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Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tootie 8y agoI'd buy a few of these for my kids.
- auslander 8y agoKids will tell you years later that it was wrong giving their data to Google, an Ad company, with core business of monetizing people's data.
- cynx 8y agoconcerned, but yet we don't seem to escape from it.
- robk 8y agoIn the 2 years they use this phone what value is there possibly to be gained??? It's virtually zero value to anyone.
- auslander 8y agoThey'll keep their Google accounts, because of emails and logins on other sites, and use them on their next devices, keeping data flowing and attributed. Hell. They would even browse Internet using Chrome signed in to their G accounts, giving away browsing history (all their secret dreams, interests that even closest people don't know about)
- Shebanator 8y agoUsers on these phones generally don't have google accounts. Of course some kinds of Assistant commands won't work without such an account, e.g. scheduling appointments in your google calendar. And these phones don't run Chrome at all.
- auslander 8y agoFrom watching votes, its either G has its own troll factory, or people just cannot admit that all their free and great services are provided by an ad business conglomerate. Maybe both :)
- tootie 8y agoI don't see why. I wasn't using my data for anything so it seems like a win-win if someone will pay for it. Also, NB this phone runs KaiOS, not Android.
- auslander 8y agoKaiOS "now sport official Google Assistant" .. "same OS just received over $20m funding from Google and even partnered with them" Its the code that runs 24/7 what matters, Android or a few G services is of no difference. > I wasn't using my data for anything Browsing, location, contacts, photos of friends, calendar, emails... the lot. Goal is your full psychological profile, skills, circles, reactions, job positions. From as much data as possible. Uses today are simple ad targeting, maybe 3rd party screening checks. Tomorrow?
- tluyben2 8y agoI have no kids myself, but from friends who do have kids I hear they get teased (and sometimes bullied) if they don't have a half decent smartphone. And some of these friends are living in poorer ('non western') countries even. I guess my friends are not lying, but not sure how widespread that is.
- tootie 8y agoKids get made fun of for whatever nonsense is available as ammunition. I've never seen kids get laughed at over phones though.
- froindt 8y ago>...I hear they get teased (and sometimes bullied) if they don't have a half decent smartphone. I've also heard of kids getting left out of things socially for the same reason. One family tried the "you don't need a smart phone until sometime in high school" thing, but their kid started missing invitations to everything because the plans developed on whatsapp, snapchat, or Facebook - all of which the kid didn't have real-time access to. They relented and got their middle school kid a smartphone. Way too much of the social world of students goes through phones to be able to keep up without a smart phone.
- newhotelowner 8y ago> from friends who do have kids I hear they get teased (and sometimes bullied) if they don't have a half decent smartphone My daughter is in middle school, and pretty much everyone in her class has iPhone. Only a few have an Android phone. School requires every student to have a Chromebook, but even teachers encourage students to use smartphones. Also, one of the apps only works on smartphones. My daughter has my old Samsung 6s. She doesn't complain or ask for a new phone, but I know she wants an iPhone.
- auslander 8y ago> School requires every student to have a Chromebook And a mandatory Google account for tracking your kids. I'd change the school.
- maxaf 8y agoAny word on US availability? There are plenty of people who don’t need an entire iPhone, or can’t comprehend one due to age or other handicaps. It’s good to have choices.
- oneowl 8y agoNot sure about US but they are available to buy on amazon. It'll probably cost a lot more after shipping charges though...
- milankragujevic 8y agoYou can buy a Nokia 8110 4G in the U.S.A. IIRC, and it's powered by KaiOS.
- afandian 8y agoI tried a demo unit. It was a very disappointing experience. Hard to use, cheap colour screen was unpleasant to look at. I really wanted to like it, but couldn't. Give me that phone with monochrome display, the usability of Nokia's original OS and modern network connectivity and I'd jump at it.
- toast0 8y agoThe 8110 4G isn't available with an appropriate set of radio bands for the US, so you're going to have coverage issues.
- JetSpiegel 8y agoJust buy one of those feature phones with the giant keys and screen fonts.
- peterwwillis 8y agoThere are two or three that I've found in the US (an older list is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS#Devices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS#Devices). They mostly seem to have bad reviews, and they aren't cheap here compared to older Android phones. I think your best bet is a cheaper feature phone, though most in stores are carrier-locked, so you may have to shop for an unlocked one online.
- morganvachon 8y agoApart from the Google tie-in, I've been wanting a KaiOS phone ever since they were announced. I actually miss the days of my Nokia E71; a stripped down but modern feature phone with battery life measured in days instead of hours would be a blessing. Unfortunately these are not marketed at all in the Western world and probably wouldn't work on domestic carriers.
- abrowne 8y agoIn the US there's the Alcatel Go Flip on T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T (at least I think the "Cingular Flip 2" is similar). https://us.alcatelmobile.com/alcatel-go-flip/ https://us.alcatelmobile.com/alcatel-go-flip/ FWIW it apparently uses an older, pre–Google-investment KaiOS.
- morganvachon 8y agoGood to know, thanks! I may pick one up and put it on my Ting account to use at work (my iPhone is on Xfinity Mobile for the next couple of months until I move it back to Ting as well). I'm constantly watching my battery life at work because I have my desk line forwarded to it (I'm never at my desk very long until the end of the day). Edit: It's $100 new which isn't too bad, but less than $40 open box on eBay and other sites. That's practically impulse buy territory. I'll definitely have to consider it.
- rahimnathwani 8y ago"I actually miss the days of my Nokia E71" A Nokia E71 was my daily driver for about a year, starting in 2010. I loved: - the hardware (slim yet solid, keyboard only slightly worse than a Blackberry, nice tapered+curved edges) - the extensive list of features (e.g. Wifi+3G, built-in SIP client, support for Exchange ActiveSync) - support from important apps (e.g. Skype) I hated: - How finicky it was. I lost count of the number of times I had set up the mail client again (maybe after re-installing it) because it stopped syncing. (This was back when GSuite free accounts supported ActiveSync, which allowed push email.) - The weirdness around selecting Wifi or 3G connection (I don't recall exactly what the issue was, but I remember there was something confusing about it).
- edoo 8y agoIt will probably require a plan. Walmart tried selling a $10 prepaid smart phone and they were all bought up by tinkerers. A $10 phone means lots of hobby and maybe even some commercial projects get a cell phone mounted as a touchscreen interface.
- milankragujevic 8y agoActually it does not. $7 in India (or i.e. my home country, or some other relatively poor countries) is not the same as $7 in US. Plus, these phones don't have a touch screen and are much cheaper to make than the Walmart Android phones.
- ricardobeat 8y agoHow is that a problem?
- tacotime 8y agoBecause they were sold as loss leaders on the assumption that people would be paying for time/data on the network.
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoI don’t think this phone is being sold as a loss leader, though.
- icebraining 8y agoI wouldn't be so sure, though it seems more like a Amazon-type play than an ISP pushing plans: "Customers can get a WizPhone WP006 from vending machines at more than 10,000 Alfamart stores for just USD$7 (IDR99,000)1. Then, with the built-in AllWizapp, customers can unlock shopping benefits in Alfamart by scanning barcodes on each product and making their purchase directly via the app on their WizPhone."
- wiradikusuma 8y ago
- oneowl 8y agoVery nice project. KaiOS also runs on jio phones and they are selling really well in India. Besides 4g these phones also have wifi support. Kai os phones are the only feature phones(I know of) that provide wifi capabilities. By the way I've got a question for people who've used Kai OS / firefox os. To use google apps like youtube/ maps etc do you need to log in like in android?
- cunidev 8y agoYou can use the Gapps you mentioned even on Android without logging in I think. At least on older Androids (4.x)
- oneowl 8y agoYes. But on Android they are pre installed.... Not sure how it works ok Kai....
- muxator 8y agoJust for information, as I do not know if this suits your use case: on my phone, LineageOS with no Play Services installed, I can watch YouTube using Firefox + the website. Maps 10.1 can be installed via Yalp Store and works pretty well.
- fabrice_d 8y agoNo you don't have to be logged in. That provides you the same experience as when you're not be logged in from a web browser.
- icebraining 8y agoInteresting, I had completely missed KaiOS; apparently it's a successor of FirefoxOS, based on some common components. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461016
- robertAngst 8y agoHow difficult would this be to add GIPO to? This crushes the Raspi3 for the value.
- oneowl 8y agoYes you are correct. These phones range anything from 300-700 MB of ram and have a pretty decent hardware. Combine that with a user operable interface (physical buttons, screen, audio) and you've got a nice package. I was looking a bit into this. It seems that KAI os is not an opensource project. Plus the OS is flashed into the ROM of these phones so its also very difficult to install a new OS reliably. So even if you got the GIPO to work with the phone how would you actually program it? Kai OS has a device api [1] but as far as I can tell it does not give you access to linux shell. If the phone has a usb slot you can use a usb gipo board [2] [1] https://developer.kaiostech.com/api https://developer.kaiostech.com/api [2]https://numato.com/product/8-channel-usb-gpio-module-with-analog-inputs https://numato.com/product/8-channel-usb-gpio-module-with-an...
- robertAngst 8y agoThoughts, since this is a real life issue/question I'm making a decision on- >I'm quite surprised at the cost of a USB GIPO board. I suppose I shouldnt have been. >Developing an OS for a platform that could change at anytime, seems risky/time consuming. >novel ways of communication- Put everything on wifi relays, or communication with other peripherals Might be worth buying one of these phones and taking it apart to see whats inside. EDIT: Looking to select my microprocessor for a consumer product. An entire computer would be nice.
- solarkraft 8y agoYou do have different leverage producing a volume product. Maybe there's a chance the manufacturer would be willing to cooperate?
- oneowl 8y agoOs'es have been built. You don't need to spend time in that. You'll find one as small as a few hundred kbs to as big as 10s of gbs. For all kind of architectures and all opnsource. However you need to find a way to install the os on compatible device. This is no easy task and will require you to flash ROM. For every device....... Or find a device that supports booting from an sd card. I don't think there is any phone out there that supports that. There are not even that many laptops that can boot from an sd card slot. But they can from an sd to usb adapter... >novel ways of communication- Put everything on wifi relays, or communication with other peripherals HIGH FIVE!!!!! This is a very good idea. But then again how will GIPO attached devices send wifi signals and understand incoming wifi signals? You'll need a separate chip for that (If I understand correctly) that would have radios and antennas. I'm sure you can find a cheap way to build such a device using electronic components that you can find online. A wifi enabled usb is very very cheap. wifi usb cards would be even cheaper, I think. A mobile phone like this is a complete package for about $10-$15.
- yoavm 8y agoThe article says it supports WhatsApp, but the KaiOS publication clarifies it does not. In many countries, that's a no go.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- i4blux 8y agoThat's the reason Firefox OS was dead in the water. Telcos in Europe promised there would be a version of whatsapp for Firefox OS which never materialised. A mobile without whatsapp might as well be a brick.
- littlestymaar 8y agoApparently, it's the second most common mobile phone OS in India[1] which sounds like it's not a «no go» for everyone. Also the question is not really “does it support WhatsApp”, but “does WhatsApp support this OS”. Which may eventually be the case if there's enough market share for that. [1] https://www.bgr.in/news/jiophone-kaios-surpasses-ios-india-second-most-popular-mobile-operating-system-android-smartphones-feature-phones-jio-4g/ https://www.bgr.in/news/jiophone-kaios-surpasses-ios-india-s...
- sametmax 8y agoWhatsapp is only very big in __some__ countries actually. Europe have free sms, so I do have friends with telegram, signal, skype, whatsapp, dumb phones, facebook chat, wire, etc., and at the the center of this crazy venn diagram, we can all discuss with sms for free. Most discussions are not group chats. In Asia they have big whatsapp competitors like weechat. But I've seen kik used as well. In Africa, it's also a lot of text message since they get the best coverage. Whatsapp is definitly popular, but far from a universal.
- viraptor 8y agoIt's also really popular in Australia (2nd most common after FB). Likely underrepresented in older people.
- 8y ago
- mateo1 8y agoA closed-source Google-developed OS for feature phones. Obviously it's the best spend DoD money so far. Just 20 millions. You need to track poor people too.
- masto 8y agoWith therapy and perhaps some medication, you have a good chance of regaining your grip on reality, if you act now.
- cinquemb 8y agoAnd then afterwords, they can go buy some Privacy in a Can™ from Apple, and take advantage of some GS backed credit and buy some weapons to shoot up some place that will invoke some knee jerk response from the population and government alike! Hopefully the metadata travels up the kill chain to the reapers fast enough!
- i4blux 8y agoIf DoD wanted to track people they can just do it by triangulating the cellular signal. No need for a smartphone.
- mateo1 8y agoIf you want transcriptions, proximity indication, scanning wireless networks, expanding your geodesic grid to accurately locate dumbphones etc, you need custom software. This is what this is (mostly) about. Sure we can pretend it's about "harmless" data mining but there's no such thing.
- auslander 8y ago> You need to track poor people too Bingo. That's is what it all about. Free email, free cloud docs and photos, free browser, free web tools. KaiOS should be running Google code. Replace DoD with Google (Skynet from Terminator) though.
- Shebanator 8y ago
- jeswin 8y agoHaving spent a couple of years building apps for KaiOS (which is really Firefox OS), I can say that it's probably the easiest development platform out there - mostly pure web; with some proprietary extensions. I wish Firefox OS hadn't thrown in the towel so early. These devices are selling millions of units every month.
- orf 8y agoWas Firefox OS targetting this kind of phone though? I thought it was trying to be a touch-screen smartphone OS.
- jeswin 8y agoWasn't really, although their focus was on low cost phones too. Credit to KaiOS for recognizing the potential of non-touch devices. However, the effort required to enable a non-touch UI would have been a small fraction of the overall FirefoxOS effort. Something Mozilla could have responded to, if the team was intact.
- fzzzy 8y agoThe non-touch concept was under development when firefox os was cancelled.
- jeswin 8y agoYup. FFOS actually convinced me that even high-end devices built on open web technologies could work quite well enough for today's usecases. I'd buy one today if I could - not a low end device but a Snapdragon 8xx device. Web is good enough for 90% of apps, and a bare metal SDK would be needed for games.
- pjmlp 8y agoPWAs did it for me. Even WebGL 2.0 alongside WebAssembly will be good enough for Flash like games (Google Chrome team will give a talk about WebGPU at IO).
- cryptokernel 8y agoI so want to go to Indonesia right now! Just leaving this here: https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3 https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3
- rb808 8y agoWebAssembly is going to make Linux phones rock. Can't wait.
- Spearchucker 8y agoI have the version two Nokia 8110 banana phone with KAIOS. First, web dev isn't good enough for me. I need crypto libraries on the device. Second,unless I've yet to discover how to turn it on, no predictive text input. Third, it ships with Google apps which, combined with the fact that you cannot uninstall apps on KaiOS makes the phone a novelty at best. More like a waste of €60 (none of these issues are obvious before making a purchase). /Edit - battery lasted two weeks between charges.
- berbec 8y ago"Edit - battery lasted two weeks between charges" Way to bury the lead! I'd put up with a lot for charge times that long. Or just a backup phpne
- hosay123 8y agoMinor nit, but I always appreciate receiving these -- in US English as well as British I believe it's always written "bury the lede"
- sdwa 8y agoI don't think that's the case. Lede is at best an alternative spelling, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paragraph#Spelling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paragraph#Spelling and FWIW, I'm British and I've never seen it spelt lede outside of this forum. I guess it's an American thing, and even then, it's pretty wrong.
- squarefoot 8y agoWe're likely approaching the day when it'll be more cheap to attempt to build an open Linux phone from scratch rather than keep waiting for a manufacturer to listen to a few thousand techies who don't want their personal data chewed by proprietary OSes. That milestone will almost certainly be marked by the availability of cheap 3/4G modems (I'd be perfectly fine with 3G if it was the only option). We're not there but chipsets are becoming cheaper with every portable router or dongle sold, so it's a matter of time. Cheap and small SBCs, displays, batteries and 3D printed cases are already here waiting for the 3/4G chipset to be added.
- hopler 8y agoWhat about cheap cellular data service for your hackphone?
- pjmlp 8y agoWhile true, Web based OSes are exactly the opposite of that regarding privacy.
- andrey_utkin 8y agoThat's right. This already is happening. I got bored of waiting for "Linux smartphone" and accidentally found that it's actually quite easy and affordable to build a wearable computer from scratch. And I built myself one of course. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/circuitbreaker/2017/7/27/16035508/diy-wearable-computer-google-glass-raspberry-pi-instructions https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/c... I just used new generation of the same display, and a one handed Twiddler 3 keyboard. Raspberry pi doesn't have cellular, so I am looking at Zero phone project which has a solution. But so far I am already extracting value from my wearable computer in many easily implementable use cases.
- ioddly 8y agoWhat's battery life like? I'm building a (non-wearable) Pi with touchscreen but haven't been able to get a good estimate.
- cunidev 8y agoWow, #1 on home! By the way, do you have any idea if Wiz/JioPhone/... are shipped by any seller to Europe? Would love to hack one of those
- RasputinsBro 8y agoAnother instance of google propping up puppet competitors.
- cinquemb 8y agoI have to say, living in Indonesia and seeing the start up scene (and financiers recently not to long ago at Global Venture Summit[which included a big ad from a google presenter, as well as one of their VC firm spawn]), seems like google is share cropping startups into their whole ecosystem. But who can blame em? The government wants the USD flowing in, and the companies (already strapped for talent and cash to pay for such) get their IaaS for free for decent chunk of time… virtually no push back here like there is in the states to 'some' degree… and it keeps their offices from getting raided again!
- JoelEmbiid 8y agoIntresting Really want to buy this one...!
- ForHackernews 8y agoI saw an interesting YouTube video about KaiOS a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA_g2bQgOXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA_g2bQgOXY
- cs702 8y agoNot only does GNU/Linux appear to be unkillable, it always seems to take over every single market niche overlooked by larger, established players promoting fully or partially proprietary stacks. And in many cases, these niche markets end up being quite large or even mainstream. Amazing.
- dontbenebby 8y agoWe spent so long waiting for linux on the desktop. Turns out insurgency was the best strategy: sit back, launch a few attacks, and wait for the desktop to die ;)
- pjmlp 8y agoThe desktop has been replaced by laptops and 2-1 foldables, it won't die that easily, specially since Android apps on tablets and 2-1 keep beinging maximized phone apps.
- JetSpiegel 8y ago> The desktop has been replaced by laptops and 2-1 foldables Whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Pholdables are not even being sold yet, let alone "replacing the desktop".
- Alupis 8y agoI think the parent meant 2-1 foldable laptops. Laptops that convert to tablets. They certainly are pretty nice... writing this from an HP Specter x360 ;)
- pjmlp 8y agoSure they are, I mean devices like the Surface.
- JetSpiegel 8y agoAh, not pholdables, laptablets? We need more classes of devices!
- Abishek_Muthian 8y agoJioPhone, which runs on KaiOS has managed to bring WhatsApp to KaiOS[1]. That was the most requested feature on JioPhone 1, when it was released & people were ready to put more money into next cheapest android smartphone to have it. Now, WhatsApp is available on both JioPhone1 & JioPhone2. Obviously it is packaged standalone version of WhatsApp web. WhatsApp team has been very successful in bring consistent performance of their apps on all platforms they support, so I assume it works well. [1]:https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000649/WhatsApp-for-JioPhone-on-KaiOS https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000649/WhatsApp-for-JioPhone-on-... Edit : typo
- fabrice_d 8y agoThe "regular" WhatsApp web needs the app to run on your Android or iOS device - it merely establishes a tunnel to get everything from the phone. The KaiOS version was built from scratch.
- Abishek_Muthian 8y agoI stand corrected. WhatsApp web does communicate with phone to perform regular activities. So the KaiOS version apart from sharing UI, might not have much common with the WhatsApp web. Then again, I wonder how much of the tech used for secure communication with the phone from WhatsApp web can be repurposed to make it a standalone application?
- IloveHN84 8y agoWhy isn't something like that in EU offered/possible? I would like this
- raghava 8y agoKaiOS offers a decent package. But unfortunately, there are many things missing yet. - decent crypto base - decent set of apps (with contraints on user/input interfaces) [ as of now, there isn't an email app available yet! ] And pretty much every phone vendor/TelCo is building a walled-garden and an appstore on their own, considering the licensing possibilities offered by KaiOS. Every TelCo will block sideloading of apps and restrict users from offering a full fledged KaiOS experience, as it turned out in the Android world. Jio runs Jio AppStore. >> Please note: while the JioPhone runs on KaiOS, its app store is managed by Reliance Jio and called the JioStore. For this reason, we can’t guarantee the below apps will be available on the JioPhone, nor does it mean apps available on the JioPhone are available in other countries. From https://www.kaiostech.com/meet-the-apps-available-on-kaios/ https://www.kaiostech.com/meet-the-apps-available-on-kaios/
- Abishek_Muthian 8y ago>decent crypto base I haven't used kaiOS, but if WhatsApp E2E encryption was possible doesn't it mean that it has decent crypto for implementing RSA/ECC i.e just like a web browser?
- fabrice_d 8y agoThere is an email app in the set of core apps. If it's not in the device you got, talk to the carrier/OEM who may have chosen to remove it when customizing their build.
- Dunedan 8y agoProbably worth mentioning GerdaOS (https://gerda.tech/ https://gerda.tech/), the first try to bring custom ROMs to KaiOS phones.
- naraic0o 8y agoSo if I'm understanding right, this isn't like LineageOS[0] for Android, which builds a system from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP)[1], but a "romhack", or modified system? Pity. I naïvely hope that running a fully open source system would be easier on a phone like this, since it's simpler than the latest and greatest in the smartphone world. Realistically, they probably still run the same radios which never have sources available. [0] https://lineageos.org/ https://lineageos.org/ [1] https://source.android.com/ https://source.android.com/
- wicket 8y agoIt's a stretch to call these "Linux-based" phones. The kernel [1] comes from an old Android fork of Linux 3.10 which is nearly 6 years old. Android kernel code is largely incompatible with mainline Linux which is the reason there are very few phones that can run actually run mainline (real) Linux. [1] https://github.com/kaiostech/kernel_msm-3.10 https://github.com/kaiostech/kernel_msm-3.10
- Bayart 8y ago>which is the reason there are very few phones that can run actually run mainline (real) Linux. You mean the drivers not being in the Linux Kernel/hard to port ? because I have a very hard time believing most smartphones couldn't run the Linux kernel, provided it's compiled to whatever architecture and the drivers are there.
- pjmlp 8y agoAndroid Linux is quite different from upstream Linux, specially after Project Treble. Now it looks more like a pseudo-mikrokernel, with drivers running on their own processes, talking via Android IPC with the kernel layer. Also it has a much more security knobs turned on as mainline, and many features trimmed down that are irrelevant to Android userspace.
- stefan_ 8y agoTreble is just another layer of abstraction on top of HALs and more binder use. Android HALs don't replace kernel drivers and so it's still the same distance from mikrokernel as it ever was, and neither did Treble further the split from mainline Linux. If anything, Android 8 reduced the gap to mainline with switching e.g. to DRM synchronization fences.
- pjmlp 8y agoReading through AOSP documentation and AOSP source code tells another story. > Binderized HALs. HALs expressed in HAL interface definition language (HIDL). These HALs replace both conventional and legacy HALs used in earlier versions of Android. In a Binderized HAL, the Android framework and HALs communicate with each other using binder inter-process communication (IPC) calls. All devices launching with Android 8.0 or later must support binderized HALs only. > > Passthrough HALs. A HIDL-wrapped conventional or legacy HAL. These HALs wrap existing HALs and can serve the HAL in binderized and same-process (passthrough) modes. Devices upgrading to Android 8.0 can use passthrough HALs. > All other HALs provided by the vendor image can be in passthrough OR binderized mode. In a fully Treble-compliant device, all of these must be binderized. > Legacy HALs (also deprecated in Android 8.0) are interfaces that predate conventional HALs. A few important subsystems (Wi-Fi, Radio Interface Layer, and Bluetooth) are legacy HALs. While there's no uniform or standardized way to describe a legacy HAL, anything predating Android 8.0 that is not a conventional HAL is a legacy HAL. Parts of some legacy HALs are contained in libhardware_legacy, while other parts are interspersed throughout the codebase. https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/hal-types https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/hal-types A binderized HAL driver only requires a minimal kernel surface, if anything. Furthermore, I specifically stated pseudo on my description.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoHow do I get one?
- icebraining 8y agoAre you in the West? Usually these types of phones appear on ebay or gearbest, etc after some time, for a somewhat higher price
- creativeCak3 8y agoDoes anyone know if there are plans of these phones selling in the US? This one-thousand dollar madness of smartphone need to be stopped.
- azinman2 8y agoI can’t even imagine the environmental / labor horrors that must be involved to allow for a phone to cost $7 retail.
- random878 8y agoYou make a very valid point. It can be easy to forget to consider environmental cost when we consider the cost of an item. I hate smartphones with a passion, so just use an old dumbphone. I face a lot of pressure through work to have one though. I'm thinking that if I do eventually get forced back into smartphone ownership I'll opt for a Fairphone 2. Major benefits being the improved environmental consideration, the ability to run Lineage OS (so no Google), and the modular approach makes it easy to hack/repair. Main downside is that it is very expensive (to me anyway... I get that many people these days seem to think £1,000 is a reasonable sum for a Facebook/Instagram PDA!).
- icebraining 8y agoOther phones of the same caliber have the same horrors, you just pay an higher profit margin.
- mrweasel 8y agoI don't understand why the Google Assistant has to be thrown in. Beside me not liking the idea of Google Assistant processing my request, I don't really believe that it's a feature that many need or even request. Of cause I'm in a non-English speaking country, so that may change the usage, but I don't know anyone who uses Google Assistant, Siri or Cortana and only two people who use Alexa, which technically isn't even available here.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- koala_man 8y agoI use it regularly to search for things because it's often faster than typing, and that's on a smartphone with a swipe keyboard. Compared to T9, it must be even better.
- Shebanator 8y agoExactly this. T9 input is difficult for most people, but especially for the customer base of the Jio phones: a lot of the people who buy these phones are looking for content in languages they aren't necessarily fluent in, and some are even semi-literate in their native language. Being able to send a text message, make a call, or search for a popular video via voice input is a huge boon for those users.
- ekimekim 8y agoGoogle assistant is the reason the phone is so cheap. The same reason a smart TV is cheaper than a dumb one, and why most of those "home assistant" things are cheap. You're not paying with money, you're paying by allowing access for data harvesting. The same phone without Google Assistant would be better, sure. But it'd also be much more expensive - if it was allowed to exist at all.
- Animats 8y agoThis is useful. Are they on Amazon or eBay yet? A backup phone for when you don't want to lug around a mini-tablet is useful.
- cedivad 8y agoI couldn't understand why they were subsidising the phone, I googled a bit and found this article saying the original article is a lie: https://beebom.com/fact-check-google-wizphone-indonesia/ https://beebom.com/fact-check-google-wizphone-indonesia/
- magtux 8y agoHow I wish these cheap 4G SoC kits could be sourced easily like the ESP8266 or the Raspberry Pi.
- lawrencegs 8y agoI am Indonesian. Its been 4 months since they announced the phone on December, and they are still not available anywhere. I am not sure whats the hold up but there is no other update