Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 26 Jul 2013 23:29

nachiket wrote:
Singha wrote:highly impressed with the 820 nokia so far. had a lot of fun with the free music service and downloaded some hindi and english songs to listen later, huge selection of music incl regional indian languages.
How is the Nokia music service different from Pandora/Spotify etc.? Did you pay for the songs you downloaded or were they free as well (although I don't see how hat could work)?

They allow downloads and I havent paid a dime till now. Pandora free version on WP8 doesn't have ads either afaik.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 26 Jul 2013 23:31

Raja Bose wrote:Weight is something GB needs to reduce. It is primarily driven by GB's internal device durability requirements which are legendary in the industry. But that results in phones built and weighing like Arjun tank while the metrosexual public demands tin can featherweights so as not to hurt their delicate shahid kapoor like wrists.

Why do you think I call Sammy phones turds.....they feel like some cheap lota one uses in Pakistan.

i have a sammy phone which is quite good. t mobile vibrant...SGS 1 . light and trim.

Nokya vs smsung? both are okay. smsung is not another hwlett pckrd.

me wonder why you call sammy turd all the time.

some of us do not need to, you know, compensate, by having a extremely large phone in our tight jeans pockets......

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 26 Jul 2013 23:31

Raja Bose wrote: They allow downloads and I havent paid a dime till now. Pandora free version on WP8 doesn't have ads either afaik.

So who pays for the songs? The Music industry can't be happy about this. They were even complaining about Pandora recently even though it's only a free radio service.

negi · Post by **negi** » 27 Jul 2013 00:09

Pandora is not available in India, in any case I never liked it for I like to listen to songs on demand basis . Pandora does not do that.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 27 Jul 2013 01:47

Sammy doesn't seem to like WP8 as much as GB it seems...

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 27 Jul 2013 02:31

nachiket wrote:
Raja Bose wrote: They allow downloads and I havent paid a dime till now. Pandora free version on WP8 doesn't have ads either afaik.
So who pays for the songs? The Music industry can't be happy about this. They were even complaining about Pandora recently even though it's only a free radio service.

I think GB has deals with the music labels (at one point they had deals with all major music labels in EMEA and NAM)....dunno who eventually bank rolls it.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 27 Jul 2013 02:32

mahadevbhu wrote:
some of us do not need to, you know, compensate, by having a extremely large phone in our tight jeans pockets......

Exactly...those people stay away from Sammy 5 inchers

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 27 Jul 2013 02:34

GB?

they were talking about motorola droid + google coming up. any info/review?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 27 Jul 2013 03:07

Raja Bose wrote:^^^chromecast is a dongle, roku is a stb.....dont think they are comparable yet, no?

Yes but the processing is on the tablet or the smart phone.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 27 Jul 2013 05:37

^^^Doesn't the dongle also run some build of ChromeOS according to Pichai Maharaj?

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 27 Jul 2013 09:40

Singha wrote:
mahadevbhu wrote:BTW more power to Micromax, xolo, lava , karbonn and other desi /chini brands.

my next phone is going to be desi for sure.

swadeshi !
Pls dont spoil the real meaning of desi by calling these brands desi or indian. They are offshore traders for chinese brands and factories who dont get into retail thats all. Today they trade phones, tomorroe ceiling fans, next day ganesha idols made in gansu onlee...wherever the price arbitrage is right.
The bigger cheen retailers like lenovo, zte, haier, gionee are slowly upping their own retail presence in india...they see an opportunity to eat meat off samsung plate and same time run the whole chain than outsource the last mile problem to micromax types.

saarji.

Lets say, Micromax makes 20% margin after buying the phone from ZTE.

I would rather give them my money, and support Indians with that 20% paisa, than some guy in Korea.

Simble.

I would rather than some Indian shareholder or family scion gets that 20% than some Taiwanese.

Simble onlee.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 27 Jul 2013 11:29

buy nokia then. atleast they make phones in india and support 1000s of industrial jobs in TN

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 27 Jul 2013 11:36

^^^feature phones onlee. I don't think they even make S40 phones in India, leave alone Lumias. Though I will give Nokia credit that they actually have kept consistently innovating in bringing smartphone type services to the next billion while the rest of the industry mainly pays lip service.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 27 Jul 2013 11:38

true. but they are supporting manufacturing jobs and have pulled some partners also into TN. it doesnt matter what part of the portfolio gets made here, just like car makers not all models get built at one place. if india become a huge lumia market they might make some of that here as well.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 27 Jul 2013 11:41

^^Yes, India is still mainly a feature phone market. They won't make lumias in India if they're going to sell them only in the tens or even hundreds of thousands..

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 27 Jul 2013 12:00

the choice comes down to this
- a MNC which has some local employment in india like ford, GM , hyundai, honda, toyota, cummins, benz, GE
- desi cos who dont have manufacturing but operate as a trading, after sales & marketing business -buying there, selling here

imho
- in employment terms the option1 is superior, trading can never equal manufacturing in people needed
- in tech absorption option1 is superior
- in training people upto world level stds in any new field, option1 wins
- in supporting ecosystem of smaller local cos supplying services or components to make the final product, option1 is superior

we need to become vital part of the food chain in every MNC in every sector in the world...just like Cheen has become.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 27 Jul 2013 12:55

^^ nice post.

BTW, thats why I already bought a Nokia Lumia 620

Ashok Sarraff · Post by **Ashok Sarraff** » 27 Jul 2013 15:38

Wrong thread.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 27 Jul 2013 18:57

Raja Bose wrote:
mahadevbhu wrote:
some of us do not need to, you know, compensate, by having a extremely large phone in our tight jeans pockets......
Exactly...those people stay away from Sammy 5 inchers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... bile-phone

Ah -ha!

All those Asian smartphone buyers with small you-know-whats !

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 27 Jul 2013 22:00

The customers are stupid. They dont know that every Pixel in FruitCo's phunwa comes sprinked with magic pixie dust and personally polished by the Mahdi.

Having said that, Now iDevices come in many screen sizes. Smaller screen size 4s and below. Larger 5 and above. A iPad mini. Next iPad mini with probably higher resolution because the current iPad mini screen looks like sandpaper. The larger iPad. If they make a larger phone that too. So all this "Applications are optimized for iDevices because it comes in fewer sizes" ended up becoming a total nonsense. Anyway.

Tried out the new Nexus 7. It is fantastic. The screen looks better than print, the stereo speakers are great -- though not as great as the front firing Nexus 10. But all in all, it wipes the floor with iPad mini. If you have a lot of investments in iEcosystem though, it is better to wait for higher resolution iPad mini. They should have made this 1 year ago and priced it higher than the intro Nexus 7. I probably wont get it, my old Nexus 7 is good enough, I also have a Nexus 10. I think that 7-8 inch tablets are here to stay. I am the old fashioned type who still likes a laptop -- I am sure most others do too. So the future would be something like a Macbook air, 7-8 inch tablet and a phone.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 27 Jul 2013 22:08

On another note. I went and bought Airport Extreme router for $200. Yes, I did that. It is a shitty piece of hardware as far as features are concerned (I have no idea whether it has a firewall and if so, how to enable it.) The configuration is through a program you run on mac machines (not through a web console like 99.99% of other routers). So if you ever go pure windows, you are screwed.

But I still love it. It took 2 minutes to set up, hasnt dropped a signal yet. My previous routers had buggy firmware, I installed dd-wrt on them and later tomato. they would mysteriously drop wifi connection. If they had wifi connection they would mysteriously drop the connection to my cable modem. All in the middle of me trying to get some office work done. So I would go and buy anoter $50 router. All in all I probably spent $150 on 3 routers over 4 years. Sometimes they would freeze up and I had to reboot my router. They would go all Paki if more devices connect to them (I already have a Macpro, GHQ has a Mac pro, GHQ and I have smartphones, I have a Nexus 7, Nexus 10, iPod touch, a Windows 7 desktop, a Chromebook, a Sammy Blu ray player that connects to Wifi and now a Chromecast dongle). Airport extreme hasnt missed a beat.

Yes $200 is a lot of money, but finally I got enraged enough to spend it on something I refuse to spend more time on. Even though I heard good things about Asus RT-N66U and it even beat out Airport Extreme in speed and on top of it, I can bend the antennas so one antenna faces down (My router is in the top floor in the bedroom, my living room is in the floor below) I simply wasnt prepared to go fiddling with DD-WRT. One thing you have to appreciate FruitCo for is that they realize what the pain points in using their devices are and work hard to eliminate them. An iPadwa is useless without good wifi, so they make a good wifi router. A macpro is useless if you keep tripping over the charging cable, so they make a good charging cable for it. And so on.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Jul 2013 00:54

^^^uh Anujanullah,.....SHQ, not GHQ.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 28 Jul 2013 00:56

Keep using the old title even now when introducing her to friends

pisses her off like anything. Was GHQ for 5 years SHQ for 2, keep forgetting the status has changed.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Jul 2013 01:01

^^^in that case make sure she only uses featherweight iPhunwas and cheapo Sammy phunwas....anything heavier hurled at you (such as a Lumia 920) will crack your noggin

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 28 Jul 2013 01:04

What's up with making a good wireless router? Everything starts off all TFTA but goes Paki and keeps downhill skiing after a few hours. Then you go fiddle with firmware and software and whatnot. Most of them don't even have automatic channel selection based on what channels your neighbors are using. The config page is a nightmare.

And what's up with fruitco? For $99 you get a router with airplay. For $200 you get a router without airplay. WTF?

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 28 Jul 2013 02:06

I still use my WRT54GL with Tomato . Rather, a friend borrowed it, and has been using it for a few years now, and I did for years before that. Rock solid device, though it didn't support wifi-n , just b/g . My home router is a Linksys E3000. It's been rebooted about once in 6 months.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Jul 2013 07:20

WTF is wrong with Chrome nowadays???

I finally got sick of it crashing and eating memory like dus percenti pocketing bribes and moved back to Firefox. Is Pichai Maharaj going out of his way to bring back the dark days of IE or what?? Might also give the new IE a try on Win7....I use it on Win8 anyways as my primary browser and the experience has been good so far (Chrome for Win8 was too buggy).

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 28 Jul 2013 07:24

chrome is banned at my KB, due to security issues. once it induced a malaware for me, like anything and every site first click always lands in some commerical site. phucking pain.. and i removed it completely. i am not going back to chrome even if they fix it and apologize for it.

there is no spell check in IE.. rest is all good.

the only advantage chrome had was its html5 compatibility.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Jul 2013 08:18

Now all 3 are pretty good in HTML5 compatibility and optimized implementation. Mozilla leads the pack slightly.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 28 Jul 2013 10:41

Suraj wrote:I still use my WRT54GL with Tomato . Rather, a friend borrowed it, and has been using it for a few years now, and I did for years before that. Rock solid device, though it didn't support wifi-n , just b/g . My home router is a Linksys E3000. It's been rebooted about once in 6 months.

Mine is a bharti Airtel local dsl to ethernet modem + linksys some old wi fi combination

rebooted once in 6 hours!

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jul 2013 21:11

hasselblad is launching a peculiar P&S camera with a wooden grip
http://www.hasselblad-stellar.com/

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 28 Jul 2013 21:18

Belkin seems to have good home modem/router with wireless, their wifi has good range

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Jul 2013 21:23

my ancient dlink dir300 is low on range but very reliable - no switchoffs needed for months...

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 28 Jul 2013 21:51

^^^^ how come only mine is unreliable....reboots required all the freakin time.

Also at work is the same. Multiple reboots/week.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 28 Jul 2013 23:30

will you specify your router name here?

kenop · Post by **kenop** » 28 Jul 2013 23:49

I am on Netgear DG834 since feb 2007.
Zero hassles. Absolutely zero reboots (what is a reboot for wifi router?)

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Jul 2013 01:01

I used to use a ton of a particular model of Buffalo routers as a talib in madrassa - they never froze, rebooted, crapped out ever. Then in their wisdom Buffalo stopped makingt that model.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 29 Jul 2013 01:08

it could be all due to driver issues.. all these hassels started since they wanted to support all the a,b,g and n protocols. next in the line is ac and ad.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 29 Jul 2013 05:50

I ordered the new Nexus 7 . Looked good in the reviews, and will see how it's like in person. Anyone get their hands on it already ? Apparently it was on sale in some stores around town, but is sold out now. I ordered straight from chacha.

Gus · Post by **Gus** » 29 Jul 2013 05:58

chromecast is getting good reviews too.

but goddamn..everything is thrice or four times the price here. why god why...