Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

[Raja Bose]

Mortullah you are talking semantics here. Btw the mobile device and smartphone divisions of Samsung are run like autonomous companies in a lot of ways especially in the context being compared in. Its not like one fine day Samsung refrigerator division will start dictating mobile phone strat-e-jee.

So its not a question of whether Sammy is doing something right but rather what exactly are they doing which protects them from the downside risk that both Nokia and Motorola faced - I for one don't see any difference in their current trends vs the trend followed by other such companies historically (Motorola, Nokia).

Isn't GB doing the same again? Release a tonne of models. Will it develop Asha into a full fledged OS to replace WP eventually?
Or will it be a part of Tizen? It has some parts of the eco system in place if it decides to go vertical like Nokia Music, maps. So far it has its superior build quality and imaging differentiating it from other vendors, but how long will it be able to stay in front in those departments? The cost of going vertical is also high. The losses if you cannot gather a good sized pie of the market is way higher than just being a hard ware vendor.

hehe actually GB has massively pruned its portfolio by like 80%. It used to be huge with tons of minor variants....something of the order of like 10k different models or so.

Asha is S40 - its not another new OS. Is S40 still the world's largest mobile platform in terms of number of users?

The problems you listed are caused by HW commoditization. That's why one cannot remain a HW onlee vendor and continue dominating becoz the layers where max value addition happens and bring max RoI don't belong to you - they belong to the platform vendor.

[hanumadu]

^^But how does the current number of models compare with what Samsung has? I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing as long they address specific markets.
During the 501 release, Elop called it the Asha Software Platform, so I thought they must have renamed it. Last quarter GB sold 60 million dumb phones. Samsung alone sold close to that many android phones. If we include all android vendors, S40 is no longer the largest selling OS. By installed base, s40 may be having the largest number of users, but it wont be for long.

[Mort Walker]

Its not like one fine day Samsung refrigerator division will start dictating mobile phone strat-e-jee.

You never know about those crazies at Sammy who might decide to make a ba$tardized Android controlled fridge or washing machine, complete with touchscreen and TouchJiz interface. They'll may call it Homelife Companion or some off the wall crap.

[ramana]

Mort, VPI had an initiative to control home appliances with fuzzy logic type of controllers. It was funded by some Korean company.

[Mort Walker]

VPI? Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg?

It is after all an excellent engineering program, so no surprise.

[ramana]

Yes. Was too lazy to type the full name.

[Anujan]

Somehow I think that it is wrong to conclude that a million models of smart phones are bad and a few models are good. Think about it: dell computers are customizable right up to the smallest nut and bolt, so in effect they are selling a gazillion models. I do think that if assembly techniques improve, cell phones will be customizable the same way too.

So whats wrong if they make a million models each catering to a different price / market / experience?

Drawing lessons from Nokia is a fallacy. Nokia failed not because they had a million models, but because they simply didn't have a phone that gave the same experience as an iPhone. Sure, they put in a camera and had apps and all that, but that's like comparing friendster and MySpace to Facebook. Facebook didn't invent the social network, but they did it the best and they are a platform -- not a product.

The million models, cheap plastic non-pixie-dust-so-all-companies-will-fail UX business you talk about is simply not true if minor nitty details are involved. How much time do you think sammy needs to crank out metal or polycarbonate unibody phone? A year? Now think about how many years it took Nokia to get out of the clusterf*ck: 4 years before the first credible challenger to iPhone. Five and a half if you don't count the stopgap lumia 800. Even more if you consider lack of app and content parity. So Nokia's trouble was not because iPhone scrolled smoother or had a seamless body or they made a million models. It is because they bought a knife to a gunfight.

A more drastic analogy is like arguing that Kodak failed because they had too many film varieties and their packaging wasn't pleasing. They failed because they weren't playing in the market segment that disrupted them.

Yes Sammy might fail. It won't be because their plastic is thin or their UI lacks pleasing colors or because they sell too many kinds of phones: it will be because they get blindsided by a market segment they didn't see coming.

[Raja Bose]

So whats wrong if they make a million models each catering to a different price / market / experience?

It doesn't scale from a resourcing and product management perspective. Each variant actually needs a whole bunch of folks to manage its lifecycle - trust me, its a pain-da-butt on a level software companies cannot even begin to imagine. And sooner or later it also leads to confusion in terms of expanding one's device portfolio and getting hamstrung by the long legacy tail of multiple revisions whether in terms of hw design, id, software design - you name it. Essentially having a huge unwieldy portfolio leads to feature creep and paralysis.

Drawing lessons from Nokia is a fallacy. Nokia failed not because they had a million models, but because they simply didn't have a phone that gave the same experience as an iPhone. So basically better UX wins

The million models, cheap plastic non-pixie-dust-so-all-companies-will-fail UX business you talk about is simply not true if minor nitty details are involved.

The causes for such failure are well known and hardly rocket science if one bothers to study the mobile industry and its evolution in-depth - its out there in the open! We can try our best to convince ourselves how Sammy had an ephiphany and how they are somehow special and protected but the truth is they are following the same trend as GB and Motor Oil have before them and those companies had the same capabilities as Sammy especially GB when it comes to scale - the only change is there is a phase delay that's all.

Trying to find one single reason why GB or Motor Oil failed is plain naïve and is equivalent to trying to find a magic bullet which killed the werewolf. The reason they got blindsided is due to a number of reasons including but not limited to having an unwieldy portfolio. And all the reasons discussed before played a role - its not a mutually exclusive set of reasons. Also, Sammy won't fail becoz its churning out turds but when it gets blindsided it has higher risk of failure becoz if it churns out turds with bad UX becoz its products are not sticky and it has higher risk of getting blindsided becoz of inertia caused by an unwieldy portfolio. Its not one simple single watershed reason which causes a company to get blindsided - its a cascading set of bad decisions which causes that. That is why one needs to study the industry in-depth to understand the underlying causes which led to such failure historically in other companies and learn lessons from that - pithy YumBeeAye style statements look good on ppt but don't provide any useful insight.

[Anujan]

Well pithy statements don't provide insight but you use UX as a catch all statement that doesn't provide any insight at all!! I could argue that "things should be good" and argue that "not being good" is what caused products and companies to fail. That would provide as much insight as "needs good UX"!

You lump smooth scrolling, good construction (appearance in some sense) with ability to do bulk of the activities I want to do (capability in some sense) all under "UX".

Nokia made phones which were sturdy, didn't drop calls and had good battery life. In that sense UX was good. IPhone first gen dropped calls, had bad battery life, construction was not sturdy, the body would chip and the glass could crack if dropped, and typing was/is a pain. In that sense iPhone has bad UX. Except that iPhone in fact had a good UX because you could browse, watch YouTube, do email, lookup maps very nicely. So tell me, did iPhone have better UX than Nokia? You could argue either way. If iPhone had failed, we could have chalked it to "bad UX" due to bad construction and battery life. In fact that's what Ballmer gloated about and thats why Nokia said they weren't worried. Anyone remember the famous Nokia statement "users dont want big glass screen on their phones because they are afraid to break it"?.

My point is, iPhone could do a lot more things than the phones at that time. People still bought it despite the bad body, fragile glass, bad battery, bad reception. If you want to call it "good UX", yeah sure. But then you come back and argue that a Sammy phone which arguably matches iPhone feature for feature and even exceeds it in areas of cost, multitasking and screen size has "bad UX" because the body is cheap!

So what really is UX? Construction or capability? It can't be the first in one case and the second in the other. If it is both then or goes back to "things should be good"

[Anujan]

Simplistically speaking: Companies fail because of two reasons (1) Users dont want what they make. Examples are Kodak and Nokia. At some point users wanted what they made but at some point they stopped wanting it. (2) Users still want what the company makes, but there is no profit in making it. Example is Dell.

Obviously we all know the role of competition, monopoly, commoditization and branding in (2). As in any maturing products, margins in Phones will fall. FruitCo does not make as much money in the iPad mini as they do in the iPad. And iPad mini is cannibalizing iPad. There is pressure on FruitCo to further lower prices on tablets and phones. As long as products are interchangeable, there will always be pricing pressure. UX has no role in this. Making a million types of products, if done in a sane way has no role in this. Sure you can argue that UX ultimately contributes to brand image which in turn contributes to users willing to pay more -- but that connection is tenuous at best. Good customer service and return policy will also get you brand loyalty, despite shitty usability. You can verify this point with Amazon and their website.

The biggest danger to companies is from (1). And that typically happens when products with game changing capabilities are introduced. Sure you can lump them into UX -- as in "I can do more things with it, so my user experience is better" and lump it with "product is light, small, has premium feel and winds smoothly. so it has a good UX" --- but that gives no insight.

If I were in Kodak at that time and asked "how can I improve the UX", the answer would be smaller film, easier loading and unloading of cartridge and easier processing because the camera recorded the shooting conditions into the film. Kodak in fact improved their UX and came out with .... Advanced photo system film cartridge!! . A boatload of good it did them. The irony though was that Kodak made the first digital camera in 1975, but never took it seriously. Nikon had several film camera models, at every pricepoint. That doesnt seem to have deterred them from moving to digital!

Game changing capabilities is what killed Kodak, not smoother cameras with better construction. Digital could shoot many photos, seeing them instantly and reshooting if necessary, zero cost of shooting pictures....

One way of getting game changing capabilities is to make your platform programmable. Programmable platforms always win, because use cases that nobody dreamed of while making the products can be enabled. Think of what would have happened if Mahdi had his way and iPhone was not programmable (at first he refused to release a SDK). It would have been a no-contest with Android, it would have killed the iPhone dead in no time! Nokia was blindsided by this, they were competing against a programmable platform with thousands of apps. Thats why "burning platform" memo was written and it wasnt titled "Need more glass", "need less seams" or "make scrolling smooth"

Yes premium feel and smoother scrolling matters, but it is not even two orders of magnitude near to how important capabilities are. The point is, can Sammy spot the next game changing opportunity and jump on it. You argue that a big product portfolio distracts from making tight seams. Well there is some merit to it. You argue that a big product portfolio distracts from spotting the next game changer. I am not so sure about that.

Point is, sammy may or may not get blindsided. But one data point is that Sammy is still investing in R&D in processors, flash, display tech and battery tech. This is not a mark of a company that is complacent about looking for the next game changer.

[Mort Walker]

^^^

[BhairavP]

My 808's 41MPx sensor laughs at your puny iPhones and Galaxies.

[Anujan]

This is an interesting read and a review for a HBR paper "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave
by Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen" http://business.fiu.edu/emba-consortium ... logies.pdf

Written in 1995, still prescient to this day:

One of the most consistent patterns in business is the failure of leading companies to stay at the top of their industries when technologies or markets change. Goodyear and Firestone entered the radial-tire market quite late. Xerox let Canon create the small-copier market. Bucyrus-Erie allowed Caterpillar and Deere to take over the mechanical excavator market. Sears gave way to Wal-Mart.

The pattern of failure has been especially striking in the computer industry. IBM dominated the mainframe market but missed by years the emergence of minicomputers, which were technologically much simpler than mainframes. Digital Equipment dominated the minicomputer market with innovations like its VAX architecture but missed the personal-computer market almost completely. Apple Computer led the world of personal computing and established the standard for user-friendly computing but lagged five years behind the leaders in bringing its portable computer to market.

Why is it that companies like these invest aggressively—and successfully—in the technologies necessary to retain their current customers but then fail to make certain other technological investments that customers of the future will demand? Undoubtedly, bureaucracy, arrogance, tired executive blood, poor planning, and short-term investment horizons have all played a role. But a more fundamental reason lies at the heart of the paradox: leading companies succumb to one of the most popular, and valuable, management dogmas. They stay close to their customers.

.....

We have seen this pattern repeatedly in an ongoing study of leading companies in a variety of industries that have confronted technological change. The research shows that most well-managed, established companies are consistently ahead of their industries in developing and commercializing new technologies—from incremental improvements to radically new approaches—as long as those technologies address the next-generation performance needs of their customers. ... In fact, the processes and incentives that companies use to keep focused on their main customers work so well that they blind those companies to important new technologies in emerging markets. Many companies have learned the hard way the perils of ignoring new technologies that do not initially meet the needs of mainstream customers

......

The technological changes that damage established companies are usually not radically new or difficult from a technological point of view. They do, however, have two important characteristics: First, they typically present a different package of performance attributes—ones that, at least at the outset, are not valued by existing customers. Second, the performance attributes that existing customers do value improve at such a rapid rate that the new technology can later invade those established markets. Only at this point will mainstream customers want the technology. Unfortunately for the established suppliers, by then it is often too late: the pioneers of the new technology dominate the market.

Each time a disruptive technology emerged, between one-half and two-thirds of the established manufacturers failed to introduce models employing the new architecture—in stark contrast to their timely launches of critical sustaining technologies. Those companies that finally did launch new models typically lagged behind entrant companies by two years—eons in an industry whose products’ life cycles are often two years. Three waves of entrant companies led these revolutions; they first captured the new markets and then dethroned the leading companies in the mainstream markets.

[Raja Bose]

Well pithy statements don't provide insight but you use UX as a catch all statement that doesn't provide any insight at all!!

That should have actually given you a hint what UX is. Plus you can go back and read my old posts becoz what I will say below is a repetition of what I have already covered many times before Its no surprise to me that UX is one of the most misunderstood and most over-used/over-abused terms in the mobile industry.

So what really is UX? Construction or capability? It can't be the first in one case and the second in the other. If it is both then or goes back to "things should be good"

So what is UX? Is it good construction or capability? It is both and much more (smooth UI, battery life, good apps, good app experience...all contribute to it). In a nutshell UX is what the user feels when using the device. The key thing that differentiates good UX from bad UX is design choices which make a balance amongst all these factors such that the user's experience with the device is positive (that's why its called "User Experience"). The Mahdi made a profound quote which actually defines the essence of good UX which in turn is enabled by good design namely (paraphrasing), "The Design of a product is not how a product looks but how it works". So good construction alone cannot be good UX becoz I can build a phone which can survive getting crushed by a car hence will look and weigh like a brick - is that good UX? No! Capability alone cannot be good UX becoz I can shoehorn all sorts of functionality into a phone like Sammy did but it makes it painful for me to do any of my common tasks - is that good UX? No! Battery Life alone cannot be good UX becoz I can make a phone which has a battery which lasts a whole month but it will weigh a ton - is that good UX? No! Is having a Octa-core processor in a phone good UX? Not when the UI lags! Speaking of Sammy their flagship phones have bad UX not solely becoz of cheap plastics onlee but becoz they lag, have tons of features which actually hinder use OOB (see above point) and bad UI flow. Just becoz 2 products match each other on the features table doesn't make them products of equivalent quality - that is a major misconception.

Good UX is about amplifying the strong points of a device which matter the user while shielding the weak points or ensuring that the weak points don't matter to the user. The definition of good UX does not change but what constitutes good UX changes with time - its not static. So while the sturdy tank-like construction of GB phones might have played a role in ensuring good UX years ago, now with higher disposable income and a replacement lifecycle of ~2 years it is no longer relevant in ensuring a good UX. So your examples of GB vs FruitCo are valid but your reasoning/conclusions is incorrect. BTW you do realize that one of the major game changers introduced by FruitCo which put GB into near-death was actually Good UX. Otherwise do you think Android would try to improve its UI experience thru efforts like Project Butter? The Mahdi ensured that the mango consumer's expectations from a mobile device now included good UX and this was a kick in the mush for engineering/technology companies like Chacha and Mickey to shape up or ship out. He raised the bar on what constitutes an acceptable user experience on a mobile device - what would be considered great user experience back in the days is now considered merely acceptable/expected.

Good UX is all about Good Design and Good Design is all about balance. In the real world its always a trade-off between different factors and the trick is to balance those factors in such a way that the user's experience is positive. UX drives desirability and desirability drives loyalty and stickiness of a product. Its funny how engineers find this hard to digest and think its fashionable to claim UX is fluff and pixie dust. The harsh reality is you can have the best super duper technology under the hood but if its doesn't positively affect the user's experience in a way perceptible to the user - its pretty useless. Ensuring it does is what is good UX - its stating the obvious but this basic fact is missing from a lot of engineers' understanding. And unlike purely technical challenges there is no easily quantifiable way or recipe/prescription/algorithm to create good UX - its critical but not trivial (in a mathematical sense).

If you are interested in understanding the underpinnings of good UX and why it is crucial, you can start off by reading The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. The text is slightly dated but the fundamentals are still very much valid.

[Raja Bose]

Making a million types of products, if done in a sane way has no role in this.

On paper it sounds great but doesn't happen in practice.....hasn't happened till date coz companies are run by humans not robots.

Sure you can lump them into UX -- as in "I can do more things with it, so my user experience is better" and lump it with "product is light, small, has premium feel and winds smoothly. so it has a good UX" --- but that gives no insight.

The answer to that question is deceptively simple. At the time you are marketing the device to the consumer and in that specific market segment, what matters to the end user? Does "I can do more things with it" matter more or does "product is light, small, has premium feel and winds smoothly" matter more to the end user? What matters more to the end user defines what constitutes a good UX. In fact this exercise is undertaken at least a few 100 if not 1000 times during product design phase of any CE device today - its not some fluffy hand waving powerpoint exercise, it can make or break a product.

If I were in Kodak at that time and asked "how can I improve the UX", the answer would be smaller film, easier loading and unloading of cartridge and easier processing because the camera recorded the shooting conditions into the film. Kodak in fact improved their UX and came out with .... Advanced photo system film cartridge!! . A boatload of good it did them. The irony though was that Kodak made the first digital camera in 1975, but never took it seriously. Nikon had several film camera models, at every pricepoint. That doesnt seem to have deterred them from moving to digital!

You are comparing UX (easier to use film catridge) vs a paradigm shift (moving from film to digital) and using that to try to explain why UX is not important? That's like trying to explain why I failed my exam by claiming its becoz my neighbor had an an upset stomach Anyhow mobile device industry is not the camera fillum industry or vice versa otherwise we could compare the aircraft manufacturing industry with the toilet fittings industry.

Think of what would have happened if Mahdi had his way and iPhone was not programmable (at first he refused to release a SDK). It would have been a no-contest with Android, it would have killed the iPhone dead in no time!

You do realize that without FruitCo introducing the centralized App Store model, there would be no Android in its present avatar hence, the question of whether Android would even be as successful as it is now would be debatable, forget about it killing the iPhone. The industry is not static and events and effects are not mutually independent.

Yes premium feel and smoother scrolling matters, but it is not even two orders of magnitude near to how important capabilities are.

How do you define capabilities? Why would you assume they are disjoint from UX? (read previous post as to how they become or don't become part of UX). In fact nothing could be further from the truth! UX is not some abstract academic concept - it is probably the biggest reality check on the quality of a CE product. In fact the capabilities that you leave out of a device are as important as the capabilities you put in a device. Becoz as mentioned in my previous post, good UX involves a balancing act against trade-offs to maximize perceptible positive impact on the user.

Point is, sammy may or may not get blindsided. But one data point is that Sammy is still investing in R&D in processors, flash, display tech and battery tech. This is not a mark of a company that is complacent about looking for the next game changer.

By that logic GB should not have been blindsided. The fallacy of the above argument is that it presumes that the next disruption will occur in one of those areas. Despite all those investments in processors, FLASH, display etc. GB got blindsided - why? Becoz it did not see the mobile device as an app platform and all those R&D investments didn't help becoz the disruption did not happen in those areas! If it had then GB would still be #1. That's an example of why the above assertion is invalid.

That being said, assuming there is no major disruption in mobile, Sammy is trying to ensure that it can be dominant by removing its dependencies such as lack of its own platform, lack of ownership of some key apps and making sure that any new differentiators (such as automotive app integration for example) are exclusive to it, available on future platforms it owns and will launch and available through a channel owned by it (Samsung app store vs Google Play). These actions if executed well will go much further in shielding it from effects of getting blindsided by disruptions as opposed to churning out procesors or FLASH.

[Raja Bose]

Musk: $35,000 Teslas might be three years away, will be 20 percent smaller

When this happens Lexus, Infiniti, low-end Beemers and Acura will dhoti shiver. But to really make them colour dhotis khaki he needs to solve the charging problem. Increasing the number and density of charging stations is fine but either their service capacity has to be significantly large or battery charging times need to be drastically reduced or range significantly increased. Even if a car takes 15 mins to full charge, that's still magnitudes more than the time it takes to tank up a gasoline engine car. And on top of that, the Israeli swappable EV batteries company went kaput 2 days ago.

Elon Musk reveals Tesla's Supercharger network will triple its coverage area this month

[negi]

GB had all it's eggs kept in a same basket, Samsung has a diverse portfolio it will have to commit some serious blunders to loose it all from here. Worse case scenario for Samsung would be going down Sony's path i.e. from one time market leader in consumer AV gadgets to now a so so player. It will be interesting to keep an eye on global trend in sale of DSLRs especially in the light of availability of pretty good compact digital cameras or even the ones on new smartphones , I mean at least in my case it's been over a year since I used my D90; for usual get togethers or even functions I just use my iPhone and from what I know cameras on GS IV and Lumia are even better.

[Prasad]

A 250 mile range should be good for roughly 4 days of a 20 mile commute in rush hour traffic. Lesser #days for a longer trip. Even if your commute is say 60-70 miles thats still atleast a days' commute. A lot of people still only do that much during a regular day. Why wouldn't you buy an electric car and plug it in at night for a charge? It isn't any different from charging your smartphone every night. Sure we all grumble but its no different really. Unless your daily commute is close to max range, you'll still have enough juice to do the small errands, lunch outside, whatever without having to recharge during the day. Only question is, what is the per mile cost comparison between gasoline and power.

[Raja Bose]

GB had all it's eggs kept in a same basket, Samsung has a diverse portfolio it will have to commit some serious blunders to loose it all from here. Worse case scenario for Samsung would be going down Sony's path i.e. from one time market leader in consumer AV gadgets to now a so so player.

That is exactly correct. Sammy as a company ain't going away unless there is a world war but then there is no company like Sammy or Mitsui of yore or Mitsubishi in the decadent west.

DSLRs are great for what they do but their target audience is quite small compared to P&S. I have not used a P&S for quite a while now and my current smartphunwa (Lumia 928) can take pics which puts pretty much every P&S to shame except the Sony ones which use the Exmor sensor which has superb low light capability - rumour is GB has a deal with Sony to bring that sensor into smartphones. I see P&S going the way of standalone GPS equipped PND as these camera technologies gets commoditized in smartphones. Yesterday while flying United I saw this ad from Garmin in the in-flight mag which has the by-line "Break free from bars" (beta negi, not those kind of bars ) where it touted how you didn't need a data connection to do turn-by-turn nav on Garmin PND. I guess they are depending on consumers not knowing that Nokia Drive has offline PND style nav which makes the Garmin redundant (plus both use the same map/PoI data from NAVTEQ so why pay Garmin?!).

----

I wouldn't say Tesla has leveled the playing field in luxury.....yet. They have certainly fired a shot across the bows in a major way. Further execution will tell if they can carry their game changing plans thru and disrupt completely the stodgy in-bred auto industry (telecom industry was like that too).

[Raja Bose]

A 250 mile range should be good for roughly 4 days of a 20 mile commute in rush hour traffic. Lesser #days for a longer trip. Even if your commute is say 60-70 miles thats still atleast a days' commute. A lot of people still only do that much during a regular day. Why wouldn't you buy an electric car and plug it in at night for a charge? It isn't any different from charging your smartphone every night. Sure we all grumble but its no different really. Unless your daily commute is close to max range, you'll still have enough juice to do the small errands, lunch outside, whatever without having to recharge during the day. Only question is, what is the per mile cost comparison between gasoline and power.

The easy way to answer that question is to ask: "If you had to own one car in your household, would you buy the Tesla Model S?" (assuming money was not a limiting factor)

This touches on something which comes up in product design namely, what are the one-off use cases which colour a customer's buying preference? In this case one of them would be range anxiety on long drives.

The mechanics of charging an EV are somewhat like a smartphone but the experience is not. Why? Becoz you can't plug in a EV just about anywhere. That is what Deer Gland secretor is focusing on now and rightly so. But for that he has to solve the twin problems of distribution of charging stations and charging time.

[Prasad]

True. Musk seems to be on it now. Given the seemingly successful launch of the model s, they're now putting in place a decent network. Time for a charge to full will still be an issue, unless someone comes up with a super duper swap system for the batteries. I wonder if something like a roll-on/roll-off system can be developed like how tanks do treads. That is the only thing stopping people from doing long distance trips like sfo->vegas.

Dslr's are pretty niche imo. You don't need a dslr for taking snapshots while on vacation or to shoot the random thing during the day. Unless you're going to stop, think and then take a picture, a dslr is pretty much wasted in ones hands. That is why the M series (if they'd done it properly) or micro 4/3rds are such a good option. Bigger sensor than a phone and better quality.

[Zynda]

Windows 8.1 is officially unveiled. Start button makes its appearance but not Start Menu! Per early reports, M$ has changed a lot based on customer feedback...guess have to wait till end of June when consumer preview is released for detailed reviews.

Windows 7 Ultimate is selling for $300 at Amazon! Am thinking should I stock one for future? I have plans of buying a new laptop next year and don't want to get stuck with 8.1 if it sucks like 8. I am not a big fan of current Metro UI and looks like its not going away on 8.1 either!

[Anujan]

Regarding Tesla, the only thing that comes in the middle is the battery-safety. GM had an interesting take on the problem and used an architecture very similar to Tesla on the all-electric concept. A flat, multi-purpose drive train with different style of bodies bolted to the top.

Even in gasoline cars, car chassis is not developed from scratch in every model. The chassis and drive train is the same and the body is changed. For example, TFTA Audi TT roadster has the same chassis as the very SDRE Volkswagen Golf.

[Gus]

if the electric was economical, i would buy one, even if it was the only car. anything else, like a couple of road trips a year, a rental can easily cover those.

[Mort Walker]

DSLRs are great for what they do but their target audience is quite small compared to P&S. I have not used a P&S for quite a while now and my current smartphunwa (Lumia 928) can take pics which puts pretty much every P&S to shame except the Sony ones which use the Exmor sensor which has superb low light capability - rumour is GB has a deal with Sony to bring that sensor into smartphones. I see P&S going the way of standalone GPS equipped PND as these camera technologies gets commoditized in smartphones.

The Lumia 928 is a turd compared to any decent P&S camera. You made the classic mistake of equating a good sensor to a quality photograph. You can use the best sensor in the world, but optics takes up physical space and there is simply no substitute for that. A camera in a smart phone is a nice feature, but not really very useful for anything practical.

[Raja Bose]

That's standard practice in automotive such as the Porsche Cayenne sharing the same platform as the VW Touareg. Even worse is the Japanese rebadging Accords and selling them as Acura to gullible Khan consumers like the TSX

[Raja Bose]

DSLRs are great for what they do but their target audience is quite small compared to P&S. I have not used a P&S for quite a while now and my current smartphunwa (Lumia 928) can take pics which puts pretty much every P&S to shame except the Sony ones which use the Exmor sensor which has superb low light capability - rumour is GB has a deal with Sony to bring that sensor into smartphones. I see P&S going the way of standalone GPS equipped PND as these camera technologies gets commoditized in smartphones.

The Lumia 928 is a turd compared to any decent P&S camera. .

Perhaps on paper. Not in the real world. Your P&S is going the way of the dinosaur, sorry.

[Mort Walker]

^^^Not on paper, but real photographs my friend. P&S sales are still strong and they've evolved. For $300, you get a lot more for your money and the optics just can't be beat. It's simple, practical physics and you can see the results of it, so no denying it.

[Mort Walker]

That's standard practice in automotive such as the Porsche Cayenne sharing the same platform as the VW Touareg. Even worse is the Japanese rebadging Accords and selling them as Acura to gullible Khan consumers like the TSX

The Acura has a different suspension (struts, control arms, and sway bar linkages are different) and transmission is tuned differently as well. The closest to the TSX would be the Accord Sport, but when you modify it be like the TSX would involve about $5K, so might as well get a TSX.

[Raja Bose]

^^^Not on paper, but real photographs my friend. P&S sales are still strong and they've evolved. For $300, you get a lot more for your money and the optics just can't be beat. It's simple, practical physics and you can see the results of it, so no denying it.

I am talking about first person real world use (in this case my own personal experience). And what extra space/fizzyics are you talking about? We are comparing P&S not DSLRs with smartphone cameras. Smartphones now use Carl Zeiss optics, they oversample to remove the need for motorized optical zoom mechanism, all somewhat complex but very practical fizzyics and signal processing. So what is this pixie dust in P&S optics you are talking about? And on top of that, speaking in UX terms, people care a lot about convenience becoz "the best camera is the one you happen to have with you" which in a vast majority of cases for a vast majority of people is the phone.

Keep those blinkers on but don't buy stock in P&S camera manufacturers.

[Raja Bose]

That's standard practice in automotive such as the Porsche Cayenne sharing the same platform as the VW Touareg. Even worse is the Japanese rebadging Accords and selling them as Acura to gullible Khan consumers like the TSX

The Acura has a different suspension (struts, control arms, and sway bar linkages are different) and transmission is tuned differently as well. The closest to the TSX would be the Accord Sport, but when you modify it be like the TSX would involve about $5K, so might as well get a TSX.

The TSX was and perhaps still is sold as an Accord in Japan. Don't compare a US Accord with the US TSX.

[nachiket]

Folks, my mom wants to get a low end smartphunwa in India not costing more than Rs. 15k. I suggested the Lumia 620, since the low end Android phones usually have old OS versions with bugs and their HW cannot run Android without lag. Low end GB phunwas with WP8 don't seem to have that problem. Has anyone here used the Lumia 620? Is it worth shelling out more for the 720? And is the UI intuitive and easy to understand?

[nachiket]

I am talking about first person real world use (in this case my own personal experience). And what extra space/fizzyics are you talking about? We are comparing P&S not DSLRs with smartphone cameras. Smartphones now use Carl Zeiss optics, they oversample to remove the need for motorized optical zoom mechanism, all somewhat complex but very practical fizzyics and signal processing. So what is this pixie dust in P&S optics you are talking about? And on top of that, speaking in UX terms, people care a lot about convenience becoz "the best camera is the one you happen to have with you" which in a vast majority of cases for a vast majority of people is the phone.

Keep those blinkers on but don't buy stock in P&S camera manufacturers.

Is the oversampling done by all smartphone cameras now? I thought that was something only GB used for the PureView cameras. Smartphone cameras are still hopeless in low light conditions and the LED flash is not as powerful as the ones on P&S cameras. The HTC One seems to be the exception as far as low light pics are concerned but they have sacrificed detail in regular conditions compared to other phones due to the lower pixel count.

People don't carry their P&S to parties and weddings anymore, but if you are going on vacation and are going to be taking plenty of pics of picturesque landscapes or night pics of cities etc., a P&S is way better than a smartphone camera. A DSLR of course is on a whole different level when it comes to picture quality.

[Suraj]

The TSX was and perhaps still is sold as an Accord in Japan. Don't compare a US Accord with the US TSX.

Which is because Acura itself is a premium badging to distinguish it from the mass-market marquee in markets outside Japan. There's no Acura in Japan; everything is a Honda. Until recently there was not even a Lexus in Japan - the same car you see as a Lexus LS here was sold as a Toyota Celsior in Japan.

[negi]

I have the iphone4s a Nikon D90 and a canon S 90; that little bugger from Cannon takes far better pictures than my Nikon with 50mm prime on it when used in auto mode and makes a nice companion on treks or hikes where lugging a DSLR is cumbersome, yes DSLRs are all about shooting in manual mode but the fact is there are some beautiful moments in life which will not wait for one to deploy a tripod and calibrate the light meter and shoot. In weekly get togethers hand instinctively reaches out for mobile phone to capture pictures . All in all DSLR mostly collects dust for most part of the year.

[Raja Bose]

Get the 720 over 620. Based on my mom's OOB experience with the Surface and Metro UI, I can safely say that it is more intuitive for people who are not used to a windows/mouse/keyboard interface and hence don't have preconceived expectations. Same goes for WindowsPhone - my mom could figure out how to use my Lumina 928 by herself much more easily than my dad who had much more trouble with it.

I am talking about first person real world use (in this case my own personal experience). And what extra space/fizzyics are you talking about? We are comparing P&S not DSLRs with smartphone cameras. Smartphones now use Carl Zeiss optics, they oversample to remove the need for motorized optical zoom mechanism, all somewhat complex but very practical fizzyics and signal processing. So what is this pixie dust in P&S optics you are talking about? And on top of that, speaking in UX terms, people care a lot about convenience becoz "the best camera is the one you happen to have with you" which in a vast majority of cases for a vast majority of people is the phone.

Keep those blinkers on but don't buy stock in P&S camera manufacturers.

Is the oversampling done by all smartphone cameras now? I thought that was something only GB used for the PureView cameras. Smartphone cameras are still hopeless in low light conditions and the LED flash is not as powerful as the ones on P&S cameras. The HTC One seems to be the exception as far as low light pics are concerned but they have sacrificed detail in regular conditions compared to other phones due to the lower pixel count.

Well I was talking about state of the art today in smartphone cameras. As it gets commoditized it will spread to lower and lower price points. Right now HTC and GB do oversampling based zoom but HTC hasn't been able to scale up performance to larger sensors yet - they will get there soon though. BTW smartphones do carry Xenon flash (one reason I got the Lumina 928 and used to have a N8).

[Mort Walker]

^^^Not on paper, but real photographs my friend. P&S sales are still strong and they've evolved. For $300, you get a lot more for your money and the optics just can't be beat. It's simple, practical physics and you can see the results of it, so no denying it.

I am talking about first person real world use (in this case my own personal experience). And what extra space/fizzyics are you talking about? We are comparing P&S not DSLRs with smartphone cameras. Smartphones now use Carl Zeiss optics, they oversample to remove the need for motorized optical zoom mechanism, all somewhat complex but very practical fizzyics and signal processing. So what is this pixie dust in P&S optics you are talking about? And on top of that, speaking in UX terms, people care a lot about convenience becoz "the best camera is the one you happen to have with you" which in a vast majority of cases for a vast majority of people is the phone.

Keep those blinkers on but don't buy stock in P&S camera manufacturers.

I don't think you've ever bothered to take pictures with any stand alone camera, in that case even a turd like the Lumia 928 or any toy will work. Simple things like focal length and ratio of FL to diameter on a lens make a big difference in shooting, so if you can't understand that, there is no sense in talking to you. You can use any sensor and all of the signal processing methodologies in the world that aren't worth squat on a lens smaller than a thumb tack. The CZ name plate is pure marketing for lenses on a toy. No one gives a sh1t about pixel count, anything over 8 MP on a phone is pointless since you aren't going to be able to resolve detail anyway.

[Raja Bose]

^^^Yes I guess only you have used a P&S camera....Now instead of your usual hand waving BS why dont you explain where exactly is a P&S camera's mechanism soup-e-rear to a top end smartphone's camera assembly today? Given your ignorance I would be curious about the further spin you want to put into it. Remember we are not comparing the crap Sammy puts in as camera modules. And I seriously doubt you have used any PureView camera phone except spouting information read from tech blogs.

So anything above 8MP is useless in a smartphone? I guess Damian Dinning who designed the PureView 808 phone's camera module didn't get the memo. That phone not only has a sensor which is larger than your "standalone" P&S cameras, it has a 41MP sensor which it uses to do lossless zoom without a physical motorized mechanism. Too bad they didn't get to avail of your wisdom otherwise they would have given up and called it a day.

I think I am going to randomly engage in piskology experiments on this dhaaga from now on, where I will say the exact opposite of what I intend to say just so that you will instinctively say the opposite by reflex and end up agreeing with me in reality

[Raja Bose]

I have the iphone4s a Nikon D90 and a canon S 90; that little bugger from Cannon takes far better pictures than my Nikon with 50mm prime on it when used in auto mode and makes a nice companion on treks or hikes where lugging a DSLR is cumbersome, yes DSLRs are all about shooting in manual mode but the fact is there are some beautiful moments in life which will not wait for one to deploy a tripod and calibrate the light meter and shoot. In weekly get togethers hand instinctively reaches out for mobile phone to capture pictures . All in all DSLR mostly collects dust for most part of the year.

past....dont tell Mortullah, he will accuse you of never having used a DSLR

[Mort Walker]

Now instead of your usual hand waving BS why dont you explain where exactly is a P&S camera's mechanism soup-e-rear to a top end smartphone's camera assembly today?

I already explained it if you bothered to read. It's called focal length and lens diameter - something you just can't get on any phone and why it's better to carry at least a P&S. The 41MP sensor is marketing for the masses. If 41MP was of any use on a small surface area, it would have found it's way in professional use somewhere by now. People can't carry a DSLR at all times, that is understandable due to circumstances and weight, which is what negi was referring to.

You are right, I have not used the Puerile View on the Nokia 808, but I have used a variety of SLR and DSLRs and P&Ss with a wide variety of lenses over the last 30+ years. Right now my favorite is the 5DMkIII with 40mm pancake as my P&S which I prefer over the Canon G15 and Sony RX100. That said, I did look in to the Nokia 808 last year, and on the advice of camera enthusiasts who recommended that I not bother with it. If you even used a P&S, the other thing it offers is better ergonomics of the controls so you can quickly take your shot without fiddling with the device, remember you said it's about the UX?

Goodbye and good riddance!