I emailed them already asking what options were.
Unfortunately, since we don't know much about the chip yet, it's hard to plan an approach. We've got a message in to our YiHi rep, but dealing with them is nothing like dealing with Evolv. They're surprisingly rigid about their many rules & policies, and they've always been rather tight-lipped & very protective of the SXmini's market share, even building some proprietary advantages into its version of the SX350J firmware (though I haven't seen any indication of hardware spec differences).
For customers who pre-ordered the Whiteout SX, if you're like to change your order to a Whiteout DNA (which can be used with 18650s at up to 133W, if you pick up a dual-18650 DNA Build Kit from us). Alternatively, if you'd prefer to wait until we know the specifics of the SX350J-V2 so we can determine how we'll approach the transition (beyond the obvious V2 Build Kit for those who want to upgrade), we'll keep you guys in the loop as soon as we know specifications, availability timelines, and other critical details. Once that information is available & we can announce our plans, pre-order customers who waited will still be able to change configurations, if they so desire. I expect at the very least, we'll offer a discount on the V2 Build Kit to Whiteout SX pre-order customers, but we're also looking into alternative proactive approaches depending on what YiHi tells us. Who knows? The chip might be identical in dimensions & mounting points to the V1 (the SXmini ML images look
very similar, at least), and it might be a seamless transition (from a component design perspective). Or, it might be 4 months before 3rd party vendors can even place orders for the SX350J-V2, and this discussion may be severely premature.
Either way, I hope YiHi's SXi-Q is a legit answer to eScribe, because the rest of the V2 chip seems (from what little we know so far) to be more of an incremental upgrade that could've been accomplished with a firmware push, if the profit/marketshare motive wasn't a primary factor. I hope I end up being impressed despite myself, but regardless of what happens with the V2, the V1 is still one of the best chips on the market. YiHi had better not discontinue firmware updates for the V1 chip now that they've announced the successor (I'll be asking about that too when CMT's rep responds). Unfortunately, in my book, that's the likely
real headline behind this announcement: "YiHi Discontinues Firmware Update Dev for SXmini M-Class." Let's hope I'm wrong though, for everyone who paid $200 for a flagship device released less than 5 months ago that is currently still running a 'test' version of the Titanium firmware update. -_-
This is yet another perfect example of why the Whiteout platform is such a great departure from the norm. Once again, a PV company had dropped a totally-unexpected new device on us not even half a year after their previous flagship came out. Development cycles have gotten so short that it's increasingly difficult for small manufacturers & new startups to be relevant, because when you start developing a device around a particular PCB, by the time you start production on it, the chip you chose is perceives as 'obsolete' because something new has already been announced or released.
You can see this happening with DNA40 mods frequently these days -- the DNA40 is not even a year old yet, and in the past couple months, a host of newly-released DNA40 devices have finally started appearing in stock in stores, because a year's time is not that long when you're developing hardware from the ground up. CMT has been working on the Whiteout since January, so our development process has taken about ~9 months from initial founding of the company to expected shipping of first batch units. If we hadn't been designing the device to be modular & accept future PCBs, we'd be totally out of luck on all the R&D money spent to develop the Whiteout, because there's no way we could become profitable quickly enough to recoup those costs before the original chip the device was designed around became old news.
While it's true that follow-up devices can be developed more quickly even by companies with static platforms, that doesn't change the fact that this rapid development cycle makes entering the hardware market increasingly challenging for new PV companies, particularly non-Chinese ventures facing much higher costs on everything from components to overhead. It's also rough on consumers & their wallets, because it's increasingly costly to keep up with the cutting-edge (do you realize that by now, most devices sold in 2014 can't even
fire the majority of 2015's subohm tanks? These concerns were all major factors in the Whiteout's development, and we appreciate all the support & feedback you've all given us to help make this platform a reality. We're so close to finally being able to share it with you all, and then the real fun starts...