Well, it is quite possible it may fail. $1.5 million does not seem like very much for product development. Especially for a phone and all the design challenges it may entail. It is still over a year until release date. A lot can happen between now and then. My guess is that a phone will be released and that it will likely be a clunker by most standards in regards to hardware. On the other hand so was the Jolla phone but I still liked using it because it played like a normal linux distribution (unlike android) that I was comfortable with. Also the Jolla phone had a nice user interface which must have cost a bit to create. Probably Librem will be less sophisticated to start which is fine if functionality is the main focus.