Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days

Re:Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days by poulsbohemian on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:10PM (#17527888)

I think his expectations are just out of balance. The phone he describes sounds a lot like the phone I gave my kids. I just want them to have a phone that they can use in case of emergencies. That's basically what my baby boomer parents need as well. So he's right, phones at that price point are limited, but that doesn't mean they don't fulfill the needs of portions of the population - just different demographics than his own personal needs.

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Re:Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days by jpatokal on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:20PM (#17527940)

If you really need just calls, dumbphones are still a thing, and I see plenty for sale here in provincial China (/me waves from Xining). The article's point is that cheap smartphones aren't working well for their intended users because the vast majority of apps aren't designed for their limitations.

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Re:Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days by oneTimePeet on Saturday July 14, 2018 @08:28AM (#17530061)

Well, this should be easy- open the Git-Repository from five years ago, compile the old version of the app and release.

The irony is - you cant do that, because maybe, just maybee all your current users would drop the HOT NEW SHINY, bloat-add-ware in the store, like a hot rock, if they could go back to something basic- basically have the whats-app experience, before the feature bloat came.

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Re:Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days by megablast on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:42PM (#17528044)

Except this phone isn't for kids, this is for people where the phone may be there only device. No laptop, no desktop, no parent to organise things for them.

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Re:Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days by praneshp on Friday July 13, 2018 @11:54PM (#17528708)

I'm not sure the target customers of this phone organize things on their phone (TFA has a quote from Micromax related to this).

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Re:Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days by mhd on Saturday July 14, 2018 @03:02AM (#17529202)

These days, basic chat apps are common enough that they're close to core "phone" functionality -- even a few Nokia smartphones had WhatsApp support before they went the way of the dodo.

And one would assume that that's not really that hard to do. After all, for SMS support you've got a very similar set of features already running on the phone. Maybe videos won't work that well, but that shouldn't degrade the basic support.

In New Delhi, I'd also want my kids to have access to some car hailing app and maps. Heck, I'd want a stun gun integrated in the phone…

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