ZTE's crowdsourced phone, the ZTE Hawkeye, hasn't done remarkably well since it was announced at CES. The Kickstarter campaign has only raised 7% of the $500,000 goal, and funding has only increased by $4,000 in the past six days. Now ZTE is going back to the community, asking what could be done to improve the device.

The ZTE Hawkeye is the result of the company's 'Project CSX,' which asked the ZTE community what features they want most on a phone. Somehow, the ability to control the phone based on eye movement and an adhesive case were the winners. The Kickstarter price is $199, with specs including a Snapdragon 625, 3GB of RAM, and Android 7.0 Nougat.

ZTE admitted defeat in a forum post, believing that introducing the eye-tracking feature on a mid-range device likely hurt expectations. With the introductory price already set, ZTE wants to hear how they can change the device to make it more appealing with a new poll. Some of the options ZTE has recommended includes swapping out the Snapdragon 625 for the 835, increasing the battery capacity to 3500mAh, and using stock Android.

As you might imagine, the Snapdragon 835 option is leading in the poll (at the time of writing). Whatever option wins will almost certainly affect the full retail price of the phone, but I'm not convinced even a high-end CPU will push the Kickstarter project to $500,000.

Source: Z-Community