If my price range is in the $10 area, Iâm buying a fucking feature phone. At least those have been around for literally decades and have had all the kinks worked out.
Iâd even take a Motorola RAZR V3 over a $10 smartphone sight unseen.
If you tap the screen, something (eventually) happens
But⌠WHAT happens? Donât leave us like that!
Stuff. Things!
I cracked the screen on my iPhone 3 two years ago. Still works great, but itâs getting a little jagged. Am wondering if this would be a good replacement?
I bought one too and I really disagree with the article. I needed a low-end Android test device and this, well, definitely fits the [$10] bill. The day the phone came in from my ship-to-store order, I happen to shatter the screen on my iPhone 6S, so I decided to use the LG as a stand-in until my replacement 6S came in.
For me, the $10 LG did 80% of what I needed it to do as well as the iPhone 6S. Sure, itâs fat, the screen is on par with an Palm Pre, itâs pokey, and the camera is terrible, but nothing out-right failed. It was fine. And at 1/64th the price of a iPhone itâs amazing.
Iâd love to know what the actual cost of this sort of device is. I canât imagine that the carrier âsubsidyâ is anywhere near as high as in the â2 year contract with an expensive data plan and a stiff ETFâ case, since there just isnât the same amount of more or less guaranteed profit; but all the low-end prepaid devices Iâve encountered have been pretty heavily locked down(not necessarily at the OS level, if smart enough for âthe OSâ to be something you can poke at; but very, very, vigorously SIM-locked); which suggests that the retail price is set based on some expectation of future earnings, not because it is directly profitable.
He sounds really disappointed his $10 phone isnât state-of-the-art.
Does it allow you to talk to people who arenât in the same room as you? Sounds an ideal festival phone.
Is âdash camâ really such an obvious use for a disposable smartphone? Do people actually make this work?
Oh, and since this never, ever gets old:
MOTO F3 4EVA
#swag
With the right software (possibly a native-language app to avoid the resource penalty of java) it could be good as a controller. Attach an arduino and sensors/relays, and voila, a nice smart user interface. And battery with charger included.
With the cellular interface it could also serve as a remote sensor or controller. I can imagine it attached to a compressor station in the middle of nowhere, fed from a solar panel, and report status once per five minutes.
The really bonkers thing is that Walmart is selling LITERALLY DOZENS of smartphones for under $35⌠In the context of $600 iPhones, Iâm sure a couple of those are well worth the money.
Iâm using an LG Tribute that was $40 from Best Buy (hell itâs $30 now from Virgin Mobile). Itâs got about twice the specs as this, 1Gb of RAM, 800x480 res, 4gig rom, msdhc slot, decent camera, 1.2Ghz quad core. Itâs not a screamer, but god damn itâs $30.
Iâm using a Moto E which some consider one of the better âshitâ phones. Yea the camera sucks but otherwise it works just fine.
I suppose if you let a little kid play with it you wouldnât have to worry much if they broke it. A fake plastic phone could cost more.
Whatâs the battery life? Because Iâm sure it does calls and txts maybe even better than a feature phone, but if the battery life is rubbish, itâs useless.
If itâs just the jagged glass youâre worried about, why not pick up a tempered glass screen protector to seal it all up? No more jaggies, and itâs like youâve got a new screen. 
(Edit: ok, itâs still all shattered, but it feels like a new screen to touch)
Hmm, a device that can play audio for the price of a bargain bin MP3 player with an interface that canât really be worse than that of a bargain bin MP3 player and that doesnât use the battery of anything important.
Actually, itâs still $10, at least in the Wal-Mart stores. Or at least it was yesterday when I bought one at a Wal-Mart here in Indianapolis.
Iâm planning to send one to my Mom for Christmas. Being that sheâs an amputee, I think she could use a smartphone of some kindâit would be easier to use one-handed than the Nexus 10 tablet she owns, or even the 7" Fire she just got. But itâs the sort of thing sheâd never think to buy for herself. The nice thing is, my parents already use TracFone feature phones, so this $10 smartphone would be able to use her existing minutes and everything.
She insists she wouldnât get much use out of it, but heyâa $10 phone is a great way for her to try out even a lousy smartphone, and if she likes the general idea, she could pay more to upgrade to a better one later. Plus she could use it around the house via WiFi as a one-handed mini-tablet, which means sheâd get a lot more use out of it than she does out of the feature phone she rarely uses except when one or the other of them is in a store and the other is in the car.
It was kind of amusing reading the Ars Technica article, though. The cognitive dissonance in reading a review this thorough of a device this cheap is considerable. Itâs like having a professional sommelier report on MD 20/20, or reading a high-performance sports car magazine article about a Yugo. Ars Technica probably paid Ron Amadeo many times more money for writing it than it paid for the phone itself!
