If you think Carrier bloat is bad, wait till you see Merchant bloat

[Repost]

It appears Amazon is now offering budget phones at lower than budget prices by adding their own ads into their phones. 

Quote

If you could save a few bucks on a new phone by allowing ads on your lockscreen, would you do it?

That's the idea Amazon is pitching with a new offer to its Prime members for two unlocked budget phones. Starting Wednesday, the e-commerce giant will take early orders for the Blu R1 HD for $50 and Motorola's Moto G4 for $150. That's $50 below the regular retail price for both. (There's a limited promotion on the Moto G4 that takes an additional $25 off.)

Here's the catch: Those lower prices are available only for customers who agree to receive personalized ads on the devices' lockscreens.

I think for the customers that are in a pinch, this isn't too bad, but this is a bad direction to go in.

 

Source: http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-makes-budget-phones-even-cheaper-thanks-to-ads-moto-g4-blu-r1-hd/?ftag=COS-05-10-aa0a&linkId=26038102

[Crazy Ginger]

This is actually not bad if the person buying it knows how to root and install a custom ROM.  

[forthe48]

Agreed. If you can root/unlock the phones, or otherwise disable the ads , then I think it'd be a cool way to save some money. But personally, I think that showing me ads every time I unlock my device over the entire lifetime of a phone is worth more than $50.

[ChrisCross]

Just now, Crazy Ginger said:

This is actually not bad if the person buying it knows how to root and install a custom ROM.  

that was a thing with the kindle tablets for a while.

[Crazy Ginger]

52 minutes ago, ChrisCross said:

that was a thing with the kindle tablets for a while.

I was going to do that with my Kindle fire and install Android OS on it, but I never bought that special USB cable you needed to root it mainly out of laziness and I got a Nexus 6, which while it isn't as big, performed alot better and had better battery life so it ended up sitting in a drawer in my house gathering dust.  Maybe one day I'll get around to doing it so I have a spare Android tablet. 

[ChineseChef]

4 hours ago, forthe48 said:

-snip- But personally, I think that showing me ads every time I unlock my device over the entire lifetime of a phone is worth more than $50.

This is actually a really valid point.  Even assuming the lowest daily average of checks, lets say 3 times a day, that is a lot of ad views.  And it could potentially tailor those ads based on your browsing history and current apps.  That's likely 2 years worth of daily ads, likely with great metrics for effectiveness. 

 

So I would agree, definitely worth more than $50, especially when you also consider how much data usage that would be over the lifetime of the phone.

[Zodiark1593]

Like any PC I put a finger on, the device is my servant.  I tell it to do stuff, and it fetches what I specify, when I specify.  Ads on my phone run contrary, hence I will not support this initiative.  

 

Suppose I'm a controlling person.

[Duke nG]

I'm not sure if it is still around, but I heard about an app that people could put on their phones that ran ads constantly on their phones and supposedly they got paid for it. I'm unsure about the legitimacy of that, though. 

[SansVarnic]

Would not buy one, the kindle phone was full of junk as well. Shoot the kindles have bloat just the same.