My advice to Purism is that if it is going to charge that much for the L5, it should include 4GB RAM and 128GB Flash memory, so the L5 will function better as a convergent PC. There are some people who will pay any price, but most people start to do a calculation of practical utility, and they can’t justify that price for just a phone, but they can justify that price for a phone+convergent PC that gets lifetime software updates. Purism can save money by switching from 3GB of specialty automotive RAM to 4GB of standard RAM, and the cost of increasing from 32 to 128 GB NAND Flash is probably $20-$30, so I don’t think this change would be very expensive and the extra hardware costs can be recouped in higher sales.
The email focuses on how hardware costs have risen with COVID-19, but I suspect that most of these price hikes are due to the higher development costs and lower sales than expected. I’m guessing that Purism expected that it would have reached mass production by now that would stimulate more demand, but that didn’t materialize, so Purism has to recover its development costs with a higher unit price.
If we assume that the bill of materials for the L5 is $300, then Purism will make the same amount of profit selling 10k units at $600 as selling 3k units at $1300. I’m guessing that Purism doesn’t think that it is going to get that many orders for the L5 to recover its development costs, so it has to just focus on the niche market of people who are willing to pay a lot for its special features.
Frankly, these price hikes make me sad, because I was looking forward to the L5 becoming the next N900, with a large and active community of Linux enthusiasts, but I think that the L5 is becoming too expensive to attract the tinkerers and general Linux enthusiasts, and it will be limited to the niche users who are willing to pay extra for the L5’s special features.
I guess that we shouldn’t be too sad, since Purism’s dev work on Phosh is being used by PinePhone users and the PinePhone is reaching toward the mass market, so in the end mobile Linux is moving forward as a whole. I preordered the L5 as an investment in mobile Linux. From my point of view, it was a good investment, because Phosh avoids the major pitfalls of the other mobile Linux interfaces and I think Phosh is our best shot for mobile Linux to reach the mass market.
However, we need Phosh to be preinstalled in an affordable phone with a competitive processor in order for it to appeal to ordinary users. I had hoped that the PinePhone 2 with the RK3566 would be the vehicle to get there, but PINE64 chose Manjaro/Plasma Mobile as its default OS, which is a poor choice for general users in the mass market in my opinion.
My hope is that Purism will spend a couple years working on the software so that it gets good enough to appeal to mass market users, and then launch a future phone based on the RK3568 or RK3588 at a mid-range price ($400-$600) that allows it to reach the mass market. The other possibility is another company jumping into the market to sell the phone at that price point with Phosh, which is possible since it won’t have to pay for much software development. However, I would prefer for any profits to go to Purism, since it is one of the few hardware sellers willing to pay for software development.