Just ordered a pack of µC the other day for under 1$ per unit. These come with powerful computation cores, floating point units, analog-digital converters, countless integrated serial interfaces... You don't even get a coke for that price. Completely insane world...
Smartphone production is just the same:
First the people are enslaved to get the resources out of some mines, then some Asian workers (inc. children etc.) have to assemble (996 without a loan you'd want to live with). Then it's transported via logistics which is another sector that refuses to treat people like human beings. In the end of the line we have the eager sales guys who knowingly lie to customers and themselves to get a lot of sales.
The difference is that companies earn a lot more on a single sale for a smartphone but the scale of the sales of these feature phones could end up being more revenue I think. On the other hand marketing costs could be much lower because the price plus features alone would beat every smartphone at once.
I think it's crazy we still didn't modularize these devices and have nice OS'es for them.
https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/country-stu...
Everyone who isn't ignoring this based on a decision to do so knows about the practices under which people have to suffer every day to sustain our nice lifestyle here I think.
The problem is the way the whole industry works because new products need to be sold continuously for a company to survive.
We all know climate change is here but it will take us decades to react globally.
Of course they turn their heads - it's much easier that way to enjoy all the money they got for acting like this.
- C.S. Lewis
http://news.trust.org/item/20180918134734-kqc8m
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/11/industry-gian...
There is much more if you want to research further. I'm astonished you didn't know that.
To realize this led me to buy used computers and phones instead of new ones among other stuff I try to improve in my personal/professional radius.
Integrated circuits are tiny specks of material, usually encased in comparatively huge plastic rectangles which are still only a few mm on each side.
The cost is almost all capital investment. After years of having a working design and process, the marginal cost of each chip is negligible. Most of what you actually pay for is probably validation and transportation.
What's really expensive is getting an application running on one with the reliability that people expect of a consumer electronic device. Yes, modern Cortex-M cores can do just about everything, but it takes some expertise and/or time to get them to do anything in particular.
Anyways, how much do you pay for a few hundred milligrams of acetaminophen? Is that also completely insane?
Consumers are way too entitled. Look at aeronautic applications where it just has to work for a few hours until you have to reboot everything.
But anyway, even if development costs amortize with giant quantities, it still requires complex machinery and a trained workforce for manufacturing.
It is evidently possible, but the result is still amazing.
Development for the chips is costly, but in many applications the same principle seems to apply.
Porting to another processor can happen if a chip becomes available that is a few cent cheaper. I have often seen that, even though porting isn't trivial and in many cases pretty error prone in my opinion. (compiler change, specs just completely different...)
> Anyways, how much do you pay for a few hundred milligrams of acetaminophen? Is that also completely insane?
Honestly it seems that it is. I got the impression that something about the price is wrong. That is why I often have the thought that pharma might rip off their patients and chip manufacturers concentrate on exploitation of workers instead. Pharma might not have this option to that degree because counterfeiting is easier to accomplish in that domain.
Not that I want to complain about cheap and powerful hardware too loudly...
They are most probably subsidized, though not sure how much of it is considering they offer 14 GB for 1.50$ a month.