3 ms·

Take everything this guy says with a grain of salt. His phone business appears to be a scam. These paragraphs caught my eye: > The Figgers F3, which went on s

Take everything this guy says with a grain of salt. His phone business appears to be a scam. These paragraphs caught my eye: > The Figgers F3, which went on sale in 2019, contains a chip designed to enable wireless charging whenever the phone is within five metres of a "super base charger" - a device that has been awaiting approval by the FCC. > The marketing of the F3 caused controversy, with some bloggers arguing that not all of the first model's features were as up-to-date as they said they had been led to believe. Some quick Googling shows that the Figgers F3 is actually just a rebranded $200 Oukitel u23. Figgers apparently claimed that the phone had wireless charging at a range of 5 meters (impossible), a Snapdragon 855 (it has a cheap MediaTek chipset), a 4K screen (it doesn't), and 1TB of storage (only 128GB built-in, but it has a microSD card slot). You can also find press releases saying "Figgers F3 is first 5G smartphone made in America with 5-meter wireless charging" which is clearly untrue, as Oukitel is a Chinese company and the Oukitel u23 is made in China. More drama with trying to pay off YouTube influencers can be found on Reddit. Supposedly Figgers tried to pay a YouTuber $34,000 to shill the phone, but the YouTubers have turned on them after realizing it was a scam: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/gtujqx/figgers_wireless_the_company_flossy_carter/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/gtujqx/figgers_wir... It appears this guy's phone company is a scam, regardless of the truth of his origin story.

peteretep 5y ago
His Wikipedia is interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Figgers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Figgers For example: “Figgers also has a license spectrum band from FCC”. The citations there are a student-run uni newspaper in Ghana, and the news site of a Florida State University radio station. If the guy isn’t all he claims, he’s done an excellent job of layering together successive Wikipedia-credible sources and then using those as a springboard to more and more credible news stories, culminating in coverage in WashPo and the BBC. I am pretty skeptical, but if I’m right to be, also pretty impressed by his press coverage game.
- matsemann 5y ago
  Reminds me of Citogenesis, how things repeated enough becomes truth. https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
- nexuist 5y ago
  He's clearly in the wrong field. He should be doing PR for megacorps with these results.
  - robjan 5y ago
    This is quite common in the product world. Even before the internet we had "as seen on TV" where people would go to extreme lengths to get their product mentioned either on some magazine show or, failing that, just an informercial. They then have a circular reference which can be used to gain legitimacy when trying to get covered in a more prestigious publication.
- axaxs 5y ago
  That is a very...strange wiki. If not self written, then perhaps written based on spoken self accounts. Also, I know of no place in Florida called "Coral Gates." Perhaps the transcriber misheard.
markdown 5y ago
Hah, reminds me of InstaCharge. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/03/fiji-pm-endorses-instacharge-app-that-claims-to-recharge https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/03/fiji-pm-endors...

peteretep 5y ago

His Wikipedia is interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Figgers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Figgers For example: “Figgers also has a license spectrum band from FCC”. The citations there are a student-run uni newspaper in Ghana, and the news site of a Florida State University radio station. If the guy isn’t all he claims, he’s done an excellent job of layering together successive Wikipedia-credible sources and then using those as a springboard to more and more credible news stories, culminating in coverage in WashPo and the BBC. I am pretty skeptical, but if I’m right to be, also pretty impressed by his press coverage game.

matsemann 5y ago
Reminds me of Citogenesis, how things repeated enough becomes truth. https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
nexuist 5y ago
He's clearly in the wrong field. He should be doing PR for megacorps with these results.
- robjan 5y ago
  This is quite common in the product world. Even before the internet we had "as seen on TV" where people would go to extreme lengths to get their product mentioned either on some magazine show or, failing that, just an informercial. They then have a circular reference which can be used to gain legitimacy when trying to get covered in a more prestigious publication.
axaxs 5y ago
That is a very...strange wiki. If not self written, then perhaps written based on spoken self accounts. Also, I know of no place in Florida called "Coral Gates." Perhaps the transcriber misheard.

markdown 5y ago

Hah, reminds me of InstaCharge. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/03/fiji-pm-endorses-instacharge-app-that-claims-to-recharge https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/03/fiji-pm-endors...