Oh, Linshof, we hardly knew ye! German smartphone maker wannabe is no more

The device was set to arrive early 2015 and had a $380 price tag, for which the potential customers of Linshof would have received an unorthodox octagonal body, 5" AMOLED or IPS LCD display, an octa-core chipset, 80GB of internal storage, 3GB of RAM, and a heavily-modded Android 5.0 Lollipop-based interface that looked like nothing we've ever seen before.

During the past few weeks, quite many an allegation surfaced in the German press, accusing Linshof and its founders of fraud. Subsequent investigation revealed a number of concerning details around the start-up as a whole, substantiating its shady status.

Whether Linshof was going to release the i8 or not, we might never know, as the company has officially shut down doors. If you try to navigate to Linshof's website, you'll be greeted by a message, notifying visitors that Linshof is closed. The official reason for this is the departure of the company's investors.


What do you think - was Linshof a fraud from the very beginning or Lady Luck prevented Germany from having a new locally-based smartphone vendor? Comments are welcome right below.