Saygus: We Double-Pinky-Promise Our Phone Is Coming

BARCELONA—Hardware is difficult. Nobody knows that more than Saygus, a starting time-up phone maker that is at this signal a cautionary tale in how hard information technology is to build your dreams. Here at Mobile World Congress, though, Saygus founder Republic of chad Sayers insists the long look is over—and the Saygus V Squared smartphone will finally start to appear next month.

MWC Bug Art "We expect to have the first 3,000 finished and ready in the first shipping phase next month," Sayers said. The telephone will enter the FCC's testing labs the second week of March, he said. Take this with a grain of salt.

Saygus raised $1.3 million in an Indiegogo campaign to back up the V Squared terminal year. At this bear witness, Sayers unraveled a sorry tale of multiple failed Chinese manufacturing partners. This is why I'm nervous about other phone first-ups like Nextbit, past the style. Sayers said that Saygus has been through five manufacturing partners, variously being delayed, having contractual issues or merely evidently being ignored past the manufacturers that were supposed to produce it.

"We got hung up twice in the last twelvemonth [with manufacturers,]" Sayers said. "We sat for iv weeks waiting for a working sample, and week number five, said 'yous're gone.' That was three manufacturers ago," he said.

Saygus V Squared

Even if it does appear shortly, the V Squared'south long, long road to market may still make it a tough sell. The latest version of the phone is a slightly ruggedized, water-and-soap-proof Android half-dozen.0 phone with dual-SIM bill of fare slots, dual MicroSD card slots, 60GHz wireless HDMI, and a USB-C 3.0 port. The phone runs mostly stock Android, and is rootable with an unlocked bootloader.

Other specs include a 5-inch 1080p display, 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, 21-megapixel and 13-megapixel cameras, an IR transciever, a remoavble 3100mAh bombardment and wireless charging. This all looked really stunning in early 2022, but less shocking in early 2022, especially once you hear Sayers say the phone will probably cost $650.

Saygus has also stuck with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, which makes the phone look old. Sayers said the 801 still has great performance, and he's right, but it's still an old fleck. A new version of the Saygus, bachelor by Christmas, may have the newer Snapdragon 820, he said.

"This chipset is awesome; we saw aught to upgrade to until the 820," Saygus's Jason Actor said.

The phone will back up LTE bands ane/2/iii/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/25/26/41, which makes it uniform with all four of the U.S. carriers' networks. It will likewise support both GSM and CDMA, and Saygus is still working towards getting certified by Verizon, Sayers said.

Given that Saygus is the phone visitor which has been crying wolf practically since the pre-industrial era, I'd exist very cautious virtually bold that this phone will actually come to marketplace. But if it does, I'll exist very happily surprised. Information technology'll be the cease of a long road.

This commodity originally appeared on PCMag.com.