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.

[edit] 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.
[/edit]

Thanks for your interest
jOERG

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...

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 .


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.


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/


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

short update:

1GB RAM PoP chips: those arrived as expected. unboxing footage:
(150 of the 650 are for another project) Also see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...GB#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

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

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

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

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

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.
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.

cheers
jOERG

ps:
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs...s/index_de.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs...t_rates_en.pdf

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".