
Linux-ready, made-in-Germany “Volla Phone” succeeds on Kickstarter - reddotX
https://tuxphones.com/made-in-germany-linux-ready-volla-phone-kickstarter/
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ageitgey
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.

~~~
wtetzner
> 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.

~~~
a012
Say "success on ..." still sounds dishonest and clickbaity. It should be
"exceeded milestone" or just "reached their goal".

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baybal2
I'm sceptical.

From my knowledge of the phone industry, and one of out past client's venture
into it, the minimal viable budget for a cellphone project is $1M these days
on the low side.

\- MOQs of all truly essential assemblies are huge: high-end PCBs, custom made
camera modules, custom cut LCD/OLED cells, antenna-body integrated assemblies

\- RnD is long and torturous, even without Android atrocity: RF-tuning for
high perf wireless, tiny high density PCBs development, lots of prototyping
for bodywork and LCD assemblies

\- SCM challenges are monumental even for factories in South China: constant
shortages and high lead times of speciality passives, time spent waiting for
parts, while burning money, logistics to and from module integrators...

Smartphones are becoming like jet engines: while parts count in general go
down per unit of functionality, and they become simpler for non-IC parts of
the design, very few can make them competitively as the supply chain gets
longer, and 3rd parties are now taking bigger and bigger cuts with each year.

~~~
alkonaut
Wouldn’t it be simpler to license an existing Android design from
Samsung/Huawei/... and change as little as possible to make it run?

~~~
panpanna
Googles Android license forbids this.

~~~
alkonaut
Are you saying that manufacturers that produce hardware that runs android are
banned from also selling hardware (being an OEM manufacturer) that does _not_
run android (that doesn't fly with e.g. Samsung making TVs with their OS and
Sony making cameras that runs non-android I guess)?

Somehow it doesn't seem possible to prevent HTC from building one smartphone
and sell it either themselves or via another brand as an android phone, while
at the same time selling the same design (screen peripherals etc) with some
minor chages, maybe a slightly different SoC, to someone who wants to sell a
phone with a different OS? How exactly would the license forbid it?

Obviously google owns the license and can probably unilaterally revoke it for
anything they see as unpleasant (such as building OEM phones that run linux,
instead of just TVs that do?) - but is this really expressed explicitly in
their agreement? How?

~~~
josefx
> Are you saying that manufacturers that produce hardware that runs android
> are banned from also selling hardware (being an OEM manufacturer) that does
> not run android

It is the other way around companies that produce Google Android phones (with
play store) are banned from producing anything Android not based on Googles
stack. Amazon had to find out the hard way that basing your OS on Android
makes it hard to find a manufacturer.

Of course this is not globally true. Various countries already informed Google
just what they thought of that kind of licensing abuse. That led to Google
carving out new licensing regions for every lawsuit and outright boycotting
Turkey when they mandated the same treatment as the EU.

~~~
alkonaut
So no problem for a manufacturer to build a oem phone running a non-Android
Linux then? It has no relation to Android if it runs a non-Android OS?

Or is there a

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kees99
I'm struggling to reconcile "Linux-ready" in the title and this blurb in the
article body:

    
    
      MediaTek Helio P24 SoC is not one of the
      most easily hackable, and its Taiwanese
      manufacturer is not exactly famous for
      releasing kernel sources.

~~~
notRobot
Please don't use code blocks to quote text, it's very hard to read on mobile
and narrow viewports.

~~~
elcomet
> MediaTek Helio P24 SoC is not one of the most easily hackable, and its
> Taiwanese manufacturer is not exactly famous for releasing kernel sources.

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bitL
Let's cripple our project right from the beginning by including an ugly notch
at the top, a "design feature" that tanked Essential, caused recent sales slip
of new Nokia phones and forced even low-cost Chinese manufacturers to switch
into drilling a circular hole in the display for placing camera in order to
avoid its negative sales effects.

~~~
teekert
/opinion

~~~
baybal2
Actually a very sensible opinion. If anybody put a bare minimum effort to
survey the market, they would've found that some no notch models are being
sold solely because of that. If you make 2 similar models, one with notch, and
one without the first will sink in sales, things are as simple as that.

Look at sales stats for Mi Max 3. Despite good sales Mi kills it, and then get
surprised how their other models didn't get any sales kick, and then resuming
Mi Max production.

Same with other brands having a "Waterloo moment" with models lacking 3.5mm
jack. Samsung saw trashy sales on low and mid-level models without jacks, made
models with jacks, then removed them again, and is now about to introduce new
A and J series phones with jacks again. Some times they don't learn...

I think the same thing was with removable batteries and tf cards.

What was good for Apple, was a real poison for brands with a polar opposite
identity to Apple.

I attribute HTC's demise highhandedly to them denying removable storage, and
jacking storage prices, while few power user brands were hammering that point.

I can remember such cases where blindly chasing trendsetters kills many times,
going back to 200X, and Nokia.

So many brands went under chasing Nokia because they were perceived as
"cheaper, worse Nokia's" just as today some brands became "worse Iphones"

~~~
teekert
Still think it is opinion, why not see it as 2 extra flaps of display at the
top? Why _not_ cover those areas with display if you can? I certainly agree on
the removable battery though.

I also hated that they removed the head phone jack. But I recently bought 16$
qcy bt headphones, never looked back. Personally I don't care much about
notches and headphone jacks at all. The camera would now be my nr. 1 buying
argument.

~~~
notRobot
Because it leads to a very short status bar which annoys me a lot. And if I
disable the notch to get a full status bar underneath it from settings, then
the "flaps" get turned off system-wide for all apps so they're of no use.

Now I've switched back to my old notch-less phone and am much happier.

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paulcarroty
> MediaTek Helio P24 SoC

Thanks, nope. Firmware is closed source and you'll never get updates in 99%
cases.

------
8fingerlouie
I hope some day, somebody will recognize that phones have become our everyday
computers, and will create such a device.

A phone that is just that on it's own, but couple it with a dock and it
becomes a desktop computer. It will of course require apps to have both phone
and desktop UI variants, but given that most serious apps already have both
phone and desktop versions i don't really see that as a major problem.

My current phone has just about as much RAM, CPU and GPU as my desktop machine
has, so performance should be somewhat "desktop like".

I'm aware this is partially what Ubuntu tried to do with the Ubuntu Phone, but
last i checked that project wasn't doing too well.

~~~
jowsie
Samsung Dex has been doing this for years now.

~~~
LeonM
I was surprised how useful Dex has become, and yet no one seems to speak about
it.

Currently the only thing holding me back is that my particular phone (S9+) has
fairly limited resolution support. IIRC the Note models are supposed to do
much better as they have a discrete GPU for Dex output.

But basically all my day-to-day development tasks can be done on Dex and a
SSH/terminal app.

~~~
pmontra
I second your sentiment but the Android keyboard (external Bluetooth) is not
very Linux friendly. I googled and experimented and there is no way to have an
Esc key. I have to work in vi with control ], like on some broken terminal
from the 80s. If anybody has a solution I'll pay with an upvote :-)

~~~
LeonM
You can connect any regular keyboard through BT or USB. The escape key just
works as expected.

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Tepix
One of the best things about this phone is currently hidden in Update #6:
Backers can get the phone with a preinstalled Ubuntu Touch OS!
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/volla/volla-phone-
desig...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/volla/volla-phone-designed-
with-simplicity-and-security-in-mind/posts/2769732)

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RegnisGnaw
How many Kickstarters have we had for these phones? I will personally bet
$1000 this doesn't ship.

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panpanna
How does this compare to pinephone?

[https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/](https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/)

I might be wrong but it feels as if that's were the mindshare is right now
(maybe because they have already shipped development phones)

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jacobush
How can 20k euros buy a phone? I doesn't make any sense, unless it already
exists and this is "only" a branding effort. The kickstarter mentions Gigaset,
do they have a ready Ubuntu Phone already?

~~~
deathjest3r
It looks to be like rebranded Gigaset GS290... They put their logo on the case
and install some other OS for you and sell it for 50€ more than the original
one...

~~~
panpanna
I would happily pay those €50 if it works as advertised.

Time is money and anything that keeps me away from random dudes random ROM on
XDA is a good thing.

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ChrisRR
Surely 20k isn't enough to manufacture a phone. Even the tools themselves
would cost more than that, let alone purchasing components. Unless they're
CNCing the housing for every device

~~~
jowsie
It's just a white label Gigaset GS290 from what I've read. No tooling costs
etc.

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blitmap
I just want a hand-sized general-purpose tablet with a 5g modem I can plug in
when I need a phone. I like the 'security by isolation' aspect of physically
unplugging my cellular connectivity. Otherwise I piggyback on Google Voice for
texts/calls. Also bring back physical slide-out keyboards like the Motorola
Sidekick.

:-)

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Zenst
Kinda feel they would be better off providing an OS reflash service for a 50
euro fee of a range of phones they could expand over time. Given this is just
a rebrand of an existing phone as many have pointed out.

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megous
Where's helio P24?
[https://www.mediatek.com/products/smartphones/helio-p](https://www.mediatek.com/products/smartphones/helio-p)

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longtermd
It's exciting to see this. I believe such a design will have many applications
in niche industries and niche use cases for sure.

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Itismelee
20k isn't enough for communication cost for heaven sake. Plus what niche is it
targeting? Geeks? Good luck milking the milkers.

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numlock86
Why support this Kickstarter campaign instead of just buying a Gigaset GS290?
For the custom OS?

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totaldude87
totally unrelated, any of you feel that kickstarter's logo is stale and due
for an update?

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aganame
Another one to bite the dust.

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aquir
No dual SIM :(

~~~
aquir
Sorry, if it's a rebranded Gigaset GS290 then it did have dual SIM

------
robomartin
My first reaction was "No f-ing way!". Then I decided to dig deeper.

This is just a Gigaset GS290 with different software:

[https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/gigaset-
gs290/](https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/gigaset-gs290/)

Current street pricing for this phone appears to be around €269.

Volla is getting from €298 to €359 for them (Let's ignore the t-shirts, books,
etc.).

If we assume they are buying the phones for, say, 25% off, their COGS is
around €200 per unit. In other words, they are getting paid between €100 and
€159 to develop software and support their version of the phone. In the case
of the KS campaign, that amounts to about €5000 and €7950.

There are other possible business arrangements that are often negotiated in
these kinds of deals. For example, Gigaset manages fulfillment under the Volla
brand and they split the profits. That would imply zero upfront costs to
Volla. That's the kind of deal I would want to make if I were in their shoes.
Don't deal with hardware if you don't have to. Hardware is hard and very
expensive.

I am going to guess or assume (and we know how dangerous assumptions can be)
that the bulk of the software has already been developed and might even be in
release-able condition. I make this assumption because they've been at this
crowd-sourcing thing for a while.

In other words, they have sunk costs. And it might very well be that they
don't really have to invest much more to actually deliver these modified COTS
phones. In that context the €5K to €8K they just raised (after paying for the
hardware) might be fine. It's a signal rather than a bankroll needed to
produce phones. They are NOT manufacturing hardware from scratch. At worst
they might have custom printed packaging, which costs nothing.

I then looked into Gigaset. It's a solid company. Used to be Siemens Home. Now
70% owned by Goldin Group out of Hong Kong (which puts into question just how
much is really "Made in Germany"). Still, this is a real company with real
products. Therefore, there is no reason to doubt the hardware at all.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigaset_Communications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigaset_Communications)

One way I came out of this is to consider the idea that, if the Volla software
does not work out for whatever reason users might be able to reprogram their
phones with the standard Gigaset software and life goes on. If this is the
case, and you like Gigaphone, this deal has basically zero risk. You are
paying a relatively small premium to try a proposal that may or may not work.
Which is fine. Good project.

