Hacker News Reader

Comment by makmanalp | Hacker News Reader

$33? That's basically a raspberry pi with GSM for an amazing price. If I could pop open the case to get to pins or have a video out or something, this would be game changing.

View on HN

Is it not game changing just being a $33 smart phone? Heck, I pay more than $33 per month for my smart phone service!

I recently started using Freedompop, which gives 200 minutes and 500 messages and megabytes for free each month.

Tried their higher tier services - they work great. But I don't need them. So I've been paying $0 in phone service for a few months now.

It is only limited by Sprint's 3G coverage, and if its available you use the 4G instead. They even have a nice $70 a year unlimited minutes and messages plan (same 500mb of data - I don't think their data rates are competitive at all imo, but then again no phone companies data rates are competitive unless you had exactly 7 people on a tmobile plan).

This is after trying out Tracfone, Republic Wireless, and Ting. It is really hard to argue paying monthly if you don't have to.

I'm a Ting customer. The huge advantage for me with Ting over Freedompop and other MVNOs riding on Sprint is that I can roam onto Verizon at no cost for calling and texting, which is key for me in the places I normally go as Verizon has much better service than Ting in more rural areas.

EDIT: Added that roaming onto Verizon is no cost for Ting.

Just be warned that you might lose service if they fail to pay their bills to their network provider. I was with a similar sounding MVNO in the UK called Ovivo. Fortunately I switched away but just one month later all subscribers were cut off: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/utilities/2014/03/sim-...

Free is brilliant if there is a viable business model to make it pay.

I heard about them a year ago, but they started out in like 2010 and had to switch from Clear WiMax to Sprint at the time, and yeah, I had no confidence in their long term viability.

A year later, they were still going, so I gave it a shot. I don't regret it. If the floor falls out, every sane MVNO in the US is Sprint based anyway and I can move my phone to any of them.

It's a RasPi with GSM, Bluetooth and WiFi, for $33. Pretty sweet for embedded projects!

and a touch screen!

Edit: and a battery and a case...

Not sure why no one is selling that, I've looked. Keep the screen, keep the case I want exactly that with a lightweight linux distro.

Not as much processor power, but depending on if/how it communicates over USB, it might make a useful addition to a pi. There's no 3G on it though. I wonder if it can be used (possibly with tweaks) as a GSM/SIP gateway? If so, with Asterix builds already available on the Pi, this would make a cheap and powerful homebrew premicell.

It's a dual sim phone, it may have dual GSM as well (although I couldn't tell if both sims are actively registered or not)

I have a preview phone here that is based on a chipset from the same manufacturer (although it has one 3G SIM slot and one 2G SIM slot) and both SIMs are active at the same time (internet only at one). So I guess that's the case for this phone as well.

Having just a single SIM available for tests: Do you know if that's the case for the Flame as well? Both SIMs active at the same time?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com