The AI boom is making the cheapest smartphones disappear

Sucks. I have three older smart phones, one remains as a backup, the other two have been repurposed, one is a music player and the other is dedicated local LLM chat server running a headless PostmarketOS and llamacpp build serving Ling mini available to all devices on the local network. All of them could be called back in to active duty at any time if price hikes continue.

The economics of change has indeed pushed prices for reliable cheap mobile devices through the roof. The gap between the have and have not's just seen to get wider and wider. And if China, known for relatively cheaper products is surging in price, what does that say for the rest of the world?