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Comment by timw4mail | Hacker News Reader

Wow...100% funded in 175 seconds

Yeah, I was a few minutes early and missed the $129, then the $139, and ended up just getting the $159 option.

Pro tip. Have your credit card info saved in your kickstarter account so you don't end up like me.

And still virtually every single phone released in the past 3 years is bigger than say 140x68cm, which is about the maximum you could call a "small" phone.

I bit almost instantly. I've been waiting for something that looked promising in the small phone arena for years, this is the first one I've felt comfortable trying. I assumed it wasn't going to have a headphone jack, but it does!

This is just "BEST SELLER 3.5 INCH ULTRA SMALL CELL PHONE SLIM ANDROID OEM CHINA UNLOCKED 4G DUAL SIM" on Alibaba with a fingerprint reader and better camera.

The same as every single other Jelly product.

I'll never understand kickstarter.

edit: you're probably able to find the exact model of phone they're rebadging if you search for its oddball screen resolution, I just grabbed the name of the first miniphone that looked similar.

I don't think this is the case. It has a decent P60 SoC w/ 6GB of RAM and Android 10 support. None of the mini phones I could find on Alibaba were anywhere close in spec. Even the term you highlighted was for 3.5" screen, not 3.0" screen.

I imagine it's not hard to track down whomever makes the phone on Alibaba and pay them a few extra dollars to put in a few better chips. Then use Kickstarter magic to advertise it, and pocket the difference.

What's the actual evidence that they designed and made it, a screenshot of the CAD file in the video? They never actually claim they created it themselves and tested iterations etc like actual phone manufacturers do. Somehow they're more secretive than Apple?

Considering they already have "protypes" that are being reviewed, I think it lends credence to this possibility.

This is a Shenzhen company, they probably know 100 different local smartphone OEMs and can order directly from them if they wish.

You're moving goal posts. I would say if they had to ask for a different SoC to be put in a smaller chassis, that is custom work, and has risk.

Supposedly they are a subsidiary of AGold Communication Co. Ltd. which claims to have manufacturing experience, though their website is sparse and they have really old phones on there.

Even if they didn't wholly design it, I don't think it's fair to claim they are marketing a cookie-cutter design you can easily obtain off Alibaba, since you can't.

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