It's totally misleading of the article to suggest this phone is a success in any way. Building a phone (even on top of a rebranded device) is incredibly hard and expensive and unfortunately they didn't raise anywhere near enough money to even try.
The Volla Phone met an arbitrary goal of raising 20k, but they were clearly using the common KickStarter tactic of setting a really low initial goal that they hoped to blow past to build press and enthusiasm. But then unfortunately they... didn't. And they only tried this second approach after running a previous campaign to raise 350,000 euros and getting no where close.
Selling ~50 phones and not even managing to sell out the "early bird" option is the opposite of a successful KickStarter launch. They didn't even raise enough money to pay a single developer, let alone deliver an entire custom OS. And it's clear from the demo video that they don't have much software built yet. There's just no way they could deliver on their promises with the tiny amount of money raised.
I'd be surprised if this is even enough money to cover the time to purchase, box and ship out the 50 re-branded phones to the backers without installing any custom OS. I hope they decide to either just return the money or immediately ship out unmodified phones instead of trying to build their custom software. They just didn't get enough money to do that and it would most likely lead to pain and disappointment on all sides to even try.
> It's totally misleading of the article to suggest this phone is a success in any way.
It sounded to more like the Kickstarter succeeded, which usually means they just hit their goal. If you read the article, it doesn't claim anywhere that the phone itself is a success.
That said, I agree with pretty much everything else you said.
The Volla Phone met an arbitrary goal of raising 20k, but they were clearly using the common KickStarter tactic of setting a really low initial goal that they hoped to blow past to build press and enthusiasm. But then unfortunately they... didn't. And they only tried this second approach after running a previous campaign to raise 350,000 euros and getting no where close.
Selling ~50 phones and not even managing to sell out the "early bird" option is the opposite of a successful KickStarter launch. They didn't even raise enough money to pay a single developer, let alone deliver an entire custom OS. And it's clear from the demo video that they don't have much software built yet. There's just no way they could deliver on their promises with the tiny amount of money raised.
I'd be surprised if this is even enough money to cover the time to purchase, box and ship out the 50 re-branded phones to the backers without installing any custom OS. I hope they decide to either just return the money or immediately ship out unmodified phones instead of trying to build their custom software. They just didn't get enough money to do that and it would most likely lead to pain and disappointment on all sides to even try.