Clear packing tape does just fine for that ‘rode hard’ look.
Citation: my iPhone5 for the last 18 months after I dropped it and shattered the screen into 1000 pieces. Applied tape within moments, no jaggedness!!
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Is it any better than my 2005 Palm Treo? Probably not, since it lacks the delightful tactile keyboard. Maybe a step up from my Blackberry Playbook, at least. Heck, probably beats wrestling with Bluestacks under Windows. And how can I care about the camera when I still have my old Canon Powershot?
I will have to check if these are available in Canada.
ETA: Did you notice how most of the benchmark tests refer to the “LG Sunshine” ? Tsk.
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I buy $10 phones as toys. My kids lose things and are irresponsible, the have cracked the screens on both my wife’s ipads so I feel a lot more comfortable giving them something like this to play games or watch youtube on.
I bought two of these yesterday for $9.82 each. And I would say they are certainly not as bad the Ars says. One of the great things about this phone is that it came with a 4gb SD card. You can’t buy a charger and an SD card for $10 so you already ahead of the game.
It’s not lightning quick but it is not snail slow either. And it has Kitkat, many of the phone you find in that price point will only have Jellybean or Ice cream Sandwich.
I haven’t tested the camera, but in general these phones do not have great cameras.
The only other thing I have tried so far, unsuccessfully is to root the phone. Several one-click root solutions took me nowhere. There is a LG Script, but I gave up for the evening because I couldn’t figure out the right combos to enter recovery mode.
It better than the last $10 phone I bought, also tracfone, Samsung Galaxy Centura (SCH-S738C), which is painfully slow and should be a $5 phone and un-rootable. This is my $9 year old’s phone complete with service.
My best find for $10 was back in September when Kroger had the Samsung Galaxy Stardust (S766C) on sale, that has the enhanced Samsung apps and rooted in 2 minutes without a reboot. Wish I could pick up more of these at that price.
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Why is this guy so surprised that a $10 phone is terrible? I bought one. Honestly. It’s not bad. Its a great phone for the price. But I didn’t buy it as my own device. I bought it as a device to hand to my 10 month old son when he wants to play with my phone. And guess what. It works miracles, and I have his favorite shows downloaded on it and he absolutely loves it, which means I absolutely love it. If you go down the toy aisle at Walmart and find a fake phone that lights up and makes obnoxious noises, they are over $20. So my son has a far better device at half the cost.
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At $10 (plus the TracFone charges), it’s a functional phone with some (perfectly usable) features that make it a reasonable choice for someone who doesn’t live on the thing. In our household, a cellphone is a secondary device, and we’ve used a pair of TracFones for years for away-from-home calling. We currently have an LG 34C (specs similar to the Sunrise, though we paid $25 for it), and it’s more than adequate for making calls, sending texts (which we almost never do), and checking e-mail. It is not good at web surfing, watching movies, playing games, or producing feature films. But then, what we needed was a functional, inexpensive phone. (BTW, try finding a case or a backup charger for the thing for less than ten bucks, outside of a thrift store–which is where I got my accessories.)
I rooted mine with kingroot. Might wanna give that a try
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2007?!?
The original iPhone only wishes it had this kind of hardware and software power.
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I liked my Palm Pre!
Maybe I have the wrong version of Kingroot app. The version I have says no solution available. I also tried Kingoroot, Oneclick Root and Root Genius.
i also replaced a dead iphone with a $100 Motorola android phone that is unlocked. since i was switching from iOS to Android I figured I’d try the cheap phone first and upgrade to a samsung if i liked android, but truth be told i’m super happy with this cheap phone. it is better then my ios phone ever was at a fraction of the cost.
it really is quite good for the price…and i’ve never felt the need to put a case on it.
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I’m sad at the lack of insight displayed by the linked to article…
At $10 these are in raspberry pi price range, and they have a screen, battery, wifi/bluetooth/3g, usb host and slave capability, sd card slot, cameras, and more built in. these are maker gems waiting to be scooped up and used in some creative projects. they could power drones and smart homes/appliances. they could be cheap baby monitors or home security. they could be used to make robots to take over the world…use your imagination folks!
#Maker Dream Device
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Should have bought the Moto E from Best Buy for $10!
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I though dual core phones were 2011 - NOT 2007. I had a Motorola Photon in late 2011 and its dual core CPU was new tech at that time. I get that you hate cheap phones, but no need to exaggerate.
I’m an unapologetic Android nerd fanboy, but you couldn’t use that smartphone as a smartphone. Better to buy a simple old dumb Nokia.
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I’m surprised no1 mentioned the LG exceed 2that is regularly at $10 at best buy.
Anyway you use these phones for the Verizon $300 trade in. Buy LG lancet for $120 + $10 phone - $300 trade in = $170 in bill credit. (Suspend line immediately and then cancel it after a month)
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Updating the list of folks disappointed in the $10 smartphone to include BoingBoing.
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THis exactly. In other news, the cheapo palmer easter bunnies taste like cast dog diarrhea, brach’s jellybeans don’t taste as good as jelly bellies, and the stuff you buy for cheap in giant tubs from the grocery store (I’m loathe to even call it “ice cream”) isn’t as tasty as Double Rainbow’s “Ultra Chocolate” (and if you haven’t had that, you’ve got to find yourself some…).[sorry folks, currently on a sweets fixation.]
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They certainly offer a great deal of capability for the price. The one potential sticking point is that, since they are almost certainly being sold with the expectation of some amount of future profit from sale of cellular service; but without a contract legally enforcing that, odds are pretty good that they are on the hostile side when it comes to modification.
If a given model proves to be an exception(either through sheer apathy, an exploitable bug, or a ‘the cell modem is SIM-locked to hell and back; but we don’t care what you do on the Android side’ arrangement; then it could definitely be useful; but one of the perks of devices where the sale price is directly profitable is that there is room for the device to not be intrinsically hostile. Some devices that you pay full price for still are; and not all lockdowns succeed; but if they are losing money on the sale odds are that they will want to make it up later, and without a contract and a credit score, enforcement is going to be in firmware.
$300 trade-in? Man, Canada SUCKS - the best we ever get for a “guaranteed minimum trade-in” is $50.
Anybody who has even a passing familiarity with computing knows that the cost of computing power plummets from year to year, at least in the mobile sector.
Apple iPad 2 As Fast As The Cray-2 Super Computer
So it’s not terribly implausible that an extremely inexpensive computing device might turn out to be a perfectly usable device. The important question is-- if you compare this to a top of the line device from several years ago, how much do you lose?
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