It's at least more interesting than I thought: an ideologically bent alternative Android phone. And my assumption is Aurora is the "uncensorable" app store, but it's also got Google Play? It's an...
It's at least more interesting than I thought: an ideologically bent alternative Android phone.
And my assumption is Aurora is the "uncensorable" app store, but it's also got Google Play? It's an interesting solution to the "problem" they're trying to solve (that's a lot of quotation marks).
Myriad conservative personalities are pushing this phone with custom $50 discount codes, and by using a few easy-to-guess ones (MAGA, Trump2024, etc.), some clever shoppers were able to do some extreme couponing to get the $500 phone processed for $0, with only the $20 shipping-and-handling fee charged to their cards.
Now I'm absolutely curious about how they're making a profit, or if most people aren't trying to run ten coupons at a time. Any storefront I've used typically only allows one discount at a time.
From the article, it seems that Aurora is just an alternative skin for the Play Store. Honestly the whole things sounds like a grift. It's a cheap Chinese phone using an open source Android distro...
From the article, it seems that Aurora is just an alternative skin for the Play Store.
Honestly the whole things sounds like a grift. It's a cheap Chinese phone using an open source Android distro and a skin on top of the play store, with a few preloaded web links to banned apps like Parler. And they're selling the thing for $500.
I suspect there's a good reason they have lots of "buy now" links on the website, but no detailed specs.
You're right on Aurora, it's an alternative to Google Play to allow downloading apps and updates from the play store without a google account, see their store page. (And it works wonderfully well...
You're right on Aurora, it's an alternative to Google Play to allow downloading apps and updates from the play store without a google account, see their store page.
(And it works wonderfully well if you have a dependency on a few gstore-only apps, and don't want / cannot have a g account)
Yeah, I don't get the impression there's any real ideological drive here, it's just some basic buzzwords marketed with a huge mark-up to a crowd who've already proven themselves incredibly...
Yeah, I don't get the impression there's any real ideological drive here, it's just some basic buzzwords marketed with a huge mark-up to a crowd who've already proven themselves incredibly gullible on other matters.
The fact the manufacturers didn't even have the foresight to enable "one coupon per customer" on the store page is pretty much the level of competence I'd expect. Preload a couple of APKs and maybe if the users are really lucky, modify the store client to read an extra 10 apps off a server somewhere and append them to the standard Google Play catalogue. I'd be amazed if they get anything more complex than that, and I'd bet good money on a significant data breach within three months if the product actually ships.
They'll probably just sell a few thousand phones, in which case they need a hefty markup to cover wages. What still makes me think it's a grift is the dishonesty. They could have said sorry, we...
They'll probably just sell a few thousand phones, in which case they need a hefty markup to cover wages.
What still makes me think it's a grift is the dishonesty. They could have said sorry, we really wanted to avoid China, but buying Chinese turned out to be the only viable option, instead of claiming it's built in the USA. And explained that this were the best parts they could get for cheap, instead of lying about their specs. They could have gone with stock Lineage OS and praised the freedom and censorship resilience that comes with open source software, instead of rebranding it and stealing the credit. They could have explained how Aurora lets users access all their favourite apps without a Google account, instead of claiming to have built their own app store. In this case, the line between a viable product for reasonably people and a scam for gullible people is pretty thin.
As a side note, I noticed it comes with Brave as the default web browser, and I find it wildly amusing that a device that claims to be anti censorship comes with a browser which has censorship as a core feature.
They've fixed the coupon stacking (I just tried, because hey free phone). I'll be surprised if they actually ship any phones at all and if they do I'm guessing it'll be preloaded with their echo...
They've fixed the coupon stacking (I just tried, because hey free phone). I'll be surprised if they actually ship any phones at all and if they do I'm guessing it'll be preloaded with their echo chamber apps and the app store will be "coming soon".
This kind of social media oriented phone that's really just a stupid money grab reminds me of the HTC First (the "Facebook phone"), just with the "freedom" flavoring that these people love so much.
This kind of social media oriented phone that's really just a stupid money grab reminds me of the HTC First (the "Facebook phone"), just with the "freedom" flavoring that these people love so much.
Your comment just reminded me about how many of the old HTC phones had dedicated facebook buttons https://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/facebookphone1.jpeg
It's at least more interesting than I thought: an ideologically bent alternative Android phone.
And my assumption is Aurora is the "uncensorable" app store, but it's also got Google Play? It's an interesting solution to the "problem" they're trying to solve (that's a lot of quotation marks).
Now I'm absolutely curious about how they're making a profit, or if most people aren't trying to run ten coupons at a time. Any storefront I've used typically only allows one discount at a time.
From the article, it seems that Aurora is just an alternative skin for the Play Store.
Honestly the whole things sounds like a grift. It's a cheap Chinese phone using an open source Android distro and a skin on top of the play store, with a few preloaded web links to banned apps like Parler. And they're selling the thing for $500.
I suspect there's a good reason they have lots of "buy now" links on the website, but no detailed specs.
You're right on Aurora, it's an alternative to Google Play to allow downloading apps and updates from the play store without a google account, see their store page.
(And it works wonderfully well if you have a dependency on a few gstore-only apps, and don't want / cannot have a g account)
Yeah, I don't get the impression there's any real ideological drive here, it's just some basic buzzwords marketed with a huge mark-up to a crowd who've already proven themselves incredibly gullible on other matters.
The fact the manufacturers didn't even have the foresight to enable "one coupon per customer" on the store page is pretty much the level of competence I'd expect. Preload a couple of APKs and maybe if the users are really lucky, modify the store client to read an extra 10 apps off a server somewhere and append them to the standard Google Play catalogue. I'd be amazed if they get anything more complex than that, and I'd bet good money on a significant data breach within three months if the product actually ships.
They'll probably just sell a few thousand phones, in which case they need a hefty markup to cover wages.
What still makes me think it's a grift is the dishonesty. They could have said sorry, we really wanted to avoid China, but buying Chinese turned out to be the only viable option, instead of claiming it's built in the USA. And explained that this were the best parts they could get for cheap, instead of lying about their specs. They could have gone with stock Lineage OS and praised the freedom and censorship resilience that comes with open source software, instead of rebranding it and stealing the credit. They could have explained how Aurora lets users access all their favourite apps without a Google account, instead of claiming to have built their own app store. In this case, the line between a viable product for reasonably people and a scam for gullible people is pretty thin.
As a side note, I noticed it comes with Brave as the default web browser, and I find it wildly amusing that a device that claims to be anti censorship comes with a browser which has censorship as a core feature.
They've fixed the coupon stacking (I just tried, because hey free phone). I'll be surprised if they actually ship any phones at all and if they do I'm guessing it'll be preloaded with their echo chamber apps and the app store will be "coming soon".
This kind of social media oriented phone that's really just a stupid money grab reminds me of the HTC First (the "Facebook phone"), just with the "freedom" flavoring that these people love so much.
Your comment just reminded me about how many of the old HTC phones had dedicated facebook buttons https://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/facebookphone1.jpeg