this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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They've got a lot of referbs and knock-offs (and the occasional rocks-in-a-box scam), which is one reason why prices can seem suspiciously low.
Which isn't to say American phones aren't overpriced. But the way AliExpress vendors make money isn't by simply undercutting American retails. They still have to source their product from somewhere, and that often means cutting corners or using substandard parts.
The other side of the marketing-heavy society is constantly being burned by "discount" products that are low-quality imitations. Case in point, back when Black Friday was a big deal, retailers would often source cheaper versions of well-known brands and use deceptive advertising to convince people the big TV you were buying at a 80% discount the day after Thanksgiving was comparable to the one you'd have gotten the day before.
Buying "full price" is often a hedge against getting one of these bait-and-switch marketing gimmicks.
I suggested AliExpress because it's internationally accessible, but I've actually bough small cheap phones both were I am now, Portugal and were I lived before, the UK from local eBay sellers and even mobile phone repair shops.
It's stuff that costs 20 bucks and the reason for that is because the price of the electronics needed for that really is stupidly cheap nowadays as it's all so heavilly integrated and even in China stuff like circuit board assembly is mostly automated.
Going directly to some seller from China just removes most of the middlemen as well as any brand markups (though the seller is almost certainly a middleman since factories don't usually sell by the unit, at least not in my experience way back when I had a small business importing and selling electronics).
It's the same reason why a perfectly good TV Media Box will cost you €35 (including VAT and shipping) even though that thing has to have enough power and memory to run Android and something like Kodi on top of it, which doesn't apply to a basic mobile phone.
(I've actually made my own basic mobile phone a couple of years ago when playing with Electronics, though it wasn't that practical to use, since it was all stuff hanging from a breadboard and connected to a 2G module ;)
It's shocking just how huge a fraction of the prices we pay nowadays for consumer electronics in the West are markups.
Sure, more complex and expensive devices it does make sense to get it from a brand (though I would advise against big brands, or at least get something you can put a Custom ROM on, beause of enshittification) even if the quality of no-name-Brand goods from China is actually better than it used to be, because it's so much money at stake that the risks of scams, bad quality and inexistent support in getting if from random-Chinese-brand make it maybe not such a good idea for products worth hundreds of dollars (which would also favoured by scammers).
Simple mobile phones, however, are not "complex and expensive devices" nowadays and the same companies making €35 TV media boxes or €50 Single-Board-Computers (like the Banana-Pi or Orange-Pi stuff) have enough expertise to make basic phones and the price of those things is pretty low if you're not expecting similar features as bigger smartphones (i.e. no high resolution screens, not much memory or processing power, no high resolution cameras with good optics) since that's were most of the parts cost is.
But yeah, I get your point and I myself generally have a maximum price point for the stuff I'm willing to source from there since because of the risk involved, but if you're after a mobile phone that costs $20, just get two or source it for a bit more from a local seller in a place like eBay to be a bit safe when it comes to replacements.