The 4$ smartphone | Hacker News Reader

The 4$ smartphone

freedom251.com

194 pointsdonbox98 comments

Here's what's in a $34 smartphone (completely un-subsidised, actual purchase cost):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9568004

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558854

It's around a year ago, but I don't think technology has gotten cheap enough in that span of time for even a $4 dumb phone now. This one is pretty close though:

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107

Edit: why does it look so iPhone-ish?

> I don't think technology has gotten cheap enough in that span of time for even a $4 dumb phone now. This one is pretty close though

But it has a color display, bluetooth, is capable of playing mp3. What if they removed that?

Presumably the cost would go up because nobody makes parts that don't have those features any more (it would be more expensive to find/get them).

Well, I can still imagine a phone without a display.

No money is spent on people to come up with an original design so you emulate what is already successful.

>>I don't think technology has gotten cheap enough in that span of time for even a $4 dumb phone now.

You underestimate how far we have come, here is $30 phone : http://www.walmart.com/ip/44465710

You won't be getting this for $4 next year. The margin of profit is already so small, no body is going build phones and sell them for profits of a chewing gum.

But you can bet a $100 phone will be available for $30 very soon.

Isn't that phone on Walmart locked with AT&T?

Because it is a violation of Apple's design and utility patents.

It costs 251 INR to be exact. That's 3.654 USD as per today's exchange rate.

Specifications at a glance:

-- Android Lollipop 5.1

-- 4 inch qHD display

-- 1.3 Ghz Quadcore processor

-- 1 GB RAM

-- 8 GB internal memory, expandable to 32 GB

-- 1450 mAh battery

-- 3.2 MP AF Rear camera, .3 MP Front

It's also only 3g, but if you're not into photography and mostly use wifi, it could be a good little device.

3G is already faster than "broadband" in most parts of the world. It's good enough.

When I'm at home and my 3G phone loads everything faster than expected I know that Wifi isn't enabled...

Same here. When I recently had to upload a 3 GB file, I split it in 3 and uploaded one part with each of my (3G) phones… 45 minutes instead of the 4 hours it would have taken me with my ADSL line.

Found my fellow Comcast customer :/

Just as bad here with AT&T (Uverse)

3G has a wide range of specs - at its lowest it is only twice dialup speed.

Developers should actually test their websites at 3G speeds and latency.

144 Kbit/s is legally considered "broadband" in Austria. Although ISPs are usually generous enough to offer 384k minimum.

Specs not mentioned are all PET construction. It won't be durable.

At that price, I don't need it to be. I could imagine having a box of these and as I destroy each one, recovering only the SIM. Which I then swallow.

Sounds like you already have a particular use case in mind.

Don't swallow the SIM or the government will be able to track you forever...

Well, for a day or two ...

Humor aside, non-durable construction creates more electronic waste. For a place with 1 billion+ people I'd think twice before creating something that won't last.

How about if it was made with more recyclable material? Or if it was made using recycled material (not the same thing as the first) Phones generally are not recyclable.

I'd imagine there being a balance point of the volume of waste and the environmental effect.

> Phones generally are not recyclable.

People recover the gold. One ton of ore gives one gram of gold; you get about a gram from about 40-50 smart phones.

The specs are great but, what actually 4inch qHD means? Quad HD or is it some sort of marketing slang?

qHD is a standard display resolution: 960x540. Not to be confused with QHD (2560x1440).

Thanks, I just figured out that it's for Quater HD, not Quad HD.

I can't see fine detail that small/close anyway. My OPO is set to max fonts, and I still tend to zoom sometimes in browser.

> qHD

What a beautiful acronym. I only see the HD part.

Not only it is HD, it is q too. :-)

Clearly, $4 is far below the cost of the components listed. Assuming this is a legit offer - how are they doing it? One possible explanation - maybe it is supported by ads. They are counting on revenues generated by ads within the various applications - inlcuding search. If you notice the Search screen does not show a Google logo - it looks like a reskinned version of Google's home page. So presumably it could generate revenue via Adsense. Not sure if this is allowed as per Android Licensing terms for OEMs though but it could be an explanation.

It's government subsidized, not carrier subsidized.

And not their first attempt.

The nation has a severe problem of inequality. You have villages that are bordering on pre-industrial, at the same time as you have near scifi highrises in the cities.

I recall one project that basically equipped young ladies with a bicycle and a laptop loaded with textbooks on everything from agriculture to medicine. The ladies would then cycle between villages and help improve crop yields and diagnose illnesses.

This isn't their latest attempt though. It's not subsidized.

It's not subsidized.

Hands on review - http://www.bgr.in/photo-gallery/freedom-251-first-impression...

EDIT: I was unaware of the issues of the Nexus 7. Seeing that they are not related to the phone's specs, my previous statements no longer hold.

Also, this has very similar specs to the 2012 Nexus 7 which is basically unusable with Android 5.1

Unusable meaning up to 20 seconds delay between a tap and the expected app opening up or the keyboard showing. Random hangs with the question if you want to kill the offending app.

I don't expect a $4 phone to be fast but unless there are some major differences, I think you'd just get $4 worth of frustration.

Interestingly, I have a $99 smartphone with quadcore 1.3GHz cpu, 1GB of RAM and a 720p 5" screen, and it works marvelously. No lag, keyboard works as it should, can play 1080p video without any issues, 2100mAh battery lasts for a day. I don't think that 2012 phones are the same as 2015/16 phones. As a x86 dual core 1.6GHz cpu from today and 4 years ago is not the same.

edit: cpu 1.6 to 1.3 ghz

Can you share what exactly smartphone do you have?

Very no-name-ish, but Prestigio Muze C3. I was wrong about the CPU, it's QC 1.3 GHz

I had Moto G 2nd gen which is similar specs. Said I had, because it was so slow I couldn't use it at all. So slow that calls would drop because phone app took 10sec to open.

Just to give a counter-anecdote: I still use a 1st gen Moto G. I previously had a mid-range HTC and a low-end Samsung phone. The Moto G is without doubt the best Android phone I owned so far.

I have Moto G 1st gen, and the phone app starts instantly, loads fully in around 1sec. You probably have some malware running, or forgot to close all the apps in the background.

Strange – I'm reading this on my first gen Moto E. I see occasional lag, mostly in web content, but generally I think it works great.

I use the first Moto G LTE they came out with. (The specs really don't change much from phone to phone.) It works for me the only other phone I've used before it was a Galaxy S III US Version.

At first it had a horrible bug that unloaded apps all the time. I and many others assumed the 1GB of RAM was the culprit. It wasn't. Unfortunately, we had to wait for the Lollipop update for it to get fixed.

If it weren't for the firmware issues and the fact that they waited so long to fix it I would buy another Motorola/Lenovo phone to replace it. Since it broke sometime ago.

As good as it is, I don't think it can play 1080p videos on a 720p screen, without downscaling.

I meant it can decode 1080p video.

Downscaling is relatively cheap, most smartphone SoCs have enough of a GPU to do that in hardware.

I have a cheap Asus tablet with a quad core 1.3 ghz mediatek CPU and 1 gb of ram that is perfectly usable. It is not as smooth as my iPhone and there are delays but nothing like you describe.

The issues in the 2012 N7 are related to the flash memory used. As this device doesn't specify I think that's an unfair pre-judgment.

The actual flash memory device is flawed?

Yeah, supposedly there is something wrong with the flash controller. It doesn't do a good job of wear leveling, or has a buggy/slow implementation of garbage collection, or something in that vein.

AFAIK your issues with the 2012 Nexus 7 are well known to be caused by the storage memory of the device, it degrades really rapidly. Upgrading to 5.1 just makes it more pronounced. Other devices of the same age don't suffer from it.

> I don't expect a $4 phone to be fast but unless there are some major differences, I think you'd just get $4 worth of frustration

Ah, but frustration arises when you know there's something better.

If you've never used ANY computing device before, you'd think the 20 second delay was normal.

This phone is targeting people who've never used any computing device other than a dumb phone. Some haven't even used dumb phones.

I can't believe people are knocking this phone here for its "eh, it's slow". You are NOT the target market. You are so, so not the target market.

I agree that I am definitely not the target market.

However, if you constantly wonder if the thing is actually doing anything, if it registered your touches, apps disappearing because they were killed by the OS, the whole thing will just not be discoverable or learnable and will be discarded as not useful, even by people who never used another phone.

> the 2012 Nexus 7 which is basically unusable with Android 5.1

Really?

The 2013 works with no real issues.

My Nexus 7 (2012) was exactly the same... Lost my phone last week and needed a device to use in the meantime. Installed Cyanogenmod 12.1 on the Nexus and it's measures of magnitude better!

Now to fix the rubbish WiFi reception.

It's a rebranded "Adcom Ikon 4" some say

https://gadgets360.com/shop/adcom-ikon-4-gold-8-gb-3738342d3...

I bought a pretty great Android cellphone, brand new, contract free, with a SIM card for $10 only 3 months ago with free shipping.

It was discussed on Hacker News and other tech news sites at the time. In various threads people and even some tech journalists claimed it was a scam, would end up costing more, wasn't really $10, would not work just as a wifi device if you didn't activate it, or that developer tools would somehow be disabled. Some of the articles got hostile with anyone that reported it actually worked fine and really did cost only $10.

Well here it is several months later and not only is my total investment still $10, but I've got it set up with free texting, a free telephone plan, and I am using it to target for Android development with no problems. And it works very well as a nice mp3 player with high quality sound, internet browser, voice recorder, and bluetooth robot controller as well. What it doesn't have is a good camera, the camera is OK outdoors and very poor indoors. But good optics cost money so that is not surprising.

I'm done arguing with people though, especially the tech journalists that didn't know what they were talking about, arguing and making accusations against those who were reporting actual first hand experience. Crazy stuff.

Where did you get free text and voice?

$4 should be much less than the cost of the components. How do they stay in business?

Also, patent licensing and taxes. I think they aren't earning anything at this cost.

crapware (see preinstalled apps)

How long until it's rooted ?

For one, advertised components are not always in the actual phone. Two, licensing fees are probably not paid, given that they are ~7$ for a 3G handset.

Still, $4 is undoable. Cheapest Spreadtrum 2G SOC with WiFi/BT/Sim holder/camera will go over that amount.

It's subsidized phone for India market. India nation's defense minister will be at the launch event.

So it probably won't be available at the super low price elsewhere. I bet Indian customs will have a lot of work on their hands...

I'm not up to date on leading edge hardware, but this seems impressive especially for that price. Is there some sort of catch? This would be great to root and mess around with.

Seems there must be. I'm assuming this is with some kind of plan or contract. The price is below the cost of the components it seems to me. The quad core 1.3GHz ARM processor alone is probably worth more than $4. The display panel and flash probably are also each worth $4 or more.

If these cellphones can really be bought for $4, then I want to buy 100 and network them into a cluster.

Social media links might be of use. https://www.facebook.com/RingingB/ https://twitter.com/RingingB https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6BBJhi7x8eD1QKJsLG6OiQ

These phones need to start becoming recyclable, not just electronics recyclable, but plastic lot recyclable.

Screens are difficult to be made of plastic right now, but someone is working on a replacement to LED lights that uses plastic instead. So there is promise here.

That leaves the battery. I cannot think of a recyclable material (plastic or aluminum metal) to replace the battery. When that happens, I think such $4 smartphones will not be damaging to the environment.

Why? Phones are very small, so the amount of material in them is small, too. Compared to most other things one could do for the environment, this seems like it would be a waste of effort.

This sounds like Datawind's "$35 Tablet" all over again - https://asiancorrespondent.com/2012/02/aakash-brings-a-daily...

A company over-promises, the Government over-funds, and the product under-delivers.

Unlike Datawind, this doesn't seem to have announced any Government affiliation. If government has subsided any of its costs then government is in a lot of trouble as transparency is the key to democracy and nothing about such a project was ever announced.

On the contrary, it seems it's doing what the article suggested.

i.e. instead of trying to be the next Samsung, doing R&D and manufacturing of your own new smartphone tech and reinventing the wheel, they're just importing low-cost (maybe ± $40) existing phones from China and subsidising them to be dirt cheap ($4). Exactly like the article you linked to suggests:

> To bridge the digital divide — an avowed goal — it could have simply contracted a company in Taiwan and imported the tablets and sold it at subsidized rates to students. The cost would have been nominal — after all, the Indian government is subsidizing the cost of Aakash 1, which costs $50 to produce — and the tablets would have reached students sooner.

the link seems to be dead, here's the cache for those who can't view the website http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eD-BK_b...

Reasons why I think it is shady.

https://medium.com/@seekshiva/reasons-why-i-think-freedom-25...

The $4 cannot be the cost of the phone but the government-subsized end-user price tag.

The government might want to subsidize some programs to fix the issue with the Indian people shitting in the street first.

"Indians like to shit on streets -- no doubt. They would rather spend monies on Iphones that get themselves a toilet."

[1] http://theplanetd.com/india-is-filthy/

[2] http://veritas-lux.blogspot.com/2013/11/indians-and-their-sh...

It is probably a loss leader to create a splash. It does not seem to be supported by the Govt. Likely, only a few will be in stock at that price. Later the price will increase or the model will be discontinued.

I wonder how good the IMU is? If it's any good at all, this might make an excellent device for pairing with my VR rig and using as an input device.

I have a box of $5 smartphones from last Black Friday but some would argue they are subsidized.

In fact they are almost exactly the same specs as the freedom one.

Those aren't subsidized, they are loss leaders instead. You're supposed to buy more of something else or they're dumping ancient hardware nobody wants for low prices.

Wow! I am extremely surprised to see this. If this device actually works, it will do a lot to push internet connectivity in India.

I see the specs are better, but I wonder how it measures up in real world usage to the $35 Intex phone.

How is it so cheap? A good haircut is 4 dollars. Is the Indian Govt subsidizing it? Shady tbh

Are we sure this isn't a typo? If it were 2510 INR it would make more sense.

Trying to order it, but their site is erroring with a 503

Can someone fix the typo in the headline?

I can't believe no one has mentioned this yet, but that looks like a violation of some of apple's design and utility patents.

smells like a scam

wow that's shady!

Forget the whole "smart" features in the phone. I am extremely happy if I am able to make calls with this phone, message peeps through Whatsapp, update status on Facebook. As a power user, I'm sure most of us wouldn't want this phone, but imagine the power this could give to the poor people in India. With just Rs.251, communication is just one touch away. This is going to make the farmer, fishermen, plumber, merchants far more connected, productive and simply get onto to the internet and explore the taste of connectivity. I'm definitely thrilled to see the outcome of this. My only fear is the subsidies that the government has poured into this.

Rs.251 is what I spend for a tasty dinner. If someone could have a phone for that cost, why the hell not.

This would have been great with free basics. But thanks to post colonial Indian white suspicion, that's not about to happen.

As if one needs to be Indian to be suspicious of Mark "They trust me. Dumb fucks." Zuckerberg.

Yeah. Too bad Facebook's self-interest was so blatant; if their technology offering had matched their rhetoric it really could have been something amazing.

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