Even with the Elephone Vowney MIA, Elephone are pushing ahead with the launch of the Elephone P9000 with a ‘crowdfunding’ event. Details below.
Chinese phone makers are known for building up hype, then creating special offer presales, to generate more interest in their product, but it is quite obvious to them now that we are all much more savvy to their ‘marketing’ tricks so phone makers are trying new tactics.
Elephone’s plan it to hole a ‘crowdfunding’ event which requires customers to pay a small deposit towards the Elephone P9000. In return the customer will receive a voucher that will reduce the cost of the phone by as much as $50 (pay $5 and you will get a voucher for $50 off the price of the P9000, $3 will earn you a $30 voucher). The idea is different to a presale as the initial outlay from customer is much less, and as a result Elephone are hoping for many many more thousands of orders.
Gizchina News of the week
The event launched yesterday (25th December) for both types of Elephone P9000 and already 2006 people have backed the P9000 model with a price of less than $200 promised, and 2087 backers opting for the $150 P9000 Lite.
With such a low entry price we are sure that many more people will take part before the offer expires on the 15th January 2016, but how long will people need to wait before their P9000’s ship?
Is either of these the bezeless model?
Nope, that’s the edge version
…at least, it’s not just cheaper, but fairer as well: instead of months of waiting after putting hundred dollars on the edge wondering if the phone will ever come, it’s just 3-5 dollars and on a crowfinding!
Help me out here. If you hit the ‘details’ panel on the regular model, it shows that this will support 4G in the U.S. That version will ship later but still that is good news for us in the U.S.
I don’t think this version will actually come later: this would mean they’ll have to differentiate their productions, but the chip is the same and it does support us bands, so probably they’ll just enable it on the antennas and sell the same everywhere… Otherwise it would mean extra effort and problems of mass production, something they cannot actually afford
Except that the P8000 shows A & B models with different frequencies for each. The B is for the U.S. and coolicool shows that it’s in stock now.
However, I don’t get why they have to have two separate models if the chip will support all the bands. Why not just produce one world-mode model? As you say, it does mean extra effort and costs so why bother?
Seems like they though this model out for china and european markets only (which have similar bands), not expecting to sell anything in the american market… Probably they though that adding us’ antennas was not worth the money and time, adding them in a different version later! Because (as i forgot to mention it) the chip can fisically support us bands, but if there aren’t the antennas it won’t catch them! Sometimes bands just needs to be software-enabled, sometimes it’s just antennas missing… In this case, was the latter! However, maybe the vowney won’t have us support, but i really think they won’t make this mistake twice with p9000 (it was the same with some important 3g bands missing for european market at the beginning… They added it on all of the other following models!)
So they’ll need a different production line for the U.S. phones.
And then there’s the delay factor, which Elephone is famous for.
I think this time around (to avoid that production issue) they’ll add all of the bands right from the start… So the months long delay will be for everybody, not just us buyers 😀
Hmm. Well then. Specs are nice. Price is nice if I commit $5.
I cracked the screen on my Be Pro so I am looking for a replacement.
Yep, I’ve yet got to understand how they’ll screw all up, but 5$ are worth the risk i think 😀
the chip supports the bands, but like MattD said you need the Antennas.
what they also need is to pay fees for the patent protected technologies.
A world phone Elephone won’t happen because it’s made at cheap and it would be a waste of money to pay for redundant fees.
there are only few true world phones out there and they usually come from big brands like Samsung.
the rule is that companies make two different versions for separate markets to avoid those fees.
Motorola,LG,HTC to name few of them usually have two different versions (US and International)
I have an old spare television antenna, I hope that works for band 111
as long as you make it fit in your pockets 🙂
Thanks.
crowdfunding? lol
… i will pay 100$ just to see the a picture of that elephone berlin..
but why …
Can someone please tell me the difference? They’re both 4GB/32GB with the same screen?
Seems like the lite version doesn’t have fast charge, wireless charge, 5mpx front camera in place of the 8mpx on the other version, and maybe it’ll miss something else like (but I’m really not sure about it) no nfc
it wont have a metal frame
I haven’t heard about that, but seems reasonable
just look at the older news , renders
the p9000c/lite is all plastic and the other ones have metal frames + sandstone back
I thought to go check the old renders as well, but then i was like “not worth the little efford for elephone, plus their renders are hardly reliable” and i quit the idea lol
However, you’re definitely right: i just saw the p9000 lite’s video someone posted here in the comments, it doesn’t seem like it has metal frame
the little is still a bargain mt 6755+4gb RAM+32gb ROM for 199$ its amazing
They are supposed to email you a code to use when you buy the phone at their authorized seller. I threw my $5 at it, and never got the code. figures
I got my voucher code at the end of my paypal $5.00 purchase.
You guys never follow their trend, even if you funded them and got special rates I think you will not be getting a good deal. They’re churning out phone like no tomorrow……..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOvyt0d2Fl0
Elephone are running a ponzi scheme.
Some of you might get phones or some kind of ‘gift’ at a later date but most of those people have just been duped out of a handful of dollars.