Comment by 6ren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 6ren | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It isn't a smartphone, it's a computer. This is the real "one laptop per child".

It is truly disruptive: in 1.5 years (Feb 2013), that $80 will buy twice the RAM, processing power, flash etc (or sooner, as they may well beat Moore's law via economies of scale).

Wow, I got shivers up and down my spine at the Medkenya: as usual, disruptive platforms carry disruptive applications atop. This can really change the world. All the great things that computers can do, these "smartphones" can do - not just angry birds.

Apple can't compete here, because they are only interested in cutting-edge technology that will not work unless it is put together with great ingenuity. It's essential that someone lights the way as Apple does; but it does mean that they have to keep inventing the next new thing to remain viable.

EDIT oddly, they are priced $176-249 here in Australia (our AUD is currently worth 5% more than the USD). Guess it's priced by market. And of course, you still need to pay for connectivity (I wonder how much that costs in Kenya?). A review and specs: http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/review/mobile_phones/huawei/id...

People who don't realize this should not bother commenting on the smartphone/tablet market. Not only are there enormously disruptive and empowering aspects to mobile platforms, especially in the developing world, but those aspects will also make such platforms enormously desirable. The potential worldwide market for mobile devices is staggering, even in the short-term. As poorer countries develop that market will just get larger, establishing a presence and a brand reputation today will pay huge dividends down the road.

Selling smartphones to rich people in rich countries today is certainly a good business, but ultimately it's the worldwide business and the volume business which will bring in the biggest share of revenue.

Meanwhile, imagine how these devices will change the world? How many people in the world have never made even a single phone call? How many people are illiterate? How will things change when they have the access to devices which are powerful portable computers, communication devices, and libraries? We think ebooks are important to us in the developed world, imagine how transformative they will be in a country without much pre-existing book ownership?

And as those countries develop, generations will grow up familiar with a certain brand. e.g. see Toyota Hilex and Coca-Cola.

I'm really curious to see how long it takes for smart phones to become the expected norm in Africa.

Mobile phones are already a cornerstone of their societies.

> How many people in the world have never made even a single phone call?

Not that many, actually. Mobile phones, and thus phone calls, are now pretty pervasive in homo sapiens.

I agree with your other points, though.

>Meanwhile, imagine how these devices will change the world?

you know, man, i want to believe it. Yet, i've just browsed Russian news and with Russia being much more further than Kenya down the road of technology penetration into everyday life there are some things that i sometimes think is impossible to change

http://top.rbc.ru/incidents/16/08/2011/610779.shtml ( google translate http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h... ) - in Kaluga (near the Moscow, so it isn't deep wild undeveloped far Russia) 5 teenagers (with a girl among them), while drinking, tortured a homeless with cigarette butts and ultimately burned him alive. Before jumping to the conclusion that these 5 are exception, note that only the one who doused and set the homeless on fire was charged. This situation got the attention only because the victim died, otherwise nobody would make any fuss at all.

Barbarism is the natural state of the world, we shouldn't be shocked that it continues to exist. Nor should we slack our efforts to roll it back and fight against it at every turn.

Smartphones don't make people better, they just make it more likely they will record evidence of their crimes themselves.

EDIT oddly, they are priced $176-249 here in Australia.

That was at launch 18 months ago, $99AU now. http://dicksmith.com.au/product/E7324/vodafone-huawei-ideos-... (that's with a 12 month statutory warranty, change of mind policy, etc.)

I did google around for several prices, but maybe they were all launch prices.

That one seems to be locked to Vodafone (tho I'm not sure if that's a problem, or how much that locking is "worth" in dollar terms).

Ah, I missed that, sorry. You can get them locked to Virgin for $80 from DSE, or on ebay unlocked for around $120.

I recently bought the next model along in this series, the Huawei Sonic, which DSE sell for $188 unlocked. Very happy with it, doubly so considering the cost.

I got mine (Ideos) for $AUD 129 unlocked. Very compact for a smart phone.

For using it as a laptop/computer, the display width is a limitation. At 320x240, that's 53 chars along the 320 edge. 80 chars would be ideal for an xterm (which larger phones can do, with 480x320). Do you think it's usable as an xterm (with a plug in keyboard)?

Kenya has a population of ~39,000,000 of which 40% live on less than $2 a day. I'm not sure many of those 300,000+ smartphones are going to the poor.

its more common in the middle class. Actually most of th people having the phone over here are young people (think 20 somethings) irrespective of the financial bracket of their parents

Agreed, this is potentially huge.

Can you imagine the effect of getting one billion of these to people? It's possible. Even if every one were paid for by charity, it'd be just $80 billion. That's a small fraction of the charitable giving in the world every year.

Even the stingy US foreign aid budget was over $45 billion in 2009.

Wouldn't it be better to get them a cheap laptop or something they can use to learn development and/or longform publishing of some kind?

The next generation of phones/tablets already have HDMI out and bluetooth keyboard support. If people need or want such facilities it'll be faster and easier to get there from phones than laptops.

That could be. Plus the UI stack is a lot cleaner than what's available on desktop/laptop machines.

Uh, even in the west, less than 1% of the population does any real development. Why bump the cost from $80 billion to $200+ billion to give everybody a big power-sucking device that can't be concealed and will do them only limited good over a smartphone?

These are people living off the land in third-world areas. Many are nomads. A communication and educational tool that fits in a pocket can be invaluable. In comparison, a bulky laptop does very little good at this stage in their development.

You make a good point, and this is certainly much better than nothing. I still worry a bit about the long term effects of so many people growing up with only consumption-oriented devies though. In richer countries I think it's less of an issue because people that really want to learn to create digital content can get the tools cheaply enough.

Android runs some scripting languages, so you can code on-the-unit. http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/ python, lua, beanshell (java scripting), perl and ruby (via JRuby) and some JVM languages.

Although scripting languages tend to be slower, especially on a smartphone and especially on this one (500MHz), they are increasingly mainstream, and the tools are available on the unit. And probably, vastly more powerful than the platforms most of us got started on (ZX81 here).

disclaimer: I don't have an Android, and haven't used these languags, so don't know what limitations they have on a smartphone, nor how serious those limitations are.

the 3GS is only $45 on AT&T. Some carriers overseas are offering the iPhone 3GS/4 for free (with a contract of course).

Not to diss Android, but iOS devices have better apps, better battery life, etc.

I assume you're being down-voted because you are comparing the price of a contract-free phone with that of a contract phone (but excluding the cost of the contract).

A quick look at the AT&T website suggest that to get that $49 iPhone, you need to sign up for at least $55 of services per month for 24 months, which comes to $1369 total.

Sure, there are probably deals to be had, but you'll never get it down far enough to even pretend to compete with a $80 phone and $0-20/month off-contract minutes.

Those are all subsidized prices.. not the true cost.

Agree on you about the battery life, but I'm not sure about apps since I have never used an Iphone but ios is more mature so it had some head start so I guess its apps are also a bit ahead.

The cheapest Iphone here in kenya is about 450 USdollars compare that with the ideos at 80 dollars. With such a gap battery life ceases been an important issue for most kenyans.

all i'm saying is it would be nice if these users can at least have a great first-time user experience without having to worry about their phones crashing , running out of battery within 30 min. of use, or getting malware and trojans on their Android phones.

Why I feel that I am reading Engadget? This is not the kind of comment that I expect to read on HN.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com