The Need For Clear Communications From Purism

I hope one day you will understand why I wasn’t willing to walk away from this without trying my damnedest to give you all fair warning. One day in the future we will be able to have a much more open and frank conversation on this topic and on that day I think I will be able to explain it to you in a much more satisfactorily manner. For now though this is gonna have to do.

Honestly, I don’t care that much about a delay of weeks, months or even a year. I’ve already got a phone. Sure, it’s not perfect (Samsung Galaxy S5 running LineageOS), but it seems to work perfectly well at the moment. If that breaks, I can pull out my previous device, a lovely little Nokia E55.

If that also explodes, second-hand phones are not hard to find and you’re not going to be paying much for (say) an “ancient” Samsung S5 Mini (picked this one because it’s easily pocketable, watertight, has a replaceable battery, good LineageOS support and costs something like £50 on Ebay).

If I continue waiting, I will most likely get something (though it is of course possible that I will not). If I cancel my order, I am guaranteed to get nothing. At this point, I consider the money to have been spent long ago, so cancelling serves no purpose for me.

Whatever the purpose for the delays, be it last-minute fabrication problems, a critical software issue, bad reception or finding that they can go straight to revision C and are mass-producing them by the thousand ready for a big surprise, I don’t really care.

I can wait.

Those of you who preordered and want to cancel - consider why it is that you wanted this specific phone in the first place. If it’s either the full mainline Linux support or the hardware security (killswitches, modem isolation), you’re not going to find that anywhere else.

13 Likes

It feels like both of us (Purism and the community) behave unwisely and just increase the tension. The community spends days and days in pointless holywars. Purism gets nervous about this (I believe they do, if they really work hard) which probably affects the pace and the quality of their work.

I believe that the only wise solution here is to declare a publicly agreed date (instead of just freaking now) at which Purism (which should also agree with the specific date) will share sensible amount of information about the production and shipping progress (how many item are already shipped, what unexpected issues with HW/SW are discovered in these production items so far and what are ETAs for fixes, etc.).

This would calm down the anxious community and give Purism a time frame to patiently prepare the information and resolve the issues they do not want to talk about, if any.

2 Likes

The natural deadline for this is Oct. 22nd, or 23rd. The end of the shipping window.
It’s only a vocal minority and you’ll not change their mind. It’ll not stop, not even after Purism updates their shipping plan or people receive their packages. I’d like to be wrong though :upside_down_face:

11 Likes

If anybody not affiliated with Purism (beyond just giving them money for the phone), receives an actual phone, I will publicly admit that I was 100% dead wrong and profusely apologize for the discord that my comments have sown.

2 Likes

FWIW though the latest case pics prove we were at least partially right. A week and a half ago they claimed they were assembling Aspen units with a plastic case and shipping them to customers. We even got a video of one being operated by the Chairman of the Board. Now they are saying every Aspen customer is getting the new case. So much for that assembly line and those shipments to customers a week and a half ago eh?

I got a refund also for my first montly subscribtion from puri.sm. I think my monthly fee was pro-rated because I subscribed late in the month.

2 Likes

Source?
Don’t try too hard. Both official statements said metal. Kyle said plastic in a chat.

2 Likes

Hi @jaylittle

Technically they are saying “Aspen batch phones going out next will get an anodized chassis“

“going out next”

They could have adjusted assembly mid-batch. We’ll see :slight_smile:

2 Likes

And if I recall correctly, you don’t anodize plastic, you anodize metal. If you want plastic metalized, you use vacuum metalizing.

(So this also replies to the post above yours.)

4 Likes

Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to best you or even thinks about you when not looking at this forum. I expect it’s the exact same with me. Anyhow, there’s no need.

1 Like

In the video from the Chairperson the case doesn’t appear to be metallic at all. I can’t really tell if its plastic or metal in the pics they put in the shipping announcement post though.

for what it’s worth, I’m on your side on all of this. @jaylittle

They should be telling us more than they are. Be it all at once in monthly updates or as they find out, we should get more.

2 Likes

Note that I didn’t say it was one or the other. It was just expounding the definition of a term used.

Although I sort of yearned for more info over the last couple of weeks, and although there were moments I thought Purism could do a lot better in this respect, I never gave up hope, and I certainly did (and do) not see any need for all the negativism that has been more or less rampant in this forum lately.
Keep up the good work Purists!

7 Likes

The way pine64 is handling their updates are awesome. On the 5/6 of the month every month and they provide information on delays and other stuff. I think this is how things should be done.

https://www.pine64.org/2019/10/05/october-update-pinetime-delays-and-shipping-news/

Purism went from frequent updates to whatever they’re doing now, they went from daily videos to … “more coming soon” all with no explanation.

5 Likes

The most damning thing to me when you compare Purism and Pine is that Pine isn’t really even claiming to cherish transparency at all. They are just transparent. That blog post is endearing because it is so honest. On their philosophy page they don’t fill it with buzz terms like “Social Purpose Corporation” or “Transparency” or “Freedom”, nah instead they basically say this:

At the core of our philosophy is the notion that PINE64 is a community platform.

The best part is, they appear to be living it. They don’t have to tell me how freaking great they are on that page because their actions and choices remind me of that on a regular basis. Even in the face of setbacks and failures these guys are still walking tall. I wish I could say the same for Purism.

Joe Ressington on Twitter said it best;

Right on Joe, right on!

4 Likes

this about pinephone…(and it is not my intention to criticize Pine64.org)

Last month we opened PinePhone pre-orders for developers intention to have them shipped by now. However, right before assembling complete prototypes we received word from partner-project developers who already had core PinePhone components, that the digitizer has issues with registering swipe-motions. Based on this information we were forced to hold off on starting production and turned to another vendor for a suitable digitizer replacement for the PinePhone. Sadly, the time it took to deliver and test the new part was long enough that we were unable to complete prototype production before the current Chinese National week-long holiday, which is ending on Monday October 8th. This is another case of bad luck we ran into last month. Despite the unfortunate delay in assembling the phones, we are happy that this flaw was found prior to the devices being shipped out.

which was also said by Purism when there was the fact.
And Pinephone makes a statement a month. Purism also makes a statement a month and the last is September 25th. So where is the problem?
I just don’t understand all these criticisms.

1 Like

Purism’s statements as of late appear to be mostly lies. That doesn’t concern you at all? In addition Purism ignores all relevant and important follow up questions whereas Pine does not. Pine is constantly engaging with the community on its own forums.

In addition, nobody invested $600 or $700 on a PinePhone (current price is $150 IIRC). Nobody has been waiting around for two years to get one either. The differences here are actually pretty large if you really think about it.

3 Likes

<… seem to be lies …> unjustified statement.
<… Pino is constantly engaged with the community on its forums.>
https://forum.pine64.org/ in which forum exactly?
<… Also, nobody has invested $ 600 or $ 700 on a PinePhone>. So?
<… No one has been waiting around for two years to get one either.> For a device that is open Hardware ???

2 Likes