The C2 was (still is) advertised as a reference device with Sailfish pre-installed so that users can experience Sailfish “as its meant to be”. Its not advertised as a Beta device, nor is it advertised as work-in-progress product only suitable for techies to tinker with.
Most common-sense people reading Jolla’s sales pitch for this device would interpret this as an off-the-shelf product that would basically work out of the box for them. Yes, maybe a few glitches here and there, but a well rounded and stable product with none of the basic hardware adaptation issues that have plagued the Sony devices for years.
What they got was just more of the same or, at worst for a lot of people, a device that didn’t work at all and had to immediately be sent back. That, I would suggest, is why some users are frustrated and angry.
Its not that the C2 product is bad, or that Jolla isn’t working hard - they just made the rookie mistakes of (1) vastly over selling a product that had no chance of being what it was advertised to be at this stage, and (2) releasing it far too early without proper testing having being done.
Now they have to unbox all of the unsent C2s, reflash them, package them up again, deal with the costs of repairing at least 66 returned bricked phones, and so on.
Sadly I suspect they’ll now make a finacial loss on these C2s, certainly this year, and maybe in later ones as some users will now be wary of continuing their subscriptions for this device unless major improvements to functionality and support issues come quickly and reliably.
This is not an issue of technical capability, but of management - in other words it could have been so different if this had all been managed properly. Lets hope they learn from these mistakes.