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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

This is likely a truly unbranded OEM feature phone based on a Mediatek or Spreadtrum reference platform. Resellers then add their own branding to it.

I couldn't find that exact one but a bit of searching turns up similar models:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/9000mAh-long-standby-power-ba...

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Original-H-mobile-X8-4...

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Original-Xiaocai-X6-...

It is a bit surprising at first to see such enormous feature phones still in mass production, but it makes sense that the conditions in developing countries would favour more rugged designs and versatile physical features; in that environment a thin touchscreen smartphone made of mostly glass and metal would be an overly fragile piece of kit with little advantage.

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The main reason to use feature phones in my developing country is that they are not worth stealing.

There's also the reality that repairs and replacement can be very difficult or impossible. Similarly, my iPhone fundamentally expects me to have access to a highish-speed, lowish-cost internet connection for tons of its functionality, and that still isn't necessarily available in much of Africa. In Zambia last year, in a large second-teir city, my _household_ internet cost about $8/gb, so things like automated backups and downloading software updates isn't especially attractive.

Is this something you have sources on or just an opinion? Would be interested in knowing.

Sigh ThomPete, where do you live? The Hamptons?

Really, you need to actually go out and meet the world around you. It isn't all wine and roses I assure you, but it is better than living in a bubble, those burst, you know. If you decide to travel to South America and go by Bogotá, contact me and I'll show you around the good, the bad and the ugly.

Hmmm... Very uninformed of you.

Just walk into an alley at night in Manhattan or Chicago or Boston or Los Angeles or (surprise!) San Franciso and you'll know... Seriously, read the newspapers of any more or less poor third world country and you will find many notes about people mugged and killed, stabbed or shot to death, to steal them some US$75 chinese MediaTek shitphone you can find in Amazon.

I'll give you some newspapers in Latin American cities that range from 6 to 25 million inhabitans:

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/

http://www.eluniversal.com/

http://www.clarin.com/

http://www.eltiempo.com/

http://oblobo.globo.com/

http://www.folha.com/

As always, Google Translate is your friend.

I live in New York and I don't experience what you claimed but we arent talking about the west as far as I can tell.

I am still trying to figure out if that is actually the reason or just an opinion. The links didn't provide info about that but thanks for trying.

Looks like an interesting phone to take to music festivals...

Now, if they were paired with some kind of api/dev-kit so one could rip out the "snapchat"-stuff and bundle something useful, like xmpp+otr, a bare bones rss client... email... that kind of thing.

> something useful like xmpp+otr

XMPP+OTR is just about the last thing I'd want as a messaging service on my phone.

Not to mention the stand-by time is usually enormously different...

Well I find no difference between developed and developing countries in versatility of phones. Most of them are on LTE, internet is pretty good. Power may be spotty in most rapidly developing countries due to high rate of growth, but I would prefer my iPhone anyday to such a phone, and only use it as a backup phone because whatsapp is much bigger than SMS in Africa(or at least in Kenya, where I stay

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