[Blunt]

so a $400 iPhone or even a $200 smart phone is a better option than some of the $25 robot kits you can buy that have much more to learn from?

not buying it.

[Florin_Andrei]

(sigh) You don't have kids, do you?

It's not about price, it's about complexity. Plugging an old iPhone into a chassis is something anyone could do, even my 6 year old son. Programming an AVR from scratch is something many adults cannot do.