Comment by cjg
6 years ago
Most of the things that they say have caused the high cost are sunk costs in design.
Given that the design is open, it should be possible for another company, who doesn't have these sunk costs, to deliver the same phone for less.
Does this mean that they have the price wrong? Can selling open designs ever recoup such design costs?
I don't think they've released their full hardware schematic, right? I imagine they're waiting until they at least hit full production, and perhaps get closer to the next rev.
That being said, Pine64 has been able to make a similar device for far less also using their own design, so I'm a little skeptical that hardware design was such a large part of the price. I'm guessing the bulk of it was getting the SoC up and going since Pine64 had similar products that likely make it simpler to design a phone SoC.
You don't by the phone just for the actual device. You buy it mainly to support the start of actually open source phones. If you wanted a cheap phone you could just by a second hand android phone for dirt cheap
Of course. This is the basic open source model, only better. You get support from the folks who made the design.