I hope Pine64 addresses this sooner than later, because this is confusing and might not reflect well upon the company.
I know as of right now the prices they settled on for pinephones are breaking even, plus $10 that goes to the community that each batch of pinephones was made for.
The only way I could find this acceptable is if there is some agreement in the works to get the pinephone in physical stores at that new price point, since physical stores need to make a profit to exist.
the website was very clear with the Braveheart and UBPorts editions that the Pinephone was offered at the price point it was for tinkering minded enthusiasts to help them beta test the hardware. a higher retail price is perfectly in line with their stated intentions. there used to be a giant red blurb on the order page about how the software is pre-alpha, and the phone is offered so cheap to encourage people to do testing.
Inflation hasn't exactly stopped. If they were breaking even six months ago, they're losing a lot of money now. Plus the whole covid thing, prices on some materials are just skyrocketing. Add to that the overall cost of retail rioting and looting. Then, assume at some point the company needs to bring in money for product development. Now think about all the complaints about "customer support". If that's going to improve, it's going to cost money.
On top of all of that, PinePhones seem to be selling faster than they can make them.
12-01-2020, 04:31 PM (This post was last modified: 12-01-2020, 04:38 PM by deedend.)
WOW, that's a weird thing... I didn't expect that!
(12-01-2020, 03:21 PM)hiimtye Wrote: the website was very clear with the Braveheart and UBPorts editions that the Pinephone was offered at the price point it was for tinkering minded enthusiasts to help them beta test the hardware. a higher retail price is perfectly in line with their stated intentions. there used to be a giant red blurb on the order page about how the software is pre-alpha, and the phone is offered so cheap to encourage people to do testing.
Well, the message is still there (see attached image); anyway, it's still a great price, hopefully it can become stable enough to be used as a proper phone before the price increase
Pinephone Braveheart Pinephone Manjaro CE 3/32Gb
Pinephone Mobian CE 3/32Gb
Pinephone Pro Explorer Edition
12-01-2020, 05:29 PM (This post was last modified: 12-01-2020, 05:30 PM by ryo.)
iPhone 12 Mini (cheapest current generation iPhone) is 55,440 yen (530.95 USD).
Google Pixel 5 is 87,840 yen (841.24 USD).
In comparison, 249 USD (25,999 yen) for a Pinephone is still very reasonable.
Especially considering the fact that the expensive 2 are designed to last only 1 or 2 years, getting weakened by each OS update, you have no say about what happens to the phone, and are practically locked down into either Apple or Google walled gardens.
Pinephone on the other hand is designed with the same life span as a regular PC (so you can replace parts to upgrade or to extend its life), OS updates might or might not break or fix stuff, you do with it what you want, and don't have any walls surrounding you.
I have long thought that PINE64 needs to charge more for the PinePhone, in order to be able to pay some developers to work on the hard problems like firmware development. Plus, I think that PINE64 needs to be able to provide a normal 1 year warranty and provide decent customer service if it wants to reach a wider range of customers.
What I would like to see is PINE64 not only working on firmware that helps all the distros, but PINE64 being able to pay for software development that helps a lot of distros. Paying developers to improve Crust and wakeup speed for phone calls, and work on a camera app would improve the PinePhone significantly.
If order for mobile Linux to reach the mainstream, it is going to need some paid software developers working on it. I pre-ordered the Librem 5 precisely because I thought Purism's software dev work was important to support, and I think that many backers of the PinePhone will come to a similar conclusion if they can see the extra money in the price hike being used to pay for necessary dev work that helps many distros.
Price of Pinephone is going to increase by $100?
