Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 16 Mar 2013 11:47

Anujan wrote:HTC should get into better distribution deals. If they dont this time, their future is bleak.

Lets see if Nokia can remain afloat, we will know that only after a few quarters.

Google should be shitting its pants -- why exactly? How much money do they make on android? And this galaxy OS that you speak of -- does it have youtube, search and maps? Then all is well.

They have a castle called Maps, search, gmail and youtube. Around it a moat called Chrome and in it a few crocodiles called Android. Killing a few crocodiles does not mean the castle is falling any time soon.

If they are making enough money from Android, they won't be pushing for GMail app(where they can advertise, collect data unlike other Mail apps).. they wont have blocked the ad blocker apps in play store. Youtube, Search and Maps can work really well in web browser... to block GalaxyOS... Google would have to block UA string used by Android OS.

Also, I don't think Google can ignore AmazonOS+GalaxyOS+Windows... that would hurt their service lot more.

Anujan wrote:Why did Phil Schiller have to go and put up a brave face and give an interview along the lines of: "Samsung? Why should we be afraid of Samsung?" If Mahdi were alive, he would have never allowed such an interview. Instead he would have put up a pic of samsung S4 during his next iPhone unveil and made some fun of its plastic body, useless gimmicks, screen and battery life.

Phil Schiller sounded like "Scared? Us? Ofcourse not!" and now that has set the tone for everyone from ABC to CBS to ask "Is this the toughest competition to iPhone yet?" and WSJ is printing articles on how Apple is suddenly on the defensive. Suddenly that has become the Meme -- Apple is on the defensive!!

Even now, in terms of hardware design, iPhone is better designed than any Android phone. Nobody talks about that! Bawarchi is not Mahdi, does not know to shape the conversation. Instead believes in putting competition's products on equal footing as FruitCo. They lost half the battle right there.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/smartph ... e-18742432

Because Samsung is outspending Apple in marketing their phones.

Remember Steve Ballmer saying pretty much same thing about iPhone ?

Shiller or Ballmer are not stupid... they have to do this... at this stage silence does not help. This and what Ballmer said was to calm investors.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 16 Mar 2013 12:28

Suraj wrote:
Singha wrote:Shiver my friends shiver.....this datacenter in blr is the largest in asia and third largest in the world at present.

http://forbesindia.com/blog/business-st ... r-the-top/
Amazing. How do these things happen under the radar in desh ? A massive data center and a 20k fiber optic network ? How do these entities find the source of such capital expenditure ? I wonder how many more such TFTA things exist behind the SDRE exterior.

As someone who has worked at one point in time for sourcing space for setting up data center, I know it is bloody difficult to find a suitable space. The technical requirement rule out 99.9% of buildings and on top of it, there is the stringent security criteria.

One small example of technical requirement is floor loading - a typical IT building has floor loading of 300-450 Kg per meter square. A certain portion meant to house the server room has floor loading of 1200-1500 kg per meter square. But a typical data center requires the entire floor to have >1500 kg per square meter floor loading. Has to do with server racks and the heavy batteries. On top of it the gargantuan amount of electricity load required. Would be around 10 times the normal per sq.ft load required for IT industry.

That is why most of the new data centers are built-to-suit (BTS) buildings customised as per end user requirement. For the above Telecom Company to have built such a huge facility before confirmed demand shows a big giant leap of faith.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 16 Mar 2013 17:14

Apparently amazon is outspending apple in r&d spend..what areas of r&d spend are they into?

pgbhat · Post by **pgbhat** » 16 Mar 2013 18:32

^ aws related r&d budget might be huge.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 16 Mar 2013 21:59

Singha wrote:LED torches, folding knives, gas burners, laser pointers, 0.22 mm guns, sirens, pepper gas sprayer, toilet paper dispenser, air fresheners, toothpicks are soon coming to a smartphone near us.

Some of them would be actually useful, I tell ya. More useful than the cell phones themselves

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 16 Mar 2013 22:04

Raja Bose wrote:The Mahdi thru luck, chutzpah and providence was someone who knew and appreciated design and also managed to get to the top post.

In that spirit next Mahdi could be Takla and the top two at Chacha.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 16 Mar 2013 22:08

Probably Takla. Top 1-2 in chacha are not Mahdi material. Current chacha culture is very engineering centric like other ITvity companies so difficult for a mahdi to rise up the ranks there.

Speaking of Chacha, I wonder how much of Rubin's departure from heading Android is Vic babu's doing?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 16 Mar 2013 22:10

Singha wrote:Apparently amazon is outspending apple in r&d spend..what areas of r&d spend are they into?

They do randee in a ton of stuff, not just selling crap on the internets. BTW their corporate motto is Be Frugal. But that probably only applies to engineer salaries.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 16 Mar 2013 22:11

Raja Bose wrote: Android won't run as smoothly on that HW like WP does so it may become unattractive.

iOS and WP seem to be quite smooth and on par with each other where as the Android phones and tablets I have handled are somewhat laggy in multitouch which is quite distracting. The lag is not that much but does make a difference in user experience, especially for someone like me who gets annoyed quickly.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 17 Mar 2013 02:50

apple has put up a web page arguing why you should buy an iphone and not other phones. After steve death their marketing has gone nuts.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/why-iphone/

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Mar 2013 06:59

Raja Bose wrote:Probably Takla. Top 1-2 in chacha are not Mahdi material. Current chacha culture is very engineering centric like other ITvity companies so difficult for a mahdi to rise up the ranks there.

Speaking of Chacha, I wonder how much of Rubin's departure from heading Android is Vic babu's doing?

Man you are obsessed with vic and the blonde ceo. You see the pawprints of the sith elite everywhere

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Mar 2013 07:01

Raja Bose wrote:
Singha wrote:Apparently amazon is outspending apple in r&d spend..what areas of r&d spend are they into?
They do randee in a ton of stuff, not just selling crap on the internets. BTW their corporate motto is Be Frugal. But that probably only applies to engineer salaries.

Saw an article that lab126 was in binge hiring mode last year with 250 openings. And moved to a 500'000 sqft facility with room for upto 2500 people. The author did a linkedin search and came with 1500 in lab126 last yr.

Quietly like a romulan fleet using cloaks and meteor shower to shield their approach they are positioning themselves as huge threat on many star systems. Both in huge cloud infra and huge physical distribution and online mkting infra they are pretty solid now.....no other co can claim to be a cloud behemoth and a online retail behemoth as well.

I fear sir, that its not a moon but a far more sinister death star is nearing completion

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Mar 2013 07:06

Anujan wrote:apple has put up a web page arguing why you should buy an iphone and not other phones. After steve death their marketing has gone nuts.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/why-iphone/

Sounds like our useless PR vs pakistan, dharmic but ineffective.

Having drunk my fill of clumsy big screens i am crawling back to real phone sized phones now sire.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Mar 2013 07:49

Singha wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:Probably Takla. Top 1-2 in chacha are not Mahdi material. Current chacha culture is very engineering centric like other ITvity companies so difficult for a mahdi to rise up the ranks there.

Speaking of Chacha, I wonder how much of Rubin's departure from heading Android is Vic babu's doing?
Man you are obsessed with vic and the blonde ceo. You see the pawprints of the sith elite everywhere

Actually if you let look carefully it has Vic babu's dung prints all over. See little 'leaks' in the press about Android division not being easy to work with, how Sundar babu will be more flexible ityadi ityadi. This has been Vic babu's refrain for long. And I bet Vic babu didn't forget the mush kicking he got from Andy mian when Vic babu freshly joined Chacha and tried to poke his nose in Android business.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Mar 2013 07:51

Anujan wrote:apple has put up a web page arguing why you should buy an iphone and not other phones. After steve death their marketing has gone nuts.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/why-iphone/

So FruitCo is proud that only iPhone has the Retina Display, while other phones have displays with much higher resolution??

Under Bawarchi, FruitCo seems to be losing the plot faster than I thought!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Mar 2013 07:56

Singha wrote:
Saw an article that lab126 was in binge hiring mode last year with 250 openings. And moved to a 500'000 sqft facility with room for upto 2500 people. The author did a linkedin search and came with 1500 in lab126 last yr.

They haven't moved yet...they will....right next to NASA, Juniper and Yahoo but then their name Lab126 becomes invalid!

They have been hiring like mad but the rates they are offering is pathetic. I mean senior engineers (forget staff/principal) in the valley get paid more than their directors. Good luck attracting talent with Be Frugal!

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 17 Mar 2013 09:09

can someone throw more light on this product:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=5469

so, why android on it?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Mar 2013 09:44

android is definitely coming to TVs imo. makes it a lot easier to get third parties to do apps and stuff. we are just seeing the tip of change where TVs are going. also probably makes TV, phone and tablet links easier rather than proprietary protocols..just push it over wifi via ethernet and IP.

japan is going to shift enmasse to a new HDTV ultra std and their cos expect to retain the usual edge in semicon physics , optics, and precision manufacturing and samsung is also a member of their circle now. protos are already showing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high ... television

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 17 Mar 2013 10:42

The one and only problem for uptake of high end Tvs is the programming which is fast going down the tubes. Nothing worthwhile on all those bazillion cable channels other than same old over worked reality tropes or severa incarnations of ncis. Nothing to see here move on if you know what I mean.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 17 Mar 2013 11:13

I think Rubin head rolled because exchange support was cut off for WinMo devices.

vina · Post by **vina** » 17 Mar 2013 11:58

Singha wrote:japan is going to shift enmasse to a new HDTV ultra std and their cos expect to retain the usual edge in semicon physics , optics, and precision manufacturing and samsung is also a member of their circle now. protos are already showing.

The Japanese seem to be incredibly dumb in this and seem to be singularly unable to learn from their past mistakes. Case in point their play in cellphones. Circa 10 to 15 years ago, theirs was the most sophisticated cellphone (and general consumer electronics) play with services and stuff that was unavailable anywhere else in the world. Today, they are toast in the phone business and their consumer electronics business, with storied companies like sony and panasonic and sharp heading down to Pakistan.

The problem was that theirs was a closed and incredibly inwardly focused ecosystem and couldn't care what the rest of the world did. While it was great in keeping guys like GumBoot out, it got shellacked by the likes of Fruit and Chacha coming from the left field in terms of innovation and orchestrating a wider ecosystem play.

This ""Ultra HDTV" business seems to be a rinse and repeat of the failed Cellphone like play (which the Chinsese seem to be hell bent on copying in terms of business model) and destined to the dung heap in the long term (this seems exactly like the earlier analog based HDTV that japan had and went nowhere).

vina · Post by **vina** » 17 Mar 2013 11:59

Anujan wrote:I think Rubin head rolled because exchange support was cut off for WinMo devices.

Pliss to Eggsplain. I no understand why Rubin was shaheed because Mickey Saaft decided to halaal MS Echange support for Win Mo devices.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Mar 2013 12:15

WinMo? Who sells WinMo devices now? Does HTC have a secret line to make those monstrosities?

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 17 Mar 2013 14:02

vina wrote:
Anujan wrote:I think Rubin head rolled because exchange support was cut off for WinMo devices.
Pliss to Eggsplain. I no understand why Rubin was shaheed because Mickey Saaft decided to halaal MS Echange support for Win Mo devices.

I think he means Google ending support for EAS... which affects all platforms but WP lot more as Google isn't making Mail app for it.

IMVHO... Chrome is Google's winrt, that is why. With HTML5 WebGL Nacl they can completely replace Android. But I think they will do what MS have done, make "Android" available as Desktop is available along with Metro within Windows 8.

In fact, they can simply copy Samsung's approach of runnning multiple android apps... but in Chrome OS.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 17 Mar 2013 14:35

I think they could also run Android inside Chrome. That might be feasible given that there is a native client for Chrome.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Mar 2013 16:24

other than japanese , haier & co and koreans plus philips who makes high end tv in the world today? my guess is nobody except maybe a euro boutique or two.
samsung is deeply in bed with japanese suppliers and has a huge presence in their client list.

sure apple or someone could make a play for it, but end of the day the amt of SW on TV could be limited given set top boxes and home media boxes are proliferating. the media center hw could collapse inside a TV as apple put the whole CPU and HDD inside their big monitors.

no matter who owns the SW inside the TV , the japanese and koreans are going to make money off the HW and also the studio eqpt needed to produce such media content. not apple type bucket money but enough to dominate the show and remain in their own niche.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 17 Mar 2013 16:25

Anujan wrote:I think they could also run Android inside Chrome. That might be feasible given that there is a native client for Chrome.

Yeah, that is exactly what I am saying.

vina · Post by **vina** » 17 Mar 2013 16:34

Singha wrote:other than japanese , haier & co and koreans plus philips who makes high end tv in the world today? my guess is nobody except maybe a euro boutique or two.
samsung is deeply in bed with japanese suppliers and has a huge presence in their client list.

Scratch Philips out. They have exited the TV business. In India, they gave it off to Videocon. I bought a Philips 42in LED TV a few months before it happened. While the TV is great, I am apprehensive about the Videocon support. If I had waited, I wouldn't have bought Philips later.

sure apple or someone could make a play for it, but end of the day the amt of SW on TV could be limited given set top boxes and home media boxes are proliferating. the media center hw could collapse inside a TV as apple put the whole CPU and HDD inside their big monitors.

That will steal the volume away and drive them intoa very very small niche , where making a living would become increasingly difficult.

no matter who owns the SW inside the TV , the japanese and koreans are going to make money off the HW and also the studio eqpt needed to produce such media content. not apple type bucket money but enough to dominate the show and remain in their own niche.

Sure. A lot of Japanese and Korean hardware, assembled in China by Foxconn thing will happen. But then, the brand and control will slip away. No more people rushing to buy a Sony and paying top dollar.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Mar 2013 17:05

>> No more people rushing to buy a Sony and paying top dollar.

that has already happened...from a decade ago. sony is going the way philips went.

negi · Post by **negi** » 17 Mar 2013 17:50

Is Sharp still in the game their aqueous range used to be pretty good; afaik back in the days when Trinitron used to reign supreme only folks like Sharp, Phillips and Panasonic could compete with them.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Mar 2013 17:52

toshibha and sharp seem to have vanished from indian market. panasonic has a low profile presence via their brand stores.
sony is somehow still able to sustain a good number of their brand stores.

rest is all kimchi

panasonic seems to be in the HTC position in smartphone area - they make better than samsung but kimchi is everywhere down to the smallest town and village.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Mar 2013 18:29

just added a tool called ghostery into chrome.
going through its setup dialogue, could see around 5 buckets and total 100s of orgs using trackers to log our online activities and selling them to the likes of facebook for targeted ads.

we truly are being watched every moment we are online!

KJo · Post by **KJo** » 17 Mar 2013 19:35

I am looking to buy a Media Player. Basically I want to be able to stream my downloads to my TV. Then if possible, I want to be able to surf the web to watch sites that stream cricket. Which is the best one out there?
I have Logitech Revue which is a piece of crap. Will sell on eBay soon. I have a 3 year old WD Live which is good, but I wonder if there is anything else out there?

KJo · Post by **KJo** » 17 Mar 2013 19:36

negi wrote:Is Sharp still in the game their aqueous range used to be pretty good; afaik back in the days when Trinitron used to reign supreme only folks like Sharp, Phillips and Panasonic could compete with them.

I have a Sharp Aquos and it's been a disappointment. Volume is always low and it's had some flickering problems. I would not buy Sharp again.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 17 Mar 2013 20:00

yeah.. chacha settled for 7 or 8 million court deal for that is worth in billions. i am talking about chacha using ip address from their gps enabled devices, that uses home wifis.

chacha is becoming the wifi mafia!

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 17 Mar 2013 20:36

KJoishy wrote:I am looking to buy a Media Player. Basically I want to be able to stream my downloads to my TV. Then if possible, I want to be able to surf the web to watch sites that stream cricket. Which is the best one out there?
I have Logitech Revue which is a piece of crap. Will sell on eBay soon. I have a 3 year old WD Live which is good, but I wonder if there is anything else out there?

http://www.iboum.com/net-media-players.php

TBH, I think best solution is no longer streaming media player... but Windows 8(because metro works really well for large screens) + Widi.

KJo · Post by **KJo** » 17 Mar 2013 21:26

Thanks Anmol... never heard of that brand. Why is it better than WD and others?

I don't have Windows 8, but what I do is place the media player connected to the TV in the bedroom so I can watch files from there. The files live on my desktop in another room. How would this be possible in Win 8? My TV is a 4 year old Sharp Aq which does not have any streaming.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Mar 2013 22:03

You will see other relatively baby steps breakthrus before holographic doodads. Lots of problems still unsolved in display tech which are more mundane.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 17 Mar 2013 22:21

KJoishy wrote:Thanks Anmol... never heard of that brand. Why is it better than WD and others?

iboum is no brand... it is a site where you can find information about almost all the streaming media players in market. I would suggest you to also take a look at this: http://www.iboum.com/artkill/chipsets.php

KJoishy wrote:I don't have Windows 8, but what I do is place the media player connected to the TV in the bedroom so I can watch files from there. The files live on my desktop in another room. How would this be possible in Win 8? My TV is a 4 year old Sharp Aq which does not have any streaming.

It is possible through Widi... which is basically wireless HDMI. So instead of streaming files, why not just stream whole screen ? But we need two things to make this work:

1) OS that works well on big screen. That is Windows 8 (or maybe XBMC etc on any OS)
2) Widi enabled Computer (basically any computer with new intel CPUs) and Display.

Many new TVs in market come with Widi capability, but it can also be added using adapters from D-Link Netgear Belkin etc.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Mar 2013 23:52

Kinect Fusion for 3D modeling of objects and indoors now part of Kinect SDK