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Dear backers and supporters, welcome to the September Monthly update!
Thanks to everyone for your continued support of our project. We appreciate every comment, question, and critique — even when we get harsh notes, we know it is only because you care about the Superbook and want to get your hands on it as soon as possible.
To that end, August has been quite the month. We made significant progress on hardware, software, and operations. The team is getting ready for mass production, and we are more clear about the production timeline. I’ll let the team share their own words on progress.
Before we dive in into updates, one thing that everyone has been asking for…upgrades!
While our team is still building the functionality into Backer Portal to add additional accessories onto your order, we are opening up the ability for you to upgrade your Superbook for a limited time to make sure we can get those upgrades in time for mass production.
If you pre-ordered a 768p Superbook OR a 1080p Superbook with Regular Keyboard, you can purchase an upgrade to the full 1080p Superbook with Backlit Keyboard. There are a limited number of upgrades available due to supply constraints and the upgrade period is only open until September 15th at 11:59 PM PST.
Please check your original order to make sure your order includes either a 768p Superbook OR a 1080p Superbook with Regular Keyboard. To purchase an upgrade, click the link below that matches your order:
Please use the email that you ordered your Superbook with. Once you place the order, you'll receive confirmation from us that your upgrade order was approved within 3-5 days.
FAQ on Upgrading Your Superbook
Q: Can I change my color as well?
A: Unfortunately, the color shell orders have already been placed. We cannot change your order color anymore.
Q: Where can I see my order to make sure I’m getting the right upgrade?
A: You can either look for your original email from Kickstarter, BackerKit or Celery, OR login to Backer Portal at dashboard.sentio.com to view your order.
Q: Can I order other accessories and extras?
A: Not at the moment. We are upgrading Backer Portal to enable that in the very near future.
Q: When is the deadline to upgrade?
A: September 15th at 11:59 PM PST.
Hi everyone! I’m excited to share that in August, we finished the work to make Superbook’s firmware upgradeable via USB. When you get your Superbook for the first time and set up Sentio Desktop, it’ll be able to automatically upgrade your Superbook’s firmware to the most recent one. That means if there are any issues with new devices, charging, battery, or other hardware components, we can fix it in a short period of time - and fairly hassle-free!
We also finalized the new version of our board and will start lab testing soon. We made some additional fixes to the Superbook tooling, based on feedback from our beta testers. Most importantly, we have all of our key components prepared for mass production.
Based on the current timeline, September will see the production of ~1,200 Superbook units in test batches. Ideally, those are all successful units, although ~200 or so will be destroyed in testing. If all goes well, the first week of October will see mass production start. This time, we will likely start with producing 1080p units, as we have a large quantity of those to ship. If you ordered a 768p unit, don’t worry! We’ll get to production for those soon enough.
Hey there. Last month we rolled out the beta for the new Sentio Desktop N+, the upgraded version of Sentio Desktop for Android 7.0+. Thank you to the beta access club members that helped us test the limited beta - your feedback is really helpful to our team.
In the next few days, we’ll roll out Sentio Desktop N+ to more of our backers. The goal is to release it to all of our backers in the next few weeks. The biggest obstacle to rollout is the limits of the Google Play Store Beta Rollout functionality - so if you don’t get an invite to Desktop N+, please be patient. We’re working to get it to you as soon as possible.
On another note, CHECK OUT HOW NICE SENTIO DESKTOP N+ LOOKS!
Ok. Anyways, that’s all for us for now. Be on the lookout for the invite to the new Sentio Desktop N+. Until next time!
Greetings backers! A sincere thank you for all the support, insights, and patience you've given us thus far along this awesome endeavor of bringing the Superbook to life. I'm excited to be joining the Sentio team and a part of this unique journey.
As the first operations manager on the team, it is my job to ensure a seamless transition as we culminate hardware, software, and other important developments from the moment you pledge to every moment once you receive the Superbook in hand. Providing you with transparency, accessibility, and a genuinely wonderful Superbook experience is of utmost importance.
I look forward to working with you guys in the coming months (:
TL;DR: Always short, please read.
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
Dear Superbook backers, welcome back to our August update!
We are on schedule and the team continues to push forward on shipping the rest of the Superbooks. First, yesterday was the deadline to change the color of your Superbook. Forgot to do so? No worries, we're making TOMORROW the absolute final day to change the color of your Superbook! More photos and details are below, along with hardware and software updates. Please read everything if you can spare the time -- we don’t want you to miss anything!
TL;DR: Always short, please read.
TOMORROW (8/2) is the final day to change the color of your Superbook: log on to our Backer Portal, click on your order, and click on your Superbook. You will be able to change the color of your Superbook to gold, silver, or black from there. If you need help, please email [email protected].
Here're some more pics to help with your decision :)
Gold:
Silver:
Black:
The Superbook hardware and firmware upgrades are coming along nicely. As a reminder, upgradeable firmware is necessary to support future phones that do not adhere to USB communications standards. This is a trend that has actually grown over time, instead of diminishing as many had expected. As part of these design improvements, one physical change you'll see is the addition of a reset button to the bottom of the Superbook.
Some of these changes take time to make, which allows us to incorporate additional improvements to the Superbook, based on feedback from the first batch. Two of these are better palm rejection on the track pad (so resting your palm on it will not register as mouse movement) and battery charging improvements.
Based on feedback from backers, we will also offer non-charging MicroUSB and USB C cables to connect your phone to the Superbook. This is for anyone who wants to extend the battery life of their Superbook, and will be available to be added to your existing order, along with other accessories, in the coming weeks!
Finally, we are in the process of re-certifying the Superbook with the FCC. This is necessary with any changes to the hardware, and will take at least 4 weeks.
We have completed an alpha build of Sentio Desktop for Android N and above that is currently being tested. This means that all apps can now open in free-form windowed mode in Sentio Desktop N+, with the ability to have multiple windows open for some apps. In addition, we are working on windowed apps opening in tablet mode, if their developer has enabled it.
There is still some work and bug fixes remaining before we can release Sentio Desktop N+, including ensuring compatibility with different OEM Android customizations. In the meanwhile, check out our current Sentio Desktop beta if you haven't already!
Here are some additional changes coming with the N+ release, based on user feedback:
Thank you to all of our awesome backers who pitched in so far to add several language translations to Sentio Desktop. You guys are seriously awesome :D @barry2871 @chenzixian @chinke @cmdrjorgs @ronzouw @joaodiasafonso @barba @ellington @das_oni @brunodm @stefa9 @plenkske @chenz @lleo @marcimarc
If you want Sentio Desktop in your language, we would love your help! Join the #sentio_translations channel in Backer Slack, and Juliette will work with you on additional translations.
In the meanwhile, 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
Welcome back to our backer updates! As mentioned in comments, it has been a crazy busy couple weeks, so apologies for the day-late-update. And again, now that we're moving to biweekly updates, likely most updates will have less content than the standard monthly update.
TL;DR: Please read it all :)
TL;DR Beta 500 batch going out, we'll await results
From Andrew, CEO of Sentio:
If it feels like we’ve gotten less responsive, less active, less available — it’s because we have. Right now it is all hands on deck to try to get our early units out, get feedback, and talk make any fixes / amend orders / etc. So 100% apologies from me personally for not being as available on Slack, email, Kickstarter comments. Know that we will get to everyone’s queries as soon as we can. For us the priority is to make sure the first few units go out the door.
Anyways, it has been an exhausting if not exciting couple weeks. Our beta 500 batch is produced, with air-shipping starting Saturday. For those of you in the beta 100 group, please be on the lookout regarding communication from our team - especially those of you in "hard to ship to" countries, such as Russia.
Two things to know about engineers: 1) they dislike taking photos and 2) they particularly dislike having their photos taken. Here are some photos from the past few days that our team has begrudgingly taken:
TL;DR Scrap rate from first batch a bit high, aiming to improve
As part of our promise to stay transparent on our progress, we wanted to give everyone an update as to how the first production process went: in short, we're glad to have gotten through it, but there is a lot of room for improvement. One major item we are determining through this process is the effectiveness of our manufacturer and their production efficiency. The scrap rate from the first batch was higher than promised, and so we will go through process improvements over the next few weeks with the aim of improving that.
TL;DR: 2 more weeks to edit your order info in Backer Portal
Thanks to everyone who gave us feedback on the backer portal over the past few weeks. Although we had a few bugs at the beginning (including not paying for a high enough tier of our email delivery solution), most of those issues are fixed now. If you have not yet logged on to the Backer Portal, visit dashboard.sentio.com to see your order status and edit your address / cord selection / etc. Since we had some issues in the first week or so, we're giving backers another 2 weeks (until the next update) to edit their order info.
If you have any issues logging in, please email us at [email protected] or ask a question in the #backerportal channel in our Slack.
TL;DR: Our new self service online help guide is now online!
Courtesy of our summer intern Alex, who put together a fantastic FAQ / Help Guide with a lot of commonly asked questions:
The Sentio Support page is now live! You can check it out at https://sentio.zendesk.com/hc/en-us. The Guide is organized into six categories containing answers to questions frequently asked by members of our Backer community and preorder customers.
You can click on a category to view sections of related questions, which will also give you an overview of the content in each section. We’ll be updating our Support Guide regularly with new questions/answers. Let us know what you think!
Sorry for the shorter & delayed update. The team is hard at work getting Superbooks ready, so apologies for the slightly less responsive on Slack and on email. Rest assured - we will get to all of your questions and concerns as soon as we can.
Our undying love,Team Sentio
Welcome back to our backer updates! Now that we're moving to biweekly updates, likely most updates will have less content than the standard monthly update.
TL;DR: Please read it all :)
We know there's been a lot of changes in the last few months, and that you may be unsure that we have all of the updated details for your Superbook. In the time that we've not been working on the hardware or the software desktop environment, we've put together a backer portal where you can update your shipping information and adjust the types of cords you're receiving.
We've hit a small snag getting our backer portal up and running (which was supposed to be today), but it'll be fixed in the next couple days. You'll be receiving an email at the email address you used to make your order. You'll have to register for an account using that same email address to access your order information.
Here are a few screenshots from the site, just to give you a sense of what it looks like:
For time being, all First 100 & 500 Club participants have been selected and notified. Thanks to all who volunteered for their interest and excitement for the Superbook!
Have any Beta-specific questions? Please email us at [email protected].
This just in: Pictures of our Golden Samples, from our very first production batch ever!
Our Head of Hardware, Florian, snapped this photo of the 6 Superbook siblings, just moments after they were brought home from the hospital--er, I mean, from the factory:
Then afterwards, they got sleepy and decided to take a quick afternoon nap:
Florian also took these other (less comical) pictures of the Superbooks in action:
For the next update, we'll have photos of the backlit keys in action - couldn't get them in this time.
We're glad to have these Golden Samples to work with as we get ready to start making and shipping out the rest of the Superbooks. This is an incredibly surreal moment for us!
Currently, there are only a few apps available for backers to try out in our multi-window framework. Starting today, we're going to slowly roll out other apps for users to try. Fair warning: these are highly experimental and will continue to be improved as we launch.
To get access, go to our Backer Slack group and join the #betaapps channel. We're starting off the preview with a fun little game. Enjoy!
Backers with discerning eyes may have noticed that our Kickstarter spotlight page looks a little snazzier...and indeed, we had a fun photoshoot with the Superbook prototypes last week. We're excited to share with you more of these awesome shots, featuring some on-the-go locations where we envision you might be able to whip out your Superbook:
So what are some unusual places that you plan to take your Superbook? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Last week, we had a software AMA (ask me anything) on our Community Slack group led by our Product Lead, Jesse. It was a great learning experience for all of us - thank you for participating!
Here are a few selected questions:
Q: What are the keyboard shortcuts you’ve implemented so far?J: We’ve added so far:
We’re working on more, but it does take some time for us to decide on what works most naturally for shortcuts.
Q: Do you have a list of games that are now playable perfectly on SB?
J: All full screen games should be playable, since they take over the screen. For an app like Candy Crush or Pokemon Go, you'll get a nice full-screen version of the same app.
Q: Why are you building your own File Explorer? Why not just integrate a 3rd-party app to do the trick?
J: We’re building our own because we want to eventually be able to do more with the File Explorer than what current 3rd-party apps allow, such as drag-and-drop files. We also want to build a much nicer desktop UI. We’re always looking to make our File Explorer better, so if you suggestions let us know!
Also, here's our running list of feature suggestions, acquired via AMA! No promises that we'll get all of them done in the foreseeable future, but it'll be enough to keep us going for a while:
Want to: build friendships with your fellow backers? Debate which Superbook color is better? Ask us questions and have them answered (almost) immediately?* Then join us on the Community Slack, if you haven't already...seriously, you won't regret it!
* as long as Andrew has had his coffee for the day
You can also connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and our website. See you all in a couple weeks -- and look out for our emails!
Our undying love,
Team Sentio