Similarly cheaper smart phones have been around for a while, but Android One represents a concerted effort from Google to put its stamp on the user experience. These phones will all run close-to-stock Android without heavy manufacturer customizations, and Google will be able to push software updates itself. This should avoid the situation that arose a few years ago in other parts of the world, where low-powered phones were stuck on early versions of Android without any hope of an update, leaving customers unable to access new apps and services.

As Business Insider reported from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, the buzz was about a Chinese manufacturer showcasing a $35 smartphone and about Firefox’s flirting with selling one for $25. My contacts in China report similar prices.

First, dirt-cheap smartphones will have astonishing implications for the global economy: Smartphones are a productivity platform for wealth creation. Americans may waste days playing Piano Tiles or Clash of Clans, but the developing world can build lives with a $35 smartphone. Roughly 20% of the world population earns less than $2 a day, and the cost of a smartphone just dropped from a year’s earnings to three weeks’ pay. Now that’s an antipoverty program.

Google has launched Project Loon, bringing the Internet to rural and developing areas through high-altitude balloons. Facebook and Google are rushing to invest in drones to loop around and provide mobile connectivity. Poor villages and townships will finally have a platform to escape despair. Now we need applications to use $5-a-day workers to eyeball documents, photos, blueprints and anything that requires human cognitive skills, things that can’t yet and may never be coded into artificial-intelligence algorithms.

Related reading:MBBS in china  3g smart phones