New 'frank' smartphone design wasn't a copycat, Ottawa creator maintains
The creator of the new 'frank' smartphone says he wishes he would have been more transparent about the source of its design from the start, but it wasn't a copycat.
Boasting a faster processor, better camera and attractive price, the frank phone gained momentum quickly.
Shortly after Moe Omer and his partner launched the crowdfunding page, allegations swirled that it was an exact copy of a Chinese model. Their Indiegogo campaign, which had raised tens of thousands of dollars, was abruptly shut down in September.
"The phone people have found online is not the frank phone you can actually buy," Omer told CBC's All in a Day on Thursday.
The mold for the design of the phone existed on the online market Alibaba before the birth of frank, Omer explained. However, he said, the internal specifications of the phone were boosted to Omer's requirements — a common way of cutting design costs for electronics.
Phones made from these pre-existing molds can only be purchased in numbers of 3,000 or more.
"They simply saw a picture and said, 'Yep, that's the frank phone,' and claimed it's a copy," Omer said.
Omer said his company opted to skip the $50,000 cost of getting a designer in order to keep the price at $180 US.
Not disclosing that decision would cost them their funding.
Phone's reputation 'tarnished'
When Indiegogo pulled the project, all the money pledged was returned to contributors.
It's something Omer said he wishes was handled differently.
"It's tarnished a lot of the work we have done."
Indiegogo still hasn't fully explained their reasoning for removing the campaign, Omer said.
When contacted by CBC, a spokesperson for the site said the frank phone is welcome to open another campaign in the future, as long as full details are disclosed.
The phone's creators are currently working on a plan to try and launch the product without crowdfunding.
"The only way to gain people's trust back is to actually release something and get it in people's hands," Omer said.
