I wonder if the issue with unreliable cell networks is why the article linked to in the tweet has whole paragraphs about data transmission being accomplished by a WiFi network being built by HopeNet ?

Hell, what else are they going to do with their overstock of the damn things? It's cheaper than sending money.

@2

And they'll probably get a nice charitable deduction out of it as well. But that is the cynic in me talking.

@3:

Plus, their accountants will probably figure out a way to write it off as a "charitable donation", in which case we can expect to see Amazon donating tens of thousands more of these useless bricks to the citizens of Buffalo for help shoveling themselves out of the 5 feet of snow they got slammed with today; to Ukrainian loyalists for throwing at Russian separatists (soon to be known as "A Bezos Cocktail"); and to innumerable distraught parents to use as black censoring lines to prevent their sensitive children from viewing images of Kim Kardashian's naked ass.

Sorry, meant that for @2; @3 just beat me to the punch.

Well I suppose the net effect is that they end up in African landfill instead of U.S. landfill. Plus the energy wasted to get them there.

If there's a better example of the uselessness of most Western aid, I'll be damned if I can think of it.

@2 & 4 beat me to it.

This is simply a way for Amazon to dump a cargo of product they can't sell, and get a charitable tax write off for it. Way better than dumping it in a landfill and eating a profit loss.

I concur with all you geniuses.

Ok, you might want to read and understand. Those phones are loaded with an app - developed by the Computer Science and Engineering department at UW - that is used worldwide in developing countries for health care uses. This is no one-off for Allen.

From the CSE department:

"Philanthropist Paul G. Allen announced today that he and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation will ship more than 10,000 specially programmed smartphones to West Africa to enhance data collection and identify aid needs. Additionally, Mr. Allen is providing a grant to NetHope to further connectivity throughout Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. This initiative is part of Mr. Allen’s $100 million commitment to tackle the Ebola crisis.

The smartphones will enable government workers and humanitarian aid volunteers to gather reliable data about the effectiveness of relief efforts in affected areas.

The technology utilized by the phones is UW CSE’s Open Data Kit, an open-source toolkit for building data collection applications on smartphones and uploading the data to the cloud for analysis. ODK is widely used throughout the world for data collection for global health and other applications. The Vulcan team that designed and implemented the ODK-based solution interacted with UW CSE Ph.D. alums (and ODK development team members) Carl Hartung and Yaw Anokwa, whose startup Nafundi works in this space."

Yes, it IS a good thing.

@11 Bravo

It's pretty much known what West Africa needs: health care workers, medical supplies, and labs. Both Allen and Bezos know that, or they would if they asked. Allen's $100 million could be used right now for the last two items needed.

@11:

Yes, we read that too - along with the part about loading the app on 10,000 phones nobody wants to buy.

@11 is right on. Stop thinking of smartphones as just phones. In some parts of the world they are THE computing device. Think of it as a laptop in this case. These apps are designed specifically to work in network-challenged environments and use cellular, WiFi, or sneaker-net.