Watch the video. The phones are hidden, and the fart spray is designed to make the thief get rid of the package as quickly as possible rather than taking it apart to see what might be inside.
Even so, wouldn't it be better to use 4 cheap cameras instead of 4 expensive smartphones?
4 cheap cameras wont have lte radios
seriously, pick up x4 $30 prepaid phones from walmart and they'll do the job perfectly
Probably not. Likely these were second-hand phones, so not terribly expensive. Also because they are phones, they can upload "to the cloud" automatically, have GPS and cell tower triangulation for accurate location reporting.
If you knew they were there. The creator obscures everything except the cameras' lenses.
I don't think money was the concern here. The guy seems pretty well off.
Left his job at NASA to start a company, sell it, and work on viral content for many companies. He's pretty much rich at this point.
Not iPhones; cheaper Androids are fine for this.
Those were like $300 androids.
They were LG phones, you can see the logo in the video. He mentions a wide lens and I think that started with the LG V30. $249 on ebay, so that is close.