Hi backers and subscribers,

We want to give you a small update on the delayed shipment of the remaining MNT Pocket Reform units.

First, the good news: On Oct 14, 2024, 33 MNT Pocket Reform devices were shipped via UPS, following the previous week’s shipment of 18 units. We still have to fulfill 57 more pre-orders and we are working hard to make this happen quickly.

However, there has been an issue with our display supplier that has not been resolved yet:

One year ago, in October 2023, we found a display supplier who sent us 100 display samples. We tested them all and only 4 of them were in excellent condition. Most of them had small blotches, but we have very high quality standards and deemed the other 96 displays unacceptable. We communicated this issue and the supplier urged us to switch to a different display, because the JDI display we were going for has been end of line, so they couldn’t guarantee the quality. Since we didn’t have any alternative at the time, Lukas developed a different MIPI DSI init code, and a PWM backlight control. Lukas was able to offload this to the RP2040 system controller, which also required different firmware for those new displays. A lot of work went into this, with little help from the supplier.

It took our supplier a long time to ship us two samples, and when they arrived they worked just fine. Since we had paid in advance for 500 displays (a total of more than $15,000 USD), we were quite happy and thought that we can now ship our devices without any issue. However, when we heard back from them, they had suddenly raised the price and communicated they would only ship 350 displays; if we wanted 500, we would have to pay extra. By doing this, they disregarded our agreement. Again, we didn’t have any alternatives, so we accepted the higher price for the 350 displays and agreed internally that we would need to find a different supplier after all. Since then, we’ve been left waiting for the promised 350 displays — that never came. For weeks we’ve been asking for the exact date when the shipment should take place, for the tracking number, for any information, but they have now left us on unread after all their stalling messages.

Our guess is that something went wrong on their side and they don’t want us to know what it is. This is unacceptable, and we are now trying to get a refund. We want to be hopeful, but it is a bit unlikely as the legal terms overseas are hard to enforce.

In the meantime, Lukas has been in contact with other suppliers and has ordered several display batches already. One of the suppliers sent us a batch of 100 displays last week. Anri tested them all and found that 67 of them were damaged, so we could only use 33. We had hoped that more of them would be in good condition, as we pre-built all of the remaining MNT Pocket Reform units for Crowd Supply that are only missing a display. So this issue has been delaying the shipment to you, which we are very sorry for.

To show you a few examples of the quality issues of the last display shipment, we’d like to add a few pictures we took during the testing.

Fortunately, we now have multiple other batches of alternative displays incoming, so we will be able to send out the last 57 orders during the next weeks. We will update you on the situation and hope you bear with us. If you are on the Fediverse, please follow our account. We post frequently about the latest developments and you can also find Lukas’ thread on the display situation.