hours ago, auvo.salmi said:

Not really important, but just asking: Did you buy a new phone to replace your Pro1 just because of broken fingerprint sensor? I mean, if the phone is otherwise perfectly usable, why didn't you use for example a lock code instead? I don't even use my fingerprint sensor (or any lock actually), so I could have swapped devices with you.

His Pro1 is with us, so I can justify why he needed another phone. We're aiming to replace his device ASAP, as it will be quicker than waiting for new parts.

[brunoais 334]

Thank you for the update @Erik. Too bad these people don't understand the problems related to the worldwide virus.

[EskeRahn 5,460]

1 hour ago, brunoais said:

Thank you for the update @Erik. Too bad these people don't understand the problems related to the worldwide virus.

Virus? What virus?
[/sarcasm]

[wave-rider 9]

@Erik I think everybody should unterstand, that the delay because of corona isn't the fault of fxtec and unswayable.

BUT isn't this a good possibility for solving all these software problems during home office while waiting for china and the restart of production?

So that the rest of the pre-order customers will receive a device whithout or much less software bugs? I am sure this will be a good strategy to sell more devices ...

[EskeRahn 5,460]

48 minutes ago, wave-rider said:

@Erik I think everybody should unterstand, that the delay because of corona isn't the fault of fxtec and unswayable.

BUT isn't this a good possibility for solving all these software problems during home office while waiting for china and the restart of production?

So that the rest of the pre-order customers will receive a device whithout or much less software bugs? I am sure this will be a good strategy to sell more devices ...

It would be if the software development were based in a place without COVID19, but unfortunately idealte is in China (AFAIK), and china have not had a tradition for even IT-people to work from home. So most likely things are not set up allowing that. It would require a VPN setup, and a company sponsored computer per person, and if they not already got that, it will be hard to get that too now, even if the budget for that was accceptable.

[Doktor Oswaldo 904]

11 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

It would be if the software development were based in a place without COVID19, but unfortunately idealte is in China (AFAIK), and china have not had a tradition for even IT-people to work from home. So most likely things are not set up allowing that. It would require a VPN setup, and a company sponsored computer per person, and if they not already got that, it will be hard to get that too now, even if the budget for that was accceptable.

Yep and depending on which cities, people would need a flat with enough space for a pc too....

Well this may be an exaggeration and most IT personal should be able to pay for a more or less decent flat (Not that I know I am guessing). But to assume just anyone can do home office without any problem is naive.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Doktor Oswaldo

[EskeRahn 5,460]

1 hour ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

Yep and depending on which cities, people would need a flat with enough space for a pc too....

Well this may be an exaggeration and most IT personal should be able to pay for a more or less decent flat (Not that I know I am guessing). But to assume just anyone can do home office without any problem is naive.

You are absolutely right, home office might not be a possibility.

Even though the computer could be just a laptop, but that too could be a problem. If some other family member already use the flat during the day-time.
As an example take the classic stereotype of the wife using the flat for some textile business in day time.

And even if the flat is spacious enough, the internet connections available might be of a quality/price preventing a VPN connection from being a viable solution.

[Hook 3,020]

Based on even what we have here in the USA, assuming they need to vpn to a server or set of servers, the proper security protocols to allow this may never have been set up if working from home wasn't common before this.

[Polaris 423]

On 3/10/2020 at 12:44 PM, wave-rider said:

So that the rest of the pre-order customers will receive a device whithout or much less software bugs? I am sure this will be a good strategy to sell more devices ..

A better way to solve this problem (for now) is to just factory load LineageOS prior to shipping (or at least give the option to customers for receiving a device with Lineage. @tdm has been fixing the bugs one by one, and LOS is much more stable than the stock ROM.  Additionally, he has implemented, and is continuing to implement, very worthwhile enhancements.

[Zamasu 258]

40 minutes ago, Polaris said:

A better way to solve this problem (for now) is to just factory load LineageOS prior to shipping (or at least give the option to customers for receiving a device with Lineage. @tdm has been fixing the bugs one by one, and LOS is much more stable than the stock ROM.  Additionally, he has implemented, and is continuing to implement, very worthwhile enhancements.

That's got to be at least tricky legally. Searching a bit it seems that technically they should be able to do that, at least in the EU. Anywhere else and they might run into problems with the contract with google for the play store certification since it apparently says you can't sell devices with and with google play services. Aside from that, if they find a way to sell it with LineageOS instead, they'd be selling a phone that technically doesn't have all the features advertised since it wouldn't have google pay. They could do some other tricks to ship LineageOS with working google pay, but I think that would be even trickier legally.

But yeah, I'd advise customers to just install LineageOS themselves. It's very easy, and if you manage to brick it the dev seems keen to help even the deepest bricks. It's also one of the advertised features.

[tdm 2,322]

1 hour ago, Polaris said:

A better way to solve this problem (for now) is to just factory load LineageOS prior to shipping (or at least give the option to customers for receiving a device with Lineage. @tdm has been fixing the bugs one by one, and LOS is much more stable than the stock ROM.  Additionally, he has implemented, and is continuing to implement, very worthwhile enhancements.

Lineage does not have gapps, so an official Lineage build could not be used for stock.  It would be technically possible to build Lineage with the approved gapps for a stock replacement, but this would violate the contract with Google.

 

Unfortunately, IdeaLTE is a hardware manufacturer and FxTec is too small to have a software team.  So the current situation where stock is a basic no-frills system while Lineage is a much nicer alternative will surely persist for quite some time.

 

[anonim001 105]

3 hours ago, tdm said:

Lineage does not have gapps, so an official Lineage build could not be used for stock.  It would be technically possible to build Lineage with the approved gapps for a stock replacement, but this would violate the contract with Google.

 

Unfortunately, IdeaLTE is a hardware manufacturer and FxTec is too small to have a software team.  So the current situation where stock is a basic no-frills system while Lineage is a much nicer alternative will surely persist for quite some time.

 

Can someone explain, cause I can't find the answer anywhere... Is the device with LineageOS flashed but unrooted still SafetyNet approved? I'm using the banking app very often and I remember reading somewhere that flashing LineageOS can cause problems with some apps.

[Rob. S. 1,660]

5 minutes ago, anonim001 said:

Can someone explain, cause I can't find the answer anywhere... Is the device with LineageOS flashed but unrooted still SafetyNet approved? I'm using the banking app very often and I remember reading somewhere that flashing LineageOS can cause problems with some apps.

Indeed; I've been following everything here for some time but this specific aspect is still unclear for me, too. Until some point my interpretation of what I read was that we'd get SafetyNet approved as soon as our LineageOS would become an official build, but now I'm not too sure, since somewhere else I read something that would require Magisk to enable it (while I would have thought Magisk would only be needed for root). Consider me confused as well 😉

 

Edited March 12, 2020 by Rob. S.