Thread: Jolla Sales/Success?
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bluefoot is offline bluefoot
2014-09-23 , 18:09
Posts: 338 | Thanked: 496 times | Joined on Oct 2010
#14
Originally Posted by aegis View Post
Maybe they do need more focus but this is their first year with a product and any company is likely to be all over the place.

The Jolla phone doesn't appear to be either massively bespoke or low quality though.

I may be doing the Jolla hardware designers a disservice here but it appears to be pretty much an off the shelf reference design Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 Android handset shoehorned into the shell of the ST-E handset design they had before manufactured by BenQ IIRC. I really don't want to belittle that as I'm perfectly happy with it.

Quality wise, I've had zero issues too but appreciate others haven't had the same experience.
It's not a reference design, though. The components are all commodoties, sure, but the combination of parts and the phone's housing are not shared with other devices. This increases cost considerably (design, lack of bulk orders for components, different assembly line, separate testing) and means that they're guaranteed to have more QC issues. I think the quality of manufacture and materials (not delving into spec sheet) is very sub par for a device of its cost, or one of half the cost.

Think it was BenQ's parent that assemble it. They don't make any high quality phones, that I'm aware of. They tend to specialise in relatively cheap OEM designs which are then cosmetically altered or rebranded by dozens of small players or carriers around the world. Had Jolla gone that route, I think they and we would have got better value. I still find it weird though that they didn't go with one of the top notch Chinese OEMs, especially given their base in HK and obvious hopes in China.