This really surprised me... and then it didn't. When I first read about the CW ad I figured oh, it'll be a little 320x240 screen with a battery and wireless unit attached, some simple bios-type display and wireless driver, etc.

But I imagine as they were looking at options, they found they were paying for essentially 3/4 of a phone, and it probably would run them more to design and assemble this custom solution than it would to just buy 10,000 surplus phone skeletons with everything included and write a simple Android app.

That said, it's pretty insane that this thing will make calls and everything. I wonder what kind of restrictions are on the SIMs - time, data, minutes?

2 days ago, 71 points, 34 comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4605295

...which is a submission of http://mashable.com/2012/10/02/ew-has-smartphone-inside/

This title is misleading. It should say Entertainment Weekly bound 1,000 issues with smartphones.

Heard about this years ago. It's cool, but also quite sad. All these thousand or so manufactured just to be thrown out in one or two weeks, never again to see the light of day?

So, what's the trick to finding one? Bring a metal detector?

The trick is to go to Los Angeles or New York where the limited 1,000 issues were actually distributed.