To be fair, this particular design seems to be one of those common Chinese ones used by any company who wants to make a phone. It's really easy to assemble, hard to disassemble. It's been used in countless Xiaomi phones, lesser known Chinese brands, even Samsung seems to have borrowed from it.

It's the same basic design as the OnePlus 6/6t, boards and battery glue sandwiched between two pieces of glass (the front one being the screen itself). If they skip on the material and fit quality (like Xiaomi does), it can be done for really cheap in any semi-decent factory.

If my experience with anything MediaTek still holds, they better use a good heatsink, because their chips get hot, and they die from it, too.

We have few Xiaomi phone users in our office. We noticed that a same model phones can physically differ by few millimetres and actually have a bit different hardware internally like sensors, and etc.

Xiaomi apparently sources multiple OEM models from multiple suppliers for sale under one label

eg. for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 there are two variants "nikel (Mediatek) has 6 speaker holes on each side, while mido (Qualcomm Snapdragon) has 5. Mediatek also has screws on each side of the micro-USB port."

It looks to be like rebranded Gigaset GS290... They put their logo on the case and install some other OS for you and sell it for 50€ more than the original one...

I would happily pay those €50 if it works as advertised.

Time is money and anything that keeps me away from random dudes random ROM on XDA is a good thing.

Interesting and given "The price of €359 inside Europe or €309 outside (plus any import taxes)"

I'm thinking by Europe they mean the EU, hence price in Euros.

Also https://www.notebookcheck.net/Gigaset-GS290-Review-Good-smar... Has a price of 269 Euro - first URL saw and didn't hunt for cheapest

I also looked at specs...and agree it does look like the Gigaset GS290, and yes it 50 euros more - only if you live outside the EU/Europe! Otherwise if you live inside EUrope, its 100 euros more. For a phone that they say will be made in EUrope.

So it does somewhat feel like you are better off buying a phone that has good alternative OS support (like an older Samsung or other popular model of yesteryear) and a case of your choice and ending up with something cheaper and better.

Also this free VPN, it's a 3rd party.

Well Willyfox released a phone and promised advert free truecaller for life - I can attest that was a lie. So be mindful of such 3rd party services they offer as you have no guarantee with that.

Also of most importance: "DISCLAIMER: Please note that the device is only CE certified and importation into countries outside the EU and EFTA states may be refused by customs."

So they will sell you a phone that you legally may not be able to use and possibly be blocked by customs and in that situation - I suspect they will just point to that disclaimer and say told you so without any way to resolve you outlay. THAT is something to be most mindful of.

I had the same thinking. It feels like a desperate attempt to draw more money into the campaign with a "success story"

I wish them good luck though, I wouldn't want them to fail.

well, if it "buys" the kernel source so that mainline-linux is theoretically possible I'm really fine with it.

"We have already invested in a prototype community port of Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch"

"Iterations of the white back case of the Volla Phone." are literally moving the printed logo around; not about actually designing even the case.