Need to clear up some misinformation.
Two things first.
1. I'm a backer, since the beginning.
2. I'm not here to tell you to pre-order, you should wait until they have something to show, so whatever I say, don't take it as "pls buy this"
While there was two campaigns, they were never pulled, the first one was cancelled by the team when it was clear they weren't going to reach their goal, so they took it down to find a sponsor to lower the goal.
The so called "fake" prototype never was a fake, the only thing that turned out to be untrue about the prototype was the use of Rhomb.io's clickarm technology, when it was very clearly a lynx tablet, Rhomb.io to this day denies this, showing just how trustworthy they turned out to be. The good news is Rhomb.io was thrown out of the project, which lead to two things, the long delay of the project, and fortunate fact that they went with an updated SoC, so instead of the bulldozer based Carrizo SoC, we should be getting the very nice Ryzen based SoC, this happened because AMD showed an interest in the project, and contacted the team directly.
Now you might say; But the prototype used Atom, and not the Carrizo SoC it was supposed to?
Indeed, however this was never hidden, this was explained as it was shown, and further explained that it was streaming from a dev-board using a Carrizo SoC similar to what they were going for.
So you might say that it's not a proper prototype, personally I'm not bothered about the words used being misused as long as they are clear about what they're presenting, if you read some of their updates you'd quickly sense that these are not native English speaking people.
So where are we today?
The latest update from a few days ago is that they had issues getting the board to boot, but finally achieved boot, and was even able to have the actual device play GTA V, you see since they split with Rhomb.io they hired people from a local(to them) company called ontesting, and by the looks of things, this is ontesting's first major project, and it's a complicated processor, so getting everything to work took time, you can certainly question that decision, especially with the time it took, but as they say, hindsight is 20-20.
The september deadline is looking kind of unlikely, not completely impossible, but everything would have to go very right from now on, and while the biggest hurdle has been dealt with, I still doubt they'll make it, that being said, I fully expect we'll see a proper working prototype with the final SoC, and close to final PCB running by the end of June or beginning of August, and this comes from someone who's been down on the project a lot.
Nothing I've said here is wrong, some of it is opinion, I grant that, but I don't think it's naive, like them using prototype in place of mock-up or proof of concept.
Is it a scam?
No, I realize some people will twist and turn to make it fit a definition of a scam, but generally a scam doesn't keep you updated, work with high-profile companies, like AMD, and by the looks of it, deliver the product they promised, that's at least not my definition of a scam, ofc. we need to wait and see about that last part.
Finally, just to reiterate, I DON'T RECOMMEND YOU PRE-ORDER THIS, I recommend that if you're interested in this project, you wait, check out the forum over at www.smachz.com and/or their discord, most updates are restricted to backers, but you'll definitely hear about it when it's ready.
P.s. if you wonder why I'm posting, I clearly created this account just to post this long reply, well I think PC-gaming needs a proper handheld, and I don't like the misinformation campaign that's been going on, but as I'm not a paid shill, I'm not here blindly telling you to buy it.
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