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Comment by turbinerneiter | Hacker News Reader

Pine is Hongkong tough.

That seems to be relatively recent though, originally US based. This is what Wikipedia says about the history:

> Pine64 initially operated as Pine Microsystems Inc. (Fremont, California), founded by TL Lim

> all devices for the Kickstarter campaign were manufactured and sold by Pine Microsystems Inc. based in Fremont, California.

> In January 2020, Pine Microsystems Inc. was dissolved while Pine Store Limited was incorporated on December 5, 2019 in Hong Kong. As of late 2020, the standard form contract of pine64.com binds all orders to the laws of Malaysia, while the products are shipped from warehouses in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine64

In Hong Kong they can get away with their shoddy 1 month warranty. In USA or EU, not so much.

This means that they can also get away with charging very low prices for their products. PinePhone is the first Linux smartphone that I wanted to buy, simply because it's so cheap and I won't weep if it fails.

I also highly recommend their Pinecil soldering iron, as well as tabletop power supply. Amazing value for the money.

I got the tabletop power supply. Its nice though itgot easily scratched on the OLED. But if it breaks now (its a few months old) it is bye bye money. Cause that 1 month warranty is for all their products, no matter the price. 400 EUR e-ink notebook and Pinephone Pro included.

At least you get a breakable version of a product, rather than stay locked out of the product category entirely due to the cost.

I get about 2 years warranty and 5 years security updates on my Fairphone, am allowed and able to run whatever OS on it which I want, and I can replace broken modules myself, or upgrade modules.

I have and use both the TS100 and the Pinecil. The Pinecil is a bit thicker than the TS100 and takes a few more seconds to heat up, but for the money it would be hard to justify buying a TS100 again.

you'll weep if it fails in a month

Even if it had functioning warranty, it would cost me at least half of the original price to post the item to them for repairs (it's halfway across the world). That's not a win, really.

Whoa I had no idea. I feel like everyone I've seen doing Pine64 things lives somewhere in Europe. What a world.

They actually started as a California-based company before re-basing to Hong Kong back in (IIRC) 2019. Not sure why the change.

Doing business from the US is a minefield today, not at all like it used to be. Almost any other country is better if you just want to focus on running a business, so not so surprising that they relocated.

> Doing business from the US is a minefield today

As opposed to doing business from China. Hmm, really.....

If they do business from China or Hong Kong they can get away with shoddy 1 month warranty, simple as that. Nobody's gonna bust those who are behind the company from countries like China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, ...

If that's what the OP meant, yes I agree.

The previous US administration going to war with China on trade created a lot of uncertainty and concern surrounding tariffs and delays/parts availability.

Through that lens it probably makes a lot of sense to simply move your operation to China, when that covers the bulk of the relevant supply chain for your products. Especially if you have no other barriers deterring the relocation, like language or cultural challenges...

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