Originally Posted by Amboss

It shouldn't be on the comments if it is an information about the project. Or is it just a minor ping "we are still here"?

January 2018 Update

Hello all,

Thank you for your continuous support and trust on this project. It's been very difficult recently for us - the cost continuously rise over past weeks, and we also need to keep our business going to support it. It was hard, but a lot of you gave us great support and encouragement to keep it moving, we can't thank you enough.
Current Status

We have most components on the way, or delivered now. There are some ICs has been discontinued, but we did find the successor parts and placed the order.

Memory chips are quite expensive but we still managed to place the order to cover 3K production with both 1.5K volumes.

PCB delivery is the most difficult part recently. Due to the recent factors, such as local government restricting emitting chemical waste, the factory has to reduce capacity of production, we've paid deposit for an express service and the target delivery of plain PCB will be around Mid-February, around 12th.

When the plain PCB arrives, we will provide you the detailed pictures.
The Next Step

Once we have the PCB, we will start SMT immediately. Due to the Chinese New Year in Mid-February, labour in a week before and 2 weeks afterwards is very unstable. Our conservative estimation it can be done around 5th March till the Mid. We will provide you fully populated pictures at this point.

The final assembly estimates to start between 10th Mar to 15th Mar, and we will use samples from here for testing software and for CE and FCC certifications. It will take about 2 weeks before shipping them to you.

Therefore the first shipping date will be around end of March, by quickest. It sounds far away, but we did not want to disappoint you again for the potential factors that may delay the progress, therefore we did the estimation date conservatively. Hopefully that can be achieved quicker than estimation.
Risks that might change delivery

Mainly the Chinese New Year's holiday. Some labours may leave a week before the New Year's Day, and some may come back one week after holiday finishes (Official holiday period is a week). With reduced number of labours before and after the New Year's Holiday, there is still uncertainty on SMT and Assembly.
Special Thanks

Livermorium and Liangchen Chen has helped Youyota greatly this time on moving the project forward. With this support we have more confident on this delivery schedule. Livermorium's first product has just been announced by Lenovo and Motorola last week at CES 2018.
The Next Update

We will keep you closely updated with the process of components, PCB and assembly. The next update will be around 10 Feb, when we will have our plain PCB ready for SMT. And we will post pictures with the process.

Some quick update: The PCB factory is still under process making the board. We are trying our best to have it finished this week so we could show you some pictures before it closes for the Chinese New Year. We will do our best and keep you updated! Thank you all again!

Although it’s over weekend we still in talk with the factory. A lot of labors has already left for Chinese New Year, but we are still trying to get some finished PCB to show you before the factory completely closes, it’s hard but we are trying. Despite the New Year influence the progress is still on track, no showstopper so far. Will keep updated closely here.

It’s the Chinese New Year’s Eve today the factory is officially closed now. They have made to the surface finish step, which is the last step in PCB manufacturing. They will re-open and continue the process in about 2 weeks time, after the “Mid-Lantern Festival”. Our overall delivery time hasn’t been affected. It’s the Chinese National Holiday tomorrow our team has also left for holiday today. Will come back in around 10 days’ time and will check as soon as factory opens again.

We are still on track with assembly and delivery. It might be a little bit quiet in the next 2 weeks as every supplier / factory will be closed in this period of time, there might not be much of updates until around end of Feb. But we assure you that we will monitor closely with the factory and update here as soon as there is any.

Hello all! Thank you for your patience amongst the Lunar New Year Holiday period. The team will be back to office guadually from Monday, and we will start dealing with the factory as soon as we are back. The factory may start working slightly late as labors might take longer journey traveling back. We will keep you updated as soon as there is any. Won’t be long!