The big thing is not this phone, it's the chip.

The chip(MT6250) is a processor for feature phones which includes 260 mhz arm7 cpu,8Mbyte of ram , dsp,bluetooth,2.5G and All kinds of IO. It can run games on a touchscreen phone.

And it costs $2 in large volumes. This is much less than many microcontrollers who offer much less capability. And with such performance and memory , it can support much better languages and tools, faster time to market, and more complex systems, for cheap.

Also , this chip uses 2 different silicon pieces(one for processor and one for ram), for very low cost, instead of what we do today: build different stuff on the same silicon piece and compromise performance and cost and development time along the way. This could open the way to a lot of innovation.