Back in July, Geeksphone officially began taking pre-orders for its newest handset powered by Boot to Gecko, the tech behind Mozilla's Firefox OS. Today the company had some bad news to share regarding the Peak+, but it followed that up with another pretty interesting announcement.
Geeksphone today notified buyers of the Peak+ that it has canceled the device, explaining that there have been "very serious problems arose in the components supply chain in Asia that have been impossible to avoid." The company went on to say that Cellon, its manufacturing partner for the Peak+, was experiencing several internal issues that would've pushed the start of Peak+ production back to January of next year.
Now that the Peak+ has been canned, those that pre-ordered the device have a choice: They can either get all of their €149 ($203) back, get $20 back and receive a standard Peak or get one of Geeksphone's newly-announced Revolution devices.
The Revolution is a new smartphone that Geeksphone says is capable of running Android or the Boot to Gecko tech behind Firefox OS. Interestingly, a Geeksphone spokesperson has told GigaOM that "advanced users" will be able to install a custom ROM with Android that will enable them to use Mozilla's software.
As for the rest of the Revolution, Geeksphone has hinted that the handset will feature some impressive internals. A teaser page for the phone describes it as "a creation with a powerful heart." Geeksphone co-founder Javier Agüera has said that the Revolution will surprise the public thanks to its "very high performance" and its "very competitive" price. Because Peak+ pre-order customers are being told that their €149 cost for the Revolution represents an almost 50 percent discount off the normal price, it's expected that the Revolution will come in at around €300 ($408 USD).
It's always kind of a bummer when a manufacturer is forced to cancel an upcoming device due to manufacturing issues, but the good news is that it looks like Geeksphone has been able to pull a 180 on its bad situation with the Revolution. Obviously there's still a lot that we don't know about the device, but its ability to run either Android or Boot to Gecko is intriguing, and it'll be interesting to see exactly what kind of "powerful heart" is inside its chest. Here's to hoping that Geeksphone decides to open up a bit more soon.
Via GigaOM, Geeksphone
