PinePhones on assembly line

[theD0ctor]

 A small group of transistors will never be able to phone home. Functional blocks can.

?? sure it can... Also functional blocks = diagrams, just a visual representation of code. A group of transistors can enable the engagement of some other analogy circuit that is then itself coded with a backdoor (ex. trojan). Point is, the backdoored analog circuitry would not be known or detectable due to downstream events of hardware triggering it:

• In June 2016 it was reported that University of Michigan Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science had built a hardware backdoor that leveraged "analog circuits to create a hardware attack" so that after the capacitors store up enough electricity to be fully charged, it would be switched on, to give an attacker complete access to whatever system or device − such as a PC − that contains the backdoored chip. In the study that won the "best paper" award at the IEEE Symposium on Privacy and Security they also note that microscopic hardware backdoor wouldn't be caught by practically any modern method of hardware security analysis, and could be planted by a single employee of a chip factory.[16][17]
  

Argument is, if you were to be so worried about HW backdoors, there is almost nothing that can be done about it if it can be enabled at such a low level such as transistors, which it can... And for a sophisticated attack such as that, there are numerous other devices everyone uses other than pinephones to be better risk vs benefit scenario

[tknvkng]

Greetings to you.
  I want to write here my thoughts on the topic of your product. I mean a smartphone.
  I think that your decision to release a smartphone completely on your own is a rather bold decision in the modern conditions of the capitalist market. I mean Samsung and Apple. They invest tens of billions of US dollars in their production every year. This allows them to make smartphones that are pleasant to hold in their hands.
 You cannot compete with them at the device level. This is not an insult, but an objective fact. Therefore, I suggest you choose a different path of your development. You can use well-known and popular smartphone models as blanks. For example, recently released a good smartphone Samsung A52. Its price is not high, and there are already videos on YouTube showing how easy it is to assemble or disassemble. You can install pure Linux on these smartphones, and it will be a really successful business model for many years to come.
 For example, you offer a list of smartphones that you can install Linux on on your website. A person chooses a smartphone that he likes and places an order with prepayment. You purchase such a smartphone, perform all the work related to the installation and configuration of Linux on it. And then you ship the finished product to the customer.
 I think that making smartphones on your own, these days, is too expensive and not necessary at all.
 You should focus on trading off-the-shelf Linux devices, and testing the devices in your labs. It will bring you respect among the high-tech professionals, and popularity in the market among buyers.
P.S.
 I am not an employee of any organization or brand. I'm a regular customer. It's my personal opinion.

[dieselnutjob]

You can install pure Linux on these smartphones

This is very easy to say, and very difficult to do.
Getting open source drivers for most SoCs/Chipsets is a real problem.
Maybe you should check out this page https://tuxphones.com/list-linux-mobile-devices/ and look at the lack of choice and high prices.
I just found out the BQ appear to no longer be making handsets which is a real, real shame 

[sagaracharya]

When would the PinePhone 2GB variant come to stock? It was expected in September. Almost half the month is gone. Excited for Pinephone keyboard too!