When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2026, in 2 comments.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
Android Smartphone Storage Octa Core Monetization
Amazon's catalog no longer lists this product (checked 2026-11-02). The name comes from the link HN users posted.
Posting about Volla in a GrapheneOS thread is... I guess courageous?
They are kind of the opposite of GrapheneOS. Ancient kernel trees, ancient firmware bundles, etc. And since downstreams like /e/OS just take their kernels/firmware, they are ancient as well. Using Volla phones opens you up to a lot of known vulnerabilities.
Besides that, Volla is basically a marketing company (with some external contractors) that does Eurowashing. E.g. one of their phones (Quintus) is a phone designed by an Emirates company, produced by a Chinese ODM, marked up by 500 Euro by Volla (they probably turn some screws and flash the firmware to be able to call it 'from Germany'. You can get the same 719 Euro phone here for ~160 Euro:
https://www.amazon.ae/Android-Smartphone-Storage-Octa-Core-M...
I don't understand why people do free promotion for Volla, given that they are mostly snake oil salesmen.
Volla just Eurowashes/rebadges other low to midrange phones at a huge markup. E.g., the Volla Phone Quintus is:
https://www.amazon.ae/Android-Smartphone-Storage-Octa-Core-M...
(If you don't believe it from the identical specs and design, you can look at the committers in their kernel trees and it is basically maintained by Daria people.)
Their new Plinius model is just the Gigaset GS6 with a 250 Euro markup:
https://www.gigaset.com/gigaset-gs6/
At least this is made by a German company, though Gigset is Chinese-owned now.
At any rate, these are just rebadged phones and IIRC, but don't hold me to it, in both cases the original phones also support bootloader unlocking.