Real price of a smartphone

My old BLU Vivo Air test phone became too old, both physically and “mentally”.
The battery is playing tricks showing 40% in one moment and then dropping to 0% another and Android version is 5.0.2, which is soon will become unsupported even by my own games.
At the moment I still set minSdkVersion to 19 (Android 4.4 KitKat), but targetSdkVersion is already forced by Google to be 30.
Btw, in OpenFL it is done in project.xml file:

<config:android minimum-sdk-version="19" target-sdk-version="30"></config:android>

A neat list of all the Android/API versions can be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history.

I was able to find a cheap replacement on Aliexpress, a Chinese phone UMIDIGI A9 with the latest (not for long though) Android 11 for only ~$100 or ~C$130.
Funny enough, the phone even has an Infrared Thermometer that actually works!

Aliexpress page: UMIDIGI A9

Another interesting detail is the price tag at the package, only $45, which is super low.
But if you count everything like Aliexpress fees, defective/lost devices, returns, and some profit for manufacture/seller, it makes sense to me.

So, here I have a $45 smartphone with all these fancy specs, even though only half of them might be true, most likely the camera sucks and the battery is so-so…

I only need Android 11 here and 64bit CPU

…that can measure my temperature (COVID sets its trends)…

Am I a bit cold or should I calibrate first? 😀

…and play All-in-One Solitaire no problem.

Dying BLU Vivo Air vs. UMIDIGI A9

Btw, this phone comes with silicone case, screen protector, and wall charger (they sent me European type, but anyway, hello iPhone!).
Can your $1000+ smartphone beat that? 😀
And I feel like UMIDIGI should pay me now for this unintentional promotion.
 
P.S.: Gosh it also has a Dual-SIM slot! Maybe it can bake me a cake or something? There must be undocumented features…

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