Crap cellphones

Sam Biddle rounds up the most appalling, terribly-made cellphones money can buy. Pictured right is the Pantech Jest (as in "surely you").

Why are these awful phones for sale—some for very much money!—when you can buy phones that aren't awful and cost zero dollars? Corporate apathy, manufacturing antipathy, a large populace of people who will literally walk into a store and buy anything, like molecules bouncing around in a void—all possible.

What's interesting is how these handsets live in a crappy "$50 hinterland" between smartphones and reliable, well-made $20 burners. With gadgets, mid-range is low-end.