>Jesus Christ, HN and the creators of this (ugly, toy-like)phone seem to never get basic, rudimentary supply and demand in action that anybody running a business should already understand.
>People buy fast, sexy, bleeding edge smartphones with GREAT CAMERAS (not surprised the whole website decided to omit this, it's probably terrible). Companies that make these phones thrive (see: Apple, Samsung, etc. ) while companies that focus on things only a handful of programmers like (for free)wither away into obscurity, see: the Ouya, Firefox OS, opensolaris, etc.
The demand side is high enough. The kickstarter already reached 800k USD which is 50% of their funding goal. Remember they are using off the shelf components that have already benefited from economies of scale. Selling a few thousand units is enough for them to turn a profit. If they tried to compete with high end phones like the essential phone does then their needed budget would instantly increase by two or three orders of magnitude but the demand wouldn't increase by the same amount because there are already successful competitors.
I don't really know why you think everything needs to be the best and "disrupt" everything else to be profitable. It's basic economics.
$600 * x (variable revenue) = $1000000 (estimated fixed costs for R&D) + $200 * x (variable costs for components & assembly)
| - $200 * x
$400 * x = $1000000
| / $400
x (variable revenue) = 2500
So I estimate they only need to sell 2500 units or capture 0.00016% of the market. It might be hard but it's certainly doable.
By the way the phone can be plugged into a monitor and keyboard to act as a full linux desktop. That sounds interesting to me even if it didn't focus on privacy and freedom.