Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

tuxphones.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 212 posts

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#171

Post by ajot »

muxator wrote: post #77
oneowl wrote: post #7

Very nice project. KaiOS also runs on jio phones and they are selling really well in India. Besides 4g these phones also have wifi support. Kai os phones are the only feature phones(I know of) that provide wifi capabilities. By the way I've got a question for people who've used Kai OS / firefox os. To use google apps like youtube/ maps etc do you need to log in like in android?

Just for information, as I do not know if this suits your use case: on my phone, LineageOS with no Play Services installed, I can watch YouTube using Firefox + the website. Maps 10.1 can be installed via Yalp Store and works pretty well.

For YouTube, you could also install NewPipe from FDroid. It works perfectly 99% of the time, until YouTube changes something in their page and they have to mod the parser.

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#172

Post by darpa_escapee »

angott wrote: post #137
cronix wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of funny that PWA was Jobs original vision for iOS apps with HTML5, before they came up with the walled garden cash cow approach. > “The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got e…

PWAs make sense today, but back then, they just came too early in the game. The iPhone only had EDGE (2G) networking, it was painfully slow both in terms of throughput and latency. Each HTTP request would take ~300-500ms under optimal cell coverage. Additionally, unlike modern PWAs, web-apps back then had persistence for data only, so you had to reload the entire application over the network at each launch. People ba…

> PWAs make sense today, but back then, they just came too early in the game.

Seemed to work well enough on webOS for the Palm Pre.

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#173

Post by JetSpiegel »

auslander wrote: post #120
jschwartzi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in this on a modern smartphone platform with a touchscreen and virtual keyboard just to cut Google out of my life.

> just to cut Google out of my life. Apple?

Out of the frying pan into the fire...

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#174

Post by JetSpiegel »

pjmlp wrote: post #116
dontbenebby wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spent so long waiting for linux on the desktop. Turns out insurgency was the best strategy: sit back, launch a few attacks, and wait for the desktop to die ;)

The desktop has been replaced by laptops and 2-1 foldables, it won't die that easily, specially since Android apps on tablets and 2-1 keep beinging maximized phone apps.

> The desktop has been replaced by laptops and 2-1 foldables

Whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Pholdables are not even being sold yet, let alone "replacing the desktop".

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#175

Post by JetSpiegel »

maxaf wrote: post #4

Any word on US availability? There are plenty of people who don’t need an entire iPhone, or can’t comprehend one due to age or other handicaps. It’s good to have choices.

Just buy one of those feature phones with the giant keys and screen fonts.

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#176

Post by TkTech »

ac29 wrote: post #109
blackflame7000 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheapest 4G modem I can find is still $80. I wonder how they are making the entire phone for just $7

The SoC they are using (Qualcomm 205) seems to be less than $10 in single unit quantities: https://www.kynix.com/Detail/1331087/MSM8905.html

From that site:

1+: $9.87257

10+: $9.31375

100+: $8.78655

500+: $8.28920

1000+: $7.82000

That is absurdly cheap, and you can be sure with million-unit orders they're probably getting half that price and working direct with the manufacturer. $7.82 per unit @ 1000 for that feature set[1] brings it into the realm of hobbyists to make their own phones. Order the chips, prototype PCB, battery, charger circuit, low-res touchscreen , and mounts for USB+SD+audio from China and get them within a week. 3D print some cases, spend 20 days trying to get video output working on the completely undocumented Chinese display, boom. Made your own functional (but ugly and bad) phone for [1]: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/qualcomm-205-mobile-platfo...

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#178

Post by auslander »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #173
auslander wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just to cut Google out of my life. Apple?

Out of the frying pan into the fire...

So it looks, but, realistically is the only option for phones. And it is not an adtech company, you pay for hardware and software.

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#179

Post by mr_toad »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #130
type-2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

firefox os had so much potential, now with pwa's being the next big thing, it seem like firefox os could be a game changer. Too bad they killed it.

Are PWAs the next big thing? I thought the hype for PWAs had for the most part fizzled due to lack of user interest.

It’s not the users that are pushing native apps on every website. It’s not even the developers. It’s the media and add companies that realise that they can get away with things in a native app that a browser would never allow.

Re: Linux-based 4G phones with Google Assistant sold for $7 in Indonesia

#180

Post by reaperducer »

eropple wrote: post #147
reaperducer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is , not "was." My LG television runs WebOS.

...as a conduit to barf ads at you. I wish I could have gotten my TV without ask the parts that forced me to install a PiHole just to not get ads overlaid onto my menus. Any good parts of webOS are now just incidental.

I just banned the TV’s MAC address from my network. IMO there’s no reason for it to connect to the outside world.
Post reply on HN