you can get the non-USA librem 5 for $1200. To me the reason is pretty clear, and mentioned in the article. They employ 11 people to actively improve and upstream the software, so that money goes towards paying them to make this viable in the future. PinePhones rely entirely on the community.

That being said, $1200 is also outside of my toy budget, so I'll probably end up getting a pinephone next year.

I would expect them to send me a non-broken phone for 2 grand, if they’re serious

i guess you're a glass half empty kind of person

I’m just not sure how they’re shipping broken phones. They can’t be making many but there’s no QA?

It was just a joke. I mean if this person didn't just get really unlucky and something broke between QA and them getting the phone, they should obviously improve their QA. I was more trying to justify the high price tag in general