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Comment by trvz

3 days ago

Disingenious title, as the phone at 25$ is subsidized.

Sure, you can properly buy a phone for not much more, but so can you a Raspberry Pi.

Also, the llm that did the vibe coding did not run on the phone.

  • Of course not, just the client. But it did make real tool calls on the client device and write + modify existing config, troubleshoot and get it running, which is still pretty damn cool in my eyes

what do you mean by subsidized? do you have to buy a phone plan with it? i tried to add it to cart, and while it says it's locked to Straight Talk, it's not making me pay for a plan (though i'm not in the us so i'm not gonna actually order it to check)

  • Nowhere in the world can you make a smartphone at $25 each, even with a bit of slave labor. Either the LTV of a phone is like few k dollars for them, or someone argues it is, or they want network effect, whatever. But $25 is too cheap of a price to make sense.

  • You do not need to buy a phone plan with it (although they hope you will).

Eh, nitpicking I think. It really was $25 and anyone in driving distance of a Walmart can pay 25 real USD and grab one. For sure they are losing money on the hardware in hopes that you subscribe to the plan.