Comment by nicpottier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nicpottier | Hacker News Reader

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I work in Rwanda (http://www.nyaruka.com/) and we're currently doing a project for an NGO that is using the Ideos for a variety of different things, the pricepoint really is amazing.

For one, we're using them to act as SMS gateways to generate activation codes. Essentially they receive confirmation messages for mobile payments to a particular number and we wrote an Android app that generates a unique activation code and sends it back to the payer. Better than a PC because it's cheap, has redundant power, redundant network and better connectivity with the GSM world.

The other task we're using them for is to act as network attached barcode scanners for inventory control. Essentially using the camera to read QR codes and allowing people to move / receive / send inventory using a rich app interfacing to the cloud based backend we are building. They are amazing for that.

I guess my point is that this isn't just a milestone for the consumer, it is a milestone to have an easily programmable, portable, GSM connected device with a camera and a touchscreen that only costs $80. Nothing else compares.

Are you seeing any adoption by consumers in Rwanda? A few months ago you wrote an interesting post about the lack of SIM Toolkit support -- http://blog.nyaruka.com/androids-achilles-heal-the-sim-toolk... Is that hindering uptake? Any updates?

Sorry for the late reply, was asleep. :)

One of the carriers here just started picking them up, haven't seen them as much in Rwanda here as I have in Kenya, but they are still new.

The Ideos comes with a SIM toolkit, it's just the official 'Nexus' phones (and some others) that seem to lack it. So that part is fine, which is a good thing, because I buy electricity for my house using it weekly.

I do have one worry about this though. If this is the only "computer" a lot of people can afford, this is going to mean that the bulk of a generation is going to grow up without access to computers they can program themselves. Maybe I'm just being alarmist, but growing up all our family's computers were also programmable, so I went from basic to c to c++ all on the same machines dad used for Word Processing. Losing all that for the convenience of mobile seems like a questionable trade.

You might have done more research than me on this, i.e. it's possible that this particular Android device doesn't actually allow it, but generally speaking you actually can do some amount of Android development on an Android device: You can install the Android scripting environment and Python for Android, and hack up Python Android apps right on the phone.

I don't mean to necessarily dispell your argument, though. I fully agree with you that it's really important that the computers we put into people's hands continue to be sustainable, i.e. that they're not just consumption devices but also allow the creation of programs. I probably wouldn't be a software developer today if my computer growing up had been an iPad, say.

Just that I think that of the current crop of smartphone platforms, Android probably comes closest to allowing and enabling hacking.

They will buy shared computers and hack on them. It's what I did growing up in India. Only, there will be a lot more of it, because these guys already have a device they know they can hack on, if they had a "computer".

sho\_hn mentioned the ASE, and I think he's on target. An important thing to remember is that these are Android phones. Unless they're unusually locked down, you can install anything on them through .apk, and the market itself has fewer restrictions. Theoretically, it's just as capable as a computer, albeit with worse input.

You are assuming that people in the developing world can afford a computer just as easily. The importance of having an information device that connects to the internet cannot be overstated in places where education is not the primary concern. Early access to technology will inspire many more kids to learn programming when they can afford one.

I agree there are some strong upsides, but phones make it difficult to participate in a meaningful way at the higher levels of the information economy. They're consumption-oriented devices. Here in Vietnam I see a lot of people that have blown their entire computing budget on a high-end mobile phone and I worry that they may have stunted the growth of some of their talent as a developer, writer, artist etc.

I realize that developers are rare but the money my grandfather invested in a C64 in 1983 has been repaid many, many times over. I'm not sure I would have the same incentive or opportunity to learn now.

Is it insane to imagine that in 50-100 years the tech infrastructure in what is now the developing world could leapfrog the West due to this sort of thing?

Very interesting point. I'm from Nigeria and I've witnessed how technology cycles tend to work here.

In America and the West, the technology markets are efficient enough for incremental innovation to be viable enough for a new product. That's not the case in Africa (I can only speak for Africa, not the developing world).

We don't innovate incrementally but we take massive leaps between commoditized technology. we need to build a stronger internet backbone that will give developers an active Internet market to cheaply test new products. it will be difficult for us to incrementally innovate otherwise.

The west has a problem due to the oligopolies of the behemoths that control infrastructure. It is the reason for example why the US ranks low in broadband speeds.

That's more a problem for the US than the west in general. EU nations are more likely to use regulation to force large telecom companies to allow smaller competitors access to their infrastructure.

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