The C64U is an amazing achievement but it seems too early to go for the smart phone.
Hopefully there is a niche and their business plan is viable for a small number of sales.
I'll buy this if there is a way to remove the app restrictions they have. Ideally, I should be able to flash the default SailfishOS
The reality though is, most folks don’t even think how much time they spend on phones, so I hope they can become profitable with devices sold in the thousands.
It's actually surprisingly easy. Flash LineageOS and don't install any nonessential apps which includes no play services. At that point all you have is SMS and the browser. (If you find even just the browser too difficult to resist then configure parental controls I guess.)
Alternatively a less drastic action is to permanently set it to silent. You (and your contacts) get used to it after a few weeks.
Most tech products are sold at somewhere around 3-4x what it costs the company to make them.
The only ones that I've seen beat this dynamic to an extent are the unihertz phones.
I hear that in China they have a lot of franken-PCs reusing recycled chips because they have all the PCB-level design and manufacturing expertise but they can't make chips. They'll take a GPU off its graphics card and solder it onto a laptop, or the reverse, stuff like that. And each design in low quantities based on what models of e-waste they can get. Pine is one of that kind of company although not nearly as extreme. A lot of their plastic cases are repurposed from other devices. The A64 chip is designed to go in set-top boxes. They don't do low-hundred quantities based on e-waste, obviously, they are set up for mass production but they're still using whatever parts they can get their hands on that are surplus to other companies' requirements. That's half the reason they discontinued so many products.