TL:DR; Flipper Zero has at least some purchasers who are only going to be users of the U2F or NFC features, not hacking on or with it much. The fact that it has useful applications out of the box separates it from some of the SBCs etc that need many more parts and code to have a useful application IRL.
> All off the shelf and any engineering team could clone it in a few days while substantially undercutting their price
Perhaps. And perhaps Dropbox is just a glorified rsync FTP target. (Sarcasm here, boiling down to saying that talk is cheap, shipping is hard)
> They're selling a fashion accessory targeting the fanboy tech crowd
I guess that makes me a 'fanboy tech' then.
Unlike the breadboard + parts + wires + needed case of some kind + SBC/microcontroller +need to learn yet another proglang or dialect to make whatever you built DO something, this device comes with a working battery, controls, screen, Bluetooth and U2F, NFC cloning out of the box. No instructables or breadboard required!
While I'm interested in circuit design, there are no simple books that will take you from plugging in a battery to a single led to something that can run c code. Maybe NAND to Tetris? Have had a hard time finding a physical book for that.
Learning to do embedded stuff as a result would require more time than I'm willing to invest right now vs what I could get done by reusing old phones or retro computers to do stuff, or by purchasing a Turn-Key device like this.
And for once the marketing may mean that these people have answers to questions, and do not disappear for months on end while the engineering types silently work and don't dare talk about their problems. Sort of like the opaque development of signal versus the open development of this week in matrix.
at the very least, the dolphin character and marketing or branding on this device shows that there is at least some ux care taken, and there will be at least one or two glossy coats of paint applied over top the bare metal. I compare this to something like a Chinese pen plotter that while technically being only a cheaper version of the do-it-yourself pen plotter or axidraw, has much worse software that barely works and is not intuitive.
Regarding the flipper itself, I purchased it to function as a simple NFC clone for my work badge if I ever go back to work, and as a u2f key manger since I don't already have one of those, not as a hacking or embedded development aid.
Those capabilities and gpio pens are optional to me as a user, which may confirm your suspicions, I don't know.
Like most finished products, this device can provide a high-value to user supplied code ratio. There's definitely a place for devices that are 'merely' hardware and a software platform that enable a one-to-one value to user supplied code device... even I run things like pihole on a dedicated raspberry pi zero since the cost benefit is there. Why, at some point, I'm going to learn native Linux development so that I can write applications for the pine phone whenever it comes out with a keyboard. not everything has to be a completely finished product with applications after all.
Having the ability to hack on something is great, but this fanboy prefers to purchase products that can actually do something for him, yet are extensible, as opposed to buying some pcbs and hoping that one day some way somehow you can make them do something. I have enough almost started weekend projects already :)
/End rant , thanks for your patience with my clumsy delivery skills
