Pro1 sales and support red flags

[BlueGraze 1]

I really, really want a Pro1. I like everything that it offers, and if I upgraded to it the only thing I would miss is water resistance. But I am stopped by the wild uncertainty of when, or if, I would actually get it, and what the support would be.

You can browse these forums and see threads from people that paid over a year ago and still haven't received their phone, while others reply that they got theirs within weeks. The Pro1 X was announced despite those outstanding orders, and it was launched on IndieGoGo where it's policy that receiving a product for your money is optional. And people post about needing a spare Pro1 because they sent their first back for repair and have received no updates in months. These are all red flags that I, as a potential buyer, can't ignore.

I really want what this phone offers: a 3.5mm headphone jack, an SD card slot, LineageOS compatibility, an emphasis on open hardware and software, and yes, a physical keyboard. I don't care about having this week's Snapdragon, a wafer-thin body, or a bezel-less 37:9 screen that only fits in cargo pants. And I can be patient; I understand that this is a niche device from a small company, and would accept if the lead time was 3-4 months as long as I could trust that time.

But asking customers to pay $700-$800 with no idea when or if they will get what they paid for? Or possibly to pay double that so they have a spare on hand for enduring months-long warranty service? To me, that's too much. The Pro1's hardware looks great to me, but the forums paint a picture of delivery and support that is a deal-breaker.

Am I off base?

[netman 1,424]

I really believe that everyone will get their phone and things will speed up over time, even though fxtec has struggled to get things done in a timely manner so far. Bringing a phone to market as a startup is no easy feat. Your concerns are legit though, I'd only advice taking the dive if you are willing to wait.

[tdm 2,322]

I have a bit of a unique perspective as a developer that was given a device and also privileged to some extra chats with FxTec.

 

FxTec is a good company with good people and good intentions. They have worked very hard to deliver even though covid killed their ODM and almost killed them.  They will do their best to get all orders filled, I'm sure of that.

 

That said, FxTec has awful communication practices. I truly feel for folks that pay good money and don't get any updates for weeks or months. And for folks that send their device in for repair then don't get any ETA or updates. That's got to be super frustrating.

 

Would I spend my money on a Pro1 if I didn't have one? I really don't know... I have a hard time supporting a company that can't communicate with customers effectively no matter how good their product. Hopefully those are just a few outliers and the majority of folks get better communication. But looking at their corporate communications, I am not so sure.

 

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by tdm

[npatel1050 132]

I would recommend to wait. If you buy now, the support you expect just isn't there. It may improve down the road, keep checking back

[eldarion 46]

Another thing I'd consider is that you're almost bound to require help from support at some point in time. The QA seems awful (my fingerprint sensor literally never worked!), there's no official case for no reason (why not just mass print the 3d layout already created by some nice folk and put a price tag on it) and the hardware has known issues.
So honestly I don't understand the "hardware is great" comments. No, the hardware isn't great. The assembly quality is honestly akin to lottery, some of the parts are almost guaranteed to develop issues on their own (hello ghost touch display) and the support/communication just exacerbates that.

Yeah the repairability is a lot better than most devices on the market right now, but if you have to wait 10 months for your spare part with no communication that's just not a good way to capitalize on it.

If I could go back I'd seriously just pick another phone. Yes the keyboard is great and LOS works well, but having something good that's unreliable is not worth it for me. I switched to another phone and my pro1 is collecting dust in the drawer because if I'm going to have to use a backup phone anyway I might simply use it now.

Edited December 7, 2020 by eldarion

[EskeRahn 5,471]

2 hours ago, eldarion said:

So honestly I don't understand the "hardware is great" comments.

Well for my part that is what I feel. The issues I experience are all pure software.
(though I have improved it with a few strategically places tiny self-adhesive rubber stickers)

But sure as many have stated there are faulty units (would have been a miracle otherwise), but the handling of those certainly seem like it could have been better. And the same goes for the software bugs. But as they are a dedicated team I do still believe the later will be ironed out.

Also remember that a forum like this will always present a disproportional amount of bugs, as people (for obvious reasons) will feel the need for help when something goes awry, more than a need to report when things are as expected.

So it is quite hard for us as users to guess how frequent/rare the hardware bugs are.

[Doktor Oswaldo 906]

Well I ordered the phone waaaay before the first was out and I was even more uncertain if I get one.

But the way I see it is this: I am complaining about the missing HWKB on phones since years. I still miss my N900. Even my wife remembers that phone, because I made a huge drama when it died!
So now I got the chance to support my goal. Instead of just whining about it all the time, I decided to take the risk and pledge that 800$. It was way more than I ever paid for a phone and I wasn't sure that I get anything for it. But I didn't want to be like so many people, always asking for stuff and then invite excuses if they would have to pay for that stuff.

Sure I am lucky enough to have 800$ just lying around. Not everybody is as fortune. And I wasn't pleased with the communication either.
So yeah it is a bit of a gamble. I think most units are fine. But if you have to send one back, be prepared to wait. I would advise to have another phone lying around.

I went through all the "next month most of the units will be shipped"-promise like 4 times. It was never explained why it didn't happen. We got some infos through other channels but never from fxtec directly. This was all before Covid-19.
In the end I was lucky, "just" waited for 7-8 months, got a unit without any hardware issues and I love the phone. So for me it was worth the struggle. And I guess you just have to ask you the question, if you want a HW-Keyboard phone that badly, that you take the risk to wait months, and maybe even send it back after getting it?
 

[Zamasu 258]

I think you're mostly right. I don't think you should consider this a "normal" pre-order or even order, there are huge red flags that indicate to me that you might not get your product or your money back. It's not a malicious company or anything though, I fully believe F(x)tec wants to supply these products and refund the people that want refunds (though they probably want you to enjoy the product instead), this just seems to be a fact of a pretty small company trying to do something very ambitious. There's a risk that's normally not present when buying products, however if you approach it from a crowdfunding perspective I think the risk is pretty low. They have shipped products, they're still shipping products, they have issued refunds, and there are no huge issues with the hardware. Compared to other crowdfunds this is a pretty safe bet I think.

Regarding the repair support, that's also a risk you'd need to factor in. Personally I'm just hoping I won't be needing it ever, which is obviously not something you can actually count on. You can try to mitigate it by being extra careful, but accidents happen and manufacturing defects can also happen. Judging from this forum it seems that manufacturing defects are slightly higher than on something like a Samsung, but thinking logically that's to be expected and I don't know if that's actually true because you obviously don't have the full picture from just looking at a forum. In my personal experience I don't think I experienced any actual manufacturing defects, sometimes the battery doesn't seem to want to charge but I also have some root software installed that's mucking with that and magnetic plugs instead of just plugging in cables, so I can't rule out if that's something I caused. Aside from that it seems to work fine. There are a lot of moving parts though, and some parts feel a bit wibbly wobbly but I think that's expected behaviour. I could see this being more difficult to assemble than a lot of other phones though, and thus I could see manufacturing defects being higher for this. Again a risk you need to consider.

So my thought is that the risk is somewhere between a regular pre-order and a crowdfund. Not bad, but not great. And this is something you'd need to evaluate yourself if this is worth it.

[VaZso 1,998]

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

Well for my part that is what I feel. The issues I experience are all pure software.
(though I have improved it with a few strategically places tiny self-adhesive rubber stickers)

Right also for me - except the rattling on my "second" device -, all of the problems should be software-related... like the handsfree mode drives the wrong side of the speakers and I hope too loud speaker in normal mode also could be repaired in software (but it may be also a wrong gain issue at the amplifier which should be solved easily but in hardware like changing the resistor(s) which sets the gain), so in software, it should be possible I think but the background noise may be a bit high as a result.

Also uncalibrated screen temperature (varying with screen brightness) could be also solved in software by applying right calibration data for this specific display or, as a workaround, maybe adjusting gain by software.

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

Also remember that a forum like this will always present a disproportional amount of bugs, as people (for obvious reasons) will feel the need for help when something goes awry, more than a need to report when things are as expected.

True - people who are in convenience less likely write their opinions but users with bad experience will come to the forum more likely.

44 minutes ago, Doktor Oswaldo said:

And I guess you just have to ask you the question, if you want a HW-Keyboard phone that badly, that you take the risk to wait months, and maybe even send it back after getting it?

I would repair it myself if possible as they seem to be very busy, thus the very long waiting.
Also, a valuable local repair shop may be a better solution for anyone - so to find some professional locally.

22 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

In my personal experience I don't think I experienced any actual manufacturing defects, sometimes the battery doesn't seem to want to charge but I also have some root software installed that's mucking with that and magnetic plugs instead of just plugging in cables, so I can't rule out if that's something I caused.

Right, also connection problem at charger cable could be a problem.
...like I have recently changed my charging cable because sometimes it did not charge at all or lost charging during movement.
Using another cable, it still works perfectly.

However, the former cable was unable to charge my Moto G6 at all, even when the cable was new (maybe it is some Type-C related issue in Moto G6).

24 minutes ago, Zamasu said:

There are a lot of moving parts though, and some parts feel a bit wibbly wobbly but I think that's expected behaviour. I could see this being more difficult to assemble than a lot of other phones though, and thus I could see manufacturing defects being higher for this. Again a risk you need to consider.

Right, some wobbling is an expected behaviour and it is definitively more difficult to assemble it, thus, longer the time needed by productivity chain.
Anyway, the slider solution is really good which was also used in some Nokia phones which proven the solution is very reliable.

[Slion 1,201]

On 12/6/2020 at 11:23 PM, tdm said:

They have worked very hard to deliver even though covid killed their ODM

Really! Ho dear! Hard to believe they recovered from that.

[Slion 1,201]

On 12/6/2020 at 9:34 PM, BlueGraze said:

But asking customers to pay $700-$800 with no idea when or if they will get what they paid for? Or possibly to pay double that so they have a spare on hand for enduring months-long warranty service? To me, that's too much. The Pro1's hardware looks great to me, but the forums paint a picture of delivery and support that is a deal-breaker.

Investing in startups is like taking a bet, sometimes you lose. However, so far FxTec customers overall are on the winning side. That's coming from the guy who wrote "I own two broken Pro1s" and "Unboxing my thrid Pro1" 😁

Being a regular on those forums I'm confident there are hundreds if not thousands of happy Pro1 users who never had an issue with their device.

I've been using Pro1 as my daily driver for almost a year, only had to change the screen once after the touch panel broke down. Thankfully I was lucky to buy on short notice a spare device from a gentleman on those forums so I could keep using it while the other was on repair.

For me that's less than $1400 investment for a professional tool that's been lacking from the market since the Nokia E7 almost 10 years ago. I have good hope those two devices will allow me to enjoy Pro1 for a decade or so. To me it's worth it.

Like you I'm also contemplating investing in the Pro1 X in the hope it contributes to the revival of that form factor through FxTec success. Even if they go bust, with three devices I surely could go on using them for over a decade 🤣

If you have the finances go for it man, try your luck.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Slion