grepGander have you watched the video where pre-NP3 relate they;'re discussing the cost of the hardware. There’s an interesting bit where they’re discussing the cost of each component (I might have been Rob and Carl) and explicitly state that they (a) have to pay up front unlike larger companies and (b) can’t always get the best newest harwdare upon release. There’s another video with Rob that shows potential 4a mock-ups about 1 year before release, thus the design is fully locked down 18-months ahead of time.
I think this is where the non-flagship specs come into play on the NP3, especially the 8sg4 and the display. I literally think they couldn’t gain access to the 8 elite SoCs (as the fab … I’m assuming TSMC was sold out for those production runs) and it’s likewise with the displays.
There was analysis on reddit a while showing that major Samsung devices were being made in parallel and NOTHING likely got locked out of that processing pool. I believe they also got locked out of the screen pool as well.
Carl looks quite dejected in that vid when explaining it.
I looked for the video and can’t find it with the amount of energy I want to spend this fine morning.
