What happened in February 2017

Helios · January 31, 2017, 11:00pm

This is a collection of announcements and updates from the Eve team. It provides a look into the history of the company and its projects.

Please note that this is a collection of old news: plans may have been altered since based on new developments, and statements may have been superseded by more recent ones. Polls are no longer active (results are included wherever possible) and links (both to other community posts and external resources) may no longer be valid.

February 1, 2017: [ HOT UPDATE ] Results of The Team Workshop Today: Timelines, Keyboard Layouts and Other Hot Questions Answered!

On another topic

Nihao Eve Family!

As I have promised in our official FAQ thread we had a product workshop today in which we discussed current project schedule and questions that popped up during order confirmation process.

Without further ado I’ll jump into topics we discussed and decisions we made.

1. Timeline

I have mentioned it before but would like to get back to this question. We think all the backers and community members should know what stage we are at and how the delivery dates looks like. I, personally, really dislike when companies provide unclear shipping timelines

Our team has reviewed the timeline today and things look good! We are on track to deliver Vs during promised Feb-March time frame.

Right now Vs are in certification stage (CE, FCC, CCC, and other country specific certifications ) that is conducted by 3rd parties. As we are shipping to many countries we have a lot of certificates to get and as a result this process takes a lot of time to complete.

In order to mitigate possibility of delays we used money raised during the Indiegogo to purchase V components.

Additionally in our view big delays (more than a month) are not foreseeable.

Despite the fact that things are looking good now there is always a chance of slight schedule slippage

In our view there are 2 things that can cause it.

Certification authorities taking longer than expected to certify devices

During community test device review some unknown bugs are found that can’t be easily fixed by software update.

People who purchased Limited bird perk will receive their device approximately 1 month after first 500 devices are produced and shipped to Hyper Early Bird backers.

Also I would like to remind you that:

We will not send out review units to press or Youtubers nor will we open our online sales again before early backers receive their Vs! So delivering on time is our team’s top priority!

2. Keyboard Layouts

One of the hottest issues is localization of V keyboard. As we have previously mentioned it is quite a tricky thing to do from manufacturing stand point for small volumes (small = less than 1000 keyboards per language).

Below are answers to popular questions:

When will we see localized layout for V keyboard?

@iKirin and @Mike will kick off community threads per each layout confirming with community members from those countries that it’s the layout they want. The goal is to lock down all of the current layouts next week.

What if my layout was not available as an add on?

Our recommendation is for you to take the layout that is closest to your desired one. After a long review of this issue we think that as we managed to get so many layouts confirmed with our vendor adding couple more should not be a problem. But we cant promise anything yet. We will need to wait for Chinese New Year holiday to end first. If all is good we will notify you about new layout availability through community or email newsletter. So in the best case you will get layout you want in the worst case you will have layout closest to your desired one. Remember we will do everything we can to get what community needs!

What about Fn functions, Alt Gr and other function keys?

Based on the discussion thread started by @iKirin we have compiled a list of desired functions that looks like this:
Keyboard-Changes:

Move existing functions:
	- 'Insert' from F10+Fn to Delete+Fn
	- 'Toggle Keyboard Brightness' from F11+Fn to F10+Fn
	
New functions:
	- 'AltGr' as default-key right beside the keyboard
	- 'Menu' as AltGr+Fn
	- 'Fn-Lock' (only affecting F1-F12) to Esc+Fn (Indicator needed?)
	- 'WiFi on/off' to F11+Fn (possible?) - If not have 'Sleep'
	- 'Touchpad on/off' to Win+Fn

Notes:
	AltGr should be present on all layouts (as people seem to want it) just where we right now have the "Menu"-Key.
	Menu would be reachable via a Fn-Combination (see proposed functions)
	
Proposed functions (all Fn combinations): 
	x Esc: Toggle Fn-Lock (only affecting F1-F12)
	- F1: Lower Screen Brightness
	- F2: Increase Screen Brightness
	- F3: Mute
	- F4: Lower Volume
	- F5: Increase Volume
	- F6: Previous Track
	- F7: Play/Pause
	- F8: Next Track
	- F9: PrintScreen
	x F10: Toggle Keyboard Brightness
	x F11: Toggle WiFi (if possible) or Sleep
	- F12: Toggle Bluetooth
	- ▽: Toggle Backlight Color
	x AltGr: Menu
	x Left Arrow: Home
	x Right Arrow: End
	x Up Arrow: Page Up
	x Down Arrow: Page Down
	x Win: Touchpad on/off
We will await for our supplier response after Chinese New Year and confirm it back to you submitting picture of final layout.

3. Accessories

We received plenty of questions asking the exact specs of some of the cables and adapters that are available through BackerKit. We will double check them with suppliers immediately after Chinese New Year and get back to you.

Currently the hottest items were:

HDMI adapter Specs

Cable speeds and other relevant specs

We will compile all of the items above along with other accessories into a list. And provide members with the spec sheet.

4. Community review units

Community review units will be sent out in Mid February. Community members will get access to test units before press and/or YouTubers (They will get it week before we kick off our sales again).

Challenge winners will be first to receive review devices.
We will keep you posted on unit delivery schedule and steps you need to take to participate in review program.

5. Shipping

Some of the users asked us about possibility of combining shipments or sending items separately. We are now in discussion with our shipping partner and will notify you about how it would go as soon as we get confirmation from our partner.

Thats about it dudes! Thank you for everything!

February 2, 2017: [Sleeve] Early February Update

On another topic

HELLO GUYS!

The man bows humbly

Its Mike here, back from China. We headed straight to visit our partners Mozo to see where we stand with the Sleeves!

After listening to your most valuable feedback, we’re now approaching the design questions with a multi disciplinary method, looking at each choice through functionality and aesthetics (look, feel and function).

Speaking of the development method you are such a big part of, Mozo guys really really like you guys!
They have told us over and over again how much they enjoy reading your feedback so keep it coming guys You rock!

Konsta, Dario & Olli evaluating Propeller’s feeback

We’re progressing according to planned timelines in terms of sleeve production, and the current prototypes we have are approximately: getting close to being ready-for-production.

Magnetic Sleeve is at around 80% readiness, while Zipper needs a bit more fine tuning, being at around 65% readiness respectively.

As you have requested from us, today we were discussing the following main points:

Magnetic Sleeve:

Increasing the flap more towards the edges.

We’re going to prototype this and see how much extension we can do.

We’re also going to reduce the reach of the flap on x axis, making it a little smaller.

Zipper Sleeve:

We liked the color or the felt very much, it had this cool “camouflage” look into it, but simultaneously the texture was a bit too “hairy”. We’re considering
to apply pressure on the fabric on manufacturing to make it smoother to touch.

Zipper Sleeve in Dario’s hands, portrayed in a horrible picture taken by Mike

We also liked the idea of waterproof zipper, but in actuality it seems to be hard to implement. Also constructing the zipper from non-metal materials takes off the premium and makes the zipper harder to open - you actually have to use more force to open it. If you take a look at any premium bag, high quality metal zipper is always used.

Seems like the original idea needs some rethinking. After all, people will be putting the V into and pulling it out from the sleeve many many times. We don’t want the “Zipper” to be hard to use

As such, we concluded that it would be worth taking a look into how we could use a premium metal zipper. This would improve the functionality: it would be easier to open and close. It would also create a luxurious feel to the product. It could also be a nice eye catcher! We will need to create a prototype to figure out how we elimiate the threat of scratching
your precious Vs inside

Let us hear our thoughts below. Please note that while I wrote this post, @konstantinos has actually been in the Sleeve creation process more intensively, so I may have said something above that’s sounds contradictory to what’s been decided or said earlier, so in those cases ping Konsta here

ps. Next time I will take better pictures haha

February 16, 2017: [OFFICIAL] Eve Status Update + Q&A

February 17, 2017: Video Minutes

On another topic

Hi there, i’ve written some minutes to all these great videos @iKirin and @Konstantinos made in the latest video thread: http://dough.community/t/offical-eve-status-update-q-a/5119?u=thospa

Yay, now even official

On another topic

Dudes! Thanks so much. You can’t imagine how big help it is to us! Cheers. Ill make it official now if you don’t mind:)

Please do not discuss your personal opinion herein, just post if there is something missing in the minutes which have been in the video.

I’ll try to sort the minutes once I’ve slept

Shipping
Small delay: Last week March/first week april
Why? Some issues prevent Eve from calling it flawless, prototypes are randomly shutting off, certification progress

Most Problems

Product is very high-end, manufacturers are not used of creating this level of quality.

Manufacturers are satisfied with the quality but Eve isn’t, as Eve’s standard is very high

Willing to delay it 2-3 weeks to increase quality if something goes wrong with the prototypes

Current Status

Final Housing Available, now matching colors (a bit darker, “gun like”)

Primarily Bugfixing (in software), hardware runs good

Many support tickets for BackerKit drowned crew

Many visits to partners, manufacturers, etc. with 10 people for business part

Certifications are proceeding - but slow process. V is sold to 80 countries - so all international certifications. Focus on US, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, Norway, Switzerland (might have missed some). Agencies are certifying the prototypes right now.

Status of Sleeves : They are really amazing, look and feel great. Final changes are made and production will be on time (in March).

Starting next week (Monday 20th Feb)

Assembling Gen 2 Prototypes, pre-production prototypes

Shipping Prototypes to Community Members

There will be a survey with different use cases of V, some will be sent out to community members of these use cases

Queue some members randomly

Get keyboard samples

Ship prototypes

Other Questions

How about using V with touch and kickstand on table. Same as other devices (V is moving on the table when pressing the screen).

Linux support? Ubuntu has offered help with compatibility, but don’t expect miracles because Eve is a small company. Touch User experience in Linux might be a problem, too. Also some drivers might be missing. Prototype might be shipped to community members to test Linux support.

Repairability

How much of the V assembly is glued? Screen and battery.

If I took the V apart, what chance to perfect assemble V back again: Really depends on the skill.

With best components in there (and the current technology and design standards in mind), repairability as a design goal had to make way for better performance and portability.

V-Pen

Still working on the color (darker color), Eve is trying to get as dark as they can (and therefore as close to the V’s case and the renderings)

Same supplier as Microsoft

Supplier is quite big and iterations of V pen take a long time on the supplier’s side. For example pen prototypes had to be ordered 4 months in advance.

Two buttons

Using NTrig standards (same as Surface Pro)

No Wacom support (because they are not supporting NTRIG)

Dimensions: 10.4cm long, about 1,5-2cm thick (diameter)

Possible to change the pen tips? Unfortunately no.

Eve is likely able to produce more pens (with different tips for example)

Battery Testing

5,5 hours DC Mark 8 Test MacBook Air same, Surface Pro 4 has 3,5 hours

Test for Charge Cycle (without depleting the capacity)

Hot tests

Average Charging of the Battery, 3hours to fully charge (should be 3,5hours) with the reference charger

Battery Runtime 5-5,5 hours on Gen 1 prototypes, on Gen 2 prototypes about 7 hours, so Eve is confident to achieve more than 10 hours when tweaking is done and is confident that they can deliver on their all-day battery life promise. This increase was compared with the increase of similar products (e.g. Surface Pro) over time (driver improvements, more testing, community feedback)

Battery Charge Limiting - cant make it at launch, maybe add it later if there is high demand from the community

PD 2.0 is used for charging

Battery shouldn’t be getting hot while charging

Charger

With 24W Charger about 2,5hours fully charge time

Eve is also optimizing charge time

Power plug instead of power brick? no

Should fit into one single socket without taking too much space

Language/Localization

Language can be switched during initial set-up, all Windows languages are available. With Windows 10, it is generally no problem to switch OS language/localizations after the set-up.

SSD
There has been a SSD teaser in the videos (great news for sure!). I’ll let them find it by yourselves

GPS

Results of test they get is not reliable. On some device it works, on some it doesn’t.

Next steps: add GPS chips to prototype for community, for community to judge that the signal is good enough.

Engraving

Device number x of 500

On the back of the Eve, underneath the kickstand

A really pleasant surprise in addition

Weight

Housing single block of aluminum

Battery about 25% larger than competitors

Status Updates

Eve will try to give us more regular updates, about every two weeks

Community should poke Eve members if they might forget about the status update because they are drowning in work

Lock down shipping address

40 hours before is lock down

Reminder will be sent by mail one week before shipping

Shipping last week of March/first week of April

Early Bird shipment should be shipped about 20 days after the Hyper Early Bird shipments

Keyboard

Currently no non-alcantara keyboards (because alcantara feels so much nicer)

We can’t see the coloroed lighting of keyboard backlight in action yet because keyboards are at the design partners in Sweden. Maybe next week (20.02.17 onwards), when more keyboard samples are shipped.

Backlight is not RGB (about 16mio combinations) but about 8 colors we can choose from

It is not certain if Fn does send a Scan Code, if it does, it should be industry standard

It may be possible to flash up keyboard once or twice when activating Fn lock, Eve really likes the idea and is looking into it

Bluetooth on the keyboard is automatically activated when detached from the V.

It is not possible to automatically activate Bluetooth on the V, while disconnecting the keyboard as this would require software/bloatware.

if you detach keyboard from V, keyboard is automatically using bluetooth

but V cannot automatically activate bluetooth when detaching keyboard

Microsoft was in Stockholm, community changing the source code of windows?

Question if Fn-Lock will survive a reboot of V or switch off/on the keyboard couldn’t be answered, but it should work the same way as the keyboard remembers the backlight color.

Latest picture of the (localized) keyboards, layouts hopefully until end of the week, then it goes to designers

Performance

i5/i7 should be available for benchmarks with the prototypes coming to the community

Vs cooling system should be good enough to keep it from thermal throttling

Throttling will be in scenarios where CPU and integrated GPU are both stressed simultaneously, as the CPU was not designed for this kind of load. This will be identical with other devices using this class of CPU.

Benchmark V vs SP4 fresh out of the box will be made for sure (sometime)

Cables

If USB-C/TB3 cables do support alternate modes of display? Yes.

Camera

Front Camera: Wide Angle Lens? The team will check this with the manufacturer.

Is a decent front camera, e.g. Skype

Back Camera is decent for office use

Display

One of the most color accurate displays of the market

should be little bit better as surface pro 4 display

how thick is the gorilla glass? 0.4mm

Differences Gen 1 / 2 Prototypes

Gen 1 Housing different color, ports to sharp, gap between kickstand, color of housing and kickstand wasn’t matching

Gen 2 Housing is final housing, fingerprint coating will still be applied

What type of bugs have been addressed?

Squashing bugs everywhere

Microsoft and Intel help with fixing

They also help with manufacturing and optimizations

Next steps (new projects)

Ambition, what is after Eve V. Community will be deciding.

Another teaser: somewhere in summer, for some accessory. eGPU, TB3 dock, backback with Mozo are considered options. eGPU might be problematic to produce because of high price (about 249-299 (€?) sales price)

If Eve could make an Eve V facelift in autumn/end of 2017? Pretty hard, no new components - maybe OLED screen (but what would it improve?). There won’t be a switch to a fan design.

Changelog
And a big thank you for the people collaborating here

17.02.2017
01:00 GMT+1: @Niloc Added battery lifetime with Gen2 prototype
11:04 GMT+1: @dibadibadu Corrected statement about fanless vs. fan design
13:19 GMT+1: @Helios Added proposed changes (with some additions of myself)
14:46 GMT+1: @nawthor Added pen manufacturer info

21.02.2017
16:28 GMT+1: @Konstantinos Pinned as official

February 21, 2017: Help us take Eve brand to the next level! Meet Underdog our new design partner!

On another topic

UPDATE: Thanks for your amazing inputs! Guys at Underdog are amazed by depth and quality of your feedback! We will now restrict editing of the document so that we could process all of your thoughts!

Hello Eve Family!

How are you doing?! I have some latest news to share with you. Many of you told us that our website could be improved as well as you would really love us to have good web-store that would make support & purchasing simple and easy! (Not the IndieGoGo mess )

Now we are happy to announce that we have just signed the partnership agreement with a very cool design agency from NY. they are cool guys and let their website do the talking (I mean really go there it´s worth it!)

http://weareunderdog.com/

Underdog will help us take our brand to the next level. Make it more like us and make sure we communicate that products we make are developed with our people (dough.community)

Underdog loves the idea of crowd development and really would want to hear from you what you think of Eve as a brand/team and why it matters to you!

So here’s the deal…

We’ve created Google doc that you can access with the link below:
Eve:Community—Brand Questionnaire - Google Docs

That is the brad survey.

If you want to help us out …

(greatly appreciated. I have birthday today so i´ll take it as a birthday gift )

Go to the link shared above and fill in your responses to the questions. This doc is shared with everyone in this thread so dont remove other people’s comments Just write below. You dont need to put your name or anything below your responses but feel free to.

Say what you truly think about us and answer questions as honestly as possible. And once again dont remove other people comments

If you really like to have it more personal then feel free to save the doc as word document fill in your responses and send it to my mail konstantinos@eve-ttech.com

Have fun!

Survey will be up for 24H so be quick!

You don’t have to fill in everything even though it is appreciated! Questions 5 & 7 are really most important.

February 25, 2017: Winner of the prototype testing!

On another topic

Hi dear community!

Sorry for the slight delay in announcing the winners, I coded a dedicated program to fairly raffle our winners!

Since you’re all likely more interested in the results than how we raffled, let me announce the lucky 24 people first:
@lifeblogv3 @rathed

@s.auler @Ctcote @razaknk

@Wallace_Bertholdi_de @Aidan_Demers

@Tamara @ChefHn

@CheesyFeet @Tihomir_Dragas @larseisberg

@huibie @smpark @Martin

@zwehn @iglobal @reffyy

@TheBetaBox @osamagotji @janko.bajagic

@henning @mamase @Tirigon

Please, all winners contact me ( @iKirin ) via PM & let me know your shipping address!
If I don’t recieve a PM within 72 hours, we will give another person the chance to test a prototype!

(The interesting part is done now, the rest is just some background information since we want to give you a fair info of how these results came to be)

And now, let’s get a bit more into the numbers - because you might wonder how some things affected the results! And why we even wanted you to give statements what you do!

After deciding the categories, locking down the poll (and filtering out doubles which took quite a while) we looked at the amount of prototypes we could send out (20 in 2 waves) and realized we can send 24 to you - 3 less than we wanted since we wanted to send a prototype to 3 persons that crossed off a specific category (like eGPU).
Since we wanted to be fair we rolled the dice which categories got fewer people - in the end the categories where we only took 2 people were: eGPU, 3D work and video editing.
Fast forward 2 hours and a program was written in Java that randomly chooses people out of each category. As I wanted to have a “substitute” that can hop in in a category if someone does not reply within 72 hours, I raffled one extra person in each category.
Well, this turned out to be a very good idea as from the 24 raffled people 8 (!) did not put in a “community username” or email that was connected to an account to the community!
After raffling some more people in the categories that were lacking (namely video editing & people that want to test Linux) & checking that there were not doubles in each category (there actually was in the Linux category - @Wallace_Bertholdi_de the luck was on your side! ) I wrote up this post with the results!

So, congratulations dear winners!

I’ll follow up with further informations soon™!

February 28, 2017: More information on the prototype testing & testers!

On another topic

Hi dear community & prototype tester!

Since now around two thirds of the prototype testers have replied, it’s time to give all of you great people in the community some information how we are going to handle the prototypes!

Now, first off - since there are quite a bunch of potential tester that have not replied within the 72 hour limit, and we’re making space for community members that hopefully will be up to the task & reply!

So, @Xervaro @JoeBoJoe @Liam1062 @Mullenia @Dxdolucci @James_Phillips @Sebastian_Geschke @Juhana_Kallio @Kazenorin you get the chance to test the prototypes!

Please message me via PM within 48 hours with your shipping address! If not, we’ll give someone else the chance to test the prototypes!

Since that is out of the way, let’s talk about how we want you to test the prototypes & share your experiences! First of all, everyone who took up the chance now has the cool title “Prototype Tester” behind his name!
Then we plan to create 2 categories Prototype Bugs & Prototype Experiences. Inside the Bugs category, only people with the title “Prototype Tester” can create a topic/reply, while everyone can see the topic. We decided to not let anyone comment in there, to make sure we don’t have to go through houndreds of replies when making 1 topic into a bug-report that we’re going to fix.
The second category is the Prototype Experiences where “Prototype Tester” can create new topics, and everyone can reply to them (and of course see them).

But it would be boring if we didn’t allow you to post anything, right? So let me give you a short list of what the prototype testers will not be allowed to do:

Intentionally damage/destroy the prototypes or open them up

Install malicious software

Other things like installing new software, taking pictures with the prototype, running tests, checking out the screen brightness, watching netflix with it until late into the night, taking it out to a nice candlelight dinner - all of those things and more are totally fine!

In terms of which tester will test what, we will not limit anyone! This means, every tester can test everything, however we’d like to get the opinion of some testers on certain topics for sure (to get a good view from someone who does something professionally or as a hobby) (Please note that I’ll add people once they confirmed their shipping address):

eGPU: @lifeblogv3 @rathed - we’d appreciate your insight on the eGPU performance! Be it with various games sent to the screen of the V or it driving an external monitor!

Artistic & Pen Performance: @s.auler @razaknk - looking forward to your insights of the pen performance in drawing and maybe how the colors look like compared to other screens

3D working: @Wallace_Bertholdi_de - I and many community members are looking forward how the V holds up with a 3D workload!

Video editing: @Tamara - Also something that many people are interested about how well the video editing on the V is holding up!

Musicians: @CheesyFeet @larseisberg - I don’t have too much knowledge about working with Music on a PC, but I’ll sure be looking forward to seeing your perspectives!

Office Work: @smpark @Martin - Simply check how the V holds up with the office workload you throw at it! I’m pretty sure many people are going to bring questions to you!

Mobile Work: @zwehn @iglobal - Just how the V performs away from the socket on the go or how it is in general when taking it with you!

Programming: (To follow) - All the code and compiling the heart could desire! Please give your feedback on this, I’m pretty sure people are going to ask quite a bunch of questions as well about this one

Linux: @henning @mamase @Tirigon - Just check out how the V performs in Linux & other OSes if you desire.

So, I think that’s it for this update!
The first prototypes should go out this week, the rest following next week!