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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Seems like they have a good idea for a phone and want to fund the development using "pre-orders" (aka a Kickstarter). I went through the website and all the marketing and watched the launch video to find out how this thing works, but all I see is the same rendered home screen and lots of promises. Even in the video they show plenty of models of the phone lying around but not a single shot of one turned on and working.

I really do hope they succeed, and will definitely buy one if it turns out to be a viable product, but not before that.

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I have a Clicks Keyboard and love it. As far as I can tell the team behind the Clicks are pretty intertwined with https://www.fxtec.com/ - in that FX Tech staff seem to be involved in Clicks support, etc.

The Clicks Keyboard for iPhone (14) was a great concept, and pretty well executed for a V1 - I haven’t tried their follow-up devices.

But assuming it’s the same team, there’s a history of shipping devices behind them.

(That isn’t to encourage you to pre-order! Just to perhaps contribute some more optimism to your hope that they succeed)

I have the clicks keyboard for the iPhone 16. I haven't used the older one, but I can say its a very solid product as well.

The only annoyance is rememberimg to hold the magic key combo before plugging it in for car play. Regardless, this is a real company that delivers real products of solid quality.

I can confirm, this is sensible advice. I backed the FxTec Pro 1x during a depressive period in depths of COVID. It took ~years of hamstringing for them to deliver, but they did eventually deliver the phone. Even aged as the phone is, it's really well designed, and I occasionally use it with Claude from my couch in the evenings.

Being LineageOS capable is a strong selling point (for the Pro 1x), so if that's on the table with this new phone then I would consider reserving one. But I wouldn't hold my breath that it will ship in 2026.

Pro 1x also has pretty solid Droidian compatibility, so it can run a full on Linux.

I wasn't aware of Droidian, this looks great, thanks!

Indeed. I am highly skeptical of kickstarters (and their ilk) outside of a small subset which is mainly forms of art. Art is something you ought to know for sure if you can achieve it before launching your kickstarter. (And even if the album/photo book/whatever doesn't turn out exactly how you imagined it, you can still give the backers some art of equivalent value.)

Electronics are the exact opposite. Coming up with an idea and getting some renders done is at least 1,000x easier than the remaining work from idea to shipping 10,000 units, therefore it's reasonable to expect that at least 90% of kickstarters for such products will fail to deliver, leaving backers holding the bag, since all our money has been spent already on the failed attempts.

Furthermore, I tend to think that if, due to some combination of their existing reputation + the amount of the work they've already completely finished, the project were a safe bet, then they'd be able to get investors to front them any further needed startup funds the normal way.

Because of their existing product lines, I look at this more like marketing or market research. I'm pretty confident that this will actually be made. For one, the company actually has experience making and selling devices. This is a bit more ambitious than an accessory keyboard, but it's at least experience making something. Second, the pre-order reservation is about half of the full pre-order price. Unlike most Kickstarters where you have to front 100% of the money.

At some point, Kickstarter (et al) campaigns switch from high-risk speculative products to marketing pitches (get in early!). I think this is one of the later. You're right that they could probably have (or have already) funded the product development themselves. I think this pitch is trying to build a market early in the year before potential competitor products are announced.

looking at this https://youtu.be/u7Uz1YZ5hQA?t=309&si=LvSzi7vXmUCJ2LY3 I think they're in mocking/prototyping phase at the moment.

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