Wileyfox goes TITSUP*: Smartmobe maker calls in the administrators UK budget smartphone maker Wileyfox has called in the administrative receiver Quantuma, The Register can confirm. The administrator was appointed late on Monday and spent yesterday at Wileyfox's premises. Quantuma told us it had reduced Wileyfox's costs to the "bare minimum", which involved laying off 20 staff, and was …
But it means more mediocre android landfill, and less proper phones.
The improvement in low cost phones over the last couple of years is quite remarkable, so I wouldn't be too sad, nor would I regard these as landfill. I spent a whopping GBP 160 on my last handset after years of running successive Samsung S2, S3, S4 and S5s on the household fleet. The only compromise I've had to make is a camera not as good as the current top end Samsung offerings, the other hand I've got a better battery life than ***any*** Samsung smartphone. Playing honest broker, my display is lower res than current top end phones, but since I can't see the difference on a 5.5" display between QHD and full HD, I'm not worried. Even the maker's skin and customisation is so good that other than Nova Launcher I've stuck with the default.
Investigating the better offerings of the Chinese makers not actively promoting in your region may offer some very pleasant surprises. I suspect that these phones are why Wileyfox didn't achieve the sales they wanted.
I spent a whopping GBP 160 on my last handset after years of running successive Samsung S2, S3, S4 and S5s on the household fleet.
And I'm onto my second, second-hand S5 that cost me all of € 140. I have two spare batteries and a spare phone (single crack on the display) if push comes to shove.
If people want to spend € 800 on a new phone then they're more than welcome, I'm happy with their crumbs though I am looking forward to the Gemini if it ever arrives as the keyboard is a real USP.
I recently bought a Blackview Chinese special from Amazon in the Black Friday sales. It cost the princely sum of just over £43 new.
It's not a premium smart phone, but the screen res. is the same as the mid-range HTC it replaced. It's only 3G and does not have NFC, but I found that I was not using the NFC and 3G is quite fast enough for the limited amount of mobile browsing I do,
It's got the same Flash and RAM, and Android 7 appears to do a much better job of managing the available memory than previous releases. The battery is removable and large at 2800mAh, and easily lasts more than two days the way I use it. It has a microSD slot as well as the SIM slots.
Also, the call and audio quality is much better than the HTC.
But the main reason I bought it was that I had been carrying around two phones because of coverage problems (the other a Nexus 4 running Ubuntu Touch - which worked really well), and this Blackview is a dual-SIM phone that means I only have to carry one.
All in all, it's a perfectly good phone for almost nothing. The only thing I still intend to check is whether there is any traffic from baked-in apps on the phone, but I've not noticed anything yet.
> I can vouch for Lenovo/Moto being the same... good enought for me.
Not my experience - My Moto G5 has not received any updates at all, apparently being on the January 2017 security patch level means my phone is up to date. Shame, because otherwise it is a very nice phone. Twin SIM and SD card, 3GB RAM, octa core CPU.
No so much if you picked one of their less popular models, like my total flop of a G5, very sporadic updates, never moved to 7.1.1 let alone 8.
This unit as well the (always was doomed) naff "friends" modules has a number nasty glitches which as far as I can tell are pretty common, getting warm for no apparent reason, epic battery drain with no clear culprit.
Buying a "flagship" doesn't always get you what it should I'm seriously wondering about something like the Honor 9 Lite
My first Android was an HTC. Apart from one carrier update that was it. Then I had a Samsung. 6 months and the updates stopped. Got another Samsung and this time it was around a year and then it was carrier updates only.
I know that this is not totally represntative but that's my experience. Moved to recon'd iPhones. My iPhone 6 is still getting full OS updates and not had any battery issues. (don't speak too soon eh?)
Until Google puts their foot down OS updates on Android will still be hit and miss. They have the stance taken by Apple to work towards and they should. The whole phone market will be a better place if they did get tough. Less for Apple Fanbois to crow about for one thing.
> Nokia are pretty good, but my Nokia 6 is still on the December's security patch.
> They're generally about 2-3 months behind. Better than most though.
My Nokia 8 has Android version 8.0.0 and Security Patch level 1 January 2018. It is always up to date. The interesting thing is that the low end £79 Nokia 3 is also kept up to date also and also runs Oreo. This proves that other manufacturer's claims that old phones are too low spec to run Oreo are untrue.
"...time to start looking around for a good value, regularly updated, replacement..."
Good luck with that. Motorola seem to be the last man standing here with the Moto E4 (4th Gen) at least. The only other options are Chinese grey imports with dubious security, poor pedigree and non-official support.
With the passing of Wileyfox Android has just become another iDevice* option i.e. overpriced & of little real-world value.
*idiot Device.
"Nothing to do with their cashflow being frozen or them not selling the number of phones they expected to in the face of increased competition.
No, it was Brexit, obviously."
Well if Brexit caused the price of memory to increase by 25% alone, reducing the profit on each handset built and sold, it would have a fairly big impact on an already beleaguered company. Wouldn't it?
Which ignores that everybody else had the same inflationary pressure, Wileyfox having an advantage of some of their costs not rising with the exchange rate, given that they are based in the UK.
The temporary currency blip may have hurt them, it may even have tipped them over the edge, but to pretend it was the main (or only) cause is it ignore the article and shout "OMG BREXIT" in the comments.
Something which became tedious before the first of July 2016.
Which ignores that everybody else had the same inflationary pressure
Not really, Wileyfox was based in the UK giving it less opportunity to hedge.
It is, however, an admittedly feeble excuse given that pound / dollar exchange rate (the relevant one for imports from the Far East) has largely recovered. I suspect the demise of Cyanogen for the OS and low volumes of a low margin product made the business unsustainable.
"Something which became tedious before the first of July 2016".
To the contrary, the only thing round here that is really tedious is Brexit supporters and their denial of reality and their denial that Brexit, especially the hard version, will do significant and long term damage to the British economy.
Nothing to do with their cashflow being frozen or them not selling the number of phones they expected to in the face of increased competition.
Not forgetting their shit customer service and priority on posting to social media rather than doing what they should be doing.
This does not come as a surprise.
Instead now they can have a banner "Screwed by Brexit. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"
Sanctions and Information Security actually.
Russian central bank had to jack up twice the capitalisation requirements for most banks. In addition to that, banks are in the same category as peering points, Internet infra, etc. Legal requirements for information security. That, once again, has been pushed to the front by the escalation of information warfare between us and them.
It failed the capitalisation and it had information security issues which their CEO blamed on an "information security attack" by the industry regulator. The last is a bit sort-a laughable as per the last set of national infrastructure protection laws they voted in 2016, their central bank regulator is entitled to verify that its subjects cannot be subverted by an information attack. They are authorized all the way - including doing it for real. If they really did that by doing a pen test which the bank failed, I can only applaud that. I wish we had the same reqs. They are needed in this day and age.
Tragic. I'm still using my original Swift. It's been a brilliant phone.
Has anyone got any recommendations for similar handsets i.e. a solid Android phone with regular software updates for those who don't need a penis extension with super high definition video and a gazillion megapixel camera?
I can't remember when it was... but a few of us at work went for them. Our security patches were... patchy... and Wileyfox were relatively quiet when directly queried... so eventually I gave up and went back to the Jolla when Cyanogen closed the doors, because I didn't want to switch to the Android alternative... because that's why I went Jolla and Wileyfox in the first place.
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