Neo900 - finally a successor of N900 [Archive] - Page 10 - maemo.org

joerg_rw

2014-12-22, 12:38

Yes, all this is what we're pondering right now. Werner checked all other major parts for their risk status. We probably won't be able to do this whole thing in one week, but we can borrow the money from R&D funds for a while to allow this new thing to take the time it needs, while we evaluate the amount it needs in the end and we implement a proper shopping procedure to make sure this is no donation but a regular purchase.

Seems - for risk parts - regular sales from our side (purchase from your POV) introduces all sorts of VAT issues again - like "we don't ship physical goods (yet) so we need to pay German VAT like if we had shipped to Germany" (thanks to immaterial goods like software etc which otherwise we could claim they got sold to abroad even when they are not. German tax laws are a nightmare).
We already changed/'transformed' the "donations" to quite regular credits (see "fineprint (http://neo900.org/donate) *)") quite some time ago. I think it's probably the easiest most feasible path to go for the riskpart fundraiser as well.

Still pondering and evaluating our options. Comments and criticism welcome.

cheers
jOERG

*) With a little help from Google translate, so bear with me for unclear wording in english, it's not binding anyway, the german wording is legally binding though:

The lender guaranteed respecting the Neo900 UG (haftungsbeschraenkt) a loan, repayable with the appearance of the product Neo900. S/He receives 2% interest per month on the loan amount (compound interest is not recompensed). In addition, s/he is added to the wishlist **) for product manufacturing. Interest payments are excluded for parts of the loan exceeding the sale price of devices ordered by the lender, at the time of loan repayment. Applicable amounts less than 100 € are treated as donations without a right to refund, repayment or distribution of any profits.

**) "wishlist" is as good as it gets, without already establishing a sale, according to my tax advisor. No "preorder". Sorry. You know what's the intention though.

which basically means you give a credit to Neo900 UG and you will receive it back at time of purchase of your device (of course we won't transfer money back and forth, we will simply treat the credit refund as down payment for the ordered device, once you place your order. Untl then, it's a credit we owe you)
And another sidenote to avoid confusion: when you gave a 100EUR to GDC and then transferred it, Neo900 UG owes you a 100EUR. There's no issue with the 13(?)% that stayed at GDC during transfer.
[edit 2] for the risk part credit we might have to sligtly modify the applicable "fineprint" - something along the line of "refundable any time. No interest. In case of payback the lender accepts that only the part of credit not used up for component sourcing gets refunded in cash. For the remainder the lender accepts purchasing of the goods from Neo900 UG instead of cash, all applicable taxes and fees apply to such sale"

joerg_rw

2014-12-22, 14:19

secured another risk part: http://neo900.org/stuff/joerg/random-media/riskpart_cameraswitch/ (1000)
/j

BaronKatz

2014-12-26, 20:09

The foremost cause of lags on N900 is the swapping. Having 4 times as RAM as N900 will eliminate that. The rest is software, having a faster CPU will get diminishing returns of smoothness.

Not since I started using Swappolube. Swapping is completely fine and smoother than any Android phone I have used. I have the Blackberry 10 now and it's A LOT choppier feeling than Maemo.

The problem is that once you try to integrate Facebook, Google, and all the rest of it into the N900, it starts to slow down and lag like crazy. Overclocking helps for a little bit but doesn't help that much. The battery dies too quickly, etc... The N900 works somewhat OK if you don't integrate those things, but that is one of the beauties of Maemo in the first place...

I just really hope that the processor and ram will be enough to get this going, which is why I would love to see some benchmark tests (specifically of an overclocked N900 to the Neo900, because the increase in ram might be a huge help but the processing speed is almost the same). Looking at the Linshof i8 that was supposed to come out but is halted now, I really hope this doesn't happen to the Neo900...

pichlo

2014-12-26, 20:51

@BaronKatz,
I have an extensive experience with upgrading old hardware and you can trust me when I tell you that doubling the amount of RAM speeds up the machine at least 10x more than doubling the CPU speed. It is all down to having to swap less: even the fastest storage media are 100-1000x slower than even the slowest RAM so avoiding swapping has a tremendous effect. There is little point frying your CPU at 4 GHz if it spends most of the time waiting for thing to move between the RAM and the slow swap medium.

All those things you list (Falsebook, Google etc) boil down to using more RAM. At some point you run out and the machine has to start swapping. On the N900, that point is rather soon due to the small RAM size.

dos1

2014-12-28, 02:03

The new progress update is here, check it out!
http://neo900.org/news/xmas-update

Happy New Year everyone! :)

joerg_rw

2014-12-30, 23:57

This:
Neo900:

I hope that it succeeds. I myself have donated in hopes of buying two of them.

I have, of course, seen the friction between one of the Neo900 project leads and members of the maemo community. It is concerning, as the Neo900 has good potential in revitalizing interest in maemo. Not only that, based on the experiences of OpenPandora, open-source hardware is not easy to pull off successfully--cooperation would seem more optimal than antagonism, on the face of it.

I think we do have to respect Joerg's wishes if he does not want to cooperate directly with the community. But since many members of our community (including me) are still interested in seeing the Neo900 succeed, we still can support development indirectly: by encouraging development discussion on the board, and by sponsoring coding competitions et al, with categories that also target development that is Neo900 specific. (The same can also be said for Diablo and Jolla).

plus a few other similar statements ask for a clarification:

I never said I "does not want to cooperate directly with the community". I think this very thread is a clear proof that in fact Neo900 team is cooperating with the community in every possible way. I've been asked if Neo900 is a maemo community project (for listing it on some tmo post list of community projects). I explained that Neo900 is not a maemo project at all since maemo is a software and Neo900 is hardware and basically doesn't ship with any particular software. Furthermore Neo900 necessarily is a commercial project since physical hardware cannot get downloaded and shared under a GPL. The Neo900 UG is not involved in software development. No antagonism in that and nothing to feel concerned about.

Neo900 nevertheless is made to run with maemo as OS, for the maemo community (among others, like openmoko community) and the Neo900 crew is actively supporting the great guys of Fremantle Porting Task Force (FPTF) (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91308) and welcomes everybody (community member or not) to seek for cooperation with FPTF crew and Neo900 team. I also want to ask everybody to please consider participation in FPTF and help with porting maemo.

Happy new year! :)
jOERG

klinglerware

2014-12-31, 04:29

Thanks for the clarification, and for the reminder of the openness of your communication in this thread--you've certainly been much more transparent than OpenPandora was during its troubled beginnings.

My worry has been that some of the spirited community discussion that is off-topic to this thread may have the potential to spill over to negatively impact cooperation between the Neo900 hardware team and those that may want to develop/port the OS and applications.

The strictly-defined hardware goals of the Neo900 aside, I do see some opportunities for the maemo council to encourage development (e.g., coding competition, etc) and interest for the Neo900. Software-side and OS issues tackled for the Neo900 could also benefit the devices running fremantle/harmattan, and vice-versa. I see the effort to reverse engineer fremantle as an example of this sort of cross-polination.

In any case, thanks again for the clarification. As I mentioned in that quote, I am very hopeful about the success of the Neo900 project and the potential it has for injecting some new life into maemo development.

peterleinchen

2014-12-31, 06:29

As klinglerware said:
thank you for this clear statement.

Happy new year to you and the whole Neo and FPTF team.

nokiabot

2014-12-31, 12:49

Have a nice new year eve and a great new year !

joerg_rw

2015-01-05, 23:19

off topic sidenote: As mentioned in last newsletter, my local lab seen a Rigol DS1054 scope as latest new instrumentation acquisition. Nice tool, and I want to share a handy lil cmdline here for doing screenshots from it:

jr@saturn:~> cat `which rigol-screenshot `
#!/bin/sh
echo ':disp:data?' | netcat 192.168.4.52 5555 | dd bs=1M iflag=skip_bytes skip=11 of=$1
echo $?
jr@saturn:~> rigol-screenshot xxx.bmp
0+903 Datensätze ein
0+903 Datensätze aus
1152057 Bytes (1,2 MB) kopiert, 2,98393 s, 386 kB/s
0

[edit] improved version, now actually checks TMC header and coverts to arbitrary picture-format target files, just use the proper file ending (.jpg, .bmp, .png...)
#!/bin/bash
# usage: rigol-snapshot <filename_with_wellknown_imagefile_extension>
# e.g.: rigol-snapshot pics/test.jpg
# fetches a bmp formatted screenshot picture from Rigol DS1000 series, via ethernet
# TODO: proper handling of broken connection to Rigol, check netcat / read return code

RIGOL_IP=192.168.4.52 # adapt to your local situation, I used fixed DHCP IP for rigol in my router
set -e -u #might improve the TODO error handling as mentioned above. untested!!

echo ':disp:data?' | netcat -w 1 $RIGOL_IP 5555\
| (shopt -s extglob;\
read -N 1 -t 0.1 magichash;
read -N 1 -t 0.1 lenofnum;
read -N $lenofnum -t 0.1 numofbytes;
head -c ${numofbytes##*(0)} ;
echo "magic: $magichash; len: $lenofnum; bytes: ${numofbytes##*(0)}" >&2\
)\
| convert bmp:- $1
echo "returncode: $?" >&2

funny detail: the data transfer is 3 times as fast when the scope is in STOP mode.

ps: don't miss our fine new whitepaper on NFC (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1455411#post1455411)

TomJ

2015-02-04, 11:54

Any news from January?

joerg_rw

2015-02-04, 12:40

Sorry, I suffered (and still do) a flu which paralyzed me, and it seems the other guys took a well deserved off time. I however hope that some news will come up RSN. [edit] also please see the link in prev post to our fine whitepaper regarding NFC (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1455411#post1455411) (date of release: 2015-01-05) which took quite some work to acquire the expertise and prepare the paper. Please bear with me for staying in bed or braindead in front of TV for the last 6 weeks

/j

klinglerware

2015-02-04, 13:12

Get well soon, Joerg!

endsormeans

2015-02-04, 18:01

ditto...
my deepest sympathies...
recover and recoup man...

My gramps woulda suggested lotsa raw garlic, onions, jalapenos and stiff mean serious drinks to burn it out.
Works epically quick and well...
tho... it seems it is hard to focus on elapsed time and the misery of the flu when you are on fire and pickled cross-eyed :D

joerg_rw

2015-02-05, 15:14

temporary problem:

none :-)

TomJ

2015-02-05, 15:52

Your cold must be spreading to the DNS... Good to hear it's not killed you off.

joerg_rw

2015-02-06, 18:09

we received first semi-working BeagleBoard-xM with 1GB RAM rework.
see http://irclog.whitequark.org/neo900/2015-02-06#11758212; ff
A second BB-xM fried the SoC during rework, we'll retry with a fresh SoC and fresh RAM PoP

[update] booted up to 512MB RAM (no NAND for now, since the xLoader isn't configured to handle that particular NAND on BB yet). Quoting Nikolaus:
Linux has booted after disabling the NAND init code in MLO. With 512 MB RAM (because that is configured into the device tree).
Ethernet works, USB works. LEDs are blinking. ssh over Ethernet works. apt-get update/upgrade does not fail (which I hope is testing the RAM well enough).
Looking forward to DT patches and then seeing a blasting 1GB of RAM in linux :)

[update 2] http://projects.goldelico.com/p/neo900/issues/678/ and - only remotely on topic and maybe rather for FPTF thread: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2015-February/069618.html http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2015-February/069617.html

cheers
jOERG

sulu

2015-02-09, 09:27

Quoting Nikolaus:
[..]
apt-get update/upgrade does not fail (which I hope is testing the RAM well enough).Certainly a good start, but it's no replacement for a proper test.
memtester [1] would be more reliable.

[1] https://packages.debian.org/sid/memtester

joerg_rw

2015-02-09, 10:48

Certainly a good start, but it's no replacement for a proper test.
memtester [1] would be more reliable.

[1] https://packages.debian.org/sid/memtester

This is not meant to *test* the complete RAM for bad bits or whatever. Rather it's supposed to verify that RAM generally works and has no short-circuited address bus lines or terribly wrong timing or whatever (think PC POST mem-test). For that it's just fine.

Thanks nevertheless for the hint, we will need it later on :-)

/j

wicket

2015-02-13, 04:00

The Neo900 website says that the Neo900 will come bundled with Debian. Is this still the case? If so, what do you have planned?

I currently maintain a set of scripts (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=93878) to assist with the installation of Debian on the N900. I would gladly collaborate with bringing Debian to the Neo900 if you would like any help. My current plan (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1460366#post1460366) is that my scripts will eventually form the basis for a full mobile Linux distribution based on Debian and/or Devuan.

Some have suggested that I might be eligible to receive one of the Mozilla donated N900s. I only have one N900 which is my daily device so to have second one dedicated to development and testing would be a great help. Are there any left?

It sounds like Android_808 might benefit from one too (http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1459884&postcount=80).

joerg_rw

2015-03-09, 14:16

We did it! :) Prolly the first BeagleBoard-xM worldwide with 1GB RAM - for sure the only device except Nokia N9 I know of that has a OMAP3 and 1GB RAM on PoP *): (quoting a report I received from Nikolaus)

Texas Instruments X-Loader (MLO) 1.4.4ss modified for GTA04 (Mar 7 2015 - 18:35:51)

> OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES2.1
> Board detected: Beagle xM Rev A
> SYSBOOT[5:0]: 0x12/18
> GMPC Memory: 3
> SDRC Memory 5 5: SAMSUNG MCP 512(?)MB/bank

^^^ well, this is currently hard-forced in my code

> Reading FAT boot sector
> Loading u-boot.bin (296020 bytes) from mmc/sd
>
>
> U-Boot 2011.03-rc1-00967-g671281f (Feb 09 2015 - 16:15:52)
>
> OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES2.1, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max CPU Clock 1 Ghz
> OMAP3 Beagle board + LPDDR/NAND
> I2C: ready
> DRAM: 1 GiB

^^^ looks good!

>
> —— snip ——
>
> [ 0.000000] Memory: 1004440K/1047552K available (5817K kernel code, 592K rwdata, 2280K rodata, 404K init, 8173K bss, 26728K reserved, 16384K cma-reserved, 252928K highmem)

Linux is now booting (didn’t with this mirrored RAM address ranges)!

>
> —— snip ——
>
> Linux gta04 3.19.0-gta04+ #992 SMP Mon Feb 9 09:04:09 CET 2015 armv7l
>
> The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
> the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
> individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
>
> Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
> permitted by applicable law.
> root@gta04:~# cat /proc/meminfo
> MemTotal: 1021228 kB
> MemFree: 905016 kB
> MemAvailable: 995204 kB
> Buffers: 7076 kB
> Cached: 89968 kB
> SwapCached: 0 kB
> Active: 69492 kB
> Inactive: 31260 kB
> Active(anon): 3728 kB
> Inactive(anon): 148 kB
> Active(file): 65764 kB
> Inactive(file): 31112 kB
> Unevictable: 0 kB
> Mlocked: 0 kB
> HighTotal: 269312 kB
> HighFree: 242656 kB
> LowTotal: 751916 kB
> LowFree: 662360 kB
> SwapTotal: 0 kB
> SwapFree: 0 kB
> Dirty: 452 kB
> Writeback: 0 kB
> AnonPages: 3712 kB
> Mapped: 6664 kB
> Shmem: 172 kB
> Slab: 12100 kB
> SReclaimable: 6716 kB
> SUnreclaim: 5384 kB
> KernelStack: 448 kB
> PageTables: 216 kB
> NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
> Bounce: 0 kB
> WritebackTmp: 0 kB
> CommitLimit: 510612 kB
> Committed_AS: 29916 kB
> VmallocTotal: 245760 kB
> VmallocUsed: 23120 kB
> VmallocChunk: 125352 kB
> CmaTotal: 16384 kB
> CmaFree: 16128 kB
> root@gta04:~#

Many thanks to Ivo and Nikolaus!

We now urgently need to raise more funds to secure those 1GB chips for the number of devices we plan to build, as well as for other similar risk parts. We also are about to source a sufficient number of used/refurbished N900 to revamp for the LCD, digitizer, mechanical parts, for those who want a complete device rather than a PCB to upgrade their own N900. Those will presumably also cost ~100some bucks per device, so we need to raise "funds" for those too, from prospect customers of complete Neo900.
I'm in the painful process to set up a proper webshop where you can place regular preorders to purchase parts of your Neo900 we're going to build for you, please stay tuned and keep your kitty in reach :-). The target for this preorder DOWNPAYMENT will be around 300EUR (total incl any "donation" you already did) for the NeoN bare board which will cover ~40% of the final price, and a 150EUR on top for the N900 we will use to mount the NeoN board into for you (you'll receive a supposedly working spare N900(!) PCB with that).

cheers
jOERG

*) some question that arrived at me was: "why don't you go for 2 or 4 GB already?" A: 1GB is the physical maximum an OMAP3 can address. So we hit the limit, can't do any better

CRCulver

2015-03-09, 17:14

A year ago I definitely would have ordered this device, even with the ~700€ price tag. But with all the delays (and while you’ve announced a webshop, you are still not actually selling this product), my interest has waned. I’m sure I’m not the only one. While I would have liked a phone focused on privacy, I think I’ll simply use a competing smartphone for the bare minimum and do most of my computing needs on a notebook.

That’s not to denigrate your efforts, joerg_rw. Obviously you’ve had lots of fun with this project and it would have been a rewarding experience even if no one ultimately bought the phone. But it’s worth voicing some disappointment that, I think, many others here share.

wolke

2015-03-09, 17:26

id be with you, CRCulver, except that there actually arent any competing phones (except perhaps jolla, if its available in your country).

every other option is either ridiculously anti-freedom (android) or non-feature-competitive (openmoko/shr/etc).

the n900 and the n9 are easily the best phones that exist, on balance, for freedom+usability. aaand they STILL both suck so hard that its difficult to decide which one is better.

if a jolla2 was suddenly on sale with an LTE radio for my region, then maybe id have to make a tough decision.

MartinK

2015-03-09, 17:56

Don't forget maybe the main thing that sets the Neo900 project apart from the other open/semi-open solutions: a separate baseband modem fully "sandboxed" by the application CPU.

Many other devices might run more or less open operating systems, but they are still on the mercy of the baseband modem runing a fully proprietary firmware not doing shady stuff in the background (or even touching the application CPU memory!) without basically any means to find about it.

Neo900 is about the only modern smartphone project I know about where the modem is controlled by the application CPU, not the other way around and where it can be verifiably powered down, denied access to the microphone, etc. And that's something you can really do without hardware support with just a software solution...

juiceme

2015-03-09, 19:16

@MartinK you are absolutely right there. As good and open the Jolla device is, Neo900 is alone in its class, peerless.

In all the "modern" devices baseband processing has been integrated on the same silicon with O&M processing, making it necessarily for the device to run unknown, closed, unaudited binaries as ring-0 processes on the same CPU that processes all user data. :mad:

This is especially bad as the chipset vendors have tight coupling with military-industrial blocks in the world superpowers;
It is well known that Qualcomm is owned and operated by USAF and I have no doubt that chinese solutions have similar ties with PLA.

CRCulver

2015-03-09, 20:44

This is all very well known to people who have been following this project for a long time. However, it remains a mere project. As long as there is no actual product for sale, then it is hard to boast about its supposed specifications.

Furthermore, the N900 screen resolution and even the upgraded Neo900 specifications seem more antiquated by the day – this should have shipped a year ago, and I think a lot of people have decided, privacy be damned, they are going to use something up to date. The Neo900 is now sort of like a project saying in the age of tablets “Hey, look, here’s a Sharp Zaurus-like device that cares about your privacy!”.

MartinK

2015-03-09, 21:24

Furthermore, the N900 screen resolution
Please show me another real Linux smartphone with a toushc screen as precise as the N900 - precise enough to edit OpenStreetMap (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm2go) or to draw gorgeous pictures (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=50811&page=155).

and even the upgraded Neo900 specifications seem more antiquated by the day – this should have shipped a year ago, and I think a lot of people have decided, privacy be damned, they are going to use something up to date. The Neo900 is now sort of like a project saying in the age of tablets “Hey, look, here’s a Sharp Zaurus-like device that cares about your privacy!”. I think a slightly updated Sharp Zaurus running a close to normal Linux distro would be really nice. :)

CRCulver

2015-03-09, 21:33

This is now getting very off-topic, but I would expect you to be aware of the fact that most mobile OpenStreetMap development is done on Android devices. At my local OSM meetings, I'm seen as somewhat out of touch, because my N900 is unable to run many of the standard OSM tools and useful new applications like ScoutSigns and Mapillary. Furthermore, OSM2GO is abandonware, it uses many deprecated OSM tags, and and there is no guarantee that it will be able to upload edits to OSM for much longer. And far from feeling that the N900 touchscreen is perfection, I've often struggled with locating an OSM point precisely.

The Neo900 would be nice as a “real Linux phone”, but I don’t think its userbase will be anywhere near large to replace many old, abandoned projects like OSM2GO with working and reliable new versions. And with the low screen resolution, even trying to use desktop applications through the power of “real Linux” isn’t an attractive prospect, as those who have to work with OpenOffice or Firefox on the N900 can attest.

sulu

2015-03-09, 22:24

I think a lot of people have decided, privacy be damned, they are going to use something up to date.Sorry if this sounds harsh, but those people deserve to have their privacy taken away from them.
If you place the convenience of swimming with the masses above your human rights then this is the price you have to pay.

I know it's an ugly business and I'm guilty too in other areas of life, but my privacy is something I'm not willing to sacrifice just to be able to have some small talk with my friends about their iphones.

btw: Releasing the Neo900 last year would have been utopic. And it would have been as outdated then as it would be today or in three years. It should have been released five years ago.
There's no way it's ever going to compete with what we call a smartphone today. So there's no point in even sending it into this competition.

edit:
On a more constructive note, you might find the DragonBox Pyra [1] more appealing:
- bigger screen with higher resolution
- faster CPU, with even potentially future upgrades
- a lot more storage
- probably a better keyboard
- likely a better "real linux" terminal

What it will not be is a better smartphone than the Neo900. It's just too bulky to even remotely fit into that category.

[1] http://pyra-handheld.com/specs.html

joerg_rw

2015-03-10, 01:52

[...]But with all the delays (and while you’ve announced a webshop, you are still not actually selling this product), my interest has waned. I’m sure I’m not the only one. While I would have liked a phone focused on privacy, I think I’ll simply use a competing smartphone for the bare minimum and do most of my computing needs on a notebook.
Sorry your interest vanished or shifted. The Neo900 specs didn't that much. And while I plead guiltiy for delays, those were due to me not only starting a hw-project but also a new company and a new approach to crowd funding. I'd rather delay stuff for another year than to cheat on Neo900_UG's customers.

That’s not to denigrate your efforts, joerg_rw. Obviously you’ve had lots of fun with this project. You have no idea how much 'fun' it been to sort all that tax office and organizational stuff, and to become head of a company that never been planned to be there, to start with.
and it would have been a rewarding experience even if no one ultimately bought the phone. But it’s worth voicing some disappointment that, I think, many others here share. rewarding for whom? My life would have been a 100 times easier just ignoring this whole thing and work for $Apple. Sorry for your disappointment about Neo900 not trying to compete with a moving target, I never promised how long it takes to get stuff accomplished - I'm doing all this (business-, company-, tax-, webshop-stuff) the very first time. All I promised was that I'll try it and to be honest to you.

cheers
jOERG

PS, faintly on topic: I announce I'll try to have one week off-time starting with next Monday. Needed to secure my (mental) health

wolke

2015-03-10, 02:24

lol, i was secretly hoping youd get offended at the condescending presumption that this has just been a meaningless joyride for you, with no realistic hope of payoff on your ridiculous hard work.

schadenfreude, i guess. :D

in case youre worried about CRCulver-types among the 'typical' customers, heres one solid datapoint for 'still willing to fork over all their forks'.

TomJ

2015-03-10, 14:51

This is now getting very off-topic, but I would expect you to be aware of the fact that most mobile OpenStreetMap development is done on Android devices. At my local OSM meetings, I'm seen as somewhat out of touch, because my N900 is unable to run many of the standard OSM tools and useful new applications like ScoutSigns and Mapillary. Furthermore, OSM2GO is abandonware, it uses many deprecated OSM tags, and and there is no guarantee that it will be able to upload edits to OSM for much longer. And far from feeling that the N900 touchscreen is perfection, I've often struggled with locating an OSM point precisely.

On deprecated OSM tags, you can use any tag you want with OSM2Go and even change the preset tags (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1380125#post1380125) if you so desire; the Linux, user-editable approach showing its flexibility over the app straightjacket. And a problem that stopped uploading new nodes was fixed by a member of the OSM community and brought to the repos by our own Aapo (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91545). The beauty of open source is that even "abandonware" can have critical bugs sorted by someone interested...

pichlo

2015-03-10, 15:14

btw: Releasing the Neo900 last year would have been utopic.

Maybe but it has been promised (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1411862#post1411862). Of course no one really expected it finished by then but even I, a supporter of the project (just see my sig), can see it from CRCulver's PoW and even I am now merely hoping rather than seriously expecting to ever see an actual device.

[1] http://pyra-handheld.com/specs.html

Interesting. They boast SDXC. And not just one, but two. I wonder if that stirred a similar poo storm as the planned SDXC support on the Jolla tablet :)

endsormeans

2015-03-10, 17:09

CRCulver ...here is a great article concerning alternate options to the neo900 and the state of current mobile devices today.
Made me chuckle.

https://medium.com/matter/shitphone-a-love-story-a44e66434807

I think this example of a first hand account of the trials and tribulations of an average person like any other ...dealing with both high and low end iphone and android devices is sufficient in the making of a point.

If you aren't keen on the neo...
good luck with your whateverphone, your laptop and your Zaurus.

juiceme

2015-03-10, 19:12

CRCulver ...here is a great article concerning alternate options to the neo900 and the state of current mobile devices today.
Made me chuckle.

[̶u̶r̶l̶]̶h̶t̶t̶p̶s̶:̶/̶/̶m̶e̶d̶i̶u̶m̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/̶m̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶/̶s̶h̶i̶t̶p̶h̶o̶n̶e̶-̶.̶.̶.̶y̶-̶a̶4̶4̶e̶6̶6̶4̶3̶4̶8̶0̶7̶[̶/̶u̶r̶l̶]̶
https://medium.com/matter/shitphone-a-love-story-a44e66434807
If you aren't keen on the neo...
good luck with your laptop and Zaurus.

Your link is broken; fixed it for you.

CRCulver

2015-03-10, 19:23

endsormeans, the point of your posting that article isn’t clear. Many of the author’s complaints would apply to the Neo900, as it will inherit much of the obsolescence of the N900.

And I think you misunderstood my post above about the Zaurus and might benefit from re-reading it. (I don’t have a Zaurus or want one, it’s just a good example of antiquated technology in this day and age, and the old Zaurus is to the tablets people expect nowadays as the Neo900 would be to the phones people expect nowadays.)

reinob

2015-03-10, 19:39

Your link is broken; fixed it for you.

Funny. I thought the "404 Nothing found here" or whatever it was displayed when opening the link was the actual answer concerning the alternate options to the neo900 and the state of current mobile devices today.

I found it ironic and delightfully insightful :)

I will nevertheless read the shitphone story.. duh.

joerg_rw

2015-03-10, 21:05

could we now revert on topic please, which is _not_ about comparing Neo900 to arbitrary Android or Apple smartphones that are _not_ free and don't provide any of the major product features of Neo900. When you are disappointed about Neo900 not being competitive to that class of devices meanwhile, I can't help but ask why you didn't notice it never been. This was obvious the very moment we announced the idea.. See posts #1 to #20 in this thread.

/j

Dave999

2015-03-10, 21:22

So whats the next step?

CRCulver

2015-03-10, 21:36

joerg_rw, while the device has never been competitive, its uncompetitive specifications were more tolerable when the device was first announced and obviously would have been more acceptable at the first projected release date on the Neo900 website than the current one (or lack thereof).

Also, the topic of this thread is the Neo900 project, which must include some voices feeling that the project has been a failure. Yes, you are proud that the device is free, and that initially attracted many people including myself. However, that some people (I’m clearly not the only one) have lost interest in the project in spite of that promised freedom, due to the inability of the project to come through in time, is a development that should be represented in the thread. If you want a thread with no negative opinions whatsoever, maybe start a separate Announce thread? I’ve already expressed my opinion and don’t want to keep harping on the theme, but seriously, you’re complaining about negative views?

It is worth mentioning, however, that freedom wasn’t the only attractive feature of the Neo900. Having a “real Linux” phone as opposed to Android was another major selling point, and Ubuntu Touch and (depending on one’s view) Jolla are now promising that.

joerg_rw

2015-03-10, 21:51

Yes, you made that pretty clear. However "interest in the project" is not the same like "supporting the project" (hint: the number of devices to build is strictly limited to the number of preorders and there never been a promise that you could buy a device as late as on sales start - only those who preordered in the soon closing preorder period will have that option), and I think the delays have been discussed in here already and for sure you did a sufficient job to cover that lately. So what's you point? Did you still not made it? What's the contructive criticism in what you insist to elaborate on here? We for sure won't cease and tear down the project since you lost interest in it. And I don't think perpetuating this sub-thread/topic will help to speed up stuff either.

joerg_rw

2015-03-10, 21:58

So whats the next step?
There are a dozen "next steps", starting at BB-xM 1GB-RAM&NAND rework for a few boards, to proto_v2, to sending some prototypes to the FPTF devels so they can test FPTF-maemo on real hardware, to securing risk parts, to sourcing N900 parts, to bringing up web shop, to...
All this is already ongoing and I don't know which of those "next steps" will yield tangible newsworthy results first.

cheers
/j

Ken-Young

2015-03-10, 23:24

...
However, that some people (I’m clearly not the only one) have lost interest in the project in spite of that promised freedom, due to the inability of the project to come through in time, is a development that should be represented in the thread.
...

Why? If you've lost interest in the project, why are you still interested in posting to a thread devoted to discussing the project?

wicket

2015-03-11, 02:40

Sorry to continue this off-topic discussion (if there are any mods reading this, it might be a good idea to move related posts into a new thread).

It is worth mentioning, however, that freedom wasn’t the only attractive feature of the Neo900. Having a “real Linux” phone as opposed to Android was another major selling point, and Ubuntu Touch and (depending on one’s view) Jolla are now promising that.

That really depends on your definition of "real Linux". I would find it difficult to categorise both Jolla and Ubuntu Touch as traditional Linux (but then again the world of Linux has changed so much in recent years). Both use Android video drivers, new display servers, major components are closed (not sure about Ubuntu on that one) and have both headed down the "one init system does everything for you" route. Of course, as long as the kernel is Linux they can always be thought of as "real Linux", just like Android.

What does Linux mean to me? To summarise, I would say a mostly free (libre), Unix-derived OS that stays faithful to Unix philosophy meaning it is loosely-coupled, making it easy to chop and change whatever you like. Unfortunately those days are over for the majority of Linux distributions.

Maemo doesn't even entirely meet that definition either however at least it is compatible with existing software made for Linux to the extent where most software will run after a simple recompile with maybe some minor modifications.

Unlike every other modern phone (except maybe the GTA04A5), the Neo900's best feature for me is its openness. It has not been designed with only one OS in mind, making it the ideal platform for me to continue development of what I consider to be "real Linux". The privacy features come as a fantastic bonus that is just unheard of everywhere else in today's world.

pichlo

2015-03-11, 09:00

@wicket, I agree with everything you've said above except the notion that this discussion is somehow off-topic. Expressing one's views, whether positive or negative, about a project are very much topical in the thread about that project (especially a general one like this - it might be different in one of the parallel threads discussing some technical details).

Not only that: I see calls for moderators to filter only one sided views a very dangerous trend. The only acceptable potential reason for such moderation would be abusive language and/or personal attacks, and CRCulver has taken care not to slip down that path.

I personally see the occasional pat on the shoulder a healthy thing. If you cannot handle criticism, whether "constructive" or not (and I am not even going to start on who decides what is constructive), then you*) should start by looking inwards first. There is a nice English saysing, "if you cannot stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen".

*) General "you", not addressing anyone in particular.

joerg_rw

2015-03-11, 11:56

We did it! :) Prolly the first BeagleBoard-xM (which is the reference design for our DM3730) worldwide with 1GB RAM - for sure the only device except Nokia N9 I know of that has a OMAP3 and 1GB RAM on PoP *): (quoting a report I received from Nikolaus)

Texas Instruments X-Loader (MLO) 1.4.4ss modified for GTA04 (Mar 7 2015 - 18:35:51)

> OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES2.1
> Board detected: Beagle xM Rev A
> SYSBOOT[5:0]: 0x12/18
> GMPC Memory: 3
> SDRC Memory 5 5: SAMSUNG MCP 512(?)MB/bank

^^^ well, this is currently hard-forced in my code

> Reading FAT boot sector
> Loading u-boot.bin (296020 bytes) from mmc/sd
>
>
> U-Boot 2011.03-rc1-00967-g671281f (Feb 09 2015 - 16:15:52)
>
> OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES2.1, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max CPU Clock 1 Ghz
> OMAP3 Beagle board + LPDDR/NAND
> I2C: ready
> DRAM: 1 GiB

^^^ looks good!

>
> —— snip ——
>
> [ 0.000000] Memory: 1004440K/1047552K available (5817K kernel code, 592K rwdata, 2280K rodata, 404K init, 8173K bss, 26728K reserved, 16384K cma-reserved, 252928K highmem)

Linux is now booting (didn’t with this mirrored RAM address ranges)!

>
> —— snip ——
>
> Linux gta04 3.19.0-gta04+ #992 SMP Mon Feb 9 09:04:09 CET 2015 armv7l
>
> The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
> the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
> individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
>
> Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
> permitted by applicable law.
> root@gta04:~# cat /proc/meminfo
> MemTotal: 1021228 kB
> MemFree: 905016 kB
> MemAvailable: 995204 kB
> Buffers: 7076 kB
> Cached: 89968 kB
> SwapCached: 0 kB
> Active: 69492 kB
> Inactive: 31260 kB
> Active(anon): 3728 kB
> Inactive(anon): 148 kB
> Active(file): 65764 kB
> Inactive(file): 31112 kB
> Unevictable: 0 kB
> Mlocked: 0 kB
> HighTotal: 269312 kB
> HighFree: 242656 kB
> LowTotal: 751916 kB
> LowFree: 662360 kB
> SwapTotal: 0 kB
> SwapFree: 0 kB
> Dirty: 452 kB
> Writeback: 0 kB
> AnonPages: 3712 kB
> Mapped: 6664 kB
> Shmem: 172 kB
> Slab: 12100 kB
> SReclaimable: 6716 kB
> SUnreclaim: 5384 kB
> KernelStack: 448 kB
> PageTables: 216 kB
> NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
> Bounce: 0 kB
> WritebackTmp: 0 kB
> CommitLimit: 510612 kB
> Committed_AS: 29916 kB
> VmallocTotal: 245760 kB
> VmallocUsed: 23120 kB
> VmallocChunk: 125352 kB
> CmaTotal: 16384 kB
> CmaFree: 16128 kB
> root@gta04:~#

Many thanks to Ivo and Nikolaus!

We now urgently need to raise more funds to secure those 1GB chips for the number of devices we plan to build, as well as for other similar risk parts. We also are about to source a sufficient number of used/refurbished N900 to revamp for the LCD, digitizer, mechanical parts, for those who want a complete device rather than a PCB to upgrade their own N900. Those will presumably also cost ~100some bucks per device, so we need to raise "funds" for those too, from prospect customers of complete Neo900.
I'm in the painful process to set up a proper webshop where you can place regular preorders to purchase parts of your Neo900 we're going to build for you, please stay tuned and keep your kitty in reach :-). The target for this preorder DOWNPAYMENT will be around 300EUR (total incl any "donation" you already did) for the NeoN bare board which will cover ~40% of the final price, and a 150EUR on top for the N900 we will use to mount the NeoN board into for you (you'll receive a supposedly working spare N900(!) PCB with that).

cheers
jOERG

*) some question that arrived at me was: "why don't you go for 2 or 4 GB already?" A: 1GB is the physical maximum an OMAP3 can address. So we hit the limit, can't do any better
PS: reposting since some managed to turn this news into a bickering about sense of the project

British

2015-03-11, 12:00

While I'm also not too fond of the screen when it comes to thumbing, for the rest I definitely stand in the I-can-wait-as-long-as-it-takes corner.
If my N900 dies horribly and is unrecoverable, then I have another one waiting.
If that one also gets totalled, I can either get another one somewhere, or go back to my N9...
That's how highly I think of the "alternatives".

So yeah, do what you have to, joerg, and make me/us proud (and happy).

joerg_rw

2015-03-11, 12:46

re "next steps", JFYI
http://wstaw.org/m/2015/03/11/plasma-desktopMT1893.png

klinglerware

2015-03-11, 14:56

endsormeans

2015-03-11, 15:02

+1 and +1 and +1 to allll of it.
Big second to what both British and Klingerware are respectively speaking upon.

I'm in total commiseration and agreement with British...who concisely voiced my stance.

And I believe that klingerware's statement is justified in that.... (if push comes to shove) the path of least resistance in regards to the practicality of full new devices in light of accessibility and cost may make refurbishment more practical.

And a huge happy for the progress jorg. :D

sulu

2015-03-11, 15:07

re "next steps", JFYI
http://wstaw.org/m/2015/03/11/plasma-desktopMT1893.pngThanks for sharing, even though this is bad news!

@dos:
I'd really appreciate it, if you as the "PR department leader" could summarize bad news like these, dumbed-down versions of the quite technical µBlog posts and important infos like upcoming deadlines in neo900.org articles from time to time.
I understand if you have other things to do, but PR is your role in this project after all and I'd consider it a part of the promised transparency to also let less tech-savvy people or those who don't visit the forums regularly know what's going on.

joerg_rw

2015-03-11, 15:08

That does not sound promising, but at least they were being honest.

Obviously, you do want to find a reliable, quality source for those rare parts. But if worse comes to worst, perhaps you can poll your donators to see how many actually want a new Neo vs how many merely want to refresh an N900 that they already have (i.e., just swap-in the board of an otherwise functional N900). Maybe that can relieve some of the pressure...
We're planning to do exactly that via the webshop thing we are about to set up, where every customer can choose what they actually want, on a personal order check/edit/confirmation page.
For the "pressure": i'm of course checking other options as well. I already reported that I found a honest trustworthy contact in China with whom I am about to secure an arbitrary number of used N900 devices. Obviously I need funds and exact numbers about how many of such N900 to secure, to do that. Another reason why we urgently need such "webshop" customer pages now. I just answered an email of a kind project supporter who offered to provide a commercial webshop licence for free. We need to evaluate all those options. I just felt like sharing an arbitrary detail of our daily work when I posted above screenshot - btw I ordered the speakers :-)

cheers
jOERG

sulu

2015-03-11, 15:20

We're planning to do exactly that via the webshop thing we are about to set up, where every customer can choose what they actually want, on a personal order check/edit/confirmation page.Just in case you're not already planning that, please add more detailed options than just ordering a board or a device!
I don't need a complete Neo900, but my spare N900 only has a crappy German keymat (crippled cursors) which I'd like to have replaced.
And I'd prefer to send it to you for assembly, so I can blame you if it doesn't work. ;)

joerg_rw

2015-03-11, 15:22

On other news: Nikolaus / GDC just told me that $other_project workload dwindles and there are working hours available for Neo900 in ~3 weeks.
Related: concrats to Pyra.

/j

reinob

2015-03-11, 15:26

joerg_rw

2015-03-11, 15:28

Just in case you're not already planning that, please add more detailed options than just ordering a board or a device!
I don't need a complete Neo900, but my spare N900 only has a crappy German keymat (crippled cursors) which I'd like to have replaced.
And I'd prefer to send it to you for assembly, so I can blame you if it doesn't work. ;)

Sure we can do sth about the former. The latter isn't decided upon yet, it has many pitfalls, starting at double-customs and shipping (which could easily get more expensive than using a 'new' N900) and not ending at warranty issues ("who scratched the screen" sort of disputes. Go figure we find your beloved N900 has its screws mangled and can't get disassembled at all). Possibly we can find a tad more local services doing the swap for you if you absolutely feel like not doing it yourself.
Anyway believe me, we will provide a very fine video tutorial how to do that easy lightswap. We also might provide any tools needed (Torx-6 driver basically). You most likely will find it's quite feasible. And in case of worst desaster, you're not on your own, I already sourced (and will continue to do so) spare parts when you actually break something. You shouldn't be able to accidentally break the NeoN board anyway, it's made to last :-) For the most delicate few parts (flex cable for example) we can provide spare parts.

/j

endsormeans

2015-03-11, 15:33

+1 to that 10 000 there reinob...
I'm aware I'm a decent illustrator-painter-carver, harp-lute-fiddle-dulcimer essent. instrument maker...make alll kinds of geegaws and weird parts too...but I can't build a 3 legged stool to save my life. :D

Excellent idea to have a vid tutorial . That will be indispensable .

Halftux

2015-03-11, 16:53

while the device has never been competitive, its uncompetitive specifications were more tolerable when the device was first announced and obviously would have been more acceptable at the first projected release date on the Neo900 website than the current one (or lack thereof).

:confused: I think the most people spent so much money because to extend the life of a N900 to another 5 years and not to throw it away after half a year. This statement is unlogic and makes no sence to me. If I would think like that I would never go for a Neo900 right from the beginning. Also I would guess that everybody could imagine that a wish release date for a tiny startup will never come true. In addition there were unpredictable circumstances.

To invest in the project is a risk because it is a huge challange but when a few people can overcome this, it is a big thing whenever it is finished. And maybe it keeps one spirit up to other people or upcoming projects.
You can not see this project in an economic way, it is some beliefs in freedom and your lifestyle.

So congratulations to the involved people for the big step forward in the project.

However If somebody need help to exchange the heart of a N900 to a beautiful Neo900. I can offer to do it for free for people near Berlin - Germany.

wicket

2015-03-11, 17:20

Sure we can do sth about the former. The latter isn't decided upon yet, it has many pitfalls, starting at double-customs and shipping (which could easily get more expensive than using a 'new' N900) and not ending at warranty issues ("who scratched the screen" sort of disputes. Go figure we find your beloved N900 has its screws mangled and can't get disassembled at all). Possibly we can find a tad more local services doing the swap for you if you absolutely feel like not doing it yourself.
Anyway believe me, we will provide a very fine video tutorial how to do that easy lightswap. We also might provide any tools needed (Torx-6 driver basically). You most likely will find it's quite feasible. And in case of worst desaster, you're not on your own, I already sourced (and will continue to do so) spare parts when you actually break something. You shouldn't be able to accidentally break the NeoN board anyway, it's made to last :-) For the most delicate few parts (flex cable for example) we can provide spare parts.

/j

In that case, I'm curious about how you plan to handle disputes from those who go for the board-only option and then claim "my board doesn't work". I'm willing to bet that 90%+ won't properly ground themselves when swapping in the board. The NeoN board might not be highly sensitive but you can't deny that there is a possibility, however small, that ESD damage may occur. People do stupid things, expect them to touch the PoP!

joerg_rw

2015-03-11, 17:59

@wicket: you're right about this, in principle. But actually the board will be better-than-normal on ESD protection, and odds that somebody damages the board by ESD completely are rather small. More likely is they do subtle damage to the SoC that only shows much later, when they don't follow the most basic principles clearly communicated in our tutoral video (like "touch the board only on its edges. At least first time you touch it in a minute"). For the one or two boards people might manage to kill during mounting, we will find a way to handle those cases so everybody is happy. I guess a certain minimal customer's own cost - e.g. for shiping and handling - caused by handling those issues will cause our customers to generally take care not to damage their eagerly awaited boards.

TomJ

2015-03-11, 19:26

Question: given the maintenance manual for the N900 says discard & replace torx screws qhen dis- and re- assembling, will a bare board neo900 ship with replacement screws?

joerg_rw

2015-03-11, 19:45

Question: given the maintenance manual for the N900 says discard & replace torx screws qhen dis- and re- assembling, will a bare board neo900 ship with replacement screws?

Simple answer: yes, of course :-)
/j

macey

2015-03-12, 06:18

Joerg, when will you be requesting that we 'buy' our ram?
I have 'donated' 100 euros @ plan to buy one, maybe two neo100.

sulu

2015-03-12, 12:35

The latter isn't decided upon yet, it has many pitfalls, starting at double-customs and shipping (which could easily get more expensive than using a 'new' N900) and not ending at warranty issues ("who scratched the screen" sort of disputes. Go figure we find your beloved N900 has its screws mangled and can't get disassembled at all).I see your point, but how does that differ from regular warranty repairs?
Let's assume I order a complete device and at some point I have to send it to you due to some warranty issue.
How would you determine in this case who mangled the screws? Of course you'd claim I did and I'd claim I already got it with the screws in this condition and never bothered to check.

Anyway believe me, we will provide a very fine video tutorial how to do that easy lightswap. We also might provide any tools needed (Torx-6 driver basically). You most likely will find it's quite feasible.I'm not worried about the tools or not understanding the instructions.
It's mainly my motoric skills. I can manage to (dis)assemble desktop PCs and even notebooks, but connecting those tiny ribbon cables of touchpads has a failure rate of 50%.
I just wouldn't want to play coin flipping with such a unique device like the Neo900.

However If somebody need help to exchange the heart of a N900 to a beautiful Neo900. I can offer to do it for free for people near Berlin - Germany.That sounds great. Thanks!

But I'd like to ask you some questions in advance:
1. Is it exceptional skill or exceptional bravery that makes you think you can do this?
2. What's your favorite beer?

LES..

2015-03-12, 15:00

We also might provide any tools needed (Torx-6 driver basically).

Just to be pedantic, Nokia had a tendency to use "Torx Plus" (IP) screws, not Torx, this is typically why battery swaps on the N9 result in trashed screws as people use an incorrectly sized Torx drivers and not the correct Torx Plus drivers.

Having done many service jobs on various Nokia devices a full set of IP drivers has been essential. Just something else to double check.

joerg_rw

2015-03-12, 15:25

6) Unscrew the four Phillips size 00 screws in the
order shown. Do not use them again.
9) Unscrew the two TORX+ size 6 screws in the ordershown. Do not use them again.
(from Nokia_N900_RX-51_Service_Manual_L1L2_v1_0.pdf)

Thanks LES..!
/j

Halftux

2015-03-12, 18:21

That sounds great. Thanks!

But I'd like to ask you some questions in advance:
1. Is it exceptional skill or exceptional bravery that makes you think you can do this?
2. What's your favorite beer?

I studied device electronics and microtechnology during my study I was working at Siemens preparing electronic boards with thermo couples to optimize reflow and hotflow soldering processes and desoldering and resoldering flip chips with special machines. During that time Siemens produced mobile phones and was looking for a lead free solder paste and halogen free PCB.:)

In the past I was soldering magic chips into PS 1 and 2, I also exchanged flexcable for my A780 for example. I am brave and keen to open everything and have also good skills to use a soldering iron.

I own 3 N900 2 in very good condition and one I can use for training. I only open a phone from somebody else, if I successful exchanged a board for myself.

I drink nearly every beer except "Sternburger".:D
I don't know if I am suitable for this, you will only know it afterwards. I have a public liability insurance, in case I drop your phone.

joerg_rw

2015-03-12, 18:36

I have a public liability insurance, in case I drop your phone.
Watch out, prolly you're not legally liable for damages occuring during you helping somebody with technical stuff when the one suffering from such damage asked for the help. So your insurance won't cover that either.
Case would be different when you snatched away (or borrowed) the device from owner and then applied some rework to it without owner knowing about and agreeing into it.

Just a heads up

[edit] I think you're more than just "suitable for this" :-) And thanks for the kind offer to help other customers.
/j

macey

2015-03-14, 11:10

Joerg, when will you be requesting that we 'buy' our ram?
I have 'donated' 100 euros @ plan to buy one, maybe two neo100.

Polite 'bump' did I miss something?

joerg_rw

2015-03-14, 15:26

really soon now, probably as soon as the webshop is ready, or even sooner

joerg_rw

2015-03-14, 20:15

answering a mail with questions Neo900 UG received. I think everybody should benefit from answering them.

On Sat 14 March 2015 20:16:05 you wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a couple of questions and suggestions about neo900
> specification. Im aware that you cant or for some reasons cant answer
> yet, but please try at least point me the right direction.
>
> I numbered the questions of groups of related questions so it will be
> easier for you to answer I assume
>
> 1. Is the chosen camera a subject to change?
no (or not more than anything in Neo900 is)

> Why use old 5mpix camera
> from n97? Why not use better camera from Carl Zeiss? Generally I have
> nothing against the qualitly of camera from n97 or n900 but 6-7 years
> old system it's simply a little bit old.
because we need electrical/logical as well as mechanical/formfactor compatibility

> 2.Won't buying bunch of broken or not n97 just to remount one part,
> and mount it to neo900 going to be more expensive and cause
> unnecessary problems than buying newer and better ones from Zeiss (Not
> necessarily from Zeiss)? In my opinion for mass production new cameras
> will come cheaper and will not cause troubles with collecting + of
> course provide better expirience.
We will use new spare parts, not parts scavenged from old N97

>
> 3. Are you planning make camera upgradeable, more changeable for
> advanced users, or the connectors will be destined just for one
> camera? I mean, most OS that neo900 will support are linux based, so
> software and drivers changes are possible
The camera is connected to system via the B2B connector the N97 camera comes with, which is one of the reasons we prefer it over the SMIA95 socket of N900 cam module. You're free to attach any camera module that can provide the same signals.

>
>
> 4. What about the front faceing camera? I guess it will be exactly the
> same as in n900? It's crappy, but hard to replace from what I know.
> Going this way, light sensor and proximity sensor will stay as they
> are in n900?
short answer: yes, exactly.

>
> 5. What about the flash light? Will it be the same as it is in n97 or
> n900? From what I know camera and flash come separately. My sugestion
> is to use better flash maybe with ability to focus light and create
> potentiality to make photos of distant objects in the dark? n97 flash
> is effective to few metters, sometimes less, imho in full darkness is
> efective only as flash light tool.
The flashlight will use new LEDs (we wouldn't even know what's the original LED component) and thus might be stronger, However we can't change anything about focusing which is done by N900 case's integrated fresnel lens

>
> >>Im aware that neo900 it's not meant to be professional camera, it's not
> >>the point but I believe me and many others would be happy to have better
> >>possibilities in their pockets. From my expirience n900/n97 cameras
> >>failed many times, when good photo was required, or in situation when
> >>you'll get one chance to do it.<<
> Enought about cameras.
see above comments. One more: Neo900 is about enabling user to re-use software made for N900, this includes canera drivers etc.

>
> 6. Will the n900 successor have the same usb port method of mounting ?
> I mean, will it be vulnerable as it was in n900? It is probably the
> most common problem with n900s. From lack of place in n900 case
> alternative charging system in neo900 isn't possible (Excluding
> protruding cables), or am I wrong? I think that kind of device should
> have easy-to-use additional charging system, even if usb port will be
> stronger.
AIUI you refer to the "USB port falling out" issue? We tackle that by using through-hole type of a micro-AB socket which is supposed to be way stronger than the one in N900.
For alternative charging please see our HackerBus whitepaper - in short: there's an option to attach chargers, under battery lid. Well suited for stuff like inductive charging (or PV-cell) or gold pads on surface of battery lid that a cradle's pogopins could attach to.

>
> 7. What about the speakers? Will you leave those mounted in n900 case,
yes

> or use different ones? I couldnt find info about that. Speakers in
> n900 aren't fantastic, but better in most tablets/mobile phones, even
> never ones, so in my opinion they should not be replaced.
We hardly could, even when we would plan for it. We need same form factor once again.

>But if so,
> please mount a woofer too (Joke) ;)

>
> 8, Will CPU Overclock be possible? If so, how much? N900 CPU can be
> overclocked to almost 2 time more than it originaly was designet by Ti
> and set by nokia.
We don't recommend nor support OC. Even while it's possible on Neo900's DM3730 CPU as well afaik, OC is considered dangerous and destructive for the SoC and will significantly reduce life span. Note that any warranty will be void when overclocking the device.

> -What about the CPU RAM? First it was said that it will be 512MB or
> 1024MB, now I see only second option, this is for sure?
Yes, please see post a few above, we verified 1024MB (1GB) RAM PoP chips to work with our SoC, and we're about to secure/source a sufficient number of chips.

>
> 9. Will the modern CPU be changeing freqs on the fly, like the n900
> CPU does? I guess locking neo900 CPU on one freq will be possible on
> planned stock OS?
The CPU is 100% compatible to the N900 one.

> -Will different OS meant to work under neo900 provide the same
> possibilities?
That's up to the OS, which Neo900 UG will not provide. We rely on community providing the OS for Neo900 hardware.

>
> 10. What about power consumption? I don't need specific info, just
> would like to know it will be higer or lower comparing to OMAP3430?
> -What about whole platform power consumption
Both shall be roughly in same ballpark. There are factors that act in favor of neo900, but others act against it. In the end the difference shall be negligible.

>
> 11. Battery will be the same as it is in n900? If so, do you think it
> will be enough? N900 sometimes was disappointing in this matter.
My experience with N900 battery standby time is like ">1 week with active ssh session via WLAN". I think that's good enough. We can't simply change the type of battery, there's a bay in N900 case the batt cell needs to fit into. When your battery standby times are disappointing, check your active apps and usage pattern and compare to arbitrary other smartphones under same test conditions. The N900 (as well as Neo900) usually shall win any such competition, given the apps are actually doing exactly same. Finally you're free to opt for a Mugen-alike battery (larger formfactor) with augmented capacity.

>
> And the last few related questions:
> 12. Will TV out through Jack port have the same abilities comparing to
> n900? Will I be able to use dedicated n900 TV cable?
yes. Though quality should be slightly better than N900. Plus we look into supporting digital-video-out adapter via USB port (http://www.displaylink.com/)

> 13. Will neo900 users be able to use better usb port as TV out
> connector gaining better qualitly and resolution? I will ask again the
> same question form another angle: Assuming that USB port technically
> can be use as TV Out port, will it depend on additional software or
> will be available as stock?
See above. And we won't provide own software, I think there's linux drivers readily available, though I didn't check a real physical setup yet.

cheers
jOERG

ammyt

2015-03-14, 21:21

I have an N97 collecting massive dust. I can gladly give it away if it would be of any help.

joerg_rw

2015-03-14, 23:38

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1464081 IR whitepaper update

JoHnY

2015-03-15, 10:20

We're looking into an option to support dual SIM, but for now that's a dumb dead switching of SIM only (SIM Shift, DSSS, Pseudo-Dual), since the modem module firmware doesn't support real Dual SIM Dual Standby (DSDS) (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dual_SIM&oldid=605949464#Dual_SIM_Dual_Standby_.28DSDS.29) *). We hope for implementig this SIM multiplexing in a way so that a possible future modem firmware upgrade might support it. So far we heard no details from Cinterion/Gemalto regarding this, so we neither know if such firmware upgrade ever will come, nor can we do better than just guessing how we best interface the multiplexer to the modem. We also need to check certification situation which maybe introduces restrictions what can be done to the SIM interface.
We're not really considering to place a second modem module in for "Dual Talk" (DSFA)

Simple bottomline: we would like to get true dual SIM, but for now modem support is missing for that. We might be able to offer electronic SIM swapping (only one of both SIM active at any time. IOW you're not available on two numbers concurrently)

cheers
jOERG

*) don't ask me what happened to the recent version of this wikipage, it seems somebody removed a lot of useful info, thus this link is to an archived version

I'm wondering if there is any update on the dual sim since last June, or if the above is still valid...

kinggo

2015-03-15, 10:26

I don't know if I am suitable for this.
If you have done any training than you will have zero problems. N900 is very "friendly" when it comes to disassembling/reassembling. Particulary for a slider device. Nothing is glued, no hidden plastic latches that will broke, it's a pleasure to work on it. Unlike SE zylo that I was replacing LCD ribbon recently :eek::eek::mad::mad:

joerg_rw

2015-03-15, 16:09

I'm wondering if there is any update on the dual sim since last June, or if the above is still valid... Alas no changes. Then OTOH I had no chances yet to talk to the Cinterion guys myself, Nik did that. So if there's some progress whatsoever internally to Cinterion, I wouldn't know about it.

/j

joerg_rw

2015-03-19, 06:47

short update: We're close to a version-2-improved of our PCB shape http://wstaw.org/m/2015/03/19/plasma-desktopWo1895.png, which we create from machine acquired (http://neo900.org/stuff/werner/scans/) data (http://neo900.org/stuff/Gallery-N900-exploded/platine_01.jpeg) via data processing and then import to eagle via script (http://neo900.org/stuff/werner/tmp/with-arcs-5.scr). Precision should be in the 0.1mm range or better. Kudos to Werner!

On the webshop front I did my first baby steps in dolibarr (ERP/CRM-system) today - honestly something I hoped to never have to touch, but well...
Anyway thanks to Sebastian and Martin for helping with all that.

OT: Blackphone seems to use Nvidia Tegra T4i SoC with integrated modem - this is a strong indication for a shared-RAM architecture with all the inevitable vulnerabilities of such a design.

The N900 samples finally left customs a few hours ago (http://wstaw.org/m/2015/03/19/plasma-desktopec1895.png), so sourcing of N900 "mech parts" for those customers interested in "full device" gets closer.
Please stay tuned for us collecting the money for paying those purchases.

cheers
jOERG

Akkumaru

2015-03-19, 09:14

Is this possible to be complete before the end of 2015?

joerg_rw

2015-03-19, 23:08

Is this possible to be complete before the end of 2015?

Yes, definitely :-)

Short update: N900 samples arrived. The one tagged "90%" looks good to me, hard to tell it's a used device. The "80%" one I wouldn't dare to sell to customers as a "new" product, though the dents/scratches in plastic and metal frame of the case are really not that bad. Then there's one tagged "100% NEW" which actually is. Anyway all three come with pristine touchpanels - funny enough with (unused, sealed, new) screen protector applied over the absolutely glossy scratchfree touchpanel.

mikegioia

2015-03-20, 02:32

Do you have any pics of the samples?

joerg_rw

2015-03-20, 03:37

Do you have any pics of the samples?

please see for yourself in http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/xiangfu/neo900/n900/N900-10-9-8-7-Back.jpg and more pics in same dir. I received only 3 best of them, and the pictures are really exposing stuff you can't see even with a magnifier glass on real device.

endsormeans

2015-03-20, 05:24

Hm.
I can't remem. now...
jorg .. was it mentioned that sending/ paying via paypal was going to be an option?

Wikiwide

2015-03-20, 05:52

Hm.
I can't remem. now...
jorg .. was it mentioned that sending/ paying via paypal was going to be an option?

Is it this one?

http://neo900.org/donate-paypal

Best wishes...

endsormeans

2015-03-20, 06:13

Pretty close to what I was thinking of.
But it looks to be more geared to initial donating/ downpayment.
I'm hoping that whatever next needed installment payments and final payments will have paypal as one of the options.

joerg_rw

2015-03-20, 14:32

endsormeans

2015-03-20, 17:33

oh good.
yea I'd rather use a service like paypal....
since the last time [shudder] I sent money via my bank.
I'd rather see you guys getting more of my money as directly as possible ...
than it getting vampiric-ly sucked away by my banks fees in their unnecessary and convoluted process involving sacrificing gerbils on the last blue moon of the year. [Our Canadian banks are a determined bunch :D]

pichlo

2015-03-25, 17:52

@endso,
True dat!

Whenever I feel that PayPal fees are extortionate, I remind myself of this story...

As a bunch of students in a certain Central-European country that no longer exists, we applied for some voluntary work in the UK. This involved sending an application fee of 50 GBP per person to an agency organising said work - an astronomical amount of money at the time not just for us poor students, but also for our parents.

The bank charged a fixed fee plus a percentage of the amount. There were 20 of us and to save on the fixed part, we sent the money in a single payment. Needless to say, the charges were enormous, coming to about 100 GBP, or 5 each.

A month later, when nothing happened, we called the agency who informed us, as confirmed by sending us a copy of their bank statement, that our application was rejected because the amount of money they received was much lower than the 50 GBP required. It was in fact 45 GBP, meaning that another 5 GBP each, on top of what we had already paid, was lost on the way.

The agency, as a gesture of good will, agreed to refund the money, even though the contract said explicitly that the fee was non-refundable. For a few more months, nothing happened. We did not receive the refund. Following another enquiry, the agency sent us another bank statement confirming that the money had in fact been sent.

To cut the long story short, we did eventually receive the refund. Long after we graduated and went our separate ways. To be absolutely specific, it took 18 months between the agency sending the refund and us receiving it. Another 100 GBP, or 5 per person, was lost again on the way back. If you've lost count, and won't blame you, the total loss was 15 of initially paid 55 GBP each, or about 27%.

Who was the bank sitting on our money for 18 months, you may ask? I know I should not name and shame, but so bad was my experience that I feel obliged to warn everyone I know. It was Československá Obchodní Banka, a. s. (http://www.csob.cz/en/Stranky/default.aspx) It happened 25 years ago and they may have turned around 25 times since then, but to this day, whenever I see a business client using that bank, I see a bright red flashing light and hear claxons. In all my long life, only one other company had left such a bad taste: a car service in the UK. But that is another story...

princefakhan

2015-03-25, 18:14

endsormeans

2015-03-25, 18:39

@pichlo - THANK GAWD! I'M NOT ALONE! I KNOW EH?!?!?! :D
banks are the new loan sharks in my opinion...and hell...it isn't even like I'm "loaning" the money... it's mine for !^@$ sake... paypal is a saint in compare to the banking institutions today...even the best of them.

@princefakhan - Kickstarter has it's probs. Takes it's ugly chunk.

I'm in favour of whatever methods make it feasible to give the most of my monies without diverting (vampirically bleeding me off) sums along the way. It means I can give that much more immediately.

joerg_rw

2015-03-26, 01:05

re kickstarter: when this started, kickstarter didn't allow non-US bank account, and generally kickstarter isn't really for the type of project we had here, it works best when you already got a working prototype. It's expensive too, particularly when you're opting for the method#2 that would better suit our needs. And the deadline on kickstarter is absolutely contraproductive since we reached that deadline during 3 days without them. we might do kickstarter for a seconf batch, and/or for STEP2 in 201(6/7) ;-)

mini update:
N900 sourcing: I have an option to source a 450 now. We RSN need to collect the needed funds to do this sourcing (150 bucks per N900, which leaves some headroom for 'unforeseen' expenses like import tax and VAT which we might have to pay for now and maybe can get refunded later when we sell that stuff again). After those N900 are ordered, there won't be a guarantee that further cases/mechpart-kits can be sourced later on for late orders - this is an early warning about one half of the preorder timespan window closing.
risk parts sourcing: We need to source several risk parts like e.g. the 1GB RAM (+ NAND) PoP chips now. for that we need funds. so we ask every one of our customers to increase their <300EUR down payment (formerly called 'donation') to at least 300EUR (plus the above mentioned amount for N900 when you want a complete case).
In this context,
webshop: since one day I'm looking into PrestaShop for our order management/webshop - dolibarr turned out to lack the functions we need most: a way our customers can log in and check/edit their order, e.g. to (un)tick the "N900 mech parts" option needed for full device so we know how many N900 to source, the type of modem you want, etc. I hope we'll get that webshop thing sorted soon, it's the main roadblock to kick off the fundraiser for the N900 and risk parts sourcing. Any help appreciated :-)

cheers
jOERG

endsormeans

2015-03-26, 03:11

Sooooo...
to be specific... :D
You need the monies now?
or...
Wait until the shop is set up.. then send the monies?.....

xman

2015-03-26, 03:43

..... so we ask every one of our customers to increase their <300EUR down payment (formerly called 'donation') to at least 300EUR (plus the above mentioned amount for N900 when you want a complete case). ....

I'm REEALLLYY ready for this! So I went ahead and bumped my payment by another 200 eur, this brings me to 400 eur! Not sure this is how you want it ... but too late :D

I only need the board so the extra money should be used to help get to the next step. If you want to refund it if you have a surplus great, if you want to keep it for the teams time and hard work groovy, but that it for me :) no more money (for now till I can watch video's of working boards)

I'm believing in you (the team) with my hard earned money and I'm happy to show my support. So lets get this party started.

x

endsormeans

2015-03-26, 03:57

hehe..
ya xman...I hear ya...
Just waitin' for the word to be given.
I'm hovering over the paypal donate button to top up mine to 450 euros.

:D

joerg_rw

2015-03-26, 04:15

Sooooo...
to be specific... :D
You need the monies now?
or...
Wait until the shop is set up.. then send the monies?.....

Everything fine, though the earlier the merrier. We'll set up the web shop so you find all your payments there when you log in first time, anyway. Just PLEASE use SAME EMAIL ADDR in refrence/subject of all payments, past and future. It's our "primary key" to link the payments to your account and a particular device. When you used PP, please do so again, from same PP account. When you absolutely can't use same email addr PP account, please MENTION your PREVIOUS EMAIL in subject, so we can make the link between previous and new payment. :)

I'm REEALLLYY ready for this! So I went ahead and bumped my payment by another 200 eur, this brings me to 400 eur! Not sure this is how you want it ... but too late :D

I only need the board so the extra money should be used to help get to the next step. If you want to refund it if you have a surplus great, if you want to keep it for the teams time and hard work groovy, but that it for me :) no more money (for now till I can watch video's of working boards) of course :D
All payments count for the final invoice when we collect final orders and ship the devices. So no matter "what for" you sent the money, it gets used to build your device and gets accounted for in the invoice.
Soon you will be able to see the serial number of the device(s) you ordered, plus the hardware items we already sourced for you, on your order webpage - as soon as webshop ready to go online.

I'm believing in you (the team) with my hard earned money and I'm happy to show my support. So lets get this party started.

x Thanks a lot :)

one last note, for correctness: these payments from now on won't receive the monthly interest we promised and grant for early donations. The early donations continue to collect interest though, as promised. And the above mentioned amounts (300.- , 150.-) are excl any interest your early donation collected so far, since interest gets calculated with final invoice only.

Important Note: when your initial donation got transferred from GDC to Neo900 UG (or you did it in time and referred to "86.- refund from GDC for original donation of 100.- from YYYY-MM-DD, re-donating it"), then this counts as the ORIGINAL amount (~100.-) you donated, NOT the REDUCED ONE (~86.-some) GDC transferred to UG
I.E.:
You donated 100.- to GDC on 2014-2-2
GDC (or you) transferred 8X.xx to Neo900 UG some time in June
your customer account at Neo900 UG: 100.- payed on 2014-2-2

cheers
jOERG

endsormeans

2015-03-26, 04:43

Good enough.
The Word has been given.
Bam-Done.
I'm up to the needed 450 EUR
Mind..I'm sure I'm a bit above that sum from whatever accrued interests...
Looking forward to mah neo.
Edit: oh yea...the transfer particulars from GDC ...forgot about that in my hurley-burley ...so yea guess that puts me at 464-ish EUR

reinob

2015-03-26, 08:05

@joerg_rw,

I was considering sending this as a PM, but it may be of interest to others.
I originally donated to Goldelico, and then the money was transferred to you.
I want to top-up my donation but w/o paypal, i.e. plain-old bank transfer.

I happen to have your bank account number (as I've "used" it previously). Would it be OK if I send the money there, or is there a separate account for Neo900?

EDIT. Stupid me. http://neo900.org/donate-iban
EDIT. Topped-up to EUR 500. This is getting exciting :)

sulu

2015-03-26, 08:10

joerg_rw

2015-03-26, 08:12

[...]
EDIT. http://neo900.org/donate-iban Yep, this is the right one :-)

joerg_rw

2015-03-26, 08:15

@joerg_rw:
Since you have the e-mail adresses I think it would be best to send an "official" e-mail to actually ask for the money.
There have been multiple risk part warnings in this thread and not all of your customers might be watching this thread so closely.

Sending an e-mail would show everyone this time you're serious.
It should contain the info about prices, "donation" handling and e-mail/paypal you gave in your last post plus a realistic deadline (people might be on holiday).

Hi Sulu!
Thanks for the suggestion, actually that's exactly what we're planning to do - just we only want to start with it when the webshop customer order page is working, so we don't send a "please already act while we're still building the infra" mail and then a second one a week later.

cheers
jOERG

mithrandir

2015-03-26, 17:50

Thanks for the hard work.

Since things are moving on now, and you are starting to create the shop. Will there be an option for selecting the keyboard layout, i.e. german?

Feathers McGraw

2015-03-26, 20:07

I'd just like to say I've been following this thread quietly with interest for a long time now. You guys have made great progress and, and I love the open approach you have taken - part of the fun of backing a project like this is sharing the highs and lows through the process. I will love my Neo900 even more when it arrives knowing all the hard work that went into the hardware design.

I'll probably wait until the webshop opens to up my donation - still very keen though! I just found it a bit unnerving when I donated the first 200EUR (PayPal) and didn't receive any confirmation.

Joerg, I appreciate this might be a difficult quesiton to answer, but if you had to estimate the % completion of the project (or if you like, the % of risk left), what would you say?

joerg_rw

2015-03-27, 00:12

Thanks for the hard work.

Since things are moving on now, and you are starting to create the shop. Will there be an option for selecting the keyboard layout, i.e. german?
Of course we'll add an option to select such stuff like kbd layout in webshop. Just I can't guarantee we will find the right keymats for everybody.

I'd just like to say I've been following this thread quietly with interest for a long time now. You guys have made great progress and, and I love the open approach you have taken - part of the fun of backing a project like this is sharing the highs and lows through the process. I will love my Neo900 even more when it arrives knowing all the hard work that went into the hardware design.

I'll probably wait until the webshop opens to up my donation - still very keen though! I just found it a bit unnerving when I donated the first 200EUR (PayPal) and didn't receive any confirmation.

Joerg, I appreciate this might be a difficult quesiton to answer, but if you had to estimate the % completion of the project (or if you like, the % of risk left), what would you say?
Sorry we didn't send out confirmation for PP donations yet, since PP already does. We'll send a mail to all donors/customers with the credentials to log in to the webshop customer's order check page

I'll try to answer the % questions by giving a very rough estimate. I can be wrong on it!
project completion technically 50%, total (incl organizational, infra and all) 80%
risk for the project to fail hard: 1...3% (thanks to the N900 we found now, was higher before) *), risk we can't reach all features we hope for right now: 15% (e.g. in Pyra it turned out the lead time for WLAN module might be some 6 or 9 months, which often means "forget this component")
Again this are numbers based on a guts feeling only.

*) The fact that we transformed all donations into proper down payments (actually credits) internally and are now handling all further payments as such down payments / credits linked to a normal commercial (pre)order may tell about the trust we/I put in the project actually succeeding, since when it would fail then Neo900 UG would go bankrupt on paying back the credits and I'm the one liable in that case.

sulu

2015-03-27, 08:05

Of course we'll add an option to select such stuff like kbd layout in webshop. Just I can't guarantee we will find the right keymats for everybody.I can offer two original german keymats in perfect condition if I get two english keymats in equal condition in return.

joerg_rw

2015-03-27, 09:22

I can offer two original german keymats in perfect condition if I get two english keymats in equal condition in return.
Of course Neo900 UG will support and coordinate such community level mutual help. Eventually (please not yet!) you can send in e.g. keymats and we will ship according swap keymats packed together with your device (unless we expect noone of our customers will be interested in getting what you provided). Please note that you will still need to somewhat coordinate with other users, since Neo900 UG can not provide any warranty for items we received from customers and send them out to other customers. Minimum when you want one of those customer-provided German keymats for example, you'd need to clearly state that you want resp are OK with a customer-swap item and not something Neo900 UG sells to you (aka "no warranty"). Anyway, we'll for sure find a way to manage this :)

Thanks for the proposition.

/j

reinob

2015-03-27, 09:30

I can offer two original german keymats in perfect condition if I get two english keymats in equal condition in return.

I have 1x German, 1x Spanish and 1x US. Would gladly swap the German and the Spanish for two US ones.

REQUEST REQUEST REQUEST PLEASE
Could some nice guy post a video on Youtube showing how to swap keymats?
I have a feeling a could do it, but need an easy-to-follow tutorial.
This way I could put the US keymat on my "production" N900 (I've remapped the keyboard, but it's still odd).
THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS IN ADVANCE

pichlo

2015-03-27, 09:44

Yes, reinob, you can do it.
But sorry, swapping the keymats is much easier than making a Youtube tutorial :)

sulu

2015-03-27, 10:03

joerg_rw

2015-03-27, 10:39

I have 1x German, 1x Spanish and 1x US. Would gladly swap the German and the Spanish for two US ones.

REQUEST REQUEST REQUEST PLEASE
Could some nice guy post a video on Youtube showing how to swap keymats?
I have a feeling a could do it, but need an easy-to-follow tutorial.
This way I could put the US keymat on my "production" N900 (I've remapped the keyboard, but it's still odd).
THANKS THANKS THANKS THANKS IN ADVANCE

You need: Torx+ (or worst case a Torx, take care to not damage screws with it!) driver size 6, a (unspoiled!) Phillips screwdriver size0(!), ideally use bits when you're unsure about correct torque.
Unscrew the two Torx+ screws left of Shiftkey and right of cursor-right key (see below about pushing out frame via Torx-driver, you can already do that now).
Loosen the 4 Phillips screws a 2..3 turns each, do NOT unscrew them! (this step is not strictly needed but helps a lot later on)
Slide open kbd and pull up/out the kbd frame around keymat on bottom long side. If you can't pick it, you can use one of the Torx+ screws, screw it in a 2..3 turns where it been and then press down the screw with the driver, so the frame pops out.
On upper long side you need to swivel out the keybpoard frame, it has a few notches there - to do so you slightly lift the display half from kbd half, that's why you loosened the Phillips screws.
Then swap the keymat, ideally while not removing the frame from its upper notches.
With new keymat in place, you make sure the frame sits tightly and flush in upper notches (slide-push and swivel it into place, use some ruler to make sure it's not bulking up direktion display half, if it does then the notches are not seated correctly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hOgVg5kVwbg#t=50)) and plug the "forks" at lower long side of frame into the case shell.
Now your new keymat is in place and the frame shall be flush with shell case and not bulk up anywhere above/between "W" and "P".
Gently(!) fix the 4 Phillips and mount the 2 Torx+, using no more force than you can apply using your thumb and index finger fingertips(! no key-grip!) only to turn the screwdrivers/bits on their 3mm diameter metal shaft (actually the correct force/torque is even less than that).

NEVER MIX the two Torx with the Phillips screws - only the Torx may go to the 2 lower side mount positions!

Enjoy!

joerg_rw

2015-03-27, 10:43

@reinob:
Here's a N900 disasembly video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVEHm325-z8

That's a really poor video. It omits a lot of important details
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43tQws4t2pY is better, however note that you do NOT need to remove the display half, it's also no brilliant idea to do that since you had to mess with the flex cable and the flimsy B2B-connector, and you most likely will damage that flex when all you got for instruction is that tekseven video. Just loosen the 4 Phillips screws holding the display half a 2..3 turns, but do NOT completely unscrew them

reinob

2015-03-27, 11:35

@reinob:
Here's a N900 disasembly video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVEHm325-z8

The keymat is removed at 3:50, while the display unit is already removed.
I can't find it but iirc there was a video some years ago showing some guy casually replacing an N900 keymat in like 30 seconds, without any sort of disassembly except for the keymat bezel.

That's the (my) issue. I don't want to fully disassemble the N900 just for the keymat. I'll see if I find that video..

EDIT. I'll give it a go with Jörg's instructions. Need to check if I even have the right screwdrivers :) [I'm really a theoretical engineer. If I told you where I work you'd understand, but I can't..]

shawnjefferson

2015-03-29, 00:06

OT: Blackphone seems to use Nvidia Tegra T4i SoC with integrated modem - this is a strong indication for a shared-RAM architecture with all the inevitable vulnerabilities of such a design.

I was told that the blackphone team got access to the baseband controller firmware under NDA...

joerg_rw

2015-03-29, 03:41

I was told that the blackphone team got access to the baseband controller firmware under NDA...

Which doesn't help a thing at all, since a) it's around the size of a standard desktop linux installation, and nobody can check and security-audit all that code, and b) even when they could/would audit it, it can still get updated to a new rogue version OTA

joerg_rw

2015-03-29, 03:45

on a short update: Prestashop installed. Pending: configuration (lot of work, mainly for dos1) and import of, and account creation for all our customers, Then we'll send out mails with the URL and credentials

nieldk

2015-03-29, 06:59

Wow. This is progressing really fast....
Good job of the neo900 team.

teamer

2015-04-01, 12:16

WOW!
just noticed this post...
How can i order one? and is it possible to add more ram? like 2 GB ?

sulu

2015-04-01, 12:31

How can i order one?http://neo900.org/donate
(you should "donate" at least 300 Euros to account for the risk part sourcing that's in progress right now [1]).
Alternatively it should be safe to wait for the webshop to go online.

and is it possible to add more ram? like 2 GB ?No, because 1GB is the maximum the CPU can adress.

[1] http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91142&page=235#2344

macey

2015-04-02, 03:28

300 euros?? I donated 100 euros at the start of the project on the understanding that it would 'reserve' me an neo900.
Please clarify...

sulu

2015-04-02, 05:54

Please clarify...risk parts sourcing: We need to source several risk parts like e.g. the 1GB RAM (+ NAND) PoP chips now. for that we need funds. so we ask every one of our customers to increase their <300EUR down payment (formerly called 'donation') to at least 300EUR (plus the above mentioned amount for N900 when you want a complete case).So if you want to reserve your Neo900 now by paying 100 Euros, you'll have to pay another 200 Euros (or 350 if you want a complete device) really soon.
Of course you can do this, but it seems to me it would make more sense at the moment to pay it in one batch.

@joerg_rw:
Any progress with the webshop? I'd prefer to do my payment that way.

[1] http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91142&page=235#2344

joerg_rw

2015-04-02, 06:36

@joerg_rw:
Any progress with the webshop? I'd prefer to do my payment that way.

Sorry, I was not fit for work during last 3 days and the pending tasks right now are web design resp graphical stuff anyway which I simply dunno how to do and hope for dos1 to get around doing it. I'd also appreciate any paid help by another professional web designer.
For the "import of, and account creation for, all our customer (payments)" I'm considering an approach where you actually create the account by yourself and then send a in-system-message to "management" to link clearly specified payments of yours to that account - we need to review each single one of the payments manually anyway.

cheers
jOERG

joerg_rw

2015-04-07, 16:50

short update: the webshop is almost ready for showtime.
http://talk.maemo.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=36884&stc=1&d=1428421777
I plan we're basically offering two "products":

a used refurbished N900 in good to perfect condition which you usually will not ask us to ship to you and rather keep it at our facilities for later on upgrading it for you with a NeoN-board to make a full Neo900 device out of it.
Price: € 150.-
dynamically growing list of risk components we'll source - starting with 1GB RAM/NAND PoP chip this week or next - that are owned by you but (usually) not shipped to you.
Those will get used to eventually build a NeoN-bareboard (prolly ~750.-) reserved for you which you may buy then and which of course will be accordingly reduced in price (minus 300.-) due to the already paid-for risk components. Basically in effect this is a partial purchase resp a down payment for your bare board.
Price: € 300.-

Of course no payment ever is 'lost', all your payments past and future are taken into account for interim and final invoice, in other words our customers/donors all have some credit thanks to past payments which they can use for future payment (quite unusual, eh? ;) ) - you just add a note pointing to your former payments during checkout/payment process, we'll do the rest and link your payments to your account. For PayPal it's even simpler as long as you're using same PP account as you did for your former payments, no note needed since we can look up your PP email address in old payments (still a process that needs manual check and approval, but simpler for you).
By the way, we still welcome new customers as well for a while, until we order the batch of parts/devices. :)

stay tuned, can't take much longer now.
cheers
jOERG

wicket

2015-04-07, 18:13

joerg_rw

2015-04-07, 18:45

How exactly will it work? Will you wait until you receive a certain number of down payments before purchasing a batch of risk parts? Will you be publishing deadlines for when we must make the down payments? I'm still undecided on whether to buy the board only or full product (depends on the condition of another N900 that I haven't received yet) but I don't want to miss out because I delayed my down payment.
Hi wicket!
Probably it will be a mix of both: a 'deadline' we expect users to act until (which is not very far into the future, some 1digit number of weeks maybe) plus waiting for a certain minimum amount of funds to collect since otherwise ordering of devices/components makes no sense at all.
We will elaborate on the details in a huge official post and a bulk mail to all our donors/customers that we will publish/send the day the shop goes online (this week I hope)

cheers
jOERG

joerg_rw

2015-04-08, 18:42

short status update:
Ivo (freemangordon) and Nikolaus cooperted today to bring up OneNAND of the PoP chip, we still see some issues in kernel, but it seems under uBoot the NAND works, so we're considering to tag the chips as "verified". Yesterday I received a note that sample chips for the "TNO" variant arrived at Moscow warehouse and I expect them to ship to us any day now.
Alas no significant progress on shop setup, I didn't find the time during last 24h. Problem is to let user decide on the amount to pay during first visit when the past payments are not linked yet so the shop can't calculate how much is missing. Idea: offer a product "1EUR voucher" of which user can buy as many as she wants bucks to pay. We'll convert those e.g. 200 vouchers into a normal payment for the Neo900 product then. Dos1 and wpwrak both are not happy with the idea, we evaluate other approaches to find the best and lest confusing method for you.

cheers
jOERG

joerg_rw

2015-04-12, 09:04

some sample 1GB RAM PoP chips arrived at last hop before final destination (me ;-) )
http://i.imgur.com/yItn0zh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ZBUOsiF.jpg

one of the 1GB reworked BB-xM arrived at me http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150410_003.jpg http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150412_006.jpg, and I've set up a remote station to fiddle with the pimped BB-xM from wherever our devels are, to bring up NAND and RAM and "NOLO" and...
http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150412_003.jpg http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150412_001.jpg the "bottom" is a tiny PC to which the stuff is connected, the right green monster with the black blocks is a relay card to operate the reset switch, has options for more remote switching when needed. The BB-xM is hooked to PC below via USB for now, RS232 to come soon (when I finally found a cable ;-D )

cheers
jOERG

short update: RS232 connected to BB_pimped by the worst homegrown cable I ever made ;-) Seems to work though
I added a cellulose based antistatic mat and a unpimped BB_xM in parallel to the remote testbench since I could and the sw guys will appreciate having a reference.
http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150413_002.jpgLooks already quite funny now

Ivo (freemangordon) been able to already load xloader and uBoot via USB to the pimped BB. Pending: fix uBoot so it actually brings up the board and recognizes the OneNAND of new 1GB PoP chip
Update2:
[2015-04-13 Mon 15:28:35] <freemangordon> DocScrutinizer05: http://pastebin.com/p6tjX8qU
Texas Instruments X-Loader (NAND) 1.4.4ss modified for GTA04 (Apr 13 2015 - 16:)
Detecting OneNAND memory...
Detected Samsung N9 Flash
OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES2.1
Board detected: GTA04A7
SYSBOOT[5:0]: 0x10/16
GMPC Memory: 3
SDRC Memory: SAMSUNG MCP 512MB/bank
Loading u-boot.bin from onenand

background:
since I just realized that many of you might not really have the technical details already steadily available in their heads and thus wonder what we're doing at all:
The boot process on a TI OMAP is rather sophisticated and nifty. See http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/Bootloader_Project#OMAP_Bootloader_Overview. Since Nokia used their own proprietary closed blob xLoader and "U-Boot" NOLO 1st and 2nd stage bootloaders, and since we otoh have a RAM and NAND chip (the 1GB PoP) that is not to be found in any other device except the Nokia N9, we already need to sort out if our Neo900 will boot correctly when equipped with such PoP chip and booted using the FOSS xLoader / U-Boot. And that's exactly what all this is about, to ensure Neo900 not only will have a nice 1GB of RAM and 512MB of OneNAND but also actually can boot to linux/maemo with that config. :-)

teroyk

2015-04-12, 21:34

short update: the webshop is almost ready for showtime.
...
Basically in effect this is a partial purchase resp a down payment for your bare board.
Price: € 300.-
...
By the way, we still welcome new customers as well for a while, until we order the batch of parts/devices. :)
...
stay tuned, can't take much longer now.
cheers
jOERG

So should I wait webshop or make donation right now. Actually I am not new customer. I paid to Golden Delicios and they ask me get money back (I take it back in summer) and it seems that transfer period has ended on August 8, 2014?

joerg_rw

2015-04-13, 12:36

So should I wait webshop or make donation right now. Actually I am not new customer. I paid to Golden Delicios and they ask me get money back (I take it back in summer) and it seems that transfer period has ended on August 8, 2014?

hi teroyk!
Please wait till webshop opens (been planned to happen yesterday already, alas the remote lab bench introduced a day or two of delay) - it will happen RSN.
Alas transfer period ended, yes. Nevertheless you might want to add details about original donation done by you as suggested in http://neo900.org/donate-gdc so we might see what can get done. No warranty though for us being able to consider that early donation since yes, the transfer period is finished since more than half a year.
Thanks for supporting the project

/jOERG

vladl

2015-04-13, 22:30

Good to hear on the webstore progress and the updates in general. Only after reading the feasibility study did I start getting a good idea about exactly how complicated this project is.

I have a couple of questions (apologies if it's the wrong forum, so to speak):

a) Did you look at having an issue tracker to track progress (so that people can get status updates without you having to rewrite the whole thing again in a forum) - Github issues comes to mind as a first suggestion

b) What can (technical-minded) supporters do to help the project currently? The GTA04 just got the 4.0 kernel (on twitter) so I'm guessing mainlining peripherals etc. is not an issue?

c) Was there a poll somewhere about what distro people wanted on the Neo900? I am particularly interested in Ubuntu Touch (and yes, I saw there is now a mailing list for that too).

endsormeans

2015-04-14, 01:12

As far as c) goes... it depends what you mean...
the neo-guys are building it to run...
as far as what distro it'll ship with...it'll be something manageable.
the fptf is working on making sure fremantle works on it.
considering the open hardware....the question now becomes personal...
what os would YOU personally like to run on it?
you mention ubuntu touch...
me..I'm torn.
soooo many possibilities ...

joerg_rw

2015-04-14, 23:10

http://irclog.whitequark.org/neo900/2015-04-14#12424619; ff til 00:00:00 ;-) just a short few hours straight view into "the lab"
Kudos and many thanks to freemangordon aka Ivo
/j

endsormeans

2015-04-14, 23:55

good news.
and Devo too. :D
good taste.

wicket

2015-04-15, 01:02

joerg_rw

2015-04-15, 01:18

Do you have any plans to offer any extras in the web shop? There are a few things I can think of that I would like to purchase and it would be much easier if I could get them all from one place. I'm thinking of stuff like screen protectors, USB host mode cables (or USB gender benders) but the main thing I would be very interested in buying that's not so easy to get hold of elsewhere would be a serial cable (for debugging boot issues).
Well, no such plans yet. Will see what can get done, for us (the company) it's a loss deal. Anyway don't worry about serial cable, no such thing needed for Neo900. You got UART3 on hackerbus (http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/hb.pdf) and on IR-UART (http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/ir.pdf), and yet the idea is to have console on USB via ttyACM or whatever it was. We might consider offering serial cable kits for HackerBus and for IR<->serial/USB

nieldk

2015-04-15, 06:35

Quick question.

HackerBus and IR<->serial/USB

Would that make it possible to debug boot?
Iam asking, because I wonder if those ports are exposed that early in boot process...

joerg_rw

2015-04-15, 10:51

Quick question.

HackerBus and IR<->serial/USB

Would that make it possible to debug boot?
Iam asking, because I wonder if those ports are exposed that early in boot process...
They both are based on UART3 which is what's commonly used for serial debugging of bootloaders etc, in BeagleBoard and N900 and GTA04. Even ROMBOOT when looking for xloader on serial is using UART3 for that

joerg_rw

2015-04-15, 16:58

[2015-04-15 Wed 18:55:26] <freemangordon> YAAAAAY, IT BOOTS FROM ONENAND
[2015-04-15 Wed 18:55:30] <freemangordon> :D:D:D
[2015-04-15 Wed 18:55:34] <DocScrutinizer05> YEEEEEHAAAAA

http://irclog.whitequark.org/neo900/2015-04-15#12433933;

[edit] while it looks soooooo innocent ;)
http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150415_001.jpg

nieldk

2015-04-15, 17:05

Iam dreeewling :)

joerg_rw

2015-04-18, 23:26

short update: we probably found the right way to take previous payments into account during your order in webshop: a voucher you apply to your order that adjusts the amount payable accordingly. Since the shop cannot guess what been your previous payments when you create your account, you will probably have to tell the shop about your previous payments during signing up to the shop (aka "create account") Please add precise info how to identify your previous payments, like the correct amount if possible date as well as payment method (PayPal or bank transfer) and for PP the email address, for bank transfer the sender's account info and/or precise subject. I will check these info against our database manually and confirm/edit.

update to the update: We possibly found a way to provide voucher codes to all our previous donors which allow reclaiming of previous payments right on first visit of shop

joerg_rw

2015-04-20, 22:17

From: Ivaylo Dimitrov <ivo.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
To: neo900-devel@XXXXXXXXXX
Date: 2015-04-20 Mon 23:06
Hi,

I was able to boot to u-boot on onenand:

U-Boot# onenand erase

OneNAND erase: whole chip
OK
U-Boot# loadb
## Ready for binary (kermit) download to 0x80200000 at 115200 bps...

!!! x-load.bin.ift through kermit

U-Boot# onenand write 80200000 0 40000

OneNAND write: offset 0x0, size 0x40000
262144 bytes written: OK
U-Boot# loadb
## Ready for binary (kermit) download to 0x80200000 at 115200 bps...

!!! u-boot.bin through kermit

onenand write 80200000 100000 80000

OneNAND write: offset 0x100000, size 0x80000
524288 bytes written: OK
U-Boot# reset
resetting ...
U**60**

Texas Instruments X-Loader (OneNAND) 1.4.4ss modified for GTA04 (Apr 20
2015 - )
Detected Samsung KCE00E00CA A506
OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES2.1
Board detected: GTA04A7
SYSBOOT[5:0]: 0x10/16
GMPC Memory: 3
SDRC Memory: SAMSUNG MCP 512MB/bank
Loading u-boot.bin from onenand

U-Boot 2015.04-dirty (Apr 14 2015 - 23:58:05)

OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES1.2, CPU-OPP2, L3-200MHz, Max CPU Clock 1 Ghz
OMAP3 Beagle board + LPDDR/NAND
I2C: ready
DRAM: 1 GiB
NAND: Muxed OneNAND 512MB 1.8V 16-bit (0x50)
OneNAND version = 0x0232
Chip support all block unlock
Chip has 4KiB pagesize
Scanning device for bad blocks
OneNAND: 512 MiB
MMC: OMAP SD/MMC: 0
Using default environment

Beagle xM Rev C
No EEPROM on expansion board
Die ID #606200029ff80000014f8e6f0601001c
Net: usb_ether
Error: usb_ether address not set.

Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
Card did not respond to voltage select!
Card did not respond to voltage select!
Booting from nand ...
Unknown command 'nand' - try 'help'
Wrong Image Format for bootm command
ERROR: can't get kernel image!
Card did not respond to voltage select!
** Bad device mmc 0 **
U-Boot#

mithrandir

2015-04-28, 20:49

Hi,
I know, it is quite late for a feature request and cannot expect such a thing to be included, but I'll post it anyway.

Would it be possible to include a 433Mhz receiver/transceiver combo in the Neo900? With this one would be able to control many garage doors, radio controlled power sockets etc. with the Ne900.

mith

DDark

2015-04-28, 20:59

nokiabot

2015-04-29, 02:17

joerg_rw

2015-04-29, 08:37

fixed another bug in prestashop:
[2015-04-29 Wed 05:02:09] <DocScrutinizer05> http://wstaw.org/m/2015/04/29/plasma-desktoptw1950.png :-S prestashop is really a PITA - yet:
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:41:48] <DocScrutinizer05> HEHE my FF is german and guess WHAT
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:42:17] <wpwrak> dresses ?
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:42:26] <DocScrutinizer05> http://wstaw.org/m/2015/04/29/plasma-desktoptw1950.png
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:42:40] <wpwrak> hehe :)
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:43:15] <DocScrutinizer05> so now we already know WHAT happens (somewhat)
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:43:38] <DocScrutinizer05> now let's see if we find out WHY prestashop shows different content for Germans
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:44:35] <wpwrak> lemme try something ...
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:44:42] <DocScrutinizer05> here MUST be some option in prestashop to intentionally create language specific pages
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:44:49] <wpwrak> please reload
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:45:00] <DocScrutinizer05> AWESOME!!
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:45:08] <DocScrutinizer05> what did you do?
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:45:50] <DocScrutinizer05> I hope you didn't edit /srv/www/my.neo900/conf/config.in.php ;-)
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:45:55] <wpwrak> LOCALIZATION / Localization > Set language from browser: NO
[2015-04-29 Wed 04:46:06] <wpwrak> all cleanly in the admin interface :)
[edit] almost forgot: we got a nearly complete list of voucher codes for all our donors which we will complete and send out by email as soon as shop works decently. Many thanks to Werner for the incredible scripting and checking job done.

Secured 250 of the supposedly unobtainium Knowles speakers, just in case we might need a few. So don't worry about XPROT, there are spares ;)
http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150429_001.jpg
http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150429_003.jpg
http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150429_004.jpg
http://maemo.cloud-7.de/share-service/20150429_005.jpg

jonwil

2015-05-02, 07:59

Ok so which hardware components are going to give us the biggest problem at this point?

joerg_rw

2015-05-02, 12:59

Ok so which hardware components are going to give us the biggest problem at this point?

basically none, that's really great news :)
Most cumbersome for now: domesheet, but that's manageable
/j

Feathers McGraw

2015-05-04, 22:35

Woah. Is it just me or did the predicted cost just jump up? I only noticed this because I've been keeping a close eye on neo900.org and noticed the updated FAQ and link to this:

http://neo900.org/estimate

EUR 990 for a NeoN kit, and an extra EUR 150 for a full Neo900 (that's EUR 1140 total, before VAT!).

Including VAT @ 20% in the UK, that's EUR 1368, just over £1000... I'm really struggling to be positive about this, not sure I'll be able to afford it.

wolke

2015-05-05, 03:27

the reason why is made clear right on that page: inflation of euro compared to usd.
"Today's EUR 990 would be about EUR 770 at last year's value."

i was about to say that i could no longer afford it, until i realized that the price didnt change all that much for me in the US. {works out to 100$USD more than i expected, since i already paid some of it}

endsormeans

2015-05-05, 05:57

I wasn't going to say boo...but I sure am now.
@wolke ...I don't know how you came to the conclusion it is only a hundred bucks more....are you kidding me? really?
...and the euro-slide aside ...the entire globe took an economic hit from the oil almost flatlining. It wasn't just the Euro that got hurt.

Here it sits...the Canadian dollar is only 18 cents from parity with the US dollar...
here is exactly the sitch...the original ballpark estimate was 700 euros for a complete device. I was fine with that... I anticipated more even...and I was fine with that...
but 990euros+150euros = 1140 euros ...that isn't a hundred dollars more...that isn't a small or modest increase ...260 euros more and it's double the original estimate. and that 1140 euros is not final.

Before fees, duty, taxes etc...that 700 euros (for a complete device) = 780 usd = 944.65 cdn .
After calculating tax (which is + $133 cdn)
going from the original estimate of $1054~ cdn. (I'm NOT even counting duty or including shipping and handling)

to the present current revised estimate of (990euros + 150euros for the complete device) 1140 euros = $1269.29 usd = $1537.23 cdn (after tax calculating $184.47) its $1725~ cdn. (and yet again I'm NOT including duty, shipping and handling)
and that's saying that is the final set price tag of course...
that isn't just a hundred dollars more...in whatever denomination...
that is going from the original estimate (in my country) of a grand to $275 dollars shy of DOUBLE the original estimate...

I've already put down over $600 cdn and I'm still $1100 bucks away?
and then there is STILL on top of that duty, shipping, handling, and insurance (I would imagine). I imagine it will be a joy to see that end figure.

The new estimation is a punch-to-the-gut number ...
it is becoming hard calling it anything different..

I do get the math...and understand the sitch (the euro slide, the unforeseen costs, etc..) ...I get it.
and I do want to see the guys getting paid decently, costs covered, the whole shmozzel...

I still intend on getting a device..
I still support the project...
I still believe in the project...
I'm not griping or complaining...
But if I'm handing over a couple hundred bucks shy of 2 grand (and I won't be surprised it makes that figure in the end)...
I think no one would deny me the allowance to say ..something...
guys..that number ... $1725~ cdn.
I can only speak for myself when I say …
flat-out that number smarts..really smarts.

macey

2015-05-05, 06:46

I agree with endsormeans, I'm going to struggle to get this past the 'chancellor of the exchequer' (the wife).
Having serious doubts.

From a daily N900 user.

wolke

2015-05-05, 06:48

endsormeans, youre calculating last year's euro estimate converted to USD at today's rates, and comparing today's estimate also converted to USD at today's rates.

when i estimated my cost at the time that i paid 100euros, the euro was worth 1.4 dollars. now, its 1.1 dollars.

long story short, i expected to pay 980$USD, and now its $1089$USD.

wolke

2015-05-05, 07:18

im not a cambist, and i dont know if my math/economics is correct now or was correct then, but i DO know that ive been expecting to pay roughly 1000$USD all along, and now its 1100$USD.

i was also under the impression, before this, that the estimate of 700 EUR was for the board, not for the complete device. maybe i misunderstood at the time, but thats what i always thought it was.

with the USD=>EUR exchange rate having changed drastically upward {0.7 => 0.9}, i am less affected by the increase, which makes sense since the exchange rate change is the primary source of the problem.

unfortunately, CAD=>EUR did not change anywhere near as much, and in fact, CAD=>USD is currently 1.2, up from 1.1 from last year.

im sorry to say, endsormeans, that your loss is greater, and i deeply respect that youre continuing to support the project.

Fellfrosch

2015-05-05, 07:44

I expected to pay 700 €. Now it's going to be 990€. That's 40% more. I fear the project is drifting out of my financial range... :(

endsormeans

2015-05-05, 08:26

you are correct wolke ...my error in the initial figure...last years valuation at todays rates...
Even still...both the euro and the cdn dollar have stayed pretty much in sync 'tween the euro-slide and the looney-slide...from this time last year until now...all that aside...
I like you was expecting something similar ...
mind I anticipated possibly $1100..$1200..$1300 even...
and didn't bat an eye at that...not a problem...

...but $1725? and that's only with tax?...
no I wasn't expecting that.

To put it in perspective...
the priciest perspective there is...
for that revised estimate ...
In my country...
with only tax applied ...
before necessary shipping...
before necessary handling...
before necessary insurances ...(and damn straight I'd want them)
before duty...
before further possible increased estimates...

would get me a troy ounce of gold....

and I'd still have at least $270 dollars in my pocket.

a troy ounce.
of gold.
is cheaper.

and the final price and additional fees isn't finished...it isn't tabulated yet.

Who wants to start a betting pool that the final grand total hits 2 grand cdn?

I will say this...there are precious precious precious few Canadians...maemoan or otherwise ...who will shuck out this sum....for any handheld device...ever..for allll eternity..
Canadians as a people have more sense.

I will say now exactly what anyone else in my country will say when they hear about my device...they'll say..."why didn't you just get 4 iphone 6 pluses? or 5 galaxy s6 edges on two year contracts?"
they'll say "Is that device coated in a troy ounce of gold?"

The only thing comparable in price at $2000 here is the (Edsel that is going to bury ...) Blackberry....the Blackberry Porsche.

I would not be surprised if I was the only one in my country to still want a Neo900 after this readjusted estimate.
I am most certainly not pleased.
I do know I am bordering on being very upset..
I still believe in the project..
I still support it..
but I am bloody-well hanging by a very very short thread

Bearserker

2015-05-05, 09:39

I feel a bit like endsormeans,
When I read the project is made in Europe, I thank something like "Nice ! It will be expensive, but the estimates will not depend too much on change rates".
Thought most of the components were secured before the euro falls, too.

I "reasonably" anticipated to pay between 700€ for a board and 850€ for a full device. I "feared" I would have to pay something like 1000€ for a full device.
Actually, for me (and many European people) it's 1188€ (990+20%VAT) or 1368€ (990+150+20%VAT).
The increase is really significant : about 500€ more than expected, and 350€ more than pessimistically estimated.

What makes me affraid is the "Material per unit (NeoN kit) 470 EUR ±100 EUR".
It lets me think the increase isn't finished yet :(
I'm used to pay 10-20€ for getting things shipped from Germany but even in this case, it's 400€ more than anticipated (more than +50%).
And it could be even more if the NeoN kit is underestimated.

I'm sad because I'm sure you, guys do everything you can to reduce the costs, and I really would like to support more this project, but 400€ isn't something I can spend without consequences.
And I wonder how many people have donated and will finally not buy anything... :confused:

pichlo

2015-05-05, 09:49

i was also under the impression, before this, that the estimate of 700 EUR was for the board, not for the complete device. maybe i misunderstood at the time, but thats what i always thought it was.

Interesting. I, on the other hand, was under the impression that the 700€ quote was for the complete device. The price for the board was supposed to be about 150€ less. I am almost sure it was mentioned here somewhere, along the Q4/2014 ETA.

I expected to pay 700 €. Now it's going to be 990€. That's 40% more. I fear the project is drifting out of my financial range... :(

Amen!

I was a vivid supporter of this project. I even brought a handful of other supporters on board. All despite the series of disaters: the "disagreements" within the team, still not fully explained... spec changes... perpetual delays... demands for more funds... I used to welcome every new post in this thread with excitement, but my excitement has gradually been eroded by a death of a thousand cuts. I recently realized that my heart sinks every time I see this thread popping up in Active Topics. What bad news is going to be this time?

It is time to face the truth that I subconsciously knew was coming but did not want to admit. The chances I might get anything in return for my investemnt are diminishing every day. I may as well consider it written off.

I am sorry. This recent price hike was the last straw.
I am sorry. I no longer have any expectations from this project. If anything comes out of it, I will consider it an unexpected bonus.
I am sorry. I can no longer support this project. I would not feel comfortable to help others to spend money on it.
I am sorry :(

Fellfrosch

2015-05-05, 10:18

The problem is that I indeed calculated wrong, when I said it will be 40% increased costs. When the project started I wanted to buy a complete device, because I'm not so keen on tinkering on my old N900. Especially because it's screen look quite horrible nowadays and I'm not so skilled in doing things like that.

After reading Bearseakers post, I must now recognize that 990 € is just for the board, so it's even more expensive then i thought on the first view.

Sorry to say that, but I think my already paid 150 € have become a donation and can't be longer seen as a prepayment. :(

sulu

2015-05-05, 10:59

Not really sure about the price increase yet. The numbers make perfect sense iff everything was affected by the course changes (R&D, Loan interest?).

What I'm really disappointed in is the lack of transparency (again!) that is shown by the way we got this info.
It took a random eagle-eyed community member to find this piece of info because apparently there is neither an easily accessible link to it on neo900.org, nor an official hint in this thread.

freemangordon

2015-05-05, 11:19

What I'm really disappointed in is the lack of transparency (again!) that is shown by the way we got this info.
It took a random eagle-eyed community member to find this piece of info because apparently there is neither an easily accessible link to it on neo900.org, nor an official hint in this thread.

I guess that info was updated just a few hours ago, so I'd rather call it "site under construction".

Bearserker

2015-05-05, 11:35

Actually, Joerg said yesterday evening in the µBlog that the FAQ has been updated.
So it's a bit more than "site under construction".

DDark

2015-05-05, 11:45

I think freemangordon, we just need to wait and see how things evolve. I don't think that Neo900UG trying to steal your money, or to make huge earnings on their first project. Also think of this phone as custom made hardware, and not as another commercial fruit device.

With this price range, I also could not afford it, but there is always an option of some government agencies order for secure device or something similar that could drop the price.

Fellfrosch

2015-05-05, 11:57

I don't think that the price will drop. To be honest it's more likely it will rise further, because there will be more like me, which simply can't make such a huge invest for a mobile phone. We had already the cost discussion in the past:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1405521#post1405521
and don't forget the poll. There were only 20 people ho voted they are willing to pay more than 1000€.

DDark

2015-05-05, 12:13

jellyroll

2015-05-05, 13:02

I still use the N900 as my main device but the battery life and screen resolution of the Neo900 makes the price of €1000,- too expensive.

klinglerware

2015-05-05, 14:37

I actually continue to be impressed by the Neo900 team's transparency.

Since they are sourcing a lot of the parts from outside of the Eurozone, the sharp price increase makes sense since the value of the Euro has tanked since the start of the project.

For what it's worth, the projected cost isn't increasing appreciably for me since I am US--well, I better hope that the US Dollar remains at relative parity to the Euro for the remainder of the project (or consider locking in a big payment now).

wicket

2015-05-05, 15:00

I'm also very disappointed by the price rise but I'm not sure if there's an alternative other than to pay up. They have justified the reasons, I've already donated €100 and there's no other device on the horizon that comes close to what the Neo900 offers. It will probably mean I'll now just go for the board-only option and use it with my 5 year old N900 case which isn't in the greatest condition. If we ever want to see the "Step 2" successor, this needs to succeed.

The disappointment seems to be widespread so this surely affects their plans for down payments for securing parts.

I think they have to find a way to secure funds to make it feasible build at least 1000 devices in order to bring down the costs. Either find an investor or launch a crowd funding campaign that ensures that the buyer has nothing to lose if they don't reach the target. This is more likely to succeed once they have demonstrated a fully working final prototype.

chrischras

2015-05-05, 20:28

Sorry, i'm one step before out although i'm one of the first supporters but waiting 2 years and seeing this increasing price? No.
And i doubt that the price will get down any time, because with every step up more people will leave. Mmh, devils end.

wpwrak

2015-05-05, 22:59

Please let me attempt a few quick clarifications regarding the transparency of the communication:

The update of the cost estimate is part of the preparations for the next project phase, where the project will incur larger external expenses, such as component purchases.

We don't mean to "hide" this. It's in fact linked from the FAQ, and the latest changes to the FAQ are not even a day old. So please treat them gently, for the ink is still wet :-)

We want to announce the whole ensemble of closely connected things (shop, how payments are calculated taking into account existing loans, and the new cost calculation) together, to avoid mistakes and confusion.

We're currently testing the shop and preparing the corresponding announcement and usage instructions. We hope to have the grand opening in a few days.

Also, we would like to ask you to wait with payments until the shop is open. Part of why this is so much work is that we have a jolly mess of payments from different sources and with different characteristics. We have now consolidated that data, and, going forward, want to use the shop as the only channel for orders and payments.

Thanks a lot for your support and your patience !

- Werner (on behalf of the Neo900 team)

ed00

2015-05-06, 03:10

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/e6/e6831265914b86c0a9fa492474365019c4c46c44a67943df92 9de70114083edf.jpg

:rolleyes:

Bearserker

2015-05-06, 10:25

After having thougth a lot, I arrived to several conclusions :
The "per device" cost is 525€ + shipping
The fixed cost for the whole project (R&D+Loan) is 190k €

The main way to significantly decrease the total cost of a device is to decrease the fixed cost, by selling more devices. I mean, if 1000 Neo900 are sold instead of 500, each customer pays 190€ instead of 380€. In many countries (with 20% VAT), it means more than 230€ saved for each customer. So what about finding a partnership, or launching a crowdfunding (as wicket proposed a few posts above) ? With a crowdfunding, the "per device" cost can be adjusted with the main goal of the project. :rolleyes:

One more thing is the pool of donators who will not buy a device.
I'm sure not every donation will end with an order. And I'm sure there will be a few "new" customers who didn't previously donate because they were not aware of this project.
There were 423 donations. How many of them were at least 100€ worth ? Let call this number X.
As soon as there are more than 500-X orders without rebate, each new order (ie without rebate) means for the smallest rebate remaining (ie not used yet) :
- either it will be used, so (380 - its worth) € is gained for the project / could have been removed from the fixed costs
- or it will not be used, so its worth is gained for the project / could have been removed from the fixed costs

What I mean is if we can accurately evaluate the number of buyers (especially new buyers) and it's high enough, the price can fall for everyone, which means more potential buyers. :)

TomJ

2015-05-06, 11:17

I hate to say it but while I could talk myself into £500, and even persuade myself that VAT on top of that would be grudgingly paid, closer to a grand (or even 900 notes) is just too much for me.

wpwrak

2015-05-06, 13:33

There were 423 donations. How many of them were at least 100€ worth ?

Based on the current list of vouchers (still under review) we have loans of EUR 100 or higher from 420 addresses.

The information we have on file for the number of devices is 449, but this information is likely to be outdated and unreliable. We'll get solid numbers from the shop anyway, and a rough "105-115% the number of loans" estimate is good enough for now.

How these numbers will translate to pre-orders is indeed the great unknown. They can go up or down, due to the effects you mentioned.

Making more devices would indeed help. Not only in terms of more customers sharing the fixed costs, but also in terms of improving our position when it comes to negotiating prices. If you buy a few hundred pieces, you pay catalog prices, if you buy tens of millions, you own the manufacturer's output and get to dictate what the product is worth. The closer we can get to the latter case, the better :-)

There are limits, though: while we can make lots of NeoN boards (limited by N97 cameras, I guess, but that may be in the tens of thousands), the market for N900 parts is more limited. So the maximum number of Neo900 devices we could make before looking for some plan B should be around 1 k, maybe 2 k.

In general, reaching more potential buyers is certainly a goal, and crowdfunding is one of the options to consider. However, crowdfunding adds new risks, so we have to be very careful with taking such a step. E.g., the EUR depreciation, while very unpleasant, is something a project like Neo900, that has some wiggle room with the final price, can survive. On the other hand, if this was standard crowdfunding, where the final price is set from the beginning, we would now be writing apologetic letters about "how it just didn't work out" or try desperate measures like freezing the project until the exchange rate improves. There is no shortage of sad stories of projects that fell into that trap with crowdfunding, and thus came to a tragic end, usual after prolonged and intense agony for all involved.

So it's important to choose a moment when the risks are very low and also when we can effectively market the project, and not divert already scarce resources into an ineffective campaign.

Thanks for your input, these are good thoughts !

- Werner

endsormeans

2015-05-06, 15:20

So to cut through the mustard ..
what is being said is ...
-the cost increase is ...in part...
a projection on the unknown state of committed peoples? ...
I would hope so...

Since what people are seeing is:
the original extreme estimate was 700 euros for a complete device at a number of 200 (potential) orders...
and now the estimate has increased to 1140 euros for a complete device at 400+ (potential) orders...
the (potential) orders were more than double but the overall estimate didn't go down ...even marginally...
it shot through the roof ..
putting it OFF the extreme end of the "How much would you be willing to pay for a Neo900 (complete device) with TI DM3730 1GHz/512M-RAM/1GB".. voting survey which was created to test interest at the beginning....
...and possibly even then "we aren't done with the finished cost being altered again?"
going from $1000+ to $1700+ cdn (for me) and "possibly" still climbing?
...it isn't something buyers of any goods or services won't be keen on seeing... just simply accepting an increase like that is awful hard for even Brand-Loyal consumer (us) to simply shrug off ...

The dynamic isn't pleasant with such forecasting.
How many specialty burgers would McDonalds sell if they said they were coming out with a new-type of burger and said they were going to be more expensive?... tops...advertised between 5-7 dollars ...not everybody who eats at McD's may be keen on it..that's a given....many will line up to buy it though...
starving.. the customers lining up waiting for lunch... are presented with a price hike of not the top end at $7 ...(figuring that the price must be hiked to compensate for the projected number of customers not showing up to buy the specialty burger?)..but $11.40....and as the customers come close to the counter to order there is an employee getting ready with the pricing board to possibly mark the specialty burger up higher still?. how many are going to afford it now...few ..precious few would bring enough..some may have come with a little extra....most weren't expecting $7 let alone 8-9-10 or $11...how many customers will express their astonishment, despondency or outrage and/ or simply leave the fast food joint under such inflation..such pricing uncertainty conditions?
Most assuredly the situation escalates with every passing non-commitment ..lack of sale...the new burger then gets more expensive by the drive of the escalating cost and feeds itself...
It become self-fulfilling prophecy

The above scenario of understanding isn't pretty...
I would hope that isn't the case...

Either way regardless..
ALL that being said... the two camps here...
the team who are making the device and the people who want to buy it ...
better flat out get their crap together...
In no particular order...

A-

-IF (and I completely believe it) the device will be so security conscious that essentially there simply isn't anything like it ...safety-wise...past or present
why.. in this over sensitive post-snowden wiki-leak era...in these absolutely perfect conditions..

1-why don't we have more of the security conscious in society to the downright neurotically paranoid average consumer stepping up to purchase? I mean there are literally BILLIONS of paranoid potential purchasers out there...and millions of neurotics with enough cash to buy...so why are we stalled at 423 donators/purchasers?

2-why don't we have the corporations who MUST HAVE secure communications banging down the door to order? A decade ago Blackberry ruled the corporate and business world and their angle was in great part ..the secure communications..they're done and their methods of security with them..and really no one has stepped up to the plate and filled the gap or done even better still..until now with the neo's un-comparable security....so why aren't there the 100 000's...10 000's ...even 1000's of companies and businessmen banging down the door?

3-Why ...(like Mr. Stallman has mentioned many times) ...that Governments MUST have secure systems... and secure linux is what they run... Why are they not banging down the door to purchase everything that is available?

4- IF (and I completely believe it) there is the ability to create such a limited number of devices... 1000 possibly 2000 units...
why isn't that being reflected in a stupidly-rapid escalation of demand?
Demand should be choking the living-crap out of supply ...
There simply should not be one single unit available for purchase... out of the maximum 2000 units (that is the ceiling) to produce ...

Considering all the above "1" to "4" ...there is no reason why... in all of creation's green and pleasant lands ...there shouldn't be one unit left 2 years on now...available for purchase.

Only 400+ people in 2 years ...something is off PR wise....really.

A Seriously professional PR (possibly team) is needed here...really really really badly.
To Pitch it , wrap it up pretty for advertising, directed right at the audience intended.

When I make a "line" of pieces..in a collection...the fact that "there are only these units or a single unit is available" and then...no more..is pitch...part of my pitch also is selling the story behind the pieces..their meanings..selling that they can have the same things ...do the same things..be the same things as me..live the "kind" of life I live...also part of the graphic story I've carved painted..worked.. is little sometimes common...but usually little known and obscure mythology...so imparting to the client the visibly seen yet "hidden" meaning(s) rendered makes the client feel inclusive..part of the story...privileged..to own it...which they should...there is soul to the product...business-wise that is also pitch.....selling "must have" elements...(longevity, quality..etc)..more pitch..diversity..wife wants jewelry, husband wants belt buckles, embellishment work in a favourite gun stock ..etc..more product pitch...and security..."quality hand weapons, knives, swords, blunt and otherwise rendered unique and exquisitely for the protection of self and loved ones..for you, your wife, your kids..some are great for practice..great for training ..all are heirlooms to pass down...quiet..and no reloading bullets required" ...I pitch products across the board...
All told after estimating the intended audience and their needs ..doing some good pitching.. and that usually creates a frenzy right there and the work is sold...

(perhaps in this sitch ..selling the pitch to a more general audience is a good idea...since I see the pitch aiming at a very small section of the hacker community...Broadening that pitch's scope to include the stock-broker, corporate executives in companies who need secure comm. , government security agents, government low-high level officials...etc ...would help I'm sure..)

B-

- to all the donators/ investors...
I know it is hard...despair and feeling hopeless ain't an easy thing to deal with and it isn't a solution...
and I'm sure the team has had enough rough patches of their own and dealt enough with that..

Take a breath...Grit your teeth boys ..
I know that isn't easy...and lets wait a bit ...
It isn't just up to the team to come up with solutions...

We all can help with that...

Being re-active never helped anyone..
It doesn't take control of the sitch.
It's just "responding" to it.
Being pro-active will help.

Wicket, wpwrak and some others voiced that...and I agree..
what is needed are solutions ..alternatives...ideas....
scrutined..
accepted or rejected...

Our best ability as a community of gadgeteers is finding a way... problem solving...
It isn't the ability to "give up"..

Walking out the door because we "hear" or "see" a number isn't an answer...
well it IS an answer...
but it is the wrong one at this point.

joerg_rw

2015-05-06, 19:58

[...]
A-

-IF (and I completely believe it) the device will be so security conscious that essentially there simply isn't anything like it ...safety-wise...past or present
why.. in this over sensitive post-snowden wiki-leak era...in these absolutely perfect conditions..

1-why don't we have more of the security conscious in society to the downright neurotically paranoid average consumer stepping up to purchase? I mean there are literally BILLIONS of paranoid potential purchasers out there...and millions of neurotics with enough cash to buy...so why are we stalled at 423 donators/purchasers?

this is a good point. I hope it will change massively as soon as shop with *true preorders* opens and even more when we can demonstrate a working sample (proto-v2)

2-why don't we have the corporations who MUST HAVE secure communications banging down the door to order? A decade ago Blackberry ruled the corporate and business world and their angle was in great part ..the secure communications..they're done and their methods of security with them..and really no one has stepped up to the plate and filled the gap or done even better still..until now with the neo's un-comparable security....so why aren't there the 100 000's...10 000's ...even 1000's of companies and businessmen banging down the door?

we already had 2 requests from software houses that sell security-improved/hardened phones resp OS for phones, and they are highly interested in cooperating with us. I think I reported about it in IRC and here in TMO

3-Why ...(like Mr. Stallman has mentioned many times) ...that Governments MUST have secure systems... and secure linux is what they run... Why are they not banging down the door to purchase everything that is available?

dunno. There's a certain err... inflexibility in authorities when it comes to such things.

4- IF (and I completely believe it) there is the ability to create such a limited number of devices... 1000 possibly 2000 units...
why isn't that being reflected in a stupidly-rapid escalation of demand?
Demand should be choking the living-crap out of supply ...
There simply should not be one single unit available for purchase... out of the maximum 2000 units (that is the ceiling) to produce ...

This is exactly our problem. For risk parts like N900, 1GByte RAM PoP etc we only know how much we can source when we sourced it. That's why we start the webshop now.

Considering all the above "1" to "4" ...there is no reason why... in all of creation's green and pleasant lands ...there shouldn't be one unit left 2 years on now...available for purchase.

Only 400+ people in 2 years ...something is off PR wise....really.

Well, the UG is just one year old, fundraiser started some 4 months or so earlier iirc. 2 years is a tad exaggerated.

A Seriously professional PR (possibly team) is needed here...really really really badly.
To Pitch it , wrap it up pretty for advertising, directed right at the audience intended.

Yes, that's a valid point. Do you volunteer? We're only 2.5 guys here (depending on how you count it) and none of us is a professional PR guy. It's not easy to find somebody doing professional PR and website maintenance and all that, particularly with that low budget we have. And then this gal or guy must actually understand the project and the concept behind it.

When I make a "line" of pieces..in a collection...the fact that "there are only these units or a single unit is available" and then...no more..is pitch...part of my pitch also is selling the story behind the pieces..their meanings..selling that they can have the same things ...do the same things..be the same things as me..live the "kind" of life I live...also part of the graphic story I've carved painted..worked.. is little sometimes common...but usually little known and obscure mythology...so imparting to the client the visibly seen yet "hidden" meaning(s) rendered makes the client feel inclusive..part of the story...privileged..to own it...which they should...there is soul to the product...business-wise that is also pitch.....selling "must have" elements...(longevity, quality..etc)..more pitch..diversity..wife wants jewelry, husband wants belt buckles, embellishment work in a favourite gun stock ..etc..more product pitch...and security..."quality hand weapons, knives, swords, blunt and otherwise rendered unique and exquisitely for the protection of self and loved ones..for you, your wife, your kids..some are great for practice..great for training ..all are heirlooms to pass down...quiet..and no reloading bullets required" ...I pitch products across the board...
All told after estimating the intended audience and their needs ..doing some good pitching.. and that usually creates a frenzy right there and the work is sold...

(perhaps in this sitch ..selling the pitch to a more general audience is a good idea...since I see the pitch aiming at a very small section of the hacker community...Broadening that pitch's scope to include the stock-broker, corporate executives in companies who need secure comm. , government security agents, government low-high level officials...etc ...would help I'm sure..)

B-

- to all the donators/ investors...
I know it is hard...despair and feeling hopeless ain't an easy thing to deal with and it isn't a solution...
and I'm sure the team has had enough rough patches of their own and dealt enough with that..

Take a breath...Grit your teeth boys ..
I know that isn't easy...and lets wait a bit ...
It isn't just up to the team to come up with solutions...

We all can help with that...

Being re-active never helped anyone..
It doesn't take control of the sitch.
It's just "responding" to it.
Being pro-active will help.

Wicket, wpwrak and some others voiced that...and I agree..
what is needed are solutions ..alternatives...ideas....
scrutined..
accepted or rejected...

Our best ability as a community of gadgeteers is finding a way... problem solving...
It isn't the ability to "give up"..

Walking out the door because we "hear" or "see" a number isn't an answer...
well it IS an answer...
but it is the wrong one at this point.

Thanks for this, couldn't have put it better. Also from my mouth it would sound somewhat strange ;)

cheers
/j

sulu

2015-05-06, 20:34

-IF (and I completely believe it) the device will be so security conscious that essentially there simply isn't anything like it ...safety-wise...past or present
why.. in this over sensitive post-snowden wiki-leak era...in these absolutely perfect conditions..Because there is no "over sensitive post-snowden wiki-leak era".
Sure, there is Snowden and there is Wikileaks, but it didn't create a new era. Some people noticed it, but it's just a tiny avalanche running down a random mountain that barely derserves the name. It's not a huge glacier announcing a new ice age.
It just looks big from your perspective (and from mine and everyone else's in this thread) because we happen to be right inside the avalanche.
Everybody else in the world doesn't care. Most don't even notice.

why don't we have more of the security conscious in society to the downright neurotically paranoid average consumer stepping up to purchase? I mean there are literally BILLIONS of paranoid potential purchasers out there...and millions of neurotics with enough cash to buy...so why are we stalled at 423 donators/purchasers?Because these BILLIONS you see don't exist. How many billion people worldwide are even in a potential position to think about such a bagatelle topic like a "privacy phone"? One?

I talked to several people I know personally about the Neo900. Most of them are intelligent people (well, at least I like to think so, otherwise I wouldn't talk to them). They all find the Neo900 a good idea, but none of them is as IT- or privacy-affine as I am. They are just not willing to pay 500 Euros (original optimistic estimate) for a device that to them is essentially a heavily outdated smartphone.
They just don't care enough for privacy to do that - just as I don't care enough for healthy food to stay away from frozen pizza, or for fair production to stay away from electronics made in China from resources mined somewhere in Africa.
How many people who care enough to consider buying a Neo900 do you know? ("know" as in: "I drink a beer with him every friday evening.")

endsormeans

2015-05-06, 20:51

Well...1 and 2(especially good news that..I must have missed the mee-mo :D),
3(well ALL gov't's inflexibility I completely understand...I forgot for a moment exactly the kind of entity we are dealing with...they'll get on board 20 years after the fact... after spending billions on the necessary studies to see if it is viable and cost effective :D) BUT...just as an example..my federal gov't went all out and gave all the ministers working ..top of the line (at the time) Electrovaya slates ..most expensive model they carried at the time...when gov't does finally commit...they don't mess around.
4- yes number 4...yes I understand it is a worry to source the parts asap...but it is also an edge...the best. If there can only ever be 1000...perhaps at best 2000 units...ever.
(unless a new compatible body design is created for the 2nd run ...the neo901..in the future..even then..for this 1st run)...
there isn't a "false" supply (report) created here for the purposes of marketing to drive interest, demand..this is dictated by the availability of the needed parts...
.this is a huge bonus...
there could only ever be 2000 units produced..ever...
THAT is a huge hook...the best.
Because it's honest, it's true. Plain and easy for all to see.
That alone is more than enough fuel to drive demand.

Volunteer?
well...whatever way I'm capable enough for ..sure...
don't know how I could help...
1-My webwork skills I think are adequate at best...
2-Design wise sure...but my speed in delivery I cannot say would be lightning ...it always depends on the quality, complexity and/ or simplicity required.
3-PR...I'm not sure I could do it...the shmoozing ..my necessary contacts here to do it right...know exactly who to interact with to get things moving "I-know-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy-I-can-put-you-in-touch-with" network in this field of interest ...the people I know to talk to and they to talk to people they know...It is far away from the work I do and the people who I know and interact with to accomplish it ...to put us in the "loop" ..get us that exposure... art, rare collectibles, that kind of field and those who are in it... is a different beast to the handheld tech world...not saying the neo isn't a rare collectible :D ...it is...just a different shade of horse compared to the llama I'm riding :D

But whatever way anyone thinks I could help ...
sure...
I wouldn't "try"..."trying" ..I "tried" ...is the expression of failure before the fact.
But I'd give 'er a shot and do what I could...
how's that..?

endsormeans

2015-05-06, 21:14

Well I've enlightened more than a few beer drinkin' buddies onto the neo...they are watching...some of them have the coin and like their toys...they're the wasteful kind...buy the next top end whatever when it comes out...for example..one of them buys a brand new 80 000 dollar truck..then trades it in next year for the next...he doesn't care about the loss he's incurring...I personally am not so cavalier...but some of my friends are quite free with their money...when it comes to having the "best" of anything.
As far as most of humanity being oblivious...
I don't know about that.
Thing is...
the media are ALWAYS keeping the people (regardless of the country) reminded how unsafe they are ...how unsecure..it's the natural fear-mongering element the media does...24 hours a day...7 days a week...alll year long...regardless of holidays...
Sure most people try to forget about it...daily...but the thought is there..
Sure some think..apathetically and say "nothing can be done"..or "I-have-nothing-to-hide.." so it's ok for me...but still the thought is in their heads..from print, radio, tv, and internet.
It's bringing the neo solution into their faces and showing the alternative.

Just as ..in the media there are more and more stories about the husband/wife/lover/coworker/boss/....."stalker" (no other word suitable here)...who has hacked into the poor victims's phone and is "with" them ...knowing every move...every spoken word..everything..unbeknownst to the victim...just one media story...
http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/local/2014/10/21/stealthgenie-smartphone-app-stalking/17650361/
or even online services which provide this service now..for the no other word for it...the "stalker"...and sure the authorities shut down the "app" ...until the next easy stalking "app" pops up ..under the guise of "monitoring your children's safety " or-what-have-you...
And I'm sure the numbers of those who were victims, are victims or are about to become victims ...are legion.
THERE...RIGHT THERE ...IS ONE PERFECT GROUP IN SOCIETY ...REGARDLESS OF BORDERS... TO FOCUS SALES ON.
I would suggest contacting such support groups (non-profit, government and for profit) for those who have been terrorized in such a way...
they would see the neo as a HUGE relief...
How many here wouldn't spend almost every penny they had to safeguard their wife, mother, sister or kids...if suddenly it were realized they were being stalked?
If I couldn't get my hands on them to kill them....I'd sell every gold crown in my mouth if that's all I had to keep them safe.
I'm sure the neo would sell out of stock.. to that special interest group alone...
Peace for the victim and the victims family ...from fear...from worry...that is worth a lot of money...and in the situation or afterwards (for that matter)...many would unhesitaitingly pay.
Thank you sulu ...your post helped with a bit of good brainstorming.

Edit: Not to mention...the platform of "keeping your wife,kids, and family safe from stalkers.. predators ...from the evil elements in society..." why that is candy to a political party...I don't know too many governments or their elected oppostions who wouldn't unanimously support such incentives, bill, passings, monies to be given out ...for a politician it's a quintessential "brass ring" platform to take. It's part of an election re-election platform...It's the kissing-the-baby photo opportunity not to be passed up.
Opposing such incentive makes the individual look worse than a fascio-commo-capitalisto endorsing baby killing-rapist-murderers...If I could integrate all three reviled concepts in one...hehe ...
Politically the neo is the perfect product to endorse...and perfect timing...
Regardless of target audience...it's about how to read that audience in question...how to phrase and word the proposition...how to "work" the product into their needs... into convincing that the product is necessary..needed...essential. One of the neo's qualities...The neo's stated security ...gives that assurance ...little is needed to convince other than a sentence or two of choice words...put together exactly. then you have the bullet-proof pitch.
Even better is visuals...
print is great ...but limited to subscribers...
radio is great but same thing again..
television commercial spots are too expensive...and you have to hope your targets are watching...forget it.

internet is as cheap as it gets...

decent camera...a couple 1 minute commercials..

say one highlighting the in use greatness and versatility of the neo.

another with a mom and her baby shopping ..and unbeknownst and oblivious to them...But the viewer becoming aware of a stalker or potential stalker...threatening their peace..
and the neo she owns thwarting the attack.

Bam.
Sure it sounds cheesy ...but I assure you ...
whoever sees it will be sold.

A fabricated scenario with the camera / audience / viewer being helpless to only watch... banging on the proverbial soundproof glass at the mom and baby .....to "watch-out" for the "bad guy."..and then then..."whew" ...the neo intercedes...ach..no need to worry.. these two are fine...
It's a foregone that it will be flat-out instant CAPTIVATED consumer interest.
Think about it...
how much...how valuable..how coveted.. is peace from fear and terror worth?
Especially when one has or is experiencing it?

This is working the psyche of the target audience properly...

It isn't "manipulating" or "playing" the audience or "fabricating" or fear-mongering anything that isn't already there ...
these societal diseases exist now...
and the cure is the neo

hehe..
101 of advertising, art and the psyche
...the use of stimuli to elicit the desired response...
with colour, image, placement, symbolism, archetypes etc...
In this case it is visualizing and bringing to life an innate societal fear..
the viewer is forced to think "this could be my mom / wife / sister...someone I care about.."
that is powerful imagery.

Toss 'er up on youtube...
it's as low budget as it gets...
but EVERYONE can see it..
email out links of the videos and flood the planet aiming at target audiences globally ...tech reviewers..news and media outlets...everyone that has an e-mail address (I know it "sounds" like "spam"..but I wouldn't call it "spam" if it is to aid in the legitimate and noble cause of stopping stalkers, predators and ne'er-do-well's ...would you? :D...) that has the power to spread that "Wholesome Neo Goodness" to the world...gotta send it to people who have audience reach...freakin' Oprah ..whoever...don't just "hope" it goes viral...engineer it ...

Anyway..just an idea ...
however the tack is taken with the target audiences..
however it is said, written, expressed and/ or visualized.....
if how the product is expressed - explained to work... (..pitched just right) making it no different than it's real life working...
you have the audience believing in you.
(too many times a product is "advertised" to have something ..the reality cannot deliver... and so it fails)
Essentially... aim well ..say it well..and the audience will follow.

wpwrak

2015-05-07, 01:10

"keeping your wife,kids, and family safe from stalkers.. predators

Keeping your family safe from real and imaginary threats for sure is a noble goal, but what really worries the man on the street is something else:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M

(John Oliver interviewing Edward Snowden.)

- Werner

endsormeans

2015-05-07, 02:05

how have I never heard of this host? (probably because ..I'm on an island at the edge of civilization and the known world...maybe...)
I have to watch this guy now...
funny, educating and illuminating...
all in every single sentence...
the guy is terrific at delivering disturbing news with comforting hilarity.

Hmmm...yea..the patriot act ...that alone...
the timing though is perfect for the neo ..
this is a gift from the gods..er..snowden...um secret services everywhere? :D
This whole program ...so far...(still watching)...
just further states the case of pervasive media fear-mongering concerning surveillance alone...
this should be harnessed as a selling point for the neo ...
to safeguard the privacy of american "junk" everywhere...
it's low-hanging fruit ready to be plucked....so to speak :D

HtheB

2015-05-07, 02:48

So... when is the Neo900 going to be released...

After the apocalypse?....

nokiabot

2015-05-07, 03:04

dear endo pls make your posts consise :( also your english is a bit diffrently styled that makes it hard for some to follow up :)

endsormeans

2015-05-07, 03:19

ah...sorry there nokiabot...
yea those 2 posts were thick...
some of my thorough explanation unfortunately get a little thick...
and that last one was posting whilst watching that snowden interview.....clean the "vague" edges there.
What nokiabot don't like the writing method?
It's perfect for mobile devices...
I call it endsoku...
my version of haiku . :D

What may be most confusing are the Shakespearean-esque "asides"...I usually put in brackets

good interview...yea...an audience that doesn't get the pitch....
but when a common understanding...a common fear..
which for the american people happens to be the gov't collecting "dik pix" well...then they are completely understanding and attentive...
all about the angle of approach and pitch.

Bearserker

2015-05-07, 08:35

Being re-active never helped anyone..
It doesn't take control of the sitch.
It's just "responding" to it.
Being pro-active will help.

I would really be happy to be more "active" than "reactive", as endsormeans tries to encourage us, but my skills in kernel developpment and electronics are insufficient to actively help and speed up things in these fields.
So, the only things I can bring are, like many of us, analysis and ideas.
- To bring accurate analysis, we need more informations. The cost didn't doubled from one day to the next, and being informed just now it's a fact doesn't allow to be proactive on anything. I think that's what sulu called "lack of transparency" : people have to actively search informations and constantly watch the project to have an idea on how it evolves.
- To bring ideas, I'm ok, but one idea (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=94212) I submited (monthes ago) is still unanswered. It let me figure that Neo900UG doesn't have enough time to evaluate these kind of ideas, so I shouldn't waste energy to propose them. Sad, because this one could have involved some skilled actors and new donators interrested by such a project.

So, the best way to help I've considered until now is to put money aside, make a donation and pry something affordable will come out of this project.
If I'm wrong, just tell here how we could help, and I'm sure there will be volunteers.

Sorry for the disillusioned tone.

pichlo

2015-05-07, 10:15

@endsormeans, tucked away neatly in your carving workshop, you do not have much experience with governments and corporations, do you? ;)

I can just see it: government or large corp officials banging on the door of a small team of 2.5, developing a niche device in their spare time, with no clear plans or a roadmap, with 4+ years outdated components, incompatible with anything else, running hoping that maybe some day it will run a derivate of an OS that said officials consider highly suspicious... Oh yeah baby!

That is not how it works. Have a product ready, with a proven track record, that you can just take off the shelf and sell in tens of thousands, then they might take a smidgen of a notice. Until then, you can dream.

reinob

2015-05-07, 10:48

- To bring ideas, I'm ok, but one idea (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=94212) I submited (monthes ago) is still unanswered. It let me figure that Neo900UG doesn't have enough time to evaluate these kind of ideas, so I shouldn't waste energy to propose them. Sad, because this one could have involved some skilled actors and new donators interrested by such a project.

OpenBSD had a reason for being famous 15-20 years ago when security sucked, also in Linux. Things have changed, and a default installation of a minimal debian (which loosely corresponds to a default installation of openbsd) is (give or take) just as secure.

OpenBSD is about the core system. With it you have nothing to work with on a "phone" (or a mobile computer with telephone capabilities). So yes, it might be possible at some point to run OpenBSD, or even OS/2, but you cannot reasonably be asking Jörg to take care of this.

Let's hope we get a working Neo900 with *anything* running on it, be it Maemo or Debian (which are the likely candidates). THEN we can talk OpenBSD.

Bearserker

2015-05-07, 12:53

I let you explain openBSD guys why their constant code audit is useless.
And I'm not so definitive about linux's security : if I want a very secured mobile device, I would tend to trust peoples who make security their first concern more than the others.
Today, I don't know well the security level of a minimal debian installation... But on last September, wasn't bash the default shell of debian ? :p

Anyway, I think you miss the point (and I would be happy this discussion took place on the other topic 5 monthes ago).
I'm not saying "Making OpenBSD run on Neo900 should be a priority"
But "Do you think OpenBSD could run on Neo900 ? OpenBSD community may be happy to be aware an open phone oriented toward security and privacy is about to exist... Furthermore if it's open enough to let them a chance to make their OS run on it"

If this project interests many communities (especially security focused ones), far more peoples could contribute and donate.
From now, I almost didn't heard of Neo900 elsewhere than on this forum. It make me think we probably miss a wide number of potential contributors. :(

reinob

2015-05-07, 13:26

I let you explain openBSD guys why their constant code audit is useless.

Nah. Was just being a bit provocative :)

The thing is: the only thing Jörg & co. could do would be to approach OpenBSD (post in mailing list or forum, etc.) and do some PR. I think they have enough to do with what they have to do.

BUT! Nothing stops *you* from doing that!

As an additional comment, I'd be careful with making any security claims about the Neo900 (or any hardware). There *is* one big security-related advantage, and that is the fact that the CPU (software) can sandbox the SIM. This cannot be underestimated. It is a BIG THING.

... nevertheless too low-level. It's not like OpenBSD or most OSs have even a concept of what a SIM card is (in the context of the OS). So from the software point of view there's no security advantage (or selling point).

So it's not like anyone will go and say "hey, my SIM is sandboxed, I can now disable my firewall" :)

So the only "selling point" would be the vague, fuzzy, idea of having something related to "security" in common. This of course may trigger some interest in security-minded people, but the problem with the Neo900 is that you have to want it no-matter-what. I don't think marketing will do anything for this project. Either you wanted the Neo900 before it was even conceived as a plan, or you didn't. If you did and you got the bucks you'll buy it (and I will).

People who didn't dream of this like 3-4 years ago are unlikely to be interested in it.
They will root/mod their android S[N+1] crap and pretend they have made a conscious, balanced, choice and that they're "secure enough" and "private enough". After all, most don't even know what's fu^H^Hhitting them left and right all the time. And those who know have learned to live with it.

So no, I don't expect masses of people joining the Neo900 ranks at this stage. Not even from oh-so-security-minded OpenBSD people.

But that's just my opinion. Hopefully I'm wrong.

sulu

2015-05-07, 20:53

Keeping your family safe from real and imaginary threats for sure is a noble goal, but what really worries the man on the street is something else:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11MWow! An interview with Snowden culminating in a discussion about Oliver's junk - of 33 centimet... err... minutes length. :eek:

Feathers McGraw

2015-05-07, 22:33

Today, I don't know well the security level of a minimal debian installation... But on last September, wasn't bash the default shell of debian ? :p

I take your point, but your example isn't strictly accurate: /bin/sh was symlinked to /bin/dash (Debian Almquist SHell) not BASH. BASH was only used in interactive user logins, there was actually quite a big fuss when Debian made the switch because all the bashisms had to be removed from system scripts.

Anyway, back on topic...

I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days. I didn't want to make any rash decisions, but I've come to the disappointing realisation that I just can't afford a Neo900. The new price is literally the only thing, I love the concept and I've really enjoyed following the project (I've read every single post in this thread). I would just feel too guilty if I spent this much money on it.

Please don't misinterpret this as trolling, I really do want this project to be a success! In fact I was so sure this was going to be the device for me that I donated EUR200 instead of 100 when I discovered it. I guess that money really will be a donation now, but I don't mind... put it to good use!

I still believe in the project and think it'll be a success for those who can afford it, I'll just have to satisfy myself with the knowledge that although I won't get the device, some of you will.

I look forward to seeing all the cool things you achieve with it (I'll still be reading, don't let me down!).

xman

2015-05-09, 05:30

So am I to understand that ($1,111?) this is the new final price (trending up)? Or are we coming to conclusions based on an unofficial number that is a mixed of GDC-UG transfer, paypal, bank transfer and career pigeon?

So if we instead focus on unit tiers, could we basically flood the web tech sites with this project? Or is it too late? We need some better tier numbers, so if we are @ 423 donations how many now do we need to reduce the price by say 300 eur or 500 eur?

If PR is needed, then I could step up and help with some of the design. But ppl with social networks should be blasting the device attributes to all.

I never invasion that this would be cost old 1990's high pda cost Newton ($1,000), psion ($549), Sony MagicLink ($1100), even some window ce devices. But the truth is We Are The Cutting Edge and the 1st devices cost a ***** amount of money with no guarantee of any longevity. I'm not happy with this price change but perhaps we still have an opportunity to change our own cost by helping spread the word.

Btw, I original voted for 700 eur as my top price ... time to save more.

So is there still time?

x

endsormeans

2015-05-09, 06:54

990 euros = $1111 usd (for the board alone)... 1140 euros = $1279.37 usd...(for a finished device)
that figure is before any fees, taxes, vat, shipping, handling, duty, all-or-some of the above are applied.
And of course saying... there are no possible future increases in this base new estimate....

From what I savvy... as well...it is still an estimate...based on 2 things:

1- obvious seriously-committed donors/ downpayments at the initial 100 euros + more...
and...
2- fuzzy-appearing not-sure-if-some-are-committed donors/ down payments consisting of only the base 100 euros or less and haven't yet committed more. (Making it unclear whether the monies are a pure donation or are meant as a down payment for a device...yet..which could influence the course of the projected estimate up or down..possibly...)

Which..when put in a proper context means..."DON'T PANIC" .

All the people who haven't committed further yet than the initial 100 euro expectation but still want one (for a moment ..forget there is this new estimate revision at least for the moment) should still... at least ...I dunno..pipe-up here and "voice" they (still) want one...also with the shop opening shortly ...purchasing numbers reflecting committed movement will help..
certainty and reassurance always stabilize situations ...
it'll help get the "fuzzy uncertain" down payments as firm "yes" or "no" commitments..and so in turn stabilize the projected estimate and reign it in...

In other words...the more people who bail out because of the estimate..the more likely the estimate won't be an "estimate"...but fact"...

the more people who have committed that stay = the instability calms.

the more "fence-sitters" (100 euros or less) who commit = the new estimate should lessen..

the more new down payments/ purchasers come on board = the price goes down.

It's called holding your ground...and not bolting..

And yea xman I'm sure whatever conceivable possible methods to bring that price down would be welcomed I'm sure.

As far as timelines go...
Good question...
I imagine with this price estimate revision ...the more additional time customers have to dig deeper to come up with that much more would be welcome as well.
I'm sure some of us may not bat an eye..whereas other customers may need weeks, months, even a good half year to save enough to come up with the difference...

For what it's worth...
From me ..
100 euros at the start of all it all...
then after transferring that to the UG ...an additional 100 euros...
and not so long ago an additional 273 euros...
I'm seriously committed..
there's my voice..and I'm sure it isn't the only one.

Boemien

2015-05-09, 15:52

is there a way to pay per month «kidding of course :D :D» ? Because the final estimation is very high. Living in Canada as Endsormeans pointed it out...we have to expect taxes, vat, shipping fees «in sus» ! I did not buy another phone, waiting for the Neo but at this price.....better stick with my old n900 or take a new androphone! really I was ready to spend maxi 700$ or 100$ more but starting to 900$, it's psychologically impossible. And when it will be out, won't it be obsolete ?

Boemien

2015-05-09, 15:57

the project was soooooo exciting! now I'm sooooooo wondering :confused::rolleyes::o !!!!

Malakai

2015-05-09, 17:54

If you want more people to buy a Neo900 you have to target the kind of people who would be interested in it.

My opinion is that you shouldn't waist money on advertisement for the masses as the masses won't be interested in the Neo900.

If you want to get some advertisement targeting the right people I think somebody (official, like someone working on the Neo900) should contact Hak5 as they have a show talking about GNU/Linux, security, privacy and hacking and I think that their audience could be interested in the project.

Twitter (http://twitter.com/hak5)
Facebook (http://facebook.com/technolust)
Google + (http://gplus.to/hak5)
Website (http://hak5.org/)

endsormeans

2015-05-09, 18:25

I do not believe in wastin time or money period...
but sanity, reality and numbers dictate that taking aim at an elite savvy 1% ...
you'll be lucky to end up a fraction of that 1%.
Marketing any salable product ONLY to a very specialized marginal segment of society is not just madness it's suicide.

For example:
If I market a new vodka...which normally would sell to ...everyone..
but my new marketing strategy is to only aim my advertising campaign at mix-ologistic scientists who are (as far as I'm concerned) the only ones competent and capable enough to make drinks properly with it.. according to "my" thinking of what the general population of vodka consumer's intellect is capable of handling...

how many people...
how many sales are going to be generated?
It'll be catastrophic.

I'm not just speaking out of my hat here...there are similarities with what I do...
for example ...the neo info on the neo webpage ...states allll the cool things and abilities and functions which can be accomplished with said device...the applications are limited only by the imagination of the owner ...essentially.
Same goes for what I do...just in antler alone...the things that can be applied are virtually limitless.
Most folks narrowly think ..antler knife handle...only...or moose antler cribbage board....only.
Because that is the stereotype of the limit of what they've seen or understand.
Same goes for the neo and the smartphone market.
The limitations of android and iphone are apparent to us...
the average consumer does not realize they can have more...
it is up to us to explain that...not shut the door in their faces saying "It's beyond them"...or .."It's beyond their interests"...that's just stereotyping and making an elitist divisive "Us vs Them" mentality... that won't help sales and is truly working against the process of bringing people on board...needlessly.

If I let the consumers dictate on their limited understanding what I "should" do, "could" do or "can" do or "how" I should market a product..
because I assume they won't want it due to whatever I "think" that they are "thinking"...
or because I aim at a segment who I think are the "only" ones to "get" where I'm coming from..
I'd be shutting out pretty much everyone other than "God's chosen few"...and that is madness and suicide business-wise.
..I wouldn't make so many cool stuff out of it...I would be limited to cribbage boards and knife handles and I would lose out on 99% more potential sales in other areas as a consequence.
Fact is I make alllll kinds of jewelries, clasps, hasps, cases, inlays, embellishments, parts, toys, curios, etc...
the applications are endless...
and consequently I can aim at other segments of the buying public ..
I'm not limited to selling to a miniscule percentage of it.
And when the consumer sees the variety of application ..they also see that there is something for them as well...and that means more sales for me.

p.s. - Love HAK5 :D

hxka

2015-05-09, 18:44

if we are @ 423 donations how many now do we need to reduce the price by say 300 eur or 500 eur?

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1369348&postcount=5

Tens of thousands, probably hundreds :(

Swordfish II

2015-05-09, 23:02

The whole reason I didn't put money into this originally is it still whiffs of vaporware.

As soon as a couple ship, I will jump in...but not before that for all the reasons you stated.

stevenc

2015-05-10, 00:42

The best outcome I see here is maybe a short run of 100 devices with the originally planned spec. They may cost a fortune, but developers and reviewers would get their hands on those and that would likely reignite enthusiasm in the project. With continued interest and some more small donations I hope there would be a second run, and it might be known by then how to lower the unit price, if newer components come on the market or some unsuccessful features are cut out. Either way it seems worthwhile to me, if only for the open documentation and designs that are being produced along the way, which are likely helpful to other or future projects.

fidel

2015-05-10, 01:10

Good to hear that the project is moving forward.

I look forward to placing my order as soon as I receive my voucher.

Thank You for all your hard work.

wicket

2015-05-10, 02:06

endsormeans

2015-05-10, 05:18

I think a big issue/ question very much worth aiming at ...
which was grazed in passing by Boemien...
what about the possibility of monthly payments?

And for that matter ...
How close are we now to assembly, production and shipping?...
and when would total payment due be required by?..
honestly...
no exact date required...roughly is more than adequate...
weeks...month...months...1/4 of a year...1/2 a year?
(I'm not in any way slamming a lengthy timespan....)
the more time ...could be better...
especially "if" the price (with fees) stays at the estimated...or possibly increases...
it would give breathing room to many... to play catch up.

@hxka - possibly ...it is quite possible you are correct ..it may take alot more ...

@swordfish II -Looks like you've got a win-win position there.

-if it fails (which I personally do not believe is going to happen) due to a lack of enough people willing to commit when it was needed ...(speaking for myself.. ) your (and to all others thinking the same) commitment and support to help make this happen was appreciated.
(I don't think a sarcasm emoticon is necessary here ...I think I made it thick enough in statement for it to be apparent.)

-if it succeeds (which I personally do believe is going to happen) ...I wish you all the best thinking you'll be able to just "order" one when the ship is sailing from port and shipping is commencing...like it is a Dell laptop waiting... pre-assembled just for you... in the warehouse.
and while on this topic... including a response simultaneously to stevenc's comment
I think reading how difficult it is going to be to source parts that are becoming harder and rarer by the day to get (as it is now)..creating just a 100 units is a grand idea...doesn't mean it will be possible to make more later though... due to a (more than likely) lack of needed parts.

mikegioia

2015-05-10, 12:18

joerg_rw

2015-05-10, 13:24

The cost estimate page doesn't state whether the estimate includes a modem or not. I assume it includes a PLS8 (LTE) modem and that the different PLS8 models are similarly priced. Can we have some clarification on this please?

Yes, the estmation is based on PLS8-E. PHS8 is probably a 20 or 30 bucks cheaper, while I'd expect all PLS8 variants to be same price (Note that Gemalto recently came up with the PLS8-X variant which is PLS8-US + one band). For PXS8 we didn't even find a supplier yet and thus no price tag either, though we plan to get the bulk of modems from a supplier closer to "the source" and thus prices and availability should change a bit anyway.

For the monthly payments: I haven't looked into how that would get handled by our shop. For me personally it means more overhead to review and assign the payments (manual process), for you it means additional (bank/PP) fees for multiple payments.

Since it seems it's somewhat unclear: we ask for DOWN PAYMENT now, which is a 350EUR for the NeoN board and a 480EUR for complete device, and we will source critical components with unclear future availability and/or long lead time / shipping time from that. Particularly for the complete Neo900 down payment we will source complete refurbished N900 right now, and it's pretty unclear if we could source more of them later on within a few days for late orders that come in when production starts or even for a second batch.

@endsormeans: 1/2 a year maybe. Sourcing of N900 alone takes maybe 3 months or more.
sidenote update: a 500 PoP chips should arrive by Monday. They sit in fedex center 15km from destination. Total sourcing time for those been almost a year, incl all investigations etc.

/j

joerg_rw

2015-05-10, 15:04

[...]We want to announce the whole ensemble of closely connected things (shop, how payments are calculated taking into account existing loans, and the new cost calculation) together, to avoid mistakes and confusion.

We're currently testing the shop and preparing the corresponding announcement and usage instructions. We hope to have the grand opening in a few days.[...]

follow up:

we started sending out emails (http://neo900.org/shop-letter) to all our customers. Newsletter will follow shortly

cheers
jOERG

endsormeans

2015-05-10, 15:25

concerning everything . Fabulous. Allll-around.
1/2 a year away? great. That buys alotta people time.
Also... even though peeps may spend a little more socking away installments to you ...it's consistent money flow...a lot more people could handle the process of that ...$50 or $75 or $100 or $125 or $150 or whatever... per month is something people can realistically budget for.... than reeling from the punch of a monstrous bill coming due...that forces many to rethink committing to the project.

stevenc

2015-05-10, 16:57

I guess starting to pay 100EUR/mo. *now* means that within 3-4 months, the down payment is enough to guarantee you a NeoN board; and after another 6 months the full purchase price is paid off, perhaps in time for it starting to ship. Less if you've already donated.

Any distributor could offer to rent or resell some devices like a commercial phone contract. But 45EUR x 24months would only cover the unit cost of a handset, whereas they'd be looking to make a healthy profit and insure against returns under warranty (including fraudulent cases due to owner negligence) and their handling costs. It'd surely cost more than 100EUR/mo. with all that factored in, so no better than my suggestion above.

peterleinchen

2015-05-10, 17:55

What I would really like to know is the real number of supporters left which do not care about that (horrendous) new price tag. Especially those who will go for the 'down payment'!
As I read here lots of folks seems to be forced to quit (and I have to admit I am not sure what to do :().
So right now it seems we had 423 early '100€-orders'.
All calculations are based on that number.
If a 100 (or even more, like 200 or even 250) quit that would for sure affect the price of the device. And I am sure and afraid not to the positive.

Could you please give us an estimation?
I know this may sound pessimistic and even force a few people to not go for a Neo. But for me this is a needed information.

I have no clue how you/we could get a realistic number of orders before orders have been placed in the web shop. Any ideas (poll, new donation, ...)?

endsormeans

2015-05-10, 19:01

from peter - "If a 100 (or even more, like 200 or even 250) quit that would for sure affect the price of the device. " - in reference to the new estimated price tag.
I concur considering the revised price...based on just the figure alone ...many may immediately come to the conclusion it is beyond them...

hence my suggestion of relief from that in the shape and form of understanding when board/ device completion rough-estimated time-frame would be... so people know what they are wrestling with and can realistically figure a budget and save toward it or possibly pay installments...
More people are apt to stay.. instead of leave... if there is a rough timeline to budget toward or methods in place to reduce the pressure to something manageable

joerg_rw

2015-05-10, 19:48

[...]
Could you please give us an estimation?
[...]I have no clue how you/we could get a realistic number of orders before orders have been placed in the web shop. Any ideas (poll, new donation, ...)?
So, neither do I, sorry. I just can say I am quite optimistic that the inevitable loss of customers can get overcompensated by new customers who just waited for a proper 'normal' way to really order a device (with finalized specs) in a legally binding way they can handle in their (commercial?) accounting.

cheers
jOERG

[edit] for each user in here stating that s/he's out, I seen one that stated to eagerly wait for the shop to open, either in here, or in IRC, or in private email. Of course the more anxious posts like the above will show up here, the more this feeling will spread. And this also works the other way around, each optimistic (or at least missing or neutral) post in here will possibly convice a few more old customers, or even attract new ones. One thing's for sure: I don't hope for *any* device getting sold when the price would rise even more - which in turn means that I'm personally convinced we can keep this price or even get it down (unless EUR exchange rate drops through the ground), or I wouldn't know how to continue this project. Hint: it's an age old wisdom of PR that it's always the disgruntled people who get active and vocal.

peterleinchen

2015-05-10, 19:53

...based on just the figure alone ...many may immediately come to the conclusion it is beyond them...
...
More people are apt to stay.. instead of leave... if there is a rough timeline to budget toward or methods in place to reduce the pressure to something manageableHow do you know? I did not see 423 comments here. (do not mix your wishes with reality, even you -and me- would like it to happen)

And I would like to know that numbers.

endsormeans

2015-05-10, 20:23

I don't think I'm mixing what I wish for compared to the reality of what is...
No I can't speak for 422 people..
I can only speak for this here 423rd person typing this post.
I'm quite pragmatic.
I have always followed a strict personal policy of monthly setting aside EXACTLY so much "mad money" saving it or spending it for whatever I want.
If suddenly it was stated right now that the total was needed... complete payment in weeks or a month or two... even...
totaling $1500 or $1700
I'd be hard pressed to justify the pint of blood...dipping into other funds or using clean empty 0-balance credit cards (I absolutely loathe credit cards and the companies ...a (barely) necessary evil in my opinion)
My policy is that I don't make exceptions to my rule of how much more I can add to the top of my personal "mad money" ceiling...
since some other area of necessity starts to take the hit.
And if I started doing it for a neo...why not other things as well..eh? :D
( I'm pretty pragmatic, as a consequence of my stern pragmatic behaviour I am beholden to no man, company or outstanding bill or debt of any kind ..whatsoever..everything has been paid in full..When I die..no one will be owed anything. I'm one of the last "free men" so to speak...can't say it doesn't take effort :D)
wouldn't like it but..odds are I'd leave the race...
Knowing vs not knowing when roughly final payment is due means everything.

It means I can realistically budget and afford it
or
It is unrealistic, impossible and cannot continue financial support toward a purchase of a device and must drop out of the race as well ...
plain and simple.

So yeah it isn't wishing...it's assessing ...it's calculating.
I'm sure others will be doing likewise.

Ilew

2015-05-10, 21:25

How do you know? I did not see 423 comments here. (do not mix your wishes with reality, even you -and me- would like it to happen)

And I would like to know that numbers.

I doubt they'll know the numbers until people start putting down the down payments when the shop opens.

stevenc

2015-05-10, 21:55

What I'd really like to know is:

"Down-payments to the amount of 350 EUR for a NeoN board or 480 EUR for complete Neo900 device are needed by XXXX-XX-XX to guarantee one will be built for you to purchase later. The sum of your prior donations (before interest) will count towards this.

"Current pricing estimates are shown at http://neo900.org/estimate and we hope to start shipping in QX XXXX. To claim your device, you will have up to X months from that date to pay the final purchase price, less your down payment (and [non-compound] interest applied to donations that were received before XXXX-XX-XX at a rate of 2% per month)."

p.s. joerg: I made a down-payment of 300 EUR last month because that's what was requested at the time, in order to guarantee a NeoN board; you're saying this has increased and a second payment is needed now?

p.p.s. for some future project or re-run, a monthly subscription sounds like something that should be accommodated if at all possible (including better automation for handling such payments). It could make for more steady project funding for R&D, and for risk purchases at intervals. It would help to more accurately gauge interest and estimate the number of devices to build, because you could see each month as subscriptions are created/cancelled. And I agree with endsormeans it makes it easier to budget and cover the final purchase price as a potential buyer.

endsormeans

2015-05-10, 22:31

@stevenc
contents of your pps are an excellent idea...

joerg_rw

2015-05-10, 22:37

p.s. joerg: I made a down-payment of 300 EUR last month because that's what was requested at the time, in order to guarantee a NeoN board; you're saying this has increased and a second payment is needed now?
Hello stevenc!
[answers to rest of your questions follow in later posts]
Sorry for the inconvenience! Please just proceed to the shop and use your voucher to do a normal order, for payment method select "Bank transfer". In "special instructions" field mention "pre-start down payment". Then send me a reminder email with your order/invoice code and I set your down payment order status to "paid". This is a one-time thing I do for this particular case for compensating that I told you an incorrect value. It's not killing the project when one person (you) pays the "missing" 50 with final invoice/payment :)

cheers
jOERG

stevenc

2015-05-10, 22:55

Please just proceed to the shop and

yes, I meant as soon as you received your voucher mail, see http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1469852&postcount=2456

It's not killing the project when one person (you) pays the "missing" 50 with final invoice/payment :)

I might as well pay a bit more at this time, I get a rather good exchange rate on EUR currency at the moment, and I think you still pay interest on these down payments? [Edit: okay, you don't]

joerg_rw

2015-05-10, 23:26

I might as well pay a bit more at this time, I get a rather good exchange rate on EUR currency at the moment, and I think you still pay interest on these down payments? (It was 2%/mo. last I read, which I think means 24% AER, which is way more than keeping it in the bank so I might as well pay it early).

Please see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1464980&highlight=interest#post1464980 - we explain more details in the letters we send out per email recently. Publishing them follows in a week.
Also see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1469485#post1469485 please.
/j

jellyroll

2015-05-10, 23:40

Is it possible to order a Neo900 board with only 1GB of ram hardware upgrade?

stevenc

2015-05-11, 12:28

Is it possible to order a Neo900 board with only 1GB of ram hardware upgrade?

The standard NeoN board spec has 1GB of memory. Do you mean to add or remove something else from it?

jellyroll

2015-05-11, 13:51

The standard NeoN board spec has 1GB of memory. Do you mean to add or remove something else from it?

Yes, a board without a LTE modem, NFC, compass etc..

joerg_rw

2015-05-11, 14:08

Yes, a board without a LTE modem, NFC, compass etc..

No problem, just tell us about that in "Special Instructions" in the down payment order. Shop opens up for new customers in 1 week. I can't promise the price reduction this will result in, expect at least a 100EUR since that's around the cost of the modem. Generally leaving out components is usually easily accomplished.

though I just learnt that I missed an important aspect :-/
[2015-05-11 Mon 16:13:45] <wpwrak> hmm, i woudn't be so generous with customized boards. they have a high risk for us: what if just that custom board has a defect ?
so yes, we will try to offer custom board variants, but you might get either a board exactly to your specs with no components for the ones you opted out, or a defect comonent in the place where you wanted none, or even a working component in the place where you wanted none. And depending on risk for our yield, we might reject certain custom board variant requests. (generally when later rework/fixing of a broken-from-production board would be impossible)
Thanks to Werner for spotting this.

Thanks for your interest
jOERG

endsormeans

2015-05-11, 14:41

Ah-ha...
hm.
Jellyroll ..
I'd like to ask...
without the modem..compass ...all the whistles...
your customized neo900 is now starting to look alot like the next obvious conclusion from the n800 and n810...
hm... ha!..you're dreaming up the new sub-species!..the neo820!
Very cool.
hm ...may not want it too bare though...
keep wireless, bluetooth, ir at the least...

xman

2015-05-11, 16:26

I'd be in favor of some form of monthly payment, too. $1200 is a lot to cough up at once, but also, if we could know now the payment will be required in 6 months, I/we could just as easily sock $150/mo away to simulate a monthly payment.

is there a way to pay per month «kidding of course :D :D» ? Because the final estimation is very high. Living in Canada as Endsormeans pointed it out...we have to expect taxes, vat, shipping fees «in sus» ! I did not buy another phone, waiting for the Neo but at this price.....better stick with my old n900 or take a new androphone! really I was ready to spend maxi 700$ or 100$ more but starting to 900$, it's psychologically impossible. And when it will be out, won't it be obsolete ?

I feel your pain guys. I would suggest (perhaps Neo Team disagrees), setting up a paypal or bank account to put money into every pay check or once a month and then have it automatically send payment to Neo Store/account. Not sure if this would work but it could take the pressure off of the Neo team form processing managing these smaller payments. Or maybe it's silly and you can simply save money monthly :D.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1369348&postcount=5
Tens of thousands, probably hundreds :(

Thanks hxka, but these are based on the previous euro. It would be nice (though perhaps too much work) to keep these tier numbers as current as possible.

If you want more people to buy a Neo900 you have to target the kind of people who would be interested in it.

My opinion is that you shouldn't waist money on advertisement for the masses as the masses won't be interested in the Neo900. .......

I agree Malakai that money should not be misused. However similar as to what I believe endsormeans was eluding to, is that sometimes people don't know that they wanted something until it is illustrated to them. And this could be advertising, but I think in this case word of mouth and getting key social type interested will do more than one simple show (although I like the idea). The problem is there is currently no tangible product that can be fondled and tested, believe it or not a lot of people just can't image how this will work ... they need to have it spelt out for them. I think this can be address with better graphics and illustration of how this device with older hardware can better than the latest Apple/google devices.

But if the wikileaks and snowmen leaks have proven anything it is that scaring people won't work in the long run over convenience. So I think this project need a multi targeted message for tech davy, tech enthusiast, tech trendies, tech followers and etc (some could overlap of course).

Here a guy who had some success in gathering interest for expensive products http://ahprojects.com/projects/

.....With continued interest and some more small donations I hope there would be a second run, and it might be known by then how to lower the unit price, if newer components come on the market or some unsuccessful features are cut out. Either way it seems worthwhile to me, if only for the open documentation and designs that are being produced along the way, which are likely helpful to other or future projects.

Stevenc reiterates an important point. That the only way to give future project a hope is to show that there is a market or possible funding. The first round cost are more like a an angel investment rather then a kickstarter support, since with kickstarter you see and track the number of interested people in pretty much real time. Of course the incentive knowing that you would get your money back if it's not funded, helps. Of course even on these crowd sourcing site, it's never a guarantee that the product/service or project will succeed or deliver exactly what was promise.

I truly believe that this type of product is the future of consumer driven manufacturing. You see it all over the place, where big company jump on board an idea once enough people inquire about something. There's already a few products that are doing security, but this is the next level ... by passing the restrictions of corporations, gov's and 3rd party interests to pave a path for an open hackable phone that we control the future of. I would be surprised if people from companies like google, blackphone, and others weren't watching the outcome of this to gage interests.

So this is a special opportunity that may not happen again in this form (hopefully just the beginning). So I would suggest if in fact you do have about 6 month to do what endsormeans suggested and start saving a little bit at a time.

x

joerg_rw

2015-05-11, 17:12

short update:

1GB RAM PoP chips: those arrived as expected. unboxing footage:
http://neo900.org/stuff/media/pictures/1GB-650/DSC02279.jpeghttp://neo900.org/stuff/media/pictures/1GB-650/DSC02280.jpeghttp://neo900.org/stuff/media/pictures/1GB-650/DSC02281.jpeghttp://neo900.org/stuff/media/pictures/1GB-650/DSC02283.jpeghttp://neo900.org/stuff/media/pictures/1GB-650/DSC02284.jpeghttp://neo900.org/stuff/media/pictures/1GB-650/DSC02285.jpeg(150 of the 650 are for another project) Also see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1466445&highlight=1GB#post1466445 for more details about those chips. Note that those chips are an early risk-component sourcing which been done from funds that were not assigned for that purpose. That's the idea behind the down payments. The notorious "window" closed already as much as only allowing 500 1GB devices for now. I can't afford sourcing more of them chips right now. It's unclear if I could source more when e.g. preorders and downpayments explode to a 1000. Likelihood that it's possible to source more is higher now than in 6 months. Also it took quite a long time to find that chip source, finding another one - even when maybe possible - would probably also take months.

partial payments: since bank transfer payment checking is a manual process anyway, there's probably nothing particularly difficult in splitting up payment for your order into several payments, as long as you note the original subject as mentioned in invoice and you also note "partial payment". It simply means I need to do more works on administration/accounting. For you it means you have multiple bank fees.
Haven't looked into PayPal yet, I know we forward to PayPal with the amount due and that can't get changed. Will do further investigation what can get done. When you have a plan please holler and ask if it's feasible on our side. Hint: the old "Donation" paypal with free choice of amount should still work. Again, please check back before using it!

And please everybody keep in mind: we're in test mode in webshop, having sent out only a 20 voucher codes so far (of 420), and we hope the shop will not see massive "invasion" by generic customers yet ;-) That's why we didn't publish the URL yet, we will do so at end of this week when all vouchers are sent. Thanks for your patience.

cheers
jOERG

zxcvbnm3230

2015-05-11, 18:40

woow, this project's alive! O_o
Didn't check you guys for some time.

Shop opens up for new customers in 1 week.
Does this mean that there will be a chance for me to order a device? Or this shop will work just for some privilleged users? I just can't believe what I'm reading :D

joerg_rw

2015-05-11, 18:46

Does this mean that there will be a chance for me to order a device? Or this shop will work just for some privilleged users? I just can't believe what I'm reading :D

This means you will be able to do a preorder with down payment next week. However please read the last 3 or so pages in here, so you won't get the whole impact at once, or even late: the current sales price estimation exceeds the initial guesses by 30%, for most non-US(Dollar) based customers
Thanks for your interest :-)

cheers
jOERG

Malakai

2015-05-12, 17:55

Just to have an idea about the final price, because as I understated 990 EUR is for the board only and before taxes (VAT, etc.).

So if I want a full Neo900 (not only the board) what would be the price knowing that I live in the EU. Would I pay German VAT or my country VAT?

I just want to have in mind the highest plausible price to know if I can continue donating or if I just can't afford it.

Thanks

joerg_rw

2015-05-12, 18:49

Just to have an idea about the final price, because as I understated 990 EUR is for the board only and before taxes (VAT, etc.).
Yes, for the complete device there are additional items:

source a complete N900 (or all the spare parts except mainboard)
test (and disassembly) of the N900 (spare parts)
mounting the NeoN board to case
test of assembled device (and handling yield loss / rework)
possibly accessories (battery, power supply, whatnot. Unclear yet)

For all this we right now have an estimated maximum of 130 EUR on top of the NeoN bare board price [edit] actually I missed to say that the last 2 points are not warranted to be completely covered by that estimation, particularly since we have no precise list of accessories and test procedure description yet. So this *might* add another 10 bucks or so, when push comes to pull.

So if I want a full Neo900 (not only the board) what would be the price knowing that I live in the EU. Would I pay German VAT or my country VAT?

TBH I'm completely lost with taxes and stuff (mind you: I'm EE and that merchandising is all new to me). To make matters even more complex, the EU is just about to change regulations for inner-EU trade. AFAIK you usually don't pay VAT in the origin country but you (may have to) pay import VAT in your destination country. This is the generic rule: your local VAT applies. Inner-EU there are alternative ways how to handle VAT, regarding who actually gets charged. See PDfs I linked below. Again: AFAIK.
It *seems* our estimation calculation didn't even consider which of our expense items already has VAT included and thus would reduce the sales price before VAT accordingly. (don't hope for much from this though, there are very few expense items in the calculation where this *might* apply)
Sorry we didn't get around to completely sort out the whole tax and shipping situation yet, I personally still hope for finding a distribution service that takes care about all this. This is part of the "90EUR shipping" mentioned in that post (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1470077).

cheers
jOERG

ps:
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/vat_on_services/index_de.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/resources/documents/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/rates/vat_rates_en.pdf

Malakai

2015-05-13, 19:23

wicket

2015-05-14, 01:34

If my calculation is right I will have (taking the VAT of Germany which is less than my country's VAT) :

990 + 130 = 1120 EUR
1120 x 1.19 = 1332.8 EUR

So a full neo900 with only VAT (that is calculated at a better rate than the one in my country) will be around 1340 EUR at which I should add the paypal conversion fee (if I pay by paypal) or Visa conversion fee (if I pay by credit card... don't really now which will be cheaper) and without any eventual additional cost.

In the poll I voted for 500 EUR without knowing what was really build and the really awesome think it could be (as described now), afterwards I was ready to pay 900 or 950 EUR for the full device, but sadly 1340 EUR is a bit too much for me.

I really like this project and want it to succeed and get a neo900 but I will not be able to gather that amount. I've already donated 100 EUR and hope it will help a little bit the neo900 to come true. I will continue to read all the forum posts and the news on the website hoping to see some day pictures of the beast.

Maybe if the final price really gets to drop below 1000 EUR and I can still get in, I could continue donating. Or maybe if a second batch will exist and the price will be under 1000 EUR (maybe more people will want to pre-order if they see that the project succeeded) then I could get this awesome "mobile computer with phone capabilities".

It pains me to see a post like this. You are absolutely right, it is out of the price range for many people. Many of us will have to break the bank to purchase a Neo900. It is much more than I had hoped to pay. I have already said I'll commit to purchasing the NeoN board only (I did want a full device) at €990 + VAT + shipping - preorder bonus, but to be honest I'm not loaded, I have to set myself a price limit somewhere and I think I've already reached it. What worries me is that there are people who have already put down €100 that are now dropping out. This is bad for all parties. I've not yet received my voucher but I'm not sure what I'll do with it given that the price could go up as more and more people drop out.

I do however believe that more people will jump on board once a fully working prototype has been demoed and I don't think that 1000 orders is out of the question. 1000 orders should bring the price down by at least €190 in R&D and loan interest distribution alone.

I'm torn here and I'm unsure about whether I should commit to the down payment. How long do you think it will be before you will be able to demo the final prototype? Is there a chance it will happen before you close the down payment window? To provide an incentive for more people to spread the word, could we perhaps get an estimate of what the cost would be should you manage to achieve 1000 orders?

It *seems* our estimation calculation didn't even consider which of our expense items already has VAT included and thus would reduce the sales price before VAT accordingly. (don't hope for much from this though, there are very few expense items in the calculation where this *might* apply)

An updated estimate with these adjustments would be nice too, however small they may be.

Thanks again for your continued hard work!

joerg_rw

2015-05-14, 02:17

...what I'll do with it given that the price could go up as more and more people drop out.
This never been an option. We won't build a 50 or 100 devices and hope for a 50 or 100 customers paying a fortune. The price calculation is meant to set an upper limit that only could fall for external factors like even more exchange rate decay. There's no business plan that counts on further increase of sales price, that would be insane and cannot work. I don't know where this idea came from.

On a sidenote we already have 6 customers going for the downpayment and some even for significant top up, from a 20 vouchers we sent out for first test batch. After just less than 3 days. During same timespan 3 new customers were all euphoric about the shop opening and giving them an opportunity to jump on the train. So rather you try to imagine how many new customers we could find on top of the best part of our existing customer base, once we finsih the stealth test phase of the shop and start spreading the word about Neo900 now has finalized (and good!) specs and is available on official legally binding preorder.
/j

wicket

2015-05-14, 04:08

That's great news (well at least to me). That idea came from my understanding that the price depends on the amount of devices built which in turn depends on the amount of preorders placed. I'm not sure if I was the only one thinking along those lines.

Now I know that it's an upper limit (give or take), you can expect my backing for a down payment shortly after I receive my voucher.

It'd still be nice to know how you're progressing with the next proto though. :P

joerg_rw

2015-05-14, 17:38

As a little special feature to our german supporters, here a very useful answer to a contacts inquiry Werner gave:

Hallo XXXXX,

ja, zu 2/3 sprechen wir in der Tat deutsch ;-)

> Dass Ihr irgendwo auf der Website "longevity" schreibt, passt da ins
> Bild, ist aber - bei allem guten Willen - auch erstmal nur eine
> Werbeaussage.

Nun, die Langlebigkeit kommt in dem Fall weniger aus Materialien
oder der Fertigung (ein paar der uebleren Sollbruchstellen des
N900 sollten wir allerdings vermeiden koennen, und natuerlich
waehlen wir Komponenten mit vernuenftiger Lebensdauer), sondern
aus dem Entwicklungsprozess.

Weil das Design offen ist, haengt der Service fuer das Produkt
eben nicht nur von der dahinter stehenden Firma ab, sondern die
Community hat alle Mittel in der Hand, um fuer sich selbst zu
sorgen. Das kann beispielsweise das Know-How sein, um ein Problem
ueberhaupt zu verstehen, und um eine Loesung zu finden und zu
beschreiben. Und wenn ein Ersatzteil benoetigt wird, dann ist
genau bekannt, was da genau ersetzt werden muss, ohne Ratereien,
welchen Chip Apple denn hier nun wieder verbaut haben mag, und
ob's den ueberhaupt frei zu kaufen gibt.

Natuerlich sind viele Reparaturen nicht so einfach moeglich,
aber man kann sich mit diesen Informationen ja auch an einen
Reparaturdienst wenden, der den Neo900 zwar vielleicht noch nicht
kennt, sich aber so schnell ein Bild von der Lage zu verschaffen
vermag.

Oft ist das Problem aber nicht defekte Hardware, sondern schlicht
eine Inkompatibilitaet mit neuer Software. Auch hier ist das
Risiko beim Neo900 gering, da es mangels Marktdominanz keinen
Druck gibt, Bestandskunden zu einem Upgrade zu zwingen, wir auch
nicht versuchen, Konkurrenz durch aberwitzige Hardwarefeatures
abzuhaengen (was vor ein paar Jahren noch der Stolz eines jeden
Rechenzentrums gewesen waere, soll heute grad mal knapp reichen,
um zornige Voegel eingermassen ruckelfrei ueber den Bildschirm
zu schiessen ?), und weil bei Open Source ohnehin die Lebenszyklen
der Software nicht von den Launen des Managements des Herstellers
abhaengen, sondern ob sich wenigstens ein Entwickler findet, der
das Programm am Laufen haelt.

Der Schutz vor "planned obsolescence" ist also ziemlich optimal.

> Für mich wäre es ein wesentlicher Anstoß, mich fürs
> Zahlen zu entscheiden, wenn da so etwas stände wie "10 Jahre Garantie".

Das waere sinnvoll, wenn hinter Neo900 eine Grossfirma stuende.
Das Neo900 Projekt ist aber die Zusammenarbeit einer Reihe von
wirtschaftlich weitgehend unabhaengigen und auch geographisch
weit verteilten Leuten.

Bei der Neo900 UG waeren derlei Versprechen somit bestenfalls
angeberisch. Natuerlich werden wir uns bemuehen, Probleme zu
loesen, aber um eine Kontinuitaet ueber derartige Zeitraeume
versprechen zu koennen, waeren gewaltige Redundanzen noetig,
die schlicht nicht existieren.

Der Witz bei der offenen Entwicklung ist aber eben auch, wie oben
bereits geschildert, dass man als Kunde nicht mehr dem Hersteller
ausgeliefert ist.

> Ich sehe ein, dass das bei einem solchen Projekt aus mehreren Gründen
> nicht so einfach ist, aber es könnte sich lohnen darüber nachzudenken,
> wie man den potenziellen Käufern etwas Verbindliches in die Hand gibt,
> das ihnen die Wahrscheinlichkeit erhöht, diese nützliche Hardware auch
> über einen langen Zeitraum nutzen zu können

Eigentlich machen wir genau das :-) Nur ist es keine Garantie,
die vielleicht das (virtuelle) Papier nicht wert ist, auf dem sie
steht, sondern das Know-How, sich selbst helfen zu koennen, bzw.
leicht jemanden finden zu koennen, der helfen kann.

> Gibt es denn die
> Option, ein N900 einzuschicken und ein Neo900 zurückzubekommen,

Das koennen wir leider nicht machen. Die Idee mag zwar verlockend
klingen, aber die praktische Umsetzung waere ein Albtraum. Erstens
allein schon der Aufwand, um Geraete einzuschicken. Dann muessten
die gesaeubert, kontrolliert, usw. werden, und erst dann koennte
man mit dem Umbau beginnen. Und was waere, wenn wir am Schluss
einen Defekt bemerken, wessen Schuld waere das dann ?

Nein, da ist es viel einfacher und erspart allen viel Stress und
am Ende auch Geld, wenn wir guenstig ueberholte N900 kaufen, und
die verwerten. So ist der Prozess sauber definiert, wir wissen,
auf welche allfaellige Macken wir achten muessen, und bei Pannen
landet das defekte Geraet schlimmstenfalls im Muell, und wir
muessen keine Trauerbriefe schreiben.

Ich hoffe, das beantwortet die wichtigsten Punkte und hilft bei
der Entscheidungsfindung. Und natuerlich freuen wir uns ueber
jeden weiteren Kunden :-)

Schoene Gruesse aus Buenos Aires !
- Werner

Thank you Werner! :)
/j

reinob

2015-05-14, 18:36

On a sidenote we already have 6 customers going for the downpayment and some even for significant top up, from a 20 vouchers we sent out for first test batch. After just less than 3 days.

So where's my e-mail? :)
I'm waiting, and have the cash ready :)

Cheers.

Add. (20150516): got the e-mail. Thanks :)

joerg_rw

2015-05-14, 19:04

So where's my e-mail? :)
I'm waiting, and have the cash ready :)

Cheers.
You should have received the shop letter (http://neo900.org/shop-letter) email by now, and we've sent out a 20 voucher code mails so far (you seem to not be one of those 20) and are busy brushing out the last ugly warts from the shop, incl funny issues like geo-ip blocked some users, password sent plaintext in welcome mail, etc. Yesterday - among other stuff - we created a proper ToS, been "lorem ipsum" ;D Today we implement a 2 step account verification to protect the shop from spam accounts getting created.
Please stay tuned, we're working on it. Plans are to actually send out all voucher codes til end of this week
/j

[update: 7/20]

Astaoth

2015-05-15, 13:13

When this project started and the poll price was launched, I voted for a price of 400€, because it was my maximal budget for a smartphone. When the price was stated to 700€, I told myself that if it's the price to privacy, I can make some effort and pay it (I had to find 300€ in one way or an other), but I didn't donate in case there is an other project of this kind less expensive.

However now the price is around 1120 €, without VAT. Just to keep this price in perspective, it's almost my salary. So the question to me is not anymore "will I buy a Neo900 ?" but "if I would like to buy a Neo900, will I be able to gather the money ?" and currently, and for the next two years, the answer is no.

Thank you for your project, but even if I'm interrested, it appears than I am not a part of the targeted customers. It seems they will be more likely an elite which is able to spend more than 1000€ in a smartphone.
I will continue to follow this project until the end of the order period, in case the price drop and I will still talk about it to people who could be potential customers, but I will more likely buy a Jolla phone which will cost "only" 250€ and keep my N900 as "travel" phone (because of the Jolla GSM frequencies).

marmistrz

2015-05-15, 14:34

jellyroll

2015-05-15, 18:17

€ 1200,- = Nexus5 + Jolla + N9 + N900

joerg_rw

2015-05-15, 19:12

Please stay on topic. Simple math doesn't really help to further the project. We all can do such math. Neither do lengthy statements how happy you are you never joined. And we probably all share the same hopes regarding Neo900 at large, alas it's not my call to change the economy and business plan by something like "Oh well, then I only get 3 Rolls Royce instead of 4". The price estimation isn't (and never been) optimized for my/our margin, it's already optimized for lowest possible price for you (but in that optimization it's taking a relatively conservative approach so we hope there will be no further price increases since we already calculated it with some safety margins). So yes, we all share your hopes, but expressing them won't change what's going to happen, but it conveys a connotation as if somebody could just change their mind and rethink the price.
Thanks
jOERG

pichlo

2015-05-15, 20:25

YMMV, but as far as I am concerned, talking about the price is on topic. Especially in this thread and especially considering that it started with a poll about how much people would be willing to pay. You may not like some things people say but that does not diminish the validity of their arguments.

joerg_rw

2015-05-15, 20:43

You may not like some things people say but that does not diminish the validity of their arguments.
It's not about what *I* like to read, it's about general usefulnes of posts. In context: an argument is usually to make a point, a means to an end, I don't see any point being made by counting up sales prices of a number of random articles to a total that happens to be close to what's recent Neo900 sales price estimation. Tell me what shall be my conclusion from it and how I can change what I do based on it, and I'll admit that my call was odd. Or is the pupose of such statements to inform other prospects what they could get for a 1200 bucks? Then I have a remark: new N900 are not available anymore and when they were, they - if I remember correctly - were priced at 599EUR direct factory sales, so maybe the math above is not even correct.

BR
jOERG

Bearserker

2015-05-15, 21:45

Yeah, I'm so happy that I didn't sign up for a donation. Over 1000 EUR is far too much for me to spend on the Neo.

It may be expansive but what is the open alternative to Neo900, and how much does it cost ? :p
Even if I still haven't ordered anything, and I may never use my coupon, I'm anyway happy to have contributed to this project.

Actually, I would even feel a little guilty if I get an opportunity to spend this amount, helping this project to succeed and I don't. :(
Beware, I'm not saying, everybody should blindly donate (not everyone earn the same salary and is able to pay such a sum) but the price can't fairly be directly compared to market products.

I mean, 1k€ is not only the price for a great new device, but it is the price for a totally open device (software AS hardware), made by an independant structure, with privacy and security concerns.
And it's the price to make this project work, which hopefully means other similar independant projects may work beyond this one. :rolleyes:

You may think it's overpriced and Neo900UG could have lowered this priced by doing such or such thing. Somehow, I personally think they should have worked to make know the Neo900 to far more people.
But it doesn't really matter. Today, it's the price ! And according to Joerg, it's a maximum price, so it may decrease but CAN NOT increase further.
So your choice should just be the result of an equation beween your bank account and how you value the possibility of such a device to exist / how much you are ready to spend to get one.

Whatever happens now, I'm happy to have donated and I sincerely wish the Neo900 will be released, wether I buy it or not ! :cool:

Swordfish II

2015-05-16, 02:07

So a related question, how is software development going for the project? I realize it is community based but that would be frustrating for people to buy one of these and not have basic functionality (email, text, MMS, phone) and have to wait and hope software is developed for it. With a limited run it is unlikely a ton of devs will rush to program...

endsormeans

2015-05-16, 02:42

chat with the boys over at fptf for how things are going fremantle -wise.

considering the open nature of the hardware and the fact pretty much whatever works on the openmoko line will run on the neo..
as well just about whatever distro that could be run ( meeting the neo specs. ) ...
well ...I don't quite see a prob software devel - wise there...
so..you'll have freemantle community , openmoko's community to dive into.., possibly 'buntu's , and I'd imagine other telephony-enabled handheld distros considering the neo versatility..
So if fptf is going to take a bit to finish freemantle and you'll have your neo first...then install shr or qtmoko or 'buntu or whichever telephony enabled platform you wish in the mean time while you wait for freemantle to be finished..

and as far as straight-up distros that could work and their software...and their communities...well...same thing there..greater number there I'd imagine...
how many communities do you need to be a part of for one device? :D
or is it more ...like...institution ...corporate-like structure you are referring to...with consistent update schedules, and of course with that...the inevitable "last" and "final" software update that that kind of "safe" structure brings...just before the new company device comes out.
Not interested there in that ...as great as they were..we had that paradigm with Nokia.

I'm curious as to how "many" and what "kind" of devel enviros. and tools could be utilized to create with ...."for" the neo...
I'd imagine the old standby's such as Scratchbox and Qt for Freemantle..
I hadn't given this specific topic alot of thought...what else can be utilized...I am curious...since this is really new ...exciting ...undiscovered country that is being trod here...