The crowd-funding site Indiegogo has suspended former Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) President Fahd Alhattab’s kick-starter campaign for his Frank. cell phone company.
A Sept. 20 post to Frank.’s Facebook page explained the suspension as an accident.
Alhattab said issues arose because the company replicated the model of the phone, meaning they used a pre-existing design and model rather than an original design.
“Let’s be frank: our team made a mistake in our choice of language and design presentation, leading to misconceptions and serious consequences that we tried to rectify by cleaning up our campaign and in interviews with the media,” the post stated.
In a previous interview with The Charlatan, Alhattab said he collaborated with quality assurance engineers and negotiated with manufacturers in China, going through four different prototypes before settling on the final Frank. design.
The final Frank. phone design was supposed to feature a 5.5-inch screen, 64 gigabytes of internal storage, a five-megapixel front camera and a 13-megapixel rear camera, all running on Android 6.0.
The first 500 devices were advertised through the Indiegogo campaign at an early-bird price of $180 US, with following devices selling for $215-$240.
“For that price, the specs you’re getting are amazing,” Alhattab said in the interview.
However, an article from Android Police, an online blog dedicated to reviewing Android smartphones, questioned the legitimacy of the phone, especially after the campaign unexpectedly switched from Kickstarter to Indiegogo. The former site is known for having stricter regulations around campaigns, while Indiegogo is typically more lenient, according to the article.
In a tweet earlier this month, Alhattab said Frank. made the switch because Indiegogo offered them a better promotional deal.
However, since the suspension, Alhattab said the company is done working with Indiegogo.
“They weren’t fair business partners,” he alleged.
Despite this, Alhattab said the company doesn’t plan to give up. While he admits they did receive some negative feedback, he said this is expected for any new business idea.
He also argued that in many ways, the negative feedback they received was the best research they could have done, as it gave them new and better ideas.
According to Alhattab, the company still plans to release the phone to the market. He said he believes there is a demand in the market for a low-cost phone.
According to the campaign site, Frank. crowd-funded $15,000 USD on the first day of its kick-starter campaign.
Alhattab said since the suspension of the campaign, around 400 supporters have continued to back the company.
He said there is discussion about introducing an online store to their pre-existing website and sell the phone from there.
According to the post, consumers can fill out a form online in order to received a discount on the phone when it is released to the market on this different platform.
Photo by Meagan Casalino
