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Walmart’s $10 Smartphone Has Better Specs Than the Original iPhone
- djfergus 11y agoVery exciting to see $10 pocket supercomputers in ubiquitous retail, but surely this is a just a loss leader? Wouldn't the patent transfer payments alone put this underwater? Has anyone traced the origin of this model? Is it remaindered stock from somewhere (and therefore a sunk cost)?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ck2 11y ago$10 phones have been around for a couple years now. They are designed to sell minutes/data plans.
- gambiting 11y agoReally? What other phones you could buy for $10 without a contract?
- ck2 11y agoZTE has made several phones for carriers that have sold for $10 over the past couple years without contract. They are locked to the carrier and require airtime purchases. No contract needed but unless an unlock is available, you are stuck with their minutes/data rates. Target stores had "Brightspot" which is a T-Mobile mvno and it went under, but they had $10 phones with these same specs last year at this time.
- joezydeco 11y agoHere's an example. ZTE Valet, $9.99 http://www.amazon.com/ZTE-Valet-Android-Prepaid-TracFone/dp/B00FM7R1WG http://www.amazon.com/ZTE-Valet-Android-Prepaid-TracFone/dp/...
- sthakur 11y agoOr this for $6.99: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JG3M47E http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JG3M47E
- joezydeco 11y agoDoesn't seem like that's an Android phone.
- sthakur 11y agoIt says "Operating System: Android OS" under "Compare to Similar Items"
- joezydeco 11y agoBut the verdict isn't completely in on that. http://androidforums.com/threads/lg-306g-running-android.900142/ http://androidforums.com/threads/lg-306g-running-android.900... http://tracfonereviewer.blogspot.com/2014_04_01_archive.html http://tracfonereviewer.blogspot.com/2014_04_01_archive.html
- sthakur 11y agoThanks for the info. It's interesting that on Amazon, it says "Android OS" for this phone instead of just "Android" as it is for all the other phones.
- josefresco 11y agoCheapest "smartphone" I found on Amazon just now: http://www.amazon.com/LG-Optimus-Exceed-Verizon-Prepaid/dp/B00K2XX4OY/ http://www.amazon.com/LG-Optimus-Exceed-Verizon-Prepaid/dp/B... $20
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ck2 11y agoThese have periodically been $10 on sale but have much higher specs than most other $10 phones. Twice the memory at 1gb and the screen is something like 800x400 But they are locked to verizon 3g network, not gsm and definitely not lte.
- agumonkey 11y agoAlso, it's 1/4 the price of a Sansa Clip mp3 player.
- anc84 11y agoWith 1/4 the number of physical buttons, a crucial feature for many people. I bought an ebook with a touchscreen and there is nothing more frustrating about it than not having physical buttons for page navigation.
- agumonkey 11y agoVery good point, I realize beside the price, it would be very impractical as is. The physical interface doesn't cost 30$ though :)
- unsigner 11y agoOK, I understand the value of hyperbole here and there, but calling this a supercomputer is akin to calling it a floodlight because its screen glows, or a space heater because its back gets slightly warm when charging. The smallest/cheapest thing that can hyperbolicaly yet somewhat reasonably be called a supercomputer nowadays IMHO is a PC with several beefy GPUs.
- scentoni 11y agoThe first supercomputer was capable of at most 160 MFlops, which is much less than this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1
- bechampion 11y agoi love to see things like this.
- listic 11y agoThat's exactly what upvote button is for.
- hayksaakian 11y agoIt uses android 4.4 instead of 5.x or 6.0 that's too bad :(
- oneweekwonder 11y agoAt least 4.4 supports chrome webview usb debugging
- sunnyps 11y agoSo does chrome (and android webview which is now based on chrome) on lollipop and above. Where did you get the idea that it wasn't? Go to chrome://inspect on your desktop, you need to have a Chrome version on your desktop that's compatible with the chrome/webview version on your android device, usually this means having the same or higher version number on your desktop. Kitkat marked the transition of android webview to be based on chrome but it wasn't made updateable. Lollipop upwards have an updateable android webview which tracks the latest chrome version and isn't very far behind usually.
- oneweekwonder 11y agoSorry a bit of a late reply, your right. I should have been more clear mentioning from 4.4 onwards you can debug a webview in a app(for all those hybrid apps).
- jusben1369 11y agoLol. TEN DOLLARS!! It's going to cut a few corners.
- privacy101 11y agoDoes version >4.4 enable writing to SD card from apps again?
- lbradstreet 11y agoIs it locked to a prepaid carrier? If so, then it's probably being sold at under cost.
- runholm 11y agoIt's locked to a pay pr. minute deal, so if you use it as a smart device on wifi only you never have to pay anything. Great for people with very limited funds and no access to the internet in other ways (assuming they can get access to a wifi, which you at least can do many places in large cities).
- lbradstreet 11y agoYou're right, it's still an amazing deal. I'm just pointing out that it likely can't be produced and sold at retail for a profit for $10.
- rsp1984 11y agoIs that 10 dollars as in 10 dollars, or 10 dollars plus a 2-years contract for phone and data that sums up to something like 500 dollars (as it is with the iPhone)? Obviously in the latter case the money is made on the contract, not on the phone.
- dugmartin 11y agoIt's a TracFone so you pay by the minute - no contract.
- marincounty 11y agoI have this phone, or the predecessor? Yes, the carrier is TracFone. For $100, plus tax, you get 1000 minutes for 365 days. You need to buy the lousy phone, but it's cheap. It's fine if you just want a cheap phone. I only use it for calls, because that's all I've been able to do with the phone. So, even though it has Internet access; I haven't got it to work. Oh yea, you need to unlock the screen whenever you call, and the touch screen software has a bug in it. It's hit it miss if you can access the answer button. That said, if you don't have much money, or hate paying huge monthly bills--this phone plan is fine. The phone is chitty. I have a iPhone 4, and an android I use at home. Both are not with a carrier, but work for my needs. Will I buy another year's worth of minutes--maybe? I like not paying a monthly phone bill to some company that I really never cared about, and only frustrated me, for years, with their rediculious billing practices.
- Zenst 11y agoWOW I appreciete you get somewhat bad deals teclo wise in the USA but even that bites. In the UK can get for £10 (7.50 for 3 months) unlimited calls/text and...data. Kinda messed up, still even for the UK that phone is a steal price wise.
- mcintyre1994 11y agoI was going to make a similar comment but I'm not aware of that deal - that's better than I get from Three for £10. Whose that with?
- dijit 11y agoThere is a certain 'rub' when people compare two pieces of technology. While it's certainly true that the cpu/memory are faster or better than an iphone was 8 years ago.. and at such a low price.. when people compare specifications they always lose perspective on build quality. It's very hard to quantify that from a product data sheet, but if this thing was built like a early 00's Nokia, then it would be worth a lot. But for $10, do you need a smartphone at all? why not grab one of those "burners" that have a battery life of 2 months which additionally can survive some abuse? I understand that for $10 people should curb their expectations, but the title is comparing apples to oranges. "$400 smartphone from 8 years ago with high build quality vs $10 phone now with unknown build quality"
- rmason 11y agoOne advantage would be for a market like inner city Detroit where a majority don't have smartphones and 40% lack broadband access at home. http://detroitography.com/2015/11/13/map-detroits-digital-divide/ http://detroitography.com/2015/11/13/map-detroits-digital-di...
- hueving 11y ago>But for $10, do you need a smartphone at all? For poorer people, a smartphone may be their only access to the Internet.
- vijayr 11y agoI guess non-profits that work with homeless people, at risk youth, domestic abuse victims, war zones etc will find creative uses for this. Another example would be Syrian refugees arriving in Europe.
- Menge 11y agoI buy low end smartphones (~$25 off-contract) and I couldn't be happier with them AFA my own use. Sometimes you need whatsapp or what not to coordinate or want to run some other basic apps. My only negative would be that the touch screen accuracy is sometimes subpar which is a real hindrance when trying to find a starter smartphone for tech curious retirees.
- rey12rey 11y agoOut of stock unfortunately.
- yitchelle 11y agoWow, this phone is so cheap, you could buy a few of them just experimentation without worrying if you would let the smoke inside it escape. Anyone got good project ideas for a lazy weekend? I was thinking of a Sonos replacement.
- morganvachon 11y agoBuying it at $10 just to harvest the touch screen, battery, and charger is profit.
- sambeau 11y agoWhat are these devices like for hacking with / and or attaching to other electronics? What is android like for these sort of uses as opposed to, say, a Raspberry Pi (or Arduino)? I'd love to use something like this to monitor the water in a tank on a hillside. The battery + the Cell connectivity + (potentially) the camera would be perfect. (I'm sure there are suitable solar phone chargers that would work with it too) It's so cheap I could afford to break a few...
- rtl49 11y agoIt depends a great deal on whether it's possible to unlock the bootloader. Unfortunately, many of these cheap phones are loaded with the carrier's software. They don't want you to uninstall it, so they don't let you unlock the bootloader, which would enable you to modify the system partition on the device. This means you can't do much with it unless someone discovers a vulnerability that grants you root access.
- jnbiche 11y agoHe wouldn't need to load a custom ROM just to make and install an app that monitors a few peripheral sensors (all of which should be accessible via the Android SDK).
- rtl49 11y agoTrue, but he specifically mentioned the RbPi and Arduino in his comment. This makes me believe he's interested in more functionality than what is offered by the standard API.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jnbiche 11y agoWell, it's running Android, so all you'd need to do is make an Android app to do this. Android SDK is pretty powerful even without root access, so what you're wanting to do shouldn't be a problem from a software perspective (now, whether the hardware is appropriate, I have no idea).
- gbl08ma 11y ago"for one, it’s running an outdated version of Android that may make it vulnerable to hackers" Then I went to check what version it actually runs, and it's 4.4/KitKat. I do not have any phone with a version more recent than 4.4 (and that's the case for everyone I know). In fact, my phone is only running 4.4 because I went through the trouble to look in Russian forums for custom ROMs for it, since the manufacturer didn't get it beyond 4.2. My phone is a not very popular model, but even for some former flagships the only way to go is to get custom ROMs e.g. on XDA. Sure, I (and my friends) could get a new phone... but we are not interested in changing phones before they are even out of warranty (2 years in Europe). This is no surprise: Google's statistics[1] indicate 4.4 is still the most used version. Cheaper phones being launched with older Android versions doesn't help, that's true, but these cheaper models are good enough for many people. And to be honest, the features (and change in looks/functionality) introduced in the later versions do not interest me much. If only Android had an update policy more similar to Windows and some Linux distros, where you stay with a major release but get security updates for it, for a sane amount of time... [1] https://developer.android.com/intl/zh-tw/about/dashboards/index.html https://developer.android.com/intl/zh-tw/about/dashboards/in...
- rtl49 11y agoI'm not sure why the writer mentions this. (It's probably an excuse to link to another Vice article.) The Android version number in itself isn't a good indication of the phone's vulnerability. Stagefright, for instance, was patched for 4.4 in many phones without an upgrade to the API. An Android phone's security depends on whoever is responsible for maintaining the device's ROM, usually the carrier or phone manufacturer. Samsung, for instance, includes extensions intended to enhance security. Admittedly, for $10 I wouldn't expect much in the way of OTA updates. But except for a few changes to the framework in the way app permissions are handled, the version number isn't the best measure of security.
- brazzledazzle 11y agoI'm having flashbacks to security vulnerability scans that have no concept of back-ported patches.
- ck2 11y agoThere have been $10 phones in the USA for a couple years now, they all have the same low end specs. 512mb of memory (which is limiting) 480x320 screen (this is the weakest part) dual core (which is nice for the price) The new thing this year is $5 and even $1 phones but some of those are single core and don't have gpu accelerators.
- listic 11y agoPlease give links to those even cheaper phones.
- Tepix 11y agoCan I use this phone with any SIM card? Or is it locked to a particular carrier/network?
- ck2 11y agoMost of these phones are tracfone, so it is locked to one of their mvnos, depending on your market. at&t mvno for gsm (usually) and verizon mvno for cdma markets
- jnbiche 11y agoIt's CDMA, so probably no SIM card, and definitely you can't use it with most other networks. Maybe, maybe Verizon, but probably just Tracfone (likely it's Verizon network, anyway).
- shade23 11y agoAs a dev,this interests me too.I just like buying low end phones to figure out their cost reduction/optimization techniques and figuring out how normal apps would survive on them. Although ,I think comparing it to the first iPhone is unfair.
- jusben1369 11y agoDid someone just buy old stock from LG (save them from recycling) and do a one time deal? Or if this a new permanent thing?
- _lce0 11y agoI've found the phone specs[0] and seems to be pretty good for thinkers and makers! There's plenty of sensors --and opportunities-- for less than $10. - Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 1.2 GHz Dual-Core MSM8610 - 1.9 GHz CDMA PCS, 800 MHz CDMA - 65K Color TFT, 480 x 320 pixels, 3.8" (HVGA) - 1,540 mAh / 7hours talk - 9day stand by - microSD 4Gb (included) -- up to 32Gb - 3MP Rear-Facing Fixed Focus Camera with Flash and WVGA Camcorder - Accelerometer - 802.11 b/g/n - Bluetooth 4.0 - GPS I'd like of another sensors not listed there; like light, proximity, or magnetic .. maybe anyone with the phone can confirm? [0] http://www.lg.com/us/cell-phones/lg-L16C-lucky http://www.lg.com/us/cell-phones/lg-L16C-lucky
- voltagex_ 11y agoCan someone get one to me in Australia? (Happy to pay)
- listic 11y agoWill reshipping service like Shipito work for you? https://shipito.com https://shipito.com
- anon1mous 11y agoShipito is beyond awful.
- foldor 11y agoHey, I was just looking at Shipito, and it was looking pretty handy to me as a Canadian. What did you dislike?
- anon1mous 11y agoThe problems start once your package is in their warehouse. Sometime they increase the price, sometime they keep asking for more and more proofs of identity, income, address. Sometime they refuse to accept documents not verified in an US embassy in your country. If you refuse their demands they keep/steal your package. Just go on a few review sites and search for Shipito.
- k__ 11y agoStrange comparison. The iPhone is 8 years old. But it wasn't really top notch back in the days either. I had a Droid/Milestone and the iPhone just looked and felt like some plastic garbage in comparison to it. It took the Apple til the iPhone 4 it became a real gem and now it seems that they're going back.
- Touche 11y agoThe original iPhone was $600 with a 2 year contract, this is $10 with no contract, that's the comparison.
- ptaipale 11y agoAt 2 % of the price of the original iPhone, I do think this is somewhat remarkable. Just consider how much is left to the device manufacturing after cost of customer service at sales, logistics, etc.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoGive me a tablet this cheap and I'm ordering 10 of them, to finally hang touchscreens in every room of my home and wire them up to an LCARS interface. (Actually, I recently had an opportunity to get some tablets for $8/piece from a bank that was getting rid of the equpiment, but unfortunately me&my friends got outbidded by some company :<.) EDIT: any source for tablets that are less than $40 / piece and decent enough to work as wall-hanged touchscreens (doesn't look like total crap, is able to run Android and some apps while connected to Wi-FI without getting unresponsive) would be much appreciated.
- gozo 11y agoYou can get decent tablets in China for $30-40. Not like a few years ago when everything low end was crap. Except cameras which usually isn't very good still. Of course it's hard to know what you are buying unless you have it in your hand. The cheap ones are usually mediatek, allwinner or similar.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoFortunately I'm in Shenzhen right now. I was wary of the cheapest stuff here, but maybe I should check it out. Any particular brand recommendation?
- gozo 11y agoNot really things changes too quickly. You want to go to 13/14 on this map over HQB though. http://www.seeedstudio.com/document/pdf/Shenzhen%20Map%20for%20Makers.pdf http://www.seeedstudio.com/document/pdf/Shenzhen%20Map%20for...
- vijayr 11y agoIt would be nice to have a review blog that exclusively reviews lower end stuff from China
- smackfu 11y agoCheap tablets have terrible lo-rez screens, which usually is not great for whatever re-purposing you are thinking of.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- StevePerkins 11y agoFor $10, I'd use it as an MP3 player at the gym or when out walking... so I don't have to worry about dropping my expensive phone (as I'm prone to do once a month or so). 4 GB would hold more Spotify playlists than I would ever need at one time. It's amazing that as recently as five years ago, I was paying around $100 for a dedicated MP3 player for exactly this purpose. I'd have no interest in the "phone" feature... and would never even install a SIM card. I have to believe that many people have thought of this idea, and that has to be a problem for TracPhone since they're probably selling this device at a loss in order to sell phone/data services. So since it's "Out of Stock" right now, I wonder how many ever were in stock in the first place? My suspicion is that they released a small number of devices as a P.R. stunt to attract publicity. The hope being that some number of people who click the link to check it out will proceed onward to buy one of the "real" devices that isn't being sold at a loss. I'd be surprised if you ever do see this $10 model "In Stock".
- joezydeco 11y agoTracFone sells a lot of returned/refurbed models. This phone was on sale this spring for $59.99, I'd wager the $10 ones are returns available only when they cycle through refurb.
- baghira 11y agoProblem is, as an mp3 (flac really) player the interface is terrible: for running or biking you really want a player that is small and has physical buttons to click, or alternatively your actual phone so you get communications and statistics. Carrying a poor player that is not you actual phone makes little sense to me.
- simcop2387 11y agoIt's not as bad as you think. A lot of headphones/earbuds these days have the buttons built in, making it less critical that the device has them. How well this will support the buttons though is a different question.
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- melling 11y agoIt's great when people observe what hundreds of millions of consumers buying a product on a regular cycle will do to a market. So the big takeaway isn't that you can get a cheap mp3 player, it's that technology will rapidly improve and decrease in price once it hits the mainstream. Now if we could only applie this to consumer robotics, genetics, or renewable energy.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- simonh 11y agoApple sells an adapter cable with similar specs to the original iPhone[1]. It does cost more than $10 though. [1] https://www.panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise/ https://www.panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-...
- pmorici 11y agoWhy is this news? It's only $10 because it is locked to the tracfone network and the $10 price is subsidized by their rate plans just like the 'free' iphone on at&t is subsidized. The only difference is that there is no contract requiring you to buy 2 years of service.
- jcadam 11y agoSmartphones are close to achieving 'commodity' status as far as I'm concerned. I just paid $60 (no commitment/contract) for a Lumia 640 (it was a gophone, which works fine on my regular AT&T plan). It's a reasonably fast, decently built phone, and I must say the Windows phone UI is starting to grow on me (and I HATE windows 8/10 on the desktop). Besides voice calls, I use a smartphone mostly for texting, email, web browsing, maps, music, and the occasional (netflix) streaming video. A $60 phone can now handle all of these things easily, so I would be stupid to spend more (vanity? status symbol?). If I drop it onto the sidewalk and it shatters, I'll merely sigh, mumble something obscene, and go buy another one. My reaction to dropping a $600 phone would be a bit more... extreme (mostly because I can't afford to replace a $600 phone on the spot).
- frabcus 11y agoYes, they're such a commodity I've moved on from features to looking at other factors, such as conflict free metals and worker rights. e.g. Look at Fairphone http://fairphone.com/ http://fairphone.com/
- micampe 11y agoI don't know if it’s on par with Fairphone yet, but Apple have also been helping make some good improvements in their supply chain. http://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/progress-report/ http://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/progress-report...
- balakk 11y ago> if I drop into the sidewalk and it shatters.. It most likely won't :) it's (was) a Nokia.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoYou might have to pay for a new sidewalk though.
- 3stripe 11y agoIs that the standard price in the US? They're £120+ here in the UK...
- h_o 11y agoDoes anyone know if there is anything like this available in Europe? Bonus points for Ireland/UK related Appreciate it!
- richardboegli 11y agoThis is why I thought the Android One program was a waste of time and effort. Just by sheer economy of scale, we have a $10 Android phone without any Google intervention. The Huawei U8150 IDEOS ended up becoming a $60AUD locked prepaid / $99AUD off contract phone in Australia at the end of 2011.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sremani 11y agoAndroid One was a Corporate strategy, to make sure Windows Phone does not grow as a low-end alternative, and Android getting squeezed from Top and bottom. For what it is worth, I would deem it as successful.
- hatsunearu 11y agoPretty sure these devices don't work unless you use the correct carrier's SIM card--like, they refuse to boot.
- peterwwillis 11y agoWhy would you think that? There's no special ROM that prevents Android from loading if the carrier's sim card isn't loaded. It should still work regardless of sim. Edit: It's CDMA, and it would have to identify a network before booting, which isn't going to happen; this phone should work fine on wifi without a carrier plan. Question is, did they disable the wifi or GPS the way some similar AT&T phones did?
- hatsunearu 11y agoVendor lock-out. And also because I saw Dave Jones do a teardown of one of these things. He tried turning it on with no SIM and it said "please insert SIM" instead of booting to Android.
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoHas anyone been able to play with the phone and see if the bootloader is locked? If one could install Cyanogenmod on the thing, they could potentially keep the phone up-to-date beyond 4.4, provided that someone's willing to develop for the device. I also can't figure out who the carrier on this phone is.
- morganvachon 11y ago> Has anyone been able to play with the phone and see if the bootloader is locked? I haven't, but if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's locked. Even if it could be unlocked easily, it's not likely you'll find anyone developing for it. It's not listed on the XDA Developers website, which is the authority on Android phone hacking. > I also can't figure out who the carrier on this phone is. It's in the first line of the article: "Walmart is now selling a TracFone-branded LG smartphone that costs $9.82 (it also ships free if your online order total tops $50)." TracFone is one of the many brands of conglomerate América Móvil, and sister brand of Walmart-sold Net10 Wireless and Straight Talk Wireless. They are MVNOs, leasing spectrum and bands from the major US carriers; I've used Straight Talk in the past on both AT&T's and T-Mobile USA's networks. At one time TracFone was Sprint PCS only, but I believe you can get TracFone devices that use any of the major carrier networks now.
- sopooneo 11y agoOne laptop per child? No, one phone. And the government won't pay, they'll be scavenged out of the trash.
- Animats 11y agoOK, here's the real $9 computer. Screen, USB port, TV cameras, audio, storage, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GSM, all in a nice little package. This could replace the Raspberry Pi in many applications. What does it take to just use it as a computer, with no cell phone account?
- nickpsecurity 11y agoCall me crazy, but I keep wondering about the subversion risk of stuff like this. Widespread deployment due to cost, what's needed for espionage included, and always from a country involved in it. Been concerned about the possibility since a HW expert told me most of world's smartphones come from about five or six companies. Talk about concentration of power and opportunity. I encourage people to spend a bit more on various vendors and encourage what little diversity we can. Not sure what to do otherwise aside from not carrying a mobile.
- azinman2 11y agoI wish they'd have talked about what it takes to get this to $10. At what cost to human rights, the environment, labor, etc. The invisible costs are huge.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jldugger 11y agoI'm curious why you think that the price of the phone affects environmental impact per unit. Or why labor is more exploited per unit. Chips are cheap on the margin; the big expensives are chip design, testing, and constructing fabs at evershrinking scales.
- azinman2 11y agoSo this phone is $10 retail. In it you gotta discount amazons margin, any middle mans margin, shipping and logistics, and marketing. Now add subtract to the original manufacturer. The manufacturing has to be few or less dollars, and that has to include raw materials and labor. With such a low price it's very unlikely you have the nicest pays and most environmentally responsible practices.... There isn't enough room for it. The only plausible way imho is if all the stock to make it was already fabbed and not sold, so either they lose the already invested money or discount it significantly to minimize loss (and it'd still be a net loss)
- rtkwe 11y agoNot necessarily worse than any other phone. They discount the phone and make the money back in the minutes. On contract phones do similar things.
- azinman2 11y agoThere isn't a contract with this phone. The total price is $10.
- ebbv 11y agoThis headline has gotten this a lot of attention, but why? The original iPhone came out 7 years ago. A computer (and phones are small computers) with specs that outdated are really only priced based on materials cost.
- olefoo 11y agoIf you're doing mobile dev, this is the phone you should be doing your user testing on. Unless your target audience is exclusively wealthy people who run only recent iOS devices. In which case, carry on. But if you are building something that needs to be widely available then this should be one of the devices on which you do extensive testing.
- 5ilv3r 11y agoThis. So much this. The whole "writing software only for the hardware elite" thing is really holding us back as a society. Sure they have money, so they might have some for you. I get that, but it's going to be pretty rotten for everyone when the cash stops flowing and people learn the hard way that you can't redraw 120 times per second on crap hardware. /rant of a classic hardware enthusiast
- tedchs 11y agoThe question is, how much is this phone's manufacturing cost subsidized by Tracfone so it can be sold at a loss?
- petersouth 11y agoI bought one of these for my little kid to play with. Does anyone know of a way to make it so he can't dial 911 or disable the call capability?
- DanBC 11y agoPut it in airplane mode?
- ctulek 11y agoReminds me https://medium.com/matter/shitphone-a-love-story-a44e66434807 https://medium.com/matter/shitphone-a-love-story-a44e6643480...