Pro¹ X – state of production and delivery

[MrCoffee 13]

Quote

Our stock has been relocated from our previous shipping partner Expansy, and the Pro1-X devices have returned to our factory. Currently, we are in the process of coordinating with our logistics company to arrange the shipment of the phones. Unfortunately, we do not have an estimated date at the moment. We will keep you informed as soon as we have more information available.

Facepalm. I've moved TWICE since ordering this phone and still no end in sight. 😂

[Hook 3,043]

9 minutes ago, VaZso said:

Latest IGG update here:

 

I think there are two really good things here.

1) They have gotten the devices moved out of Expansys' hands successfully.  

2) They are finally not trying to make timeline guesses when in fact they don't know.  They are just being straight and telling us they don't know, but giving us the update anyway.

[claude0001 1,352]

2 hours ago, VaZso said:

Latest IGG update here:

 

Like they did already in May, they fill their update with information on an alternative OS that is entirely community-developed (besides all this information on Droidian being readily available on this forum anyway).

What about the work the community cannot do? What about stock Android? Will we ever get that update towards which we have been "sprinting" for the better part of a year now? Any news on firmware fixes related to LTE connectivity? Battery depletion bug? Anything at all?

I wonder if the prawn-X might be the first device to be EoL'd before even all preorders have shipped ... 😄

Edited June 15, 2023 by claude0001

[Slion 1,201]

Has it been 3 years already? I lost track. The whole thing turned into a farse a while ago 🤣

Still have not bothered asking for my money back. Maybe I should though and CC my lawyer too ⚖️

[Slion 1,201]

TBH as I was backing the X I knew we got really lucky with the Pro1 and I knew this could easily turn into a shit show 😏 and it did, that it did 💩 I mean most of us are still waiting for it and those who have it can confirm it is unusable as a smartphone...

Still, respect to the F(X)Tec team for all their hard work and persistence in the face of adversity.

[claude0001 1,352]

50 minutes ago, Slion said:

most of us are still waiting for it and those who have it can confirm it is unusable as a smartphone...

Most who actually have one got it via Expansys' grey-marketing (myself included).

But F(x)tec's delays in delivering the preorders/perks is one thing. What is imho more worrying is that all technical activity on their side seems to have come to a halt. They appear to mostly manage the logistics disaster the Pro1-X has become. The bragging about community-supplied OSes in their IGG updates appears like a helpless attempt to mask the fact that their in-house development work has essentially stopped. Considering that the Pro1-X's stock Android (on which also all alternate OSes rely) still has significant bugs, this is bad news for the longevity of the device.

I agree that we have been quite lucky with the Pro1 ... 

[Slion 1,201]

2 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

What is imho more worrying is that all technical activity on their side seems to have come to a halt.

Of course they can't keep paying for this when it does not bring any income. They are just trying to cut their losses. They may have a limited stock of devices but I doubt that will be enough to fullfil all the orders.

[Slion 1,201]

7 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

The bragging about community-supplied OSes in their IGG updates appears like a helpless attempt to mask the fact that their in-house development work has essentially stopped

Yeah that was really funny 🤣

[claude0001 1,352]

1 minute ago, Slion said:

Of course they can't keep paying for this when it does not bring any income.

All the income on the preorders and IGG perks has already been generated. They have all that money already ...

[Slion 1,201]

1 hour ago, claude0001 said:

All the income on the preorders and IGG perks has already been generated. They have all that money already ...

Long spent I figure, I mean they can't afford to pay for shipping and can't refund customers.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Slion

[EskeRahn 5,468]

2 hours ago, Slion said:

Long spent I figure, I mean they can't afford to pay for shipping and can't refund customers.

Exactly. Some while back they told us that they use part of the revenue for other products to have those sent they could, and that that was why they went out 'drip-wise', as they were able to gather the needed funding.

Sad story indeed, but the only really alternative I see is that they give up and go bust, and those of us still waiting do not get any phones at all, and they stay and rot somewhere - or is bought from the remains and go out on a flash sale somewhere, with no warranty or support, and the severe bugs affecting some never fixed. (And no I have no idea if the "some" is 10% or 90% or whatever)

[claude0001 1,352]

15 hours ago, Slion said:

Long spent I figure, I mean they can't afford to pay for shipping and can't refund customers.

Of course they are out of money. On the other hand, as they are neither producing nor selling devices right now, what else is there to work on except software development?

Since last summer they - reportedly - were chasing all those Pro1X bugs with highest priority. And for months they were confident to release a new OTA soon. Then, with the April update, all news on stock Android development stopped. What sense would it make to abort such development at a stage when, apparently, 95% of the work has already been spent?

Rather than financial issues, I suspect that either 1) all their devs have left the company by now and only "management" personnel is left, or 2) they realized that all of the Pro1X's faults are actually in hardware and cannot be worked around with firmware fixes.

Any way, they should at least make a statement about this. They are fully aware that many users are left with an unusable phone right now, and for months have kept their hopes up that a new firmware might improve things. Suddenly going radio silence on this, and instead filling update after update with useless accounts of other people's OS porting efforts is clearly smokescreen strategy and, frankly, disrespectful.

Edited June 16, 2023 by claude0001

[EskeRahn 5,468]

@claude0001& @steff
The DO have other products than the phones, and they have said that they er using some of the revenue from that....

[claude0001 1,352]

4 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

@claude0001& @steff
The DO have other products than the phones, and they have said that they er using some of the revenue from that....

so ... what keeps them from working on the Pro1-X's Android OS or at least explaining why they chose to stop development?

[Hook 3,043]

1 hour ago, steff said:

The phone is dead.

Funny-- mine isn't. It's my daily driver. 

Neither are the ones two friends of mine have and are using.

I'm curious if that's what you told whoever you sold your Pro1x to.  😉

This phone clearly works for some people.  Also, clearly, it doesn't work for some.  My two friends never go to this forum nor do they go to the Discord server or the TG channels. How many more are out there?  We honestly don't know.

It is not a good thing that it doesn't work for some people no matter what the numbers, but that doesn't warrant calling the Pro1x dead.

So, I guess we will agree to disagree. 🙂

[EskeRahn 5,468]

4 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

so ... what keeps them from working on the Pro1-X's Android OS or at least explaining why they chose to stop development?

Strictly we do not know if there are any development/bugfixing going on. But a guess is that there is none, and for the same reason: Money.

But as so often before they are not good at communication what is going on.

But I would not be surprised if they focus the little funding they got on getting the already produced Pro1X delivered to us.

I HOPE that the also have a little funding going to handle the most severe bugs - but we do not know.

 

In more general term, I would just love if phone manufacturers had some model where they after a while went to have support and software development for a model to be crowdfunded. So as long as there were enough people interested in getting the phones updated it would be. A bit like many open source project relying on donations.

[EskeRahn 5,468]

22 minutes ago, steff said:

I told the buyers to inform themselves on this forum, so i was honest.

The other part of your answer is just ridiculous: "it is not a good thing that it doesn´t work for some people..."

Here i have to disagree of course. It is a disaster that it doesn´t work for some people....

Yes agree to disagree.

Allow me to suggest a compromise version of that statements.
It is a really really bad for the affected people that it doesn't work for them....

But the big elephant in the room here is that though we have reports from various parts of the world either way we have no idea on fractions affected.I bet it is at the least 10%, but might well be as bad as 90%.

We do not even know if the issue is on the specimen or the models handling of the circumstances.
That is, we have no Idea if you and I swapped devices if mine would work in your location with your sim, or yours would work here

IF it is 10% I would talk about "most unfortunate", IF it is 90% the "disaster"as you suggests sounds right.

[EskeRahn 5,468]

Just now, steff said:

Everybody knows what is going on, some do not want to see it and you are trying to convince everyone, that we are not allowed to judge because we do not know all the facts. Here is my suggestion: Judge yourself on all the results you have after a couple of years in this campaign. You are the moderator of this forum, you know all the problems which occured. Basically acting like it is a communication problem is strictly false.

Well I know just as little as you do on what is going on. We can guess sure, and I doubt my guesses are better than yours - but they are still guesses.

[EskeRahn 5,468]

1 minute ago, steff said:

Can we agree on a lower level like this:

A: It is not a out of the box working phone with choice of OS (as advertised)

and

B: It is a phone in alpha stage with key functionality not working and functionality hardly limited in certain regions

?

Sort of. ...

It is an internally completely new product and not a minor upgrade as planned an advertised. Hence A (also) fell. But SURE they ought to have changed their communication material accordingly IMHO.

We can agree that for some, indeed key functionality is not working. On the other hand for others it works fine. We have no idea of neither why it works when it does, nor why when it does not. Not even an idea on the size of the two fractions.
IF we could say that it only worked under very special condition THEN I would agree on the claim - but again we do not know.

I grew up with the assumption of innocent until proven guilty, and I stick by it here also...

[Slion 1,201]

18 hours ago, claude0001 said:

Rather than financial issues, I suspect that either 1) all their devs have left the company by now and only "management" personnel is left, or 2) they realized that all of the Pro1X's faults are actually in hardware and cannot be worked around with firmware fixes.

I'm guessing they subcontract much of the Android port like they do the manufacturing, possibly to the same company. As long as money flows I guess you can expect Android updates and new devices coming out of the factory. When the money stops flowing everything runs dry... Hardware and software.

[MonCon 125]

20 hours ago, Hook said:

Funny-- mine isn't. It's my daily driver.

About seven months now as my daily driver, straight out of the box the day it arrived.  I must be in the lucky 10% to 90%.  The hardware is nice and solid, the screen is nice, the keyboard is very nice, it doesn't struggle with any tasks I throw at it, I really like the blue colour.  At least in my experience the PrawnX performs very well. 

20 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

In more general term, I would just love if phone manufacturers had some model where they after a while went to have support and software development for a model to be crowdfunded. So as long as there were enough people interested in getting the phones updated it would be. A bit like many open source project relying on donations.

I fully get your point.  Lots of business models can be based on a subscription model, why not, it's an ongoing relationship.  Maybe a donate button on their website.  To me they're as good a cause as any other good cause, (or charity :)).  I'd see it the same way as ongoing support for perhaps an alternate OS provider (eg. Lineage, UT), or 'supporting' my network provider, (and my handsomely sized monthly network provider 'donation' isn't even voluntary).  If it was an available option to help speed up deliveries and aid connectivity bug fixes I would definitely call this 'a good cause'.  
I'm sure they're out of money, certainly with respect to the Pro1X project, right after the spec went from 'Add RAM, Add storage, Shiny blue colour' to 'Redesign the whole thing from the ground up, Ok you can keep most of the case and keyboard', for the original budget, and I'm impressed that they are still going and (vaguely) communicating.  
It's terrible to hear on here about delivery woes, from both purchasers on the FxTec website and also from investors on Ingiegogo, reports of unfixed bad connectivity from PrawnX users are also disheartening.  I dearly hope delivery woes will be fixed soon, and bad connectivity will finally be resolved through a firmware fix.  
Maybe my wishes seem naive, even to me, but as a very happy daily user of the PrawnX every day for the last seven months I can say that, if you can get hold of one, and you have no connectivity issues, there is is nothing quite like it.  
I hope to get a few good years daily driver duty with my beautiful PrawnX, retire it gracefully and replace it with a Prawn2X or Prawn3X when the time comes.  
Just my 10 cents. 

[EskeRahn 5,468]

5 hours ago, MonCon said:

About seven months now as my daily driver, straight out of the box the day it arrived.  I must be in the lucky 10% to 90%. 

Glad to hear that it works for you.

But I would just love if we at the least could get to the point where we knew WHY it worked / didn't work!
For all we know it might be one or more bad batches OR it could be special environments that it can not handle correctly.

If we at the least knew the reason we could guide people better than a "sad to hear, hope a firmware fix will help". That is the meagre reply we can 'offer' now.

My personal HUNCH (and it is just a hunch) is that it is some particular circumstances where it attempts to switch band and fails. And these circumstances might by quite common at specific carriers/areas, and rare or even none existing for others. If the Pro1X for what-ever reason does not correctly handle a particular part of a protocol used by some equipment, and even fails to fall back to a working band it could match the bugs we see reported.

[Hook 3,043]

9 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Glad to hear that it works for you.

But I would just love if we at the least could get to the point where we knew WHY it worked / didn't work!
For all we know it might be one or more bad batches OR it could be special environments that it can not handle correctly.

If we at the least knew the reason we could guide people better than a "sad to hear, hope a firmware fix will help". That is the meagre reply we can 'offer' now.

My personal HUNCH (and it is just a hunch) is that it is some particular circumstances where it attempts to switch band and fails. And these circumstances might by quite common at specific carriers/areas, and rare or even none existing for others. If the Pro1X for what-ever reason does not correctly handle a particular part of a protocol used by some equipment, and even fails to fall back to a working band it could match the bugs we see reported.

That's an interesting theory.  There was a previous theory discussed that the phone isn't able to handle lower frequency bands very well, but it could be that lower frequency bands somehow kick off more band switching.  Be nice if there was software that could show you what bands are available to your phone at the moment and allow you to select one (regardless of signal strength) and lock it in as the one for your phone to use.  I think that would create better control for testing. I know that my phone, which works, stays locked onto the same high frequency band even though others are available.

[Nikolai 43]

Is it OK to vent a bit? I'm following the discussion on IGG and as I'm one of those who ordered the original Pro1 via the website, I can't comment there, but some takes on that forum are borderline stupid. 

For one, most people there seem to forget that there are substantial outstanding Pro1 orders which still need to be fullfilled and which for the most part haven't been part of crowdfunding. If anything, these people (including myself) would have a right to sue anyone, not the IGG gang (crowdfunding = risk)

In other news, fxtec doesn't seem to be going out of business for now, since they are developing a FullHD screen replacement for the SteamDeck (https://deckhd.com/). Of course, we don't know much about their involvement, but at least they are trying to sell a new product for a possibly wider audience. I would take that as a positive sign that they might come good with us in the end.

And lastly, it certainly feels like non-QWERTY layouts are once again a big problem. I fully expect my order to go nowhere (which some might say could be a blessing these days), but it'll be fun to see what their proposed alternative would be (money + interest? Pro2? who knows..) 

[xhajt03 27]

On 6/17/2023 at 6:20 PM, EskeRahn said:

Glad to hear that it works for you.

But I would just love if we at the least could get to the point where we knew WHY it worked / didn't work!
For all we know it might be one or more bad batches OR it could be special environments that it can not handle correctly.

If we at the least knew the reason we could guide people better than a "sad to hear, hope a firmware fix will help". That is the meagre reply we can 'offer' now.

My personal HUNCH (and it is just a hunch) is that it is some particular circumstances where it attempts to switch band and fails. And these circumstances might by quite common at specific carriers/areas, and rare or even none existing for others. If the Pro1X for what-ever reason does not correctly handle a particular part of a protocol used by some equipment, and even fails to fall back to a working band it could match the bugs we see reported.

As far as the GSM protocols, etc., are concerned - I may be wrong, but I believe that this area is nowadays covered by the phone chip rather than the phone firmware. The chip isn't specific for Pro1x. In other words, it doesn't seem to be likely that the issue with radio communication observed by some Pro1x users should be related to missing part of a GSM communication protocol. Yes, it may be related to a particular configuration for the device which influences the behaviour of the on-chip implementation, or it may be related to some hardware issues (antenna), or possibly other factors, but incomplete protocol implementation doesn't seem to be a likely reason as far as I can tell.

And as a reminder - I'm another happy (lucky if you like 😉 ) Pro1x user - still aware of some minor issues, but those do not prevent me from using it for 100%. And admittedly, since I rely on it, I'm not very keen to experiment with test versions requiring me to backup and restore my data at least twice in the current setup (the other factor being the required use of Telegram for beta testing - I don't want to subscribe to some social media platform and keep watching it for simple communication about software testing which might be performed via regular e-mail). On the other hand, I'm willing to install whatever reasonable test programs and provide their output if that helps to anybody.

Edited June 19, 2023 by xhajt03