Comment by xyzzy_plugh

Comment by xyzzy_plugh 7 days ago

I've been out of the hardware game a minute but Qualcomm was a great partner for helping you ship products. Everything about them sucks, but they will actually send engineers to your office. They always took bug reports seriously and pretty much always delivered patches. Also they always had ample samples, both in terms of dev boards and software. I know of several products that basically shipped the sample code with minimal modifications.

If I were a company trying to ship V1 of our first product, I would hands down pick Qualcomm. MediaTek et al are great for when you know what you're doing with minimal handholding.

I absolutely hated working with them, but at least they were a vendor you could work with. Perhaps the cheaper vendors have upped their game here but I wouldn't know.

ACCount37 7 days ago

I heard that Qualcomm can be decent to work with - if you are in a company the size of Qualcomm, or can dangle "500000 units to ship" in front of them like a carrot.

But "decent" is Qualcomm at its absolute best. And Qualcomm at its worst?

I'd rather chew down broken glass than work with Qualcomm.

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gimmeThaBeet 7 days ago

I can add a minimal anecdote. I got some support from a couple engineers on a telecom project, and it wasn't even that big of a thing, but they were more than decent to work with. I did say to one guy, "you guys are a lot cooler to work with than some of the stuff you see in the news" and matter-of-fact he was just like "oh, yeah that's legal"
my vision of them is that the engineering side can be great to deal with when they want to be (and my personal experience is they want to be). but the other part of their business is like set the standard, and then enforce it.

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- ACCount37 7 days ago
  
  To get to the engineers, you need to get through the viper pit that is the sales first.
  The only time I have seen this incredible feat accomplished was in a company large enough that they had a department dedicated to dealing with other large companies.
  
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cosmicgadget 7 days ago

At least they're up front about it? When I think of a vendor I think of sales taking your money and then being ghosted by support staff.

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