July Community Update discussion

[matosys]

Yes, in any other scenario you still have a broken laptop and are $200 short. I mean, what else would you consider "helped" or "resolved"? You can't buy another laptop or fix the broken one with "Good thoughts and prayers".

I was talking about your expectation of the time it takes to solve your issue is warped. At least, if the goal is to send you parts that work, getting you a working product. I'm not about the 'money back or working product' expectation, but the 'has to be fixed in 39 days'

Things like this are called "risks" and as far as I know, risk analysis is a standard part of any business plan. You don't need a BA in Business or an MBA to conduct at least a rudimentary risk analysis. I mean, I don't know what your day job is, but you just did this analysis yourself when you correctly identified the rapidly changing situation as a risk. I would, however, disagree with your conclusion - as a business, you can and should take risks like the unpredictable situation with border closures into account. You can't influence the closures, but knowing the situation you should have at least a "Plan B" in case things do go wrong.

You are acting like I personally have to know how to do risk analysis. I'm not living in a bubble, I talk to people. And I talked to enough highly skilled people, that have proven to know what they are talking about, about the issues cropping up during the pandemic and how to deal with them - and not just people in our company.

And it doesn't look like pine64 don't have a plan b (changing the factory). changing plans takes time though, that's not a surprise. And in a business where prices are highly dependent on volume to lower parts costs, splitting up manufacturing to two or more factories sounds like a REALLY bad idea.

I'll clarify what I meant here: if having higher prices meant Pine could hire more people to deal with a higher volume of orders and issues, I'd rather they upped the prices. Having a bit of profit from each device sold could cover more/better support and sales agents, R&D, factories with a better track history, additional QA... Hope you get the picture.

It's not that simple. Just from a high view, there needs to be a lot of paperwork, if you want to import/export stuff. Filing paperwork for mainland china to hong kong, then hong kong to your country, then a possible hand-off to other delivery networks (llike china post to dhl) and all of that is not directly under pine64's control. apart from that, there's still a pandemic raging, everything takes longer.

to me, it sound's like your frustration kicks in. And you've got all the rights to feel frustrated. But it's not an objective view.

[Jazzband]

I was talking about your expectation of the time it takes to solve your issue is warped. At least, if the goal is to send you parts that work, getting you a working product. I'm not about the 'money back or working product' expectation, but the 'has to be fixed in 39 days'

Oh, I know shipping parts back and forth takes time. I would've been fine with waiting if Pine responded a week or two after the ticket was filed. If that were the case, the broken part might've already reached them, get tested, and be half-way back by now. Or at least reached them, even that would've saved us several weeks of waiting.
But instead, Pine chose to ignore all those tickets until now. So now, we've already spent more than a month waiting, and it's going to be another 2-3 weeks until parts reach them, god knows how long it'll take them to "test" these parts, then another 2-3 weeks until the fixed/replaced parts reach customers.
So no, my expectations are not "warped", they're perfectly reasonable.

You are acting like I personally have to know how to do risk analysis. I'm not living in a bubble, I talk to people. And I talked to enough highly skilled people, that have proven to know what they are talking about, about the issues cropping up during the pandemic and how to deal with them - and not just people in our company.

You don't. But Pine64 should. The rest of your paragraph - I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say.

And it doesn't look like pine64 don't have a plan b (changing the factory). changing plans takes time though, that's not a surprise. And in a business where prices are highly dependent on volume to lower parts costs, splitting up manufacturing to two or more factories sounds like a REALLY bad idea.

And I never suggested they should've changed factories in the middle of the production run, so I'm not sure who or what are you trying to argue here.

It's not that simple. Just from a high view, there needs to be a lot of paperwork, if you want to import/export stuff. Filing paperwork for mainland china to hong kong, then hong kong to your country, then a possible hand-off to other delivery networks (llike china post to dhl) and all of that is not directly under pine64's control. apart from that, there's still a pandemic raging, everything takes longer.

I was talking about raising prices to hire more staff and support agents, you're arguing about import/export and shipping. This whole argument starts to remind me of a Straw Man fallacy.

[matosys]

Oh, I know shipping parts back and forth takes time. I would've been fine with waiting if Pine responded a week or two after the ticket was filed. If that were the case, the broken part might've already reached them, get tested, and be half-way back by now. Or at least reached them, even that would've saved us several weeks of waiting.
But instead, Pine chose to ignore all those tickets until now. So now, we've already spent more than a month waiting, and it's going to be another 2-3 weeks until parts reach them, god knows how long it'll take them to "test" these parts, then another 2-3 weeks until the fixed/replaced parts reach customers.
So no, my expectations are not "warped", they're perfectly reasonable.

"pine chose to ignore all those tickets" - that's exactly what i mean. there are a few guys trying to make ends meet and issues need to get prioritized. this is not a service business where you can freely scale your support staff up when something goes wrong and kick people out when you don't need them. there is nobody turning their head away from you, it's just that there are too many things to do currently due to many external factors, so support tickets are stacking up until there's time to work on them. pine64 is not some huge business, mate. trained workers don't fall from the sky either. you being unsatisfied with the support and angry is reasonable, and i'm repeating myself in stating that. you think it's reasonable for a small company during a pandemic with unexpected things going wrong and factories not fulfilling their contractual obligations and the resulting increased amount of damaged units to service your support ticket.

What i'm expecting is, that the business gets kept running first, before servicing your support ticket. I would not be surprised if there aren't even enough spare parts since producing lots of spare parts in advance is unreasonable. So, the required spare parts would have to be manufactured together with the next PBP batch, being in like 1 or 2 months (my estimate). That's why I'm saying your expectations are warped. If so many things go wrong, I would expect to have a working part in like 2-3, maybe even 4 months. I ordered a RockPro64 and was surprised to receive it after about a month, and that's a board which was in stock.

And I never suggested they should've changed factories in the middle of the production run, so I'm not sure who or what are you trying to argue here.

I am not talking about in the middle of a production run. I am talking in general. Part costs are calculated on volume of orders. PBPs have to be considered rather low volume and if you want to produce economically, your only choice is to pick a manufacturer, based on price quotes and confidence into the production process, and go with this manufacturer for the batch. you were asking for a plan b - a fallback plan, if something goes wrong. I was pointing out, that redundant production methods are outside of the realm of possibility due to the limited volume. i was trying to make sense of your call for a plan b and what you were calling for as a plan b.

I was talking about raising prices to hire more staff and support agents, you're arguing about import/export and shipping. This whole argument starts to remind me of a Straw Man fallacy.

--> "It's not that simple" <-- I was pointing out some parts of the business process, where buerocracy gets in the way. Doing things in batches helps when applicable, but support is on a case-by-case basis. Essentially, with this part, i want to point out my doubts, that hiring more staff will improve support even close as much as you imagine it would. I'm sorry, I made the assumptions that you would be mentally capable of connecting the dots.



Keep in mind that English isn't my native language, so a lot will be lost in translation.

[qastokes]

Reading through this thread and especially the frame of the complaints...

I believe Jazzband has tried to articulate layered and nuanced point. But his point is getting caught on the barbs of loyalty. This frame will make sense and resolve itself most easily from a tangent. There is a really Important Point. & my opinion is what here needs coherent discourse around it, accounting for the layers that are harder to see in this. It was suggested this discussion arc jump to another thread, which I believe makes good sense at some point.

Anyways:
***

My perspective is I want Pine64 to grow. I want hardware manufacturing that is community driven to succeed. I value that the alpha and beta phases of product development are done Open Development style. This causes feedback and design choice to deeply orient toward what people find valuable in hardware, instead of following the extractive and perverse incentive structure of most standard business models.

This Open Development model comes with hazards. One of which is the Risk Management point that Jazzband makes. We can deal with, handle, resolve and manage these risks. If we do it well and responsibly as both Community and Business there is massive potential here. But we can screw it up by not taking the time for deeper consideration. I won't provide a list of suggestions, but that is where I would like to get to eventually.

We need to build process that reduces risks and effectively manages the risks we are willing to accept as a community to be on the inside of this Open Development process. We need to take some tradeoffs and make choices in order to build the framework that will allow all of this to scale to the broader public.

***
I'm quite new here. I know that there is a shared understanding expectations between Community & Business, built since Pine started in 2015. The trust is built on that history, which I'm not a part of, (yet). I respect that, but the point that Jazzband is making aligns more with where my head is at, I see the potential of this.

A version of Pine64 & its Community that can scale. A version that can provide a high reliability manufacturing run of Linux Phones & Tablets that Dual Boot with a AOSP like LineageOS, making convergent hardware available to the world as we reach the limits of Moore's Law, and start to see the worst predatory business practices take over as market trends radically shift.

Pine64 is currently a proof of concept that the approach to hardware/software can be different, and that that different approach isn't restricted to only hobby hardware. Pine has succeeded with bringing a Linux Phone to market where all others have failed. This is really impressive! But to make the most of this success is going to mean a lot of change. I don't see how it could play out another way.
***

We're all on the same team. I came here from the wilds of the internet drew me in god knows how. I came away from my first exposure really impressed by everything I saw Pine doing. I like what small bit of the community I've seen & interacted with, quite helpful & friendly.

I'm saying this like this, as I believe that I have arrived here just on the other side of Pandora's Box. I do not know enough to know if anyone else sees it that way, and I have been too busy in life to lurkmore, but stumbled upon this thread and felt compelled to share 2 cents, perspective et al.

Hopefully this comment is welcome & Cheers,
Geo

[Jazzband]

Oh, I know shipping parts back and forth takes time. I would've been fine with waiting if Pine responded a week or two after the ticket was filed. If that were the case, the broken part might've already reached them, get tested, and be half-way back by now. Or at least reached them, even that would've saved us several weeks of waiting.
But instead, Pine chose to ignore all those tickets until now. So now, we've already spent more than a month waiting, and it's going to be another 2-3 weeks until parts reach them, god knows how long it'll take them to "test" these parts, then another 2-3 weeks until the fixed/replaced parts reach customers.
So no, my expectations are not "warped", they're perfectly reasonable.

"pine chose to ignore all those tickets" - that's exactly what i mean. there are a few guys trying to make ends meet and issues need to get prioritized. this is not a service business where you can freely scale your support staff up when something goes wrong and kick people out when you don't need them. there is nobody turning their head away from you, it's just that there are too many things to do currently due to many external factors, so support tickets are stacking up until there's time to work on them. pine64 is not some huge business, mate. trained workers don't fall from the sky either. you being unsatisfied with the support and angry is reasonable, and i'm repeating myself in stating that. you think it's reasonable for a small company during a pandemic with unexpected things going wrong and factories not fulfilling their contractual obligations and the resulting increased amount of damaged units to service your support ticket.

What i'm expecting is, that the business gets kept running first, before servicing your support ticket. I would not be surprised if there aren't even enough spare parts since producing lots of spare parts in advance is unreasonable. So, the required spare parts would have to be manufactured together with the next PBP batch, being in like 1 or 2 months (my estimate). That's why I'm saying your expectations are warped. If so many things go wrong, I would expect to have a working part in like 2-3, maybe even 4 months. I ordered a RockPro64 and was surprised to receive it after about a month, and that's a board which was in stock.

You can outsource the 1st line of support, and scale it up and down as needed. Yes, you can't scale it instantaneously, but that's another thing that can and should be planned ahead if, for example, you know you're going to have two separate production runs at the same time, and they're much bigger than any of your previous runs. And it seems Pine already outsourced their support, just without the scaling (which could've helped mitigate many issues).



As I said before, a lot of those "unexpected" things could've been easily predicted and, with a little bit of planning, mitigated at least to some extent.



Pine64 had some reasonable expectations for a contracted factory: that they have enough experienced staff to fulfill the contract during the pandemic, they have the production line set up, they have the tools, they have the spares, they can complete the production run on schedule, etc.).

But the same goes for customers' expectations of Pine64: that Pine has enough staff to fulfill their obligations to their customers, that they can provide warranty service for the devices they're selling, that they have shipping figured out, that they have a plan in case something goes wrong, etc. And now we're seeing that Pine are complaining that the factory betrayed their trust and expectations. Yet somehow we, the customers, are not allowed to have the same level of expectations of Pine64. No, we're just "impatient", "unreasonable" and "entitled".



Finally, the fact that your expectations of Pine64 are lower than mine doesn't automatically mean that my expectations are somehow unreasonable or "warped".

And I never suggested they should've changed factories in the middle of the production run, so I'm not sure who or what are you trying to argue here.

I am not talking about in the middle of a production run. I am talking in general. Part costs are calculated on volume of orders. PBPs have to be considered rather low volume and if you want to produce economically, your only choice is to pick a manufacturer, based on price quotes and confidence into the production process, and go with this manufacturer for the batch. you were asking for a plan b - a fallback plan, if something goes wrong. I was pointing out, that redundant production methods are outside of the realm of possibility due to the limited volume. i was trying to make sense of your call for a plan b and what you were calling for as a plan b.

Changing factories AFTER they messed up is not a "Plan B". That's being reactive, whereas I'm saying Pine64 could and should have been proactive. For example, knowing they won't have access to the factory to test the devices before shipment, they should've planned to test them somewhere else instead. Basically, do what Pine64 eventually did, but for the whole production run and not just the second half of it.

Or have a smaller production run. And before you say anything about manufacturing cost, somehow Pine's previous production runs were smaller than the last one, and they still managed to make the ends meet. Or, failing that, raise the prices, maybe even make a little bit of profit and use it to rent a warehouse to perform an independent QA, or hire more support agents...

Or, you know, do the responsible thing: analyze the risks involved, see how many things could go wrong, and postpone the production run altogether. Somehow everyone keeps forgetting that's also an option.

I was talking about raising prices to hire more staff and support agents, you're arguing about import/export and shipping. This whole argument starts to remind me of a Straw Man fallacy.

--> "It's not that simple" <-- I was pointing out some parts of the business process, where buerocracy gets in the way. Doing things in batches helps when applicable, but support is on a case-by-case basis. Essentially, with this part, i want to point out my doubts, that hiring more staff will improve support even close as much as you imagine it would.

Pine's excuse for lack of support is their lack of staff to provide said support. They knew their production run is going to be much bigger, they could've planned for this and hired more staff. To hire more staff they could've raised prices. Yet they did nothing.

I'm sorry, I made the assumptions that you would be mentally capable of connecting the dots.

The fact that you're crossing the line and making this personal by implying that I disagree with your position because my mental capabilities are somehow inferior to yours doesn't make you look good, or make me want to continue this discussion with you. So this will be my last response to your comments.

Keep in mind that English isn't my native language, so a lot will be lost in translation.

Neither is it native for me, so I'd say we were on even ground here.

[bcnaz]

Regarding this months "NEWS" :

  Is the PMOS Community Edition standard release phone,  a 1.2a main board ?
   < with the 16gb eMMC and 2gb of ram.>

Then what is the main board version number for the 32gb eMMC with 3gb of ram ?
     AND  is the main board the same otherwise,  or does it have other changes as well ?

     Thanks,  BC

[tllim]

Regarding this months "NEWS" :

  Is the PMOS Community Edition standard release phone,  a 1.2a main board ?
   < with the 16gb eMMC and 2gb of ram.>

Then what is the main board version number for the 32gb eMMC with 3gb of ram ?
     AND  is the main board the same otherwise,  or does it have other changes as well ?

     Thanks,  BC

From PCB board point of view, both 16GB/2GB and 32GFB/3GB are the same, just staff with different memory components.

[bcnaz]

Regarding this months "NEWS" :

  Is the PMOS Community Edition standard release phone,  a 1.2a main board ?
   < with the 16gb eMMC and 2gb of ram.>

Then what is the main board version number for the 32gb eMMC with 3gb of ram ?
     AND  is the main board the same otherwise,  or does it have other changes as well ?

     Thanks,  BC

From PCB board point of view, both 16GB/2GB and 32GFB/3GB are the same, just staff with different memory components.

Thank you TLlim,  

  Is there a different 'version number',   between the 2gb ram/16gb eMMC  and the 3gb ram/32gb eMMC versions, so we know which board we are referring to ?

[j8m2p6f]

Regarding this months "NEWS" :

  Is the PMOS Community Edition standard release phone,  a 1.2a main board ?
   < with the 16gb eMMC and 2gb of ram.>

Then what is the main board version number for the 32gb eMMC with 3gb of ram ?
     AND  is the main board the same otherwise,  or does it have other changes as well ?

     Thanks,  BC

From PCB board point of view, both 16GB/2GB and 32GFB/3GB are the same, just staff with different memory components.

Thank you TLlim,  

  Is there a different 'version number',   so we know which board we are referring to ?

Braveheart v1.1  Ubports v1.2  postmarket v1.2a

[bcnaz]

RE:  Pine phone

There are some recent posts suggesting the modem may be corrupted if the battery is removed while the phone is powered on.

If this is true,  perhaps a warning should be on the enclosed instruction sheet  ?

I always turn my phone off before opening it,  however it is easy to turn on by accident while removing the rear cover.

BC