December Update: Manufacturing On Track, Happy Holidays!
over 6 years ago – Thu, Dec 28, 2017 at 11:42:37 PM

Hi Superbook backers and supporters,

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone! Pretty much all good news this time. Will keep this update short, but filled with information.

1. HUBS HAVE ARRIVED 

First, our first shipment of 5k USB hubs have arrived. The remainder are expected to arrive on January 20th. A few of you asked about videos of what the USB hub bug looked like - here's a video of a Superbook with a faulty hub:

As you can see, the Superbook’s screen turns off due to the data leak, fairly quickly into the video. Here is a video of the Superbook with the updated working USB hub:

Ah. Much better.

A few of you have asked in the last update and over Slack / email why we couldn’t just send out units to backers who don’t plan on playing video games or use Samsung devices. The reason is because the underlying issue is a data leak problem, which has the potential to manifest in other ways on other devices - it only immediately occurs as an issue on the Samsung devices that we’ve tested. It’s kinda like having internal bleeding, but only feeling pain when you do yoga. You could “solve it” by never doing yoga again, but the better idea is to go see the doctor to fix the internal bleeding — or face dire consequences down the road.

In any case, thank you to everyone for being patient and continue to support us as we resolve the hub issue.

2. REMAINING MANUFACTURING STEPS AND TIMELINE 

Second, we have resolved all of our major remaining manufacturing obstacles. Aside from waiting for the 2nd shipment of USB hubs, we should be set to move forward to production.

Here’s the timeline: 

• Mid-January - Mass production begins with first batch of hubs, continuing on when the 2nd shipment of USB hubs arrive. First major batches will go to the warehouse in Hong Kong. 
• Early February - Our manufacturers come back from Chinese New Year, finishing up any packing / additional assembly necessary. 
• Mid February - Superbooks start their ocean freight journey. Backers in Asia will start receiving their Superbooks. 
• Mid March - Superbooks arrive in North America and Europe warehouses, start getting sorted and shipped via Ground Shipping. 
• April - Depending on the speed of Ground Shipping, backers in North America and Europe will receive their Superbooks.

3. 10 SUPERBOOKS + EARLY REVIEW TIMELINE 

We’ve selected our awesome backers to receive the first 10 Superbooks. Those will be shipping out the first week of January, and we hope to get some detailed reviews from them for the next update. In addition, we’ll be sending out a couple devices for early reviews with major tech publications. Expect those around the same time as our next update! (Keep your fingers crossed)

Ok, that’s it for us this month. Have a great new year everyone, and I’ll look forward to giving you an update in January with production progress and reviews!

Cheers, Team Sentio

November production update
over 6 years ago – Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 12:17:50 AM

Hi everyone, it has been a journey to get here so far, and we are truly lucky to have all of you at our side.

To get right to the point: while we have nearly everything ready for mass production, we found a bug that currently only occurs during heavy video game playing on older Samsung devices. The source of the bug is that the current version of the USB hub we are using has a defect when working with Android, which Gordon explains below. The fix is to swap to a newer version of the USB hub, which is currently out of stock. This means that, while everything is ready now for mass production, we are held up by a production bottleneck.

Technical Discussion

As many of you know, Superbook internally is composed of 4 separate USB devices that together provide the whole Superbook experience. They are the Touch Pad, the Keyboard, the USB A Port, and the DisplayLink LCD Screen that mirrors your smartphone. Since Android smartphones only come with a single USB port, Superbook uses a built in USB 2.0 Hub to split the USB connection to connect the 4 end point devices.

During our end of October update, we mentioned that we have entered into initial production for the Superbook, with full production in early November. As part of the initial production run QA process, we put a batch of 135 Superbooks through an added level of product testing that we normally wouldn’t be doing for the 20k unit mass production. The process involved putting each of the Superbooks through a series of stress testing, using multiple phones we prepared for the QA process.

The phones included: Google Pixel, LG V20, Samsung Note 4, Samsung S6, Samsung Note 5.

Unfortunately for about 50% of Superbooks, when testing on the S6 and Note 5, Superbook’s screen would go blank during the middle of a gaming session. After spending most of November working with our manufacture and various parts suppliers, we tracked down the issue to a USB hub chip we had been using. The issue only occurs during fast game playing, where there is a small percentage of data communication error between the smartphone and Superbook. The error degrades the performance of the USB communication and eventually leads to the DisplayLink chipset disconnecting from the smartphone. Based on our testing, this problem is most common on older Micro B Android phones that have a USB port worn out from constant connecting and disconnecting of the charging cable, which causes a loss of connection of the V+ and V- data pin on the phone.

Working with our USB chip hub manufacturer, we found a new USB hub part that has the capability to handle and compensate for the additional error rates for older Micro B phones. Even better - the new USB hub chip is pin-to-pin compatible with the old hub chip, which means we don’t have to make any design changes to accommodate for the new part. We’ve already secured 100 samples and tested them: all Superbooks pass the full set of phone stress and compatibility tests.

However, replacing 20k existing USB hub chips with new parts will take some time, mainly for the chips to get manufactured by the provider. We are working with suppliers to expedite their process, but they’re currently telling us that 5-10k chips will be ready by mid-December and the remainder will be shipped to us by mid-January.

Updated Timeline and Kickstarter LIVE AMA

Based on the availability of the USB Hub Chip, our manufacturing and delivery timeline will look like the following:

• Mid-January, we will get all of the USB hub chips from the manufacturer
• We will complete Superbook manufacturing by mid-February
• Asia Pacific region will receive their Superbooks in late February
• Mid-February will begin the ocean freight process, which will arrive at the ports in Europe and North America by mid-March
• Backers will receive their Superbooks in the mail in April

To show that Superbooks are indeed ready for production, we are going to randomly select 10 backers from our FIRST500 to get 10 Superbooks from the batch of 100 recently made, with the new USB Hub Chip samples previously mentioned. Backers will be notified via email and receive their Superbooks in a few weeks, and those that receive their Superbooks will be asked to share their experience on our next update. While it doesn’t make up for receiving Superbooks late, we wanted to let all of you know that your Superbooks will be made.

Gordon and I will be on Kickstarter LIVE tomorrow November 29th at NOON PST to answer questions and show off the latest Superbook hardware and software. Please tune in here on the Kickstarter page.

IMPORTANT: Are you a parent buying Superbook for your kids?

If you are a parent who has purchased Superbook (or is interested in getting one) for your kid, we would like to chat with you. Our team is refining both our hardware product and software experience to work great in classrooms and for kids in school. If you'd like to participate in our focus group, email [email protected]. We will provide participants with access to software and early news on related product offerings for kids.

November Operations Update

Hey Backers, happy November to you all around the world! November has been an extremely busy month for Sentio as our hardware team has been working 7 days a week on the Superbook, our software team has released a new Sentio Desktop for Android N and above and an updated File Explorer, and our operations team has been onboarding a new Customer Success Lead.

As hard as we have been working on our end, we understand the updated delivery timeline will still come at an inconvenience to many of you with the holidays and many upgrading their existing phones. With that in mind, we wanted to re-open the chance for you to change your accessory cords in our backer portal as well as request a refund. Our Superbooks and Sentio Desktop app will continue to support Androids running 4.0 - 8.0 (Oreo, newest Android)!

ADMINISTRIVIA

1. Order Changes: To change an accessory Log onto your Backer Portal to navigate & change your current cord(s) between a Micro-B USB and Type-C option.

2. To add an accessory: Check out our Shopify page to add an accessory. Please use the email address you ordered your Superbook with if possible, so you’re not receiving separate emails from us!

3. To change a shipping address: Log onto your Backer Portal to navigate & change your shipping address.

4. Refunds: To request a refund, please send an email to [email protected] with the original name, email address, and/or order number under your original order.

5. Questions & issues? Shoot [email protected] an email for account specific questions, check out our FAQ to see if the question has already been answered, or join our Backers Slack community

With love,

Team Sentio

I know you just heard from us, but here's something exciting...
over 6 years ago – Sun, Nov 05, 2017 at 01:07:37 AM

Our app is officially released, the last build is ready, and production is starting!

Ok, so for those of you reading the updates and wondering why you're getting so many, here's why: as we produce Superbooks, run into successes and issues, we will keep you as posted as possible. If you'd rather tune us out until we can send you product, just ignore these updates from Kickstarter and wait for our direct emails. 

Today, we have a couple exciting things to tell you, as well as a bunch of administrative things as well:

• First of all, the latest build looks good, and we will be getting started with Superbook manufacturing within a few days. It is a few days later than we had hoped, but overall a win for our hardware team.
• Our software market release was a few days ago, so the brand new Sentio Desktop (for Android 7.0+) is available in the Play Store. Check it out as well as our custom file explorer.
• An update on the backer portal as we stabilize and improve our internal backer system.
• Due to Backer Portal being down, we've added a few more days to order accessories and edit the cords / address in your order.

Over the next couple weeks, we will keep you posted as production begins as to how mass production is going. In addition, you should be receiving an individual email on your shipping timeline later in November. Stay up-to-date on Slack or check your Backer Portal Dashboard for information on your current shipping update.

Superbook production and last build

I honestly can't tell you how excited I am for this. First, some photos:

Anyways, you get the picture. On the hardware side, things are finally rolling after some hiccups with typhoons, firmware bugs, and other crazy things that happen in the hardware process.

Does this mean we're in the clear? No. But it does mean we are moving forward with production. That is something we can all get excited about.

Market release for the NEW Sentio Desktop!

(PLUS tutorial guides for the software)

Hey everyone! Thank you to those that have been providing us with feedback and great reviews for the software. I wanted to let you all know that Sentio Desktop is now out in the Play Store, out of beta testing, and available for download directly from the Play Store:

• Sentio Desktop (NEW!)
• Companion File Explorer (UPDATED!)

Do me a favor: Please give it a try, especially if you have a tablet with Android 7.0+

You can email feedback directly to us at [email protected].

User Guides for Sentio Desktop

Ok, so it's a new environment and most of you are familiar with Windows and Mac. Although most of the core functionality is still Android, we've done a lot of things to make the experience super productive. There are also a number of limitations, due to Android, that we want you to know about. 

We've written a few tutorial guides to get you started, starting from Onboarding, the File Explorer system, Desktop Features and Limitations, all the way to workarounds for DPI adjustment and Android O. Click on the images below to read the articles, and let us know how we can improve on these guides!

 

 

 

 

 

So give the new software a try, read the guides, and let us know what you think.

Backer Portal and Deadline Updates

Hey backers! Happy November, from the operations end, just wanted to quickly cover some recent Backer Portal updates and deadlines:

You should now be able to see all your recent orders in the Backer Portal as of October 24th! Any additional accessory updates should be reflected as soon as we are able to refresh the data.

Some of you may have experienced portal login issues this past week due to server capacity overload (from everyone logging in at once). Our apologies for the inconvenience, we’ve now upgraded to a higher tier capacity to mitigate the problem. As always, please join the #portal_issues channel on our Backer Slack or email [email protected] for questions about the portal. If you’ve had any issues this past week, please login to check portal again, as we’ve tried to systematically fix order/portal issues the past few days.

On order deadlines: November 7th will be the last day to order accessories on Shopify, so please get your order in by then. November 15th will be the last day to edit email addresses & shipping addresses on Backer Portal, so please get your changes in by then!

Final Thoughts and Administrivia

From here on out, our updates will no longer be monthly. They will happen with each important announcement, so that we can update with more frequency without having to explicitly do an announcement on the 1st of each month. Expect the next update within the next few weeks, but no exact date set right now.

1. Non-regular update schedule starts. We promise at least one update per month, but this gives us more flexibility without rigidly needing an update on the 1st.

2. CHECK OUT MARKET RELEASE OF OUR APP!

3. The deadline for ordering additional accessories and editing your order has been extended to November 7th and November 15th respectively.

4. Any questions or issues? Contact our support team or get into our Backer Slack group!

Love, Team Sentio

One small step for man...
over 6 years ago – Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 01:45:35 AM

…one giant leap for Superbook as production of smaller batches have started. So far? We’ve been able to work through all the standard kinks to get to mass production. Next week is the final build. After that, we should be smooth sailing into mass production *fingers crossed*.

We are super excited that Superbook production is starting.

So this is going to be a short update, letting you know the following: 

1. Superbook production is starting! 

2. We have updated the backer portal to reflect the 2-3 weeks delay announced in the last update, caused by the multiple typhoons in Hong Kong. The updated delivery timeline will be available at dashboard.sentio.com in a few hours! Our engineer has been hard at work to send the site to production!

3. A brief intro into we arrive at the estimated delivery date you will see in Backer Portal

4. Once our Backer Portal refreshes, you have until November 1st to edit your cord selection (B or C) and update your address!

5. We will be back on November 1st (in just 5 days) with another update, with lots and lots of sneak peaks at both hardware and software. 

Superbook production is starting

The last few weeks have been very productive on hardware. This coming week will be the last “small batch” build before mass production. If everything goes well, we will be in full production mode the beginning of the following week. We're all hands on deck!

Backer portal timelines updated & unpacking the estimated delivery date

Backers, hope your October has been lovely wherever you may be around the world! Following up on what we mentioned in the last update, we’ve refreshed the backer portal to reflect the delayed estimated delivery dates from the Hong Kong typhoons in September.

As Andrew mentioned above, it’s been "one giant leap for Superbook" as production of our smaller batches has begun! Following up on Florian’s notes - as we've debugged & solved issues with hardware development, we can solidify a mass production timeline and shift our focus to improving the logistics process. In the spirit of transparency, here are a few notes on the delivery timeline to help you understand how we arrive at the dates reflected in your portal.

Unpacking the Estimated Delivery Date 

The Superbook's journey from initial manufacturing to arrival at your door can be broken down into three main date ranges and stages. **these are used as exemplary, your portal dates may be slightly different than the ones I have shown here**

1. This date captures:

• Optimizing packaging at factory: This involves planning assembly line routes, palatalization, & other creative set-ups to cut down on lead time. 
• Departure from factory to ports: the next step involves connecting the Superbooks from factory to ports. This involves the careful forecasting of pallet & container packaging, docks & trucks’ availability/capacity, & finally understanding the booking process as these products prepare to leave Hong Kong. 
• In transit to respective warehouses around the world: accounting for transit to warehouses in three different continents & working with on-the ground operations to ensure smooth customs process as our Superbooks arrive in foreign countries.

2. This date captures:

• Warehouse processing: Our warehouse partners will process some 20,000 Superbooks over the course of a few weeks as we use a conservative "units processed per day rate” to estimate warehouse speeds.

3. This date captures:

• Fulfillment to specific countries: last but not least, we have been working with our fulfillment partners to get a comprehensive list of shipping days estimates to over 80 countries around the world during this time of year.... finally delivering to you, our one-of-a kind Superbook!

Takeaways: The tricky part of the optimization & estimation process is we are working with people and unknowns. This is why your estimation is in a range-- to reflect the degree of unknowns that exist. To accurately estimate lead time, we push for answers from manufacturers, shippers, logistics providers, & legal resources down to the last detail— sometimes to the point of knowing whether or not a pallet of Superbooks can sit in one corner of a factory.

Our Next Steps: We will continue to push for answers and creative solutions, so that in the coming weeks, we can to provide you with a more and more refined estimated delivery window.

tl;dr: we are working to refine estimated delivery dates, which involves pushing for information about the foreseeable future from various contacts in the logistics pipeline.

DEADLINE: Update your info by November 1st

Make sure you update your shipping info and cord selection (Micro B or Type C) by November 1st. Last day to update at dashboard.sentio.com.

Also, we have kept open accessory ordering for just a few more days. Add extra accessories to your order here until November 1st!

Administrivia 

1. We will be back with another update November 1st.

2. If you haven’t checked it out already, Sentio Desktop for Android 7.0+ is out in open beta. Download it now and give us feedback! 

3. You can still order accessories until November 1st. Get them here!

4. Any questions or issues? Contact our support team or get into our Backer Slack group!

Love, Team Sentio

October Update: PHOTOS, Hardware Updates, and Accessories
over 6 years ago – Thu, Oct 05, 2017 at 11:58:30 PM

Dear backers and supporters, welcome to the October Monthly update!

This is a long post with a bunch of information coming your way! Scroll down to catch a glimpse of some exciting Superbook photos, dive into our manufacturing progress & challenges, learn how to add additional accessories to your order, and hear from our operations team. Thanks in advance for reading!

Okay. Just to get it out front: as we get down to the wire on manufacturing and shipping, you’re going to think we are giving you a bunch of excuses as to why your Superbook hasn’t arrived yet. The reality is that over the next couple months, we need to coordinate the shipment of around 20,000 Superbooks to 106 countries. Some things will go right (which means we stay on schedule) and some things will go wrong (causing minor delays) — sadly, nothing will shorten the timeline. 

I want to be open with you on both progress and challenges, but that also means you’ll also be privy to the realities of developing, manufacturing, and shipping consumer electronic hardware.

The product that you helped bring to life contains lithium-ion batteries and a number of other regulated components, all of which require a heavy amount of certifications and passing customs. Each region we ship to has varying requirements. Logistically, with 3 models, 4 color options, 4 charger types, 2 USB types, and a number of other accessories — hundreds of different order combinations will be going out to over the 100 countries. The complexity is pretty staggering, none of which is your fault as a backer — we are the ones that took on the challenge, and it is our job to figure out how we execute all of that with the resources we have.

There are still a few weeks to go before full mass production. You will receive emails from us once shipping starts from the warehouse — if you don't receive an email, chances are your order has not been shipped yet. During this period as Superbooks are produced and while your order is in progress, please check on your Backer Portal Dashboard or on our Slack channel for additional updates. 

So before we get into challenges and progress from the last month, I want to share a photo that a ton of you have been asking for: the Blue Superbook with Backlit Keyboard.

There are a TON more photos in the hardware section in the update. Before that, let’s dive into the challenges and progress as we don’t want to bury news (both good *and* bad) deep in an update:

CHALLENGES: 

• There were multiple typhoons in Hong Kong in September. It caused a couple of our key components to arrive late. That, along with back-to-back Chinese holidays of China Independence Date (10/1) and mid-autumn festival (10/5), puts off full mass production by 2-3 weeks except for a first batch of 150 Superbooks, which just started production.
• We started testing our Superbooks with a number of popular devices that were previously giving us issues. Some devices from manufacturers in China don’t seem to be able to charge in OTG mode, which means they may not be able to charge and connect at the same time. Many OEM teams have been super helpful in providing us support to figure it out, but ultimately some smartphones may just not have that capability.
• Android O — those of you that have upgraded to O have mentioned to us the challenges of using Sentio Desktop N+ with Android O. We are working on workarounds for it, and our software team is doing a lot of work to make sure Superbook works well in Android O as well.

PROGRESS: 

• Backlit Keyboard work is fully complete. See all of the sexy photos in the section below.
• Kickstarter Special BLUE is finally out. Also, see all of the sexy photos in the section below. 
• Significant improvement of palm rejection on the trackpad 
• Longer standby mode built into firmware
• Successfully implemented new hardware feature to see Superbook Battery % in Sentio Desktop as we can now send this information from the hardware back to Android via USB connection
• Most certification tests have either passed or have passed pre-scan. A couple more in submission

Superbook Photos

Without further ado, some long awaited photos of the Superbook.

Fair warning, we added in the screenshot of Sentio Desktop in these photos (if you couldn’t tell) as our photographer didn’t have access to a device when he was taking these photos.

Hardware and Delivery Timeline

Hello everyone. I’m going to elaborate a bit more on the progress and challenge items related to hardware and manufacturing listed above.

1) Adding Palm Rejection Algorithm to the Mix

• We implemented an additional palm rejection algorithm on the trackpad that’s based on the keyboard key press.
• Previously, during our internal/user testing — we noticed that while the finger/palm detection algorithm helped with palm rejection during typing, random mouse movements/clicks still occurred. Now, with the addition of the keyboard key press based palm rejection — we can now reject erroneous trackpad touches during typing session. This new algorithm introduces a trackpad rejection timer of 200ms to 500ms after a key is pressed!

2) Significant Standby Mode Improvement

• As we continue to optimize and stabilize the Superbook firmware, one area we’ve made significant progress on is the standby time of the Superbook while not in use! This is the amount of time it takes for the Superbook to reach 0% discharge from 100% charge.
• Previously, our batch of Superbooks recorded a standby time of 10 days. Even while a laptop lid is “closed”, there are still many components that continue to run, thus draining battery power. Now, as we’ve continued to optimize & power down unnecessary components, we’ve nearly doubled that, and we will focus on additional power management tricks as we aim to achieve a standby time up to 30 days

3) Superbook Battery Percentage Indicator (%) Inside Sentio Desktop:

• One of the cool new hardware features with the improved Superbook PCBA board (to allow upgradeable firmware) is the ability to send the battery % of the Superbook back to the Sentio Desktop Android app. The design work and firmware work on the Superbook side is now complete, and we now can send this information back to Sentio Desktop via USB connection. With the public release of Sentio Desktop, you will be able to see two battery % indicators, one for the phone, and another for the Superbook itself.

4) Impact of Weather and Holidays:

• In September, the Hong Kong / Shenzhen areas were hit by three separate Typhoons and Tropical Storms (Hato, Pakhar, Mawar) that cost us around two weeks of time due to factory closures and supply chain disruption (there may also be one more coming in). We had originally planned our manufacturing timeline to get a few critical items out of the way before the back-to-back Chinese holidays (Chinese Independence Day on 10/1 and Mid-Autumn Festival on 10/5), but the typhoons delayed our timelines. For our own team based in Asia, we will continue to work through the holiday focusing on firmware and logistical planning. But our manufacturers' partners and suppliers will be off during this time, in accordance to the Chinese holiday.

5) Overall Manufacturing Progress and Timeline

• We’ve already started the production of 150 trial units. Most of the units in this production are being used for additional safety certification tests as well as durability and temperature testing. 30 of the units will undergo drop testing from various high altitudes and stressful angles, water spill testing ranging from a spray of mist to splash of water directly onto the keyboard, as well as other environmental stress testings.
• From a certification stand-point, we’ve passed UN 38.3 (battery safety of shipment), UL (battery safety for usage), REACH (material compliance), RoHS (material compliance), and are finishing up the work necessary for CE and FCC for the new board design. We have scheduled additional production runs in the 3rd week of October, with the goal of having full-scale mass production by the last week of October.

Additional Accessories for Your Order

Many of you have asked for this, and we've been promising it for a while: adding additional accessories for your order. Please read carefully as they will work in the same way as the upgrades. 

Orders will be updated in your backer portal 5-7 days after your purchase, and each item has a limited amount of inventory available (we ordered a few extras). After they're gone, that'll be it.

To add additional accessories to your order, please use the link below and purchase using the same email you made your order with. DEADLINE WILL BE OCTOBER 15th, 2017 at MIDNIGHT PST TIME.

Order Accessories Here

Operations Update

Backers and supporters, thank you for making it down to the very bottom of this monthly update! My first month at Sentio has been a pleasure and I have a few things to post you guys on.  

First & foremost, the Backer Portal — any upgrades, accessory add-ons, order change requests may not be reflected in the portal for 5 -7 business days. As we've mentioned it on Slack, we are amidst new order management dashboard & backend deployment. Don't worry, we have your order, but we're just unable to display it in your portal dashboard immediately. If you are worried, feel free to shoot [email protected] an email and we'd be happy to answer any questions. 

Second & also important, "When will my Superbook arrive?" — we've quoted the general November to December date range, but the purpose of these monthly updates is in part to be transparent with you about the challenges and complexities of narrowing down to the exact day the Superbook will arrive at your door. Each order is case by case, in large part due to the batch it belongs to and the country it is going to. Again, we genuinely appreciate your support and always aim to be transparent as we bring this project to life. Please refer to our Slack community or shoot us an email at [email protected] if you have any questions. 

Administrivia

TL;DR: Always short, please read.

• Ordering extra accessories are only available until October 15th! Get yours before they run out at the accessories store.
• See our FAQ/Help Center for commonly asked questions. You can search, or browse each category for an overview of the content there. We’ll be updating our Help Center regularly with new questions/answers. 
• If you’re looking for the quickest answer to a question our FAQ/Help Center didn't cover, join our Backer Slack! 
• To avoid our emails going to your spam folder, please add [email protected] to your contacts list in your email account.

Until next month!

You're amazing. Want more immediate updates? We highly recommend joining our Backer Slack for fastest communication and discussion with both our team members and those in the community.

Our undying love,

❤ Team Sentio