Turing Robotic Industries' property in Finland set on seizure

[Levis95l]

You remember Turing Robotic Industries? That phone manufacturer startup that promised to make as secure phone as possible both hardware and software wise. It was(or is?) going to have "liquid morphium" body, no usb connector due to security reasons and Sailfish OS instead of Android. Here's a picture:

Spoiler

 

So on February 2016 they announced that they're going to start manufacturing of the phone in Nokia's old manufacturing plant rented from Microsoft, in Salo, Finland. The manufacturing should have started in the spring but it still haven't, although I believe they delivered some unfinished early adopter "beta" samples of the phone in the autumn. They also announced some ludicrous specs for their upcoming phone which led many to believe the whole company is hoax. That announcement featured here on the LTT forum too, click here to read the post.

 

Now a Finnish news paper Salon Seudun Sanomat tells that the property of Turing Robotic Industries (TRI) on their manufacturing plant in Salo is set on seizure. The firm PHE-Consulting Oy from Naantali, Finland, that has been a consult for TRI last year, has demanded the seizure and the district court of Varsinais-Suomi (South-Western Finland) has approved it. Apparently the seizure is set to aquire a debt of over 300,000€.

 

Steve Chao, the CEO of TRI, commented on the matter and said he's not aware of the seizure. He added that there should be no reason to seize TRI's property and that their lawyers will handle this seemingly not very significant matter.

 

On an interesting sidenote, that PHE-Consulting Oy is still an investor in TRI themselves.

 

Sources:

Where I read about the matter - io-tech.fi

The original news paper article - sss.fi

 

Don't know about our pal Chao, but if I were running a company with no finished products or any manufacturing, 300,000€ would be quite a big chunk of money. Unless Kickstarter money is already spent, new nice house bought and the company is ready to file for bankruptcy anyway.

 

 

UPDATE:

Another short news about TRI's response almost got unnoticed by me. This is from 21st of January. I'll try to translate it all but skip the parts that are identical to the previous article above.

 

TRI demands the district court to cancel the order by which the companys production lines and bank accounts were ordered to be seized.

 

PHE-Consulting OY says that TRI has not paid the fees agreed on in the contract. According to TRI's lawyer, TRI hasn't got a single bill or demand for payment from the consult firm concerning the debt that led to the seizure.

 

The sides have a differing view on what has been agreed on and how the contracts should be interpreted.

 

TRI claims that they had paid 60,000€ to the consult in October. According to Turing, the consult would have proposed in December for all the manufacturing lines of TRI in Salo to be transferred to his/her ownership.

 

PHE-Consulting doesn't want to comment on the matter.

 

Source:

The same news site as with the original article - sss.fi

Edited January 27, 2017 by Levis95l
Updated with new information

[NumLock21]

[OakTreeGaming]

Wow, why did they have to put the manufacturing plant under seisure? Where they handling dangerous materials without permission, or is it just a plain government mistake?

[Levis95l]

2 minutes ago, OakTreeGaming said:

Wow, why did they have to put the manufacturing plant under seisure? Where they handling dangerous materials without permission, or is it just a plain government mistake?

I guess they must have had the bills unpaid for a long time and the manufacturing equipment is everything worth of money that they have (at least in Finland).

[OakTreeGaming]

On 1/18/2017 at 7:47 AM, Levis95l said:

I guess they must have had the bills unpaid for a long time and the manufacturing equipment is everything worth of money that they have (at least in Finland).

Woah, that must have been a crap-ton of debt they were in. Those machines cost many millions of dollars all put together.

[Levis95l]

11 hours ago, OakTreeGaming said:

Woah, that must have been a crap-ton of debt they were in. Those machines cost many millions of dollars all put together.

Yeah, would be interesting to know what's going on in more detail.

 

Although it's hard to say what machines they even have when the production still hasn't started. (At least based on what I know.)

 

I'll try to update this if I hear anything new but it seems that media is interested in other "news" nowadays. Like "Have you always cooked pasta the wrong way?" or something.

[dizmo]

Not too surprising considering they still haven't managed to release their device.

Yet another reason not to crowd fund something from an unproven company that promises way too much.

 

The Turing Phone, as it sits now, is utter garbage.

They're using the SD801, they ditched Android, it's not waterproof, it doesn't have a headphone jack (and won't), it uses ECC memory, the fingerprint sensor isn't supported by the OS, abysmal camera, abysmal battery life, and they don't even have the crown jewel and whole point of their device, the security features, implemented. On top of it all it's incredibly expensive.

[VerticalDiscussions]

18 minutes ago, dizmo said:

-snip-

Triple Snapdragon 830..... 24 Kryo Cores with a 120wh battery:

...............................................................

 

 

[dizmo]

3 hours ago, VerticalDiscussions said:

Triple Snapdragon 830..... 24 Kryo Cores with a 120wh battery:

...............................................................

 

Hahaha I remember that...was that for this phone?

Such a stupid claim. I just shook my head when I first read that. I'm surprised anyone took them seriously and gave them money after that. Then again, there's a sucker born every minute. Look at how many people invested in Saygus.

[VerticalDiscussions]

6 minutes ago, dizmo said:

-snip-

The triply madness was for the Turing Monolith, probably inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey xD.

[dizmo]

12 minutes ago, VerticalDiscussions said:

The triply madness was for the Turing Monolith, probably inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey xD.

Hahah. Can't get one phone out, but tease another.

Apparently they're hiring engineers.

I'm shocked Saygus still has an active Twitter account. It's been almost two years since people placed their Kickstarter orders.

[dalekphalm]

This might be an ESL or a translation thing, but does anyone else think that "set on seizure" is a very odd way to write/say something? It doesn't really make sense.

 

However, I understand the general concept. The property and assets were seized. *shrugs* just sounds odd.

[Levis95l]

On 26.1.2017 at 10:08 PM, dalekphalm said:

This might be an ESL or a translation thing, but does anyone else think that "set on seizure" is a very odd way to write/say something? It doesn't really make sense.

 

However, I understand the general concept. The property and assets were seized. *shrugs* just sounds odd.

Yeah, it's my bad. Was struggling a bit with these "law terms" (not excactly everyday English).

 

But that is the exact way it was put in Finnish. So instead of the property being already seized, only an order for them to be seized has been given. At least I got the impression that nothing concrete had been done at the time writing.

[Levis95l]

I updated the topic with a new article.