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On Silicon Valley Companies' Bet On Boosting Their Userbases in Developing Markets With Dirt-Cheap Phones and Lite Apps (buzzfeed.com)

Posted by msmash on from the next-billion-users dept.

As user growth slows in developed markets, Silicon Valley companies are increasingly looking at developing markets such as India for new customers. The playbook of many of these companies is similar: make services work on low-cost devices that are increasingly popular among new users in these nations. Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, Twitter, Google, and Amazon have all released "lite" apps (they usually have fewer features, but are comparatively less resource intensive) for these markets, with some also offering their services as progressive web app (that mimic app-esque behavior on a website, but don't require installation of any special app for access). But how do these apps fare on the low-cost devices? And what is it like to live on a low-cost smartphone? A reporter ditched his iPhone for a $60 Android handset to find out: The phone is, well, basic. It comes with a slow-as-molasses processor, so little memory that I kept having to remove and reinstall apps to keep the thing running, a camera that would have been at home on the first iPhone, a two-year-old version of Android, about a dozen pre-installed Google apps that take up hundreds of megabytes, and a single, measly gigabyte of usable storage. Imagine your favorite Android phone, except with a waaay crappier screen, cameras, storage, and battery to get an idea.

What I bumped into immediately after turning on the Bharat 2 for the first time was the lack of storage, and this limitation entirely defined what I used my phone for. I had to start off by uninstalling the pre-installed bloatware before I actually installed any apps, because the first thing I got after switching on the phone was a low storage notification.

Slack went out the window because it was too bloated; Outlook, my email app of choice, was too big to install; and pretty much everything else -- banking apps, shopping apps, games, and more -- was a luxury I'd live without. Even Google Maps Go, a lightweight browser version of Google Maps that the company said is "designed to run quickly and smoothly on devices with limited memory," was crippled, allowing me to look up a location only to prompt me to download the full version of Google Maps when I asked for turn-by-turn directions.

So I boiled down to the essentials: staying in touch with people, catching up on news, ordering cabs, and watching videos (which went shockingly well, and supports the huge popularity of video here), pretty much the same as the Next Billion. Further reading: Shitphone: A Love Story (2015).

39 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. This Android phone costs $60 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's probably that slow because of all the spyware running in the background.

  2. Pay a little more by jonsmirl · · Score: 2

    For $100 you can get a pretty decent phone. The mistake is in buying a $60 phone.

    http://www.dx.com/p/umidigi-a1...

    Oreo 8.1 , 5.5in screen, 13MP camera, international 4G bands, quad core, 3GB RAM, dual SIM, etc..

    1. Re:Pay a little more by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      Yep. Or a Moto E4 for $125. No dual SIM, but international 4G, SD card, and user-replaceable battery.

    2. Re:Pay a little more by Nexus7 · · Score: 1

      Exactly! A good test would be $100 or even 200, but no, they had to buy a $60 phone. There's no medium left these days. It's basically a joke test.

    3. Re:Pay a little more by jonsmirl · · Score: 1

      With Umidigi A1 one of the SIM slots takes your choice of 2nd SIM or SD Card. Battery is not user replaceable. 1.5Ghz quad core A53.

      I have an A1 and it is an excellent phone for the price. Just a few complaints, it is a little heavy at 173g. And the fit/finish is not perfect, you can easily feel the joints with your finger, but put it in a case and you can't tell. Plus I wish the rear camera was not directly over the fingerprint sensor.

    4. Re:Pay a little more by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      Not really -- $60 in India might be the equivalent of $1000+ in the US due to per-capita income disparity levels. They're testing an EXPENSIVE phone by developing-nation standards.

    5. Re:Pay a little more by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      As with most technology the price goes up exponentially for a linear set of features added to it.
      $50.00 phone is out of date new. In essence what you got on it is what will work.
      $100.00 phone is the baseline low end for most modern stuff.
      $200.00 phone This is the good enough for most things, the best choice for a budget phone.
      $400.00 phone This is the normal sweet spot for phone, in this range you have enough power to do most everything quite well without sacrificing much.
      $800.00+ phone The Premium models with all the bells and whistles you will ever need for the next decade.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    6. Re:Pay a little more by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      I have a $100 phone and it doesn't feel out of date after a year and a half. It runs most apps just fine -- I don't install bloatware like Facebook app, though.

    7. Re:Pay a little more by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      Yep. Or a Moto E4 for $125. No dual SIM, but international 4G, SD card, and user-replaceable battery.

      Yep. Got the E4 for $100 with Amazon apps; deleted them with just adb (no root!)

    8. Re:Pay a little more by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      That is kinda the point, if you consider the Facebook App bloatware (which is rather common size app) then your phone isn't really up to date. This isn't saying it is bad, or you should upgrade, it is just the base line for low end applications. Which for most people is more then enough.

      You shouldn't feel like you have to justify to others why you got a $100 phone compared to someone who got a $1000 phone. If it fits your life style why should we care.

      I have a 7 year old laptop, with integrated graphics. Just as long as I don't play modern games on it, it is perfectly fine, and I have no reason to upgrade. If I was a bigger gamer, I may want a more powerful newer laptop.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    9. Re:Pay a little more by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      For all I know, Fecebook will run in the phone just fine. I just choose not to install it due to privacy implications. Fecebook links work just fine in a private browser window without invading my privacy or grabbing my contact list.

    10. Re:Pay a little more by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      I was thinking of the one without the Scamazon junk, but if the crapware is easy to remove, maybe that one isn't a bad option.

    11. Re:Pay a little more by BeanThere · · Score: 1

      "Mistake"? Or is this the journalist an Apple shill? In which case the idea is to deliberately strawman the competition. This reads like an Apple ad, pushing fallacy of false dilemma.

      His other articles have headlines like this: "Here Are All The Cool New Things Coming To Your iPhone And iPad Soon", "Apple Will Reportedly Help India's Telecom Regulator Build An Anti-Spam App", "This Is The Brand-New Apple TV 4K", "These 12 Augmented Reality Experiences On iPhones Already Look Like The Future" etc.

      There are, as you say, plenty of good-value alternatives to over-priced iPhones that are less than half the price of an iPhone and deliver comparable functionality in the middle of the market.

    12. Re:Pay a little more by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I like everything except the lack of water resistance ("none") and the fact that if you format your phone, the fingerprint sensor will no longer work and you've got to pay someone $15 to fix it. Also, LineageOS has been promised but does not exist yet.

      Do you own this phone personally, or is it just something you've noticed?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re:Pay a little more by jonsmirl · · Score: 1

      I have one. It is good phone for $100. For sure it is not a flagship, but those are 5x more $$$. It is way, way better than a Nokia 1 which I also have. It is not as good as my Google Pixel.

      There is one bug with it, they have broken Android Auto with their USB-C support. They are supposed to be fixing it; they are definitely aware it is broken.

    14. Re:Pay a little more by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      I was thinking of the one without the Scamazon junk, but if the crapware is easy to remove, maybe that one isn't a bad option.

      Was surprisingly easy (though I did do some homework before buying to make sure it was at least in the realm of possibility).

      I don't know if it's still available (got mine last Fall), but seems like at the time they just weren't that worried about it (which makes sense; really, what percentage of people are going to use adb to try to delete stuff?).

    15. Re:Pay a little more by iampiti · · Score: 1

      200$? That's over 3 times the price of the used phone. Someone who has a low (by first world standards) wage isn't going to buy a 200$ phone when a 60$ one can do many of the tasks the expensive one does.

    16. Re:Pay a little more by JonBoy47 · · Score: 1

      Per capita incomes in India, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia are an order of magnitude lower than they are in the US. It seems trivial to us, but $60 vs. $100 makes a massive difference in terms of affordability.

  3. Re:Maybe, just maybe by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Re "'more code that's less fantastically wasteful of computing resources."

    But how will the social media company know if the ads get seen in nations with users who are lite on spending ability?
    All that extra code ensures the user has see the ad, the ad was kept secure and the user reaction to the ad was tracked.
    All that computing is now needed to track users and the ads.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  4. Measely 1Gb? by MpVpRb · · Score: 2

    Ahh.. I remember when 640K was a luxury

    Further back, I remember getting a 64K memory card for my Imsai 8080. It was approx 10" x 6", completely covered in chips

    The dude at the computer store asked ..what are you going to do with all that memory?

    Modern software is incredibly wasteful

    1. Re:Measely 1Gb? by Octorian · · Score: 1

      Modern software is incredibly wasteful

      And mobile software is especially wasteful in a few ways, that could be solved by a platform vendor, but apparently none are sufficiently motivated to do so.

      First, all substantial mobile apps need to drag along their own copies of large support libraries. (because "shared libraries" are so passe, and no one has built a sufficient infrastructure for distributing them independent from apps)
      Second, all substantial mobile apps bundle a significant quantity of graphic assets, because that's how you make a good looking modern mobile UI.
      Third, all substantial mobile apps need to do both of these in such a way as to support every device and OS combination that may have been sold in the past 5+ years. (I understand some platform vendors are now sharding assets in their app stores, in an effort to help with some of this.)

    2. Re:Measely 1Gb? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

      Further back, I remember getting a 64K memory card for my Imsai 8080

      Tell me about it.

      I had to automate the energy management system for an auto plant using 8080A based machine with two ROM sockets, 8KB each, for the whole program memory. But I needed to fit the works in just one of 'em, to leave the other for the plant engineers to use for the per-machine configuration.

      So, standing on the backs of giants (Dijkstra, Riddle, Saal, and Weiser), I ported and optimized (the HELL out of) a little OS. Got prioritized preempting multitasking (including boot initialization and minimal supporting task set) in about 535 bytes of assembler. (Communicating Semaphores are SWEET. They do EVERYTHING for you, if you know the right use patterns.) It all fit with room to spare: Drivers, debugger, soft real-time clock, ladder logic interpreter, protocol stack, schedule interpreter.

      Much of what bloats current 'ware is system support for fast programming, including boundary enforcement and crossing, error checking, and the like. With cheap resources to throw at it you can get enormously more done in a given amount of designer time. And that snowballs - which also snowballs the bloat.

      This tiny system had no protection whatsoever. The pieces all had to work and carefully not stomp on their neighbors. But with the Communicating Semaphore approach the multitasking boundaries drove the software design toward tiny, encapsulated, components interacting via message-passing, anticipating Object Oriented Programming. With such small, unbloated, pieces it was possible to actually get one's head loaded with each entire piece and debug it to that level of reliability.

      IoT brought back machines comparable to those minis - for under a buck and fuel-sipping enough to run on a coin cell for years. A couple years back there was a window where such software approaches might have been apropos again. (You can shoehorn an AMAZING amount of functionality into a tiny computer if you substitute skill and use-patterns for tool-driven bloat. Alternatively, the tools could be upgraded to do much of the protection and usage-pattern checking offline during build, rather than on the live system.) Moore's law has grown IoT machines to the point where they are starting to have enough memory to support code bloat. But the power requirements still push down on cycles-per-task, so the window probably isn't closed.

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  5. Internet-lite by mi · · Score: 1

    Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, Twitter, Google, and Amazon have all released "lite" apps (they usually have fewer features, but are comparatively less resource intensive) for these markets

    Both India and Slashdot soundly denounced Facebook's earlier attempts to give a limited "Internet-lite" to users in poor countries for free. Because "net neutrality".

    Now they are trying again with a (slightly) different twist... Let's see...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  7. Re:Maybe, just maybe by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What is the point of having resources that are never used? Sensible people prefer functionality and good presentation over false economy. A cellphone uses about 2 kwh per year. At 12 cents per kwh, that is 24 cents annually, or 2 cents per month.

  8. How do make a 'lite app' by randomErr · · Score: 2

    What is the best way to make a 'lite app'?

    • Aren't Progressive Web Apps processor and RAM hogs?
    • HTML with wrapper like Cordova have a pretty good storage footprint. From my tinkering apps are 4 megs minimum for a basic app on a phone with almost no space is not a good situation. I've seen some apps get to 600 megs.
    • Java - is good in size but Google is moving away from it. Also I've had pure Java apps run real slow.
    • C++ is the best overall but hard to work with on Android and you have to make custom versions for almost every major processor type.

    So what is the best way to make a lite app?

    --
    You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
  9. $60 what luxury! I use $50 phone in hole in road! by Travco · · Score: 1

    The characters is too damn few! Really? $60 I use a samsung for $50 that had 3gig free (rapidly fills anyway). Works pretty good

  10. Not just India by WillyWanker · · Score: 1

    You can buy crappy phones like this in the US too. ZTE makes a ton of them and you can easily find them online or at Target, Walmart, and anyplace else that sells cheap prepaid phones. If it cost less than $100 you'll wind up with pretty much the same thing -- crap.

    I bought a $40 AT&T GoPhone that was a ZTE, just to use as a hotspot. And really, that's all it was good for. Crappy screen, slower than sh*t chipset, and not enough storage to upgrade the preinstalled apps, forget installing anything else. Exactly as the author described.

    1. Re:Not just India by jonsmirl · · Score: 1

      $50 is too little to pay for a phone. You can't assemble a BOM of parts to make a decent $50 phone. A key problem right now is the upward movement in the prices of DRAM and flash. However, it is possible to make a decent phone at the $100 price point. It is similar to saying why can't you manufacture a car for $1000? It just isn't possible to do it and end up with something decent. Steel, silicon, glass, lithium, plastic all cost money.

      Personally I think it is utterly amazing that we can make something the complexity of a smart phone and sell it for $100. Manufacturing capabilities today would seem like magic fifty years ago.

  11. Re:Maybe, just maybe by olsmeister · · Score: 1

    Makes you wonder where in the Wide Wide World of Sports all those CPU cycles are going. What kind of crazy, useless things unrelated to front panel button presses are being done.

  12. Re:Maybe, just maybe by mikael · · Score: 2

    Run task manager or cports.exe and see all the tasks that are running under Windows. svchost.exe is running half the tasks out there, which almost seems to be all servers; everything from SAMBA to plug-and-play, USB port monitors, keyboard and mouse drivers. All of those are written in C++ but are built from templates. Then the applications depend on 100+ different dynamic libraries. Each has grown and expanded as network protocols, bus architectures have been enhanced with burst modes, large packet sizes, and the need for real-time response speeds.

    --
    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  13. $60 is not dirt cheap by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

    I live a hundred miles from Silicon Valley. My current Android phone cost $65, has GPS . It runs Nougat and doesn't need any "lite" apps. It does everything I could want except VR, and is plenty fast enough for me. Frankly there's nothing of any significance I'd gain from moving to a $700 phone, except a lot of worry about breaking it.

    There are $20 Android phones. Those run old versions and can't handle all apps. Those may be good for the developing world, but can also be found in any supermarket in California and are not exactly new ideas either.

    --
    This space intentionally left blank
    1. Re:$60 is not dirt cheap by jonsmirl · · Score: 1

      Those prepaid phones in the supermarket have carrier subsidies on them, that is not the actual price of the phone. They are locked onto their prepaid carrier. A tech person can unlock some of them but you will be vulnerable to an OTA update relocking them (and carriers will definitely do that with increased locking security). The subsidies on prepaid phones can be up to $100.

    2. Re:$60 is not dirt cheap by JonBoy47 · · Score: 1

      All those cheapo phones you get in blister packs in Supermarkets are SIM locked because the purchase price is in fact subsidized. A $60 Tracfone, and a $60 unlocked phone are not the same beast...

  14. Facebook Lite for better information domination by nicolaiplum · · Score: 1

    This probably explains the great enthusiasm of Facebook to try to get me to download Facebook Lite, "only 2MB", when I use the Facebook web interface on mobile.

    Unfortunately for them the reason I don't have a Facebook app on my phone is not that I lack the storage but that I lack any trust that they will not siphon off my personal information for their own uses and abuses.

    2MB is pretty small, I bet even the crap-phones have that much storage.

    --
    "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
  15. Going in the wrong direction. by Spudboy2003 · · Score: 1

    People should be looking at going OTG.

  16. These lite versions are great. by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

    I have Facebook lite, it uses way less memory and intrusive crap, it even omits messenger! Huge bonus.

    Even the best of the best phones are too slow for me, I want ridiculous quick response doing stuff.

  17. Re:Alcatel Idol 3 by jonsmirl · · Score: 1

    Current equivalent is the Alcatel 1X for $115. But check the specs, the Umidigi is a better deal.

  18. Poor research by nikkipolya · · Score: 1

    Surely this "reporter" was paid by brats in Cupertino. Any sort of analysis of cheap phones would require comparing a few cheap smart phones before coming to any conclusion. This "reporter" buys one single phone and concludes all cheap phones are bad.

    https://buy.mi.com/in/buy/prod...
    https://www.amazon.in/10-Aim-G...
    https://www.amazon.in/10-ACA13...
    https://www.amazon.in/ZTE-Blad...
    https://www.amazon.in/Motorola...

    The "reporter" is making a fool of himself.