<p><pre><code> And then there’s dual SIM (or even quad SIM). It’s a feature
that’s really popular in Asia and Latin America where people
might use one network for a local call and another for an
international one. That’s largely something MediaTek drove,
but now it’s in the Moto E, which also has a feature called
SmartCalling to help people set up and swap between SIM
preferences and automatically configure access point names.
</code></pre>
<a href="https://bbot.org/blog/archives/2013/10/28/programmatically_advertising_mobile_bandwidth_cost_a_proposal/" rel="nofollow">https://bbot.org/blog/archives/2013/10/28/programmatically_a...</a><p><pre><code> You know what would be cool? If your phone knew how much
bandwidth from each carrier cost, and could switch between
them on the fly, depending on which one was cheapest, like a
multi-SIM phone that didn't suck.</code></pre>
Often, the word 'cheap' carries a negative connotation. Talking specifically about Moto G & Moto E, I'd say they are phones that are priced correctly. Before we start talking about lack of features or compromises, just look at how much they charge for incremental memory. Just $20 for 8GB extra. Smartphones makers are slowly accepting commodity pricing and I hope they realize that skinning Android isn't always a value add.<p>Cool new features like fingerprint reader sure catch the fancy of those waiting to upgrade their phone. But expecting to price the phone at more than twice what they are worth when you add an evolutionary feature may not work for too long. The difference in build quality between Android & iOS phones is way smaller than Windows & Mac laptops.
I really like the Moto-G, and the Moto E looks like a solid phone as well. I'm interested to watch what it does to the App market, that much more volume and even a small fraction of a huge market, is a worthwhile thing.<p>The other thing I'm wondering about is Apple's response, if any.
<i>Both are based on a platform from MediaTek, a Taiwanese giant you've never heard of. It makes white label handsets that operators can customize for local markets.</i><p>Technically this isn't the case; MTK don't make handsets themselves, they're fabless and only provide reference designs based on their chipsets. It's the innumerable Chinese OEMs that use these reference designs to make handsets. (See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaTek#.282013-present.29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaTek#.282013-present.29</a> for a non-exhaustive list of smartphones that contain them.) Because it's a reference design, most of them have very similar features, since OEMs don't have to expend much effort to add features themselves. In fact I'd say it's unusual to <i>not</i> have e.g. dual-SIM, expandable storage, FM radio, or removable battery in a MTK smartphone; they're pretty much standard. The variation between models is mostly in ROM/RAM, camera and screen sizes, and case styling (there are models with small screens but the fastest SoC, for example.) Also, the MT6589 platform does <i>not</i> have 4G, it's 3G.<p>MTK is certainly relatively unknown in North America but in Asia the situation is very different - you'll find far more mention and phones using them, hardware-level repair/modding information is common, and they also cost significantly less than the flagships from Samsung, LG, and the other big companies.<p>Edit: looks like Wired covered this a year ago: <a href="http://www.wired.com/2013/02/mediatek/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/2013/02/mediatek/</a><p>(I bought a generic 5" MT6589 smartphone in China and have been quite satisfied with it.)
Problem is, too many cheap phones are still shipping with Android 2.3 because the manufacturers just don't care.<p>Android 4.4 is a boon to cheap phone manufacturers because of low memory mode while retaining all the modern features. A $99 phone that isn't shit that runs Android 4.4 and has BLE would enable so much stuff that the rest of us take for granted.
My last phone was my first smartphone. It cost $80 and ran Android 4.0 very poorly with pauses and crashes.<p>My current one runs Android 4.1 and cost $60. It runs smoothly enough that I have no pressing reason to upgrade in the near future; but when I do I expect to get even more for less.<p>These are both Virgin Mobile pre-paid phones.
I have a Nexus 4 and my next phone is also probably going to be an Android phone but my shopping list now comes down to how well it takes a photo (N4 is horrible) and if it gets reasonable OS updates.<p>I can now get this for around £100.
Cheap phones really are capable these days. I just got a 2nd hand Lumia 520 for ZAR1000 (about $100) and it can do everything my much more expensive iPhone 5 can. It's good enough to be my primary phone which is pretty amazing. Even has wifi internet tethering. Windows Phone 8.1 is a solid OS. The Lumia 630 with dual sim looks very appealing to me as soon as it's available.
the wired article gets one thing absolutely right - the excitement has gone out of the high-end smartphone market, but is palpably there in this one. ubiquitous cheap devices spreading everywhere and getting smarter and smarter is a lot closer to the world envisioned by gibson, sterling et al - the high end of the market has become more like a shopping mall than a cyberpunk bazaar.
We need to stop calling them "smartphones" and call them what they really are - "personal computers." The previous personal computer is now a "work computer."<p>A smartphone's phone capability is now a small facet of its growing capabilities.
I had to write code for Androids, and so I 'used' them quite a bit while testing. To this day, every time I have to use an Android phone, I want to claw my eyes out, mainly over the lousy touch response, and somewhat-stupider UI. I fully understand they're still good iPhone knock-offs and more than adequate for many. But as someone who now uses my phone as my primary computer (and for me iOS is now only just barely adequate for this), I honestly don't know how y'all do it.
Cheap smartphones are going to change "everything?" HN still has a wired.com problem. I flag pretty much every single wired.com article that pops up past the new page. I really think wired.com is gaming the system they pop up so often.