As a software developer for more than 30 years, I've written various applications including user-facing software, credit card payment portals, and HIPAA-compliant account management. I've secured countless servers and services using public-private key encryption, and was using HTTPS protocols way before it was cool. Basically, I believe that every user is entitled to a degree of privacy, that their emails, chats, and text messages should not travel over clear-text.
So, I plunked-down $610 for the low-end Turing Phone model and waited for the phone to be released.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
I followed Turing avidly, even resorting to reading their FaceBook (I do not have a FB account for many of the privacy concerns I voiced above.) pages, received their irregular emails promising me that, for my patience, the phone would be upgraded to the next (memory) tier, then the next, then the next, and then finally, the top-of-the-line Dark Wyvern model!
I held faith even when others were abandoning in droves, requesting refunds, and evaluating Turing's responses. Always so casual: Just email our support team with your order number and your refund will be processed immediately.
Such a cavalier response bolstered my confidence that the phone would actually happen!
Finally, a full year, almost to the day later, Turing emailed me that the phones were shipping!
And so I waited... and waited... and waited some more...
Three more months went by and then, one year and three months after placing my order, I received my Dark Wyvern phone!
The waiting was not worth it.
The phone I was shipped was what I could only consider to be in a pre-Alpha state. None of the features for which I ordered the phone were enabled:
- no Android OS - Jolla OS, instead was installed.
- no encryption - there was a chat app installed but you need someone else with the same app and, presumably, the same OS, to chat securely.
- no bluetooth headset - it was promised when the final version (of the phone) shipped, at the end of 2016. That date has since been pushed-back to "sometime in early 2017"
- no Android compatibility - Turing had sent-out an email announcing their decision to switch to Jolla OS but assured users that Jolla has 100% compatibility with Android OS. This was a lie as the phone (or the OS) was unable to install the Google Play store.
- no fingerprint scanner - the hardware was there, but the OS didn't support the scanner.
I was able to link my Google account to the phone and I was able to sync my contacts and calendar, access my email, etc. But the phone was barely functional in terms it's features.
Compounding issues was the problem that the phone required frequent rebooting. When you switched from a WiFi network to the cellular network, chances were about 50-50 or better that the phone would not acknowledge the switch and you've have a hi-tech brick instead of a phone. Reboot.
Applications would frequently crash. Reboot.
Never got the Jolla maps program working. Need turn-by-turn directions to find a vet in Tijuana? Not with this phone.
About the only thing that did work was that the sim card from my crappy iPhone 4S worked without issue. Everything else on the phone was fail.
I ended up storing the phone on the shelf with the rest of my dead or obsolete electronics and went back into wait mode.
Then, in December, on the heels of receiving marketing spam announcing some new gizmo from Turing, I emailed their support asking when the DW phone, final version, would be released. That email was sent on Dec 16, 2016, to Turing Support asked when the final versions of the DW would be released. As of today, Jan 1, 2017, I've not received a reply.
Turing has posted on their FB page that the official support for the DW phones are being handled on reddit - so I bee-bopped over there to check it out and found a community that was notable only in that it was completely lacking any representation from Turing. Like FB, Turing apparently is relying on community for their technical support issued. Reading some of the posts there, I realized that the overall "quality" of my phone was significantly better than what some of the other users were reporting.
Also, sometime in December of 2016, all of Turing's social media sites, including g+, twitter, and FB were all "hacked" in that all the sites supported banners that read:
Because of an inability of Turing to pay its business partners, Turing can no longer use this page to communicate with its customers and fans
The reddit sub-forum postulated that Turing was hacked. I believe what happened is that they stopped paying their web-master, or the developer in charge of their social media presence, and he bannered them appropriately.
Turing sent out a couple additional email announcements in late December, 2016, that announced new social media sites, (snicker), and new products. The last email received, one December 31, 2016, announced the following:
We are also making a pre-announcement of our new flagship phone due for release soon.
Conspicuously absent from all announcements is any mention of the "first generation" phones, specifically, when Turing would honor their obligations to customers who apparently crowd-funded the R&D for the "new flagship" phone.
Is Turing, and their CEO Syl Chao, just another poster-boy for crowd-funding failure, undelivered product, and unfulfilled promises?
For anyone considering investment in this company, or it's production, as a customer I can only strongly recommend that you first do your due diligence. If Turing has kept its customers waiting, after taking their money, for a nearly a year and a half, with no response from either the company or their support, should you really make a monetary commitment on a non-shipping product?