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In December 2020, I decided to join a crowdfunding campaign by UK smartphone company F(x)Tec for a new smartphone. The decide was the Pro1 X, an Android phone with a sliding physical keyboard similar to the developer-only Nokia N950. Yesterday, a month shy of three years after my contribution, the device arrived at my front door.
The story of the Pro1 X is a long and harrowing one. It started as a glorified upgrade of the company's relatively-successful launch product, the Pro1, with more RAM and storage and an upgraded camera--but, critically, keeping the same Qualcomm Snapdragon SD835 processor. F(x)Tec partnered with XDA Developers to bring official LineageOS support to the Pro1 X, and in advertisements for the phone they boasted that the Pro1 X would be the world's first phone with LineageOS installed from the factory. My Samsung Galaxy Note 8 was already three years old when the Pro1 X was announced, and I decided to order one through Indiegogo.
F(x)Tec's original campaign goal was simply to fund final assembly of the device, as the core components were unchanged from the Pro1 and simply required swapping a few chips on the board. The campaign offered the highest-tier backers super early-bird devices that would arrive by Christmas 2020--apparently, a few dozen of these were shipped successfully--while other tiers would receive the Pro1 X in March 2021.
Nothing seemed to be amiss with F(x)Tec's plans at first. Updates came regularly through IGG's campaign page and on the company's own forum. Then, in February 2021, just a month before the devices were to be shipped, they dropped a bombshell on backers. The supplier from whom F(x)Tec had ordered SD835 chips took the money and ran, never delivering the promised batch of processors. Even worse, the SD835 reached end-of-life between the time the order was placed and when the order fell through, and the company was unable to secure processors from another source. This meant that the phone needed to switch to a different processor--and a new processor necessitated a complete internal redesign.
Backers were stunned by this news and many were understandably angry, but there was nothing we could do about it. Most people took the news in stride, including me. All we could do was wait for the redesign to finish.
The phone's new chip was the Qualcomm Snapdragon SD662, a mid-range processor less powerful than the SD835, but it was brand-new at the time and would have a long shelf life. F(x)Tec spent the rest of 2021 working as fast as they could to remake the Pro1 X from the inside out. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic brought its own series of challenges, such as company founder Liangchen Chen being unable to travel to China to inspect the components as they were being machined. But incredibly, they managed to finish the job, including international certifications, by the end of the year.
Early 2022 finally saw the Pro1 X reach final assembly--another stage of production beset by delays as China's zero-COVID policy left facilities closed for weeks at a time. The first few batches of devices were fully assembled by late spring and were sent to F(x)Tec's shipping partner, Expansys.
Here the story of the Pro1 X becomes a little murky. A small number of smartphones were apparently sent out from the Expansys warehouse in Hong Kong, but by summer, all shipments had stopped. Soon after, Expansys listed the Pro1 X for sale on its own consumer site, asking almost half the price the phone was selling for on F(x)Tec's website and Indiegogo! Some devices also reportedly surfaced on a Japanese retail site.
Now backers were furious. F(x)Tec themselves were all but silent on the topic, making vague references to "ongoing issues" with their partner. Rumors began to circulate on IGG, the company forum and Discord. Perhaps F(x)Tec had cut and run, leaving Expansys to recoup their losses by selling the stock they had. Perhaps Expansys had taken backers' devices and breaking contract by reselling them. Perhaps F(x)Tec had run out of money and were selling the first batch of devices at a discount to regain capital. Today, thanks to information from an F(x)Tec employee, we know there was a contract dispute between them and Expansys, but the details are still confidential. But that information was too little too late, and the majority of backers lost faith in the Pro1 X project afterward.
The first two rumors turned out to be false: F(x)Tec had not cut and run, and Expansys were not selling devices that rightfully belonged to backers. However, with the company operating for over a year and a half without selling new stock, F(x)Tec was practically out of money. The company now needed to get its remaining stock from the Expansys warehouse, but they didn't have the means to do so. The team ended up raised money via other companies related to F(x)Tec, such as Linxdot.
In the meantime, the few Pro1 X smartphones that made it into the hands of customers were by no means trouble-free. Several people reported severe connectivity issues: phones could not connect to towers, 4G was inaccessible, calls would not connect or parties would be unable to hear each other. The motherboard was found to lack safeguards to prevent deep discharge in the battery: some customers opened their brand-new devices to discover the battery dead and unable to recharge, requiring them to immediately send the phone to the UK for warranty repairs. On the development side, LineageOS had to be redesigned to work with the SD662, and in order to avoid further shipment delays, F(x)Tec converted every order to stock Android, even if the order specified LineageOS to be installed at the factory.
There was little for F(x)Tec to share in 2023 while they tried to get their stock back. They did not provide any updates on Indiegogo in July and August of this year. The lack of information began to wear down even F(x)Tec's hardcore supporters: people who owned and loved the Pro1 and were really pulling for the Pro1 X.
At last, in September, the company announced that they are moving stock and testing devices for defective batteries, with shipping due to start at the end of the month. After at least half a dozen broken promises of new shipping efforts, no-one believed them at the point. I myself discounted the news as more wishful thinking.
Then, halfway through October, I received a message from Indiegogo that I'd begun to think I would never see. My perk had shipped.
When the Pro1 X arrived yesterday, I immediately checked if my battery was bad. To my delight, the phone booted up successfully--but the battery was critically low, so I immediately put it on a charger. My device came with stock Android, but the Pro1 X now has official LineageOS support, and it was a simple matter to unlock the bootloader and flash the LineageOS images onto the phone, including Magisk. I spent a good chunk of time today configuring it ready for use.
I'll put together a full review of the Pro1 X once I've had a chance to use it for some time. For now, I'm just excited and relieved it showed up at all.
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[Last updated: 2023-11-07]