Incidentally, that's why we should be happy to see fuzzy photos of prototypes rather than more technical details. If Arrington's suppliers find out that he's committed to using Component X, the cost of producing a unit of Component X will mysteriously rise, like magic. So secrecy and a lack of public details may be a sign of good project management at work.
The question is whether the Techcrunch call for assistance has yielded a master negotiator who can eat Chinese suppliers for lunch. It might have. Silicon Valley has quite a few of them.