Hacker News Reader

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)

View on HN

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).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com