Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Oct 2013 08:10

the 13" macbook pro costs a 1L in india (!) and the 15" costs 1.5L....talk about apple premium.
I think its possible to buy them abroad cheaper and bring in, but probably you would need to pay for warranty period repair also as they will claim "no global warranty"

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 29 Oct 2013 08:14

or edlin!

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Oct 2013 08:19

my co uses a lot of macbook pro and macbook air - the younger people invariably opt for it over thinkpads, so they have a rule u get it only after 1st refresh cycle of 2-3 yrs not on joining from outside. never heard of issues with the pro in my circle, but recently a friend's air just stopped working one morning. since no in-house support for mac, he had to take it to apple service center outside and get it fixed.

I didnt like the air's rather delicate looking keys with a short 'play' .... the pro and thinkpads chicklet style keys had more play and looked easier to work with. the air like the iphone seems more suited to a stylish woman in terms of looks, size.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 29 Oct 2013 08:50

^^^I had the exact opposite on the Thinkpad Ultra Carbon, the chicklet keys are becoming loose. On my MBP and MBA they are still solid. And most importantly, the 16:10 aspect ratio on the MBP and MBA 13" version is easier for me than the 16:9 14" TP.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 29 Oct 2013 09:12

vina wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:^^^Just be happy you didn't have to do your thesis in Word Star or Word Perfect.
Pah! What a bunch of wussies! You guys never banged out stuff on Chiwriter on an 80386.

Personally, I preferred VolksWriter to Chiwriter. For one thing, with Chiwriter, you could only select bold font or italic font, not bold AND italic, whereas VolksWriter allowed you to mix and match. The only cool thing about Chiwriter was that it allowed you to enter subscripts, superscripts and greek letters easily, so good for writing formulae and stuff.

vina · Post by **vina** » 29 Oct 2013 09:18

Singha wrote:the 13" macbook pro costs a 1L in india (!) and the 15" costs 1.5L....talk about apple premium.
I think its possible to buy them abroad cheaper and bring in, but probably you would need to pay for warranty period repair also as they will claim "no global warranty"

Macs come with global warranty irrespective of where you buy them. So you can buy them outside and bring it here. The difference is around Rs5000 (given the conversion rate of USD/INR). However for me, it makes sense to buy it locally with full invoice and bills in Rupees. Since I am in Bijiness, I can write it off in depreciation and get tax benefits on it

(I can do that with all the stuff I will need for Bijness, like IPhunwa,IPadwa, HD TV, DVD, software, car, etc. etc)..

I will need to do some CapEx anyway, so was wondering.

Not sure how much of a "Premium" the Mac is. For eg, the Sony Vaio Pro 13 at Rs 85,000 clearly bisects the 13" MacBook Air @ 75,000 and the 13"MacBook Pro @ 100,000. The Sony has a Full HD display with other specs similar to the MBA , while the MBP has the Retina display & Higher Spec processors over the MBA for the Rs 25K. So, Sony Vaio Pro 13 = MBA 13" + 10,000 .. ==> The HD touchscreen = Rs 10K, if you are willing to put up with the MickeySaaft rubbish ?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Oct 2013 10:18

I have no long term exp on the new chiklet style keys on the TP. my W520 from last yr still has the old style keys. I use docking stn at work. just played for couple of days when my own went in for repair.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 29 Oct 2013 10:19

Singha wrote:... stylish woman in terms of looks, size.

and quite erotic to Mac fanboys.

Vina, considering your big blue affinity you might remember script/vs and GML - IBM quietly made it the standard through HTML which is a subset of formalzed XML which is an instantiation of SGML which traces its roots to GML. IBM is very clever - neither shampoo salesmen nor Cocacola marketing guys can compete with the gamers from Armonk.

vina · Post by **vina** » 29 Oct 2013 11:38

matrimc wrote:Vina, considering your big blue affinity you might remember script/vs and GML - IBM quietly made it the standard through HTML which is a subset of formalzed XML which is an instantiation of SGML which traces its roots to GML. IBM is very clever - neither shampoo salesmen nor Cocacola marketing guys can compete with the gamers from Armonk.

Oh yes. Of course, GML & SGML .Big Iron is /was like Darth Vader . If you embrace it fully and are willing to pay Big Dollars, you got total peace and security (like peace of the grave for instance). No systems, going Paki and crashing, no viruses, no break ins, things worked 24*7 with 99.9999999999999 % uptime, you switch it on, and you then switch it off only before taking it to the junkyard.

But even in my time with Darth Vader, getting time on big irons to do word processing was overkill. That is where the Wang and others got in, and yes, PCs really got in along with the original Mac.

All the same, many folks still insist that the absolute best version (smoothness, ease of use and final quality of output) of MS Word and Excel are on Mac and on Windows.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Oct 2013 12:31

motorola has started a project ara to build a modular LRU kind of smartphone and will soon invite open src hw development
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/29/moto ... #continued

cool idea if they can make it work and if sales of upg MLU blocks are viable business model. else it will still be cool but restricted to power users like sergey brin onlee.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 29 Oct 2013 15:14

vina wrote:
All the same, many folks still insist that the absolute best version (smoothness, ease of use and final quality of output) of MS Word and Excel are on Mac and on Windows.

I dont know how you got Mac into this argument at all.

Office for windows is much better in terms of UI than the Mac. And it makes sense from business point of view for MS to not sell the Macs, the best version of MS Office.

Do they want their Windows' based enterprise customers do suddenly dump Wintel and go for Macs?

Not.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Oct 2013 16:06

nexus5 full specs via a canadian leak: nothing thats too exciting, just throwing more cpu & more ppi at everything...

Screen: 4.95" 1920x1080 display (445 ppi) Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Cameras: 1.3MP front facing 8MP rear facing OIS
Dimensions: 69.17 x 137.84 x 8.59 mm
Weight: 130 grams
Operating System: OS Android 4.4, KitKat
Chip Set: 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, Wi-Fi (2.4G/5G) 802.11 a/b/g/n/ncNFC (Android Beam) / Bluetooth 4.0
Storage / Memory / Ram: 16GB or 32GB internal storage 2GB RAM
Ports & Connectors: microUSB, SlimPort enabled, 3.5mm stereo audio jack, dual microphones, ceramic power and volume buttons

vina · Post by **vina** » 29 Oct 2013 16:53

mahadevbhu wrote:
I dont know how you got Mac into this argument at all.

Office for windows is much better in terms of UI than the Mac. And it makes sense from business point of view for MS to not sell the Macs, the best version of MS Office.

Do they want their Windows' based enterprise customers do suddenly dump Wintel and go for Macs?

Not.

Life is full of ironies . Traditionally in publication, media and ad kind of worlds it is 100% Mac. Most digital editing and processing work in those kind of places is mac and those guys are understandably pretty demanding about their end product. So Mickey has a pretty good offering there. Think of a corporate presentation with all the bells and whistles and blow out effects done for you by a professional ad agency. So even if you get the final version via email as a ppt attachment, chances are that it was authored on a mac. Similarly a document like an annual report or some gee whiz looking CEO stuff for distribution.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Oct 2013 17:30

how good is the camera on the S4 and HTC-One ? is it on par with the one on 920/925 ?

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 29 Oct 2013 17:38

Singha wrote:motorola has started a project ara to build a modular LRU kind of smartphone and will soon invite open src hw development
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/29/moto ... #continued
cool idea if they can make it work and if sales of upg MLU blocks are viable business model. else it will still be cool but restricted to power users like sergey brin onlee.

The same thing that happened to PCs.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 29 Oct 2013 21:09

Amazon launches Kindle MatchBook, offering cheap digital copies of your physical books

Amazon's Kindle MatchBook service has gone live today, allowing customers to buy a heavily discounted Kindle copy of physical books they've purchased from the online retailer. Prices range between free and $2.99, offering a quick and cheap way to expand your Amazon ebook library. And on that note, there's good news: Amazon says that 70,000 books are enrolled in MatchBook at launch, dwarfing the original 10,000 titles it announced last month. More books will be added to the program every day, according to the company, and book detail pages will now list when specific titles will support MatchBook. Amazon combs through your entire order history going all the way back to 1995, so the initial list of ebooks offered to you may be longer than you'd expect. And since they're full-fledged Kindle copies, all of Amazon's signature features including Whispersync and X-Ray are included. To see which of your past purchases are eligible, head to Amazon now.

I have been hoping for such a service for so long. I hope all the books(or atleast the ones I care for) I purchased at Amazon are part of this program. How many of you are heading straight to amazon.com to claim your ebooks?

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 29 Oct 2013 21:18

^^What a KLPD!! Only one book available. Hope they will add others soon.

Karan M · Post by **Karan M** » 29 Oct 2013 22:26

All these fancy specs are paki, until they increase battery performance correspondingly. Stupid wifi and 3G kill my android's battery in a few hours...

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 29 Oct 2013 22:32

Singha wrote:how good is the camera on the S4 and HTC-One ? is it on par with the one on 920/925 ?

Unlikely. They are about as good as the iPhone 5. Barely. HTC-One has very good low-light performance but worse daylight performance (in terms of sharpness, detail, colors) than the other two.

Lumia 920 should be better than all three I think. haven't checked how good the iPhunwa 5S camera is.

Yayavar · Post by **Yayavar** » 29 Oct 2013 22:37

HTC-one is good but maybe I dont know how to use it - I get many out of focus shots. Cant tell what is wrong.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 29 Oct 2013 22:41

viv wrote:HTC-one is good but maybe I dont know how to use it - I get many out of focus shots. Cant tell what is wrong.

Phone cameras aren't supposed to be difficult to use. If just pointing and clicking gives too many bad shots, it's a bad camera. Maybe a defective piece?

Yayavar · Post by **Yayavar** » 29 Oct 2013 22:44

yep..point and shoot and many good shots, but inexplicably off ones. It seems like it might focus on some point - i need to study a few shots and see if the focus is on some object and its relative positioning in the image. I've at times just taken a video and taken the snapshot from it. (Got a good one of Brahmputra Dolphin leaping that way - but that was not due to out of focus reasons)

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 30 Oct 2013 05:54

Neela wrote:
Singha wrote:motorola has started a project ara to build a modular LRU kind of smartphone and will soon invite open src hw development
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/29/moto ... #continued
cool idea if they can make it work and if sales of upg MLU blocks are viable business model. else it will still be cool but restricted to power users like sergey brin onlee.
The same thing that happened to PCs.

The trend is going more towards higher integration and less modular actually. From a cost, business and even consumer perspective it doesn't make sense to add modularity in hardware at the cost of weight/dimensions/reliability in CE devices. Modularity and ability to upgrade some component might sound all warm and fuzzy especially to geeks but what does it really buy you? It wont save you cost for sure especially in small form factor devices such as phones or tablets where integration of components and tolerances are tight - modularity introduces lower tolerances.

Even in the PC business, we went from desktops to laptops to tablets with each succeeding generation less modular, less up-gradable than the previous one. Devices like phones/tablets/XYZ are commodities with a short TTL and that is deliberately kept so...the days of proudly owning a Nokia phone for 10 years are gone....people want the latest and greatest especially the ones who cannot afford it....its all human engineering onlee and nobody knew it better than the Mahdi.

And we already have a thriving business model centered around actual modular creation of smartphones namely, MediaTek and the entire Shenzhen ecosystem - that is exactly what they do.

BhairavP · Post by **BhairavP** » 30 Oct 2013 07:12

Karan M wrote:All these fancy specs are paki, until they increase battery performance correspondingly. Stupid wifi and 3G kill my android's battery in a few hours...

Which one saar? I'm using the S4 with a custom ROM and kernel, and getting a good day's worth of battery life, with the screen on for ~11 hours or so.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Oct 2013 07:40

I turn my gps and wifi off except at travel, runs fr gps and home for wifi.
no 3g browsing as i drive to work myself.
i get multiple days a charge.
no gaming also helps..gaming takes most battery

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 30 Oct 2013 07:46

Got my Magellan Switch Up...will test drive it tomorrow.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 30 Oct 2013 08:56

BhairavP wrote:
Karan M wrote:All these fancy specs are paki, until they increase battery performance correspondingly. Stupid wifi and 3G kill my android's battery in a few hours...
Which one saar? I'm using the S4 with a custom ROM and kernel, and getting a good day's worth of battery life, with the screen on for ~11 hours or so.

Yup. Same here on the HTC One. Initially poor battery life, but much better now. Mostly do phone calls, some browsing (BRF included), some apps like Wolfram Alpha, couple of hours of Pandora or Google Play Music and I'm doing fine. Android 4.3. Overall the HTC One leaves a lot to be desired, but the audio is great and listening music is really enjoyable which improves the UX for me.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 30 Oct 2013 09:05

The HTC One build quality is crap (HTC hasn't changed in all these years

) - the face plate housing the speaker grill bends and dents like anything, leaving gaps between the joins for all sorts of crap to get in.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 30 Oct 2013 22:40

vina wrote:
mahadevbhu wrote:
I dont know how you got Mac into this argument at all.

Office for windows is much better in terms of UI than the Mac. And it makes sense from business point of view for MS to not sell the Macs, the best version of MS Office.

Do they want their Windows' based enterprise customers do suddenly dump Wintel and go for Macs?

Not.
Life is full of ironies . Traditionally in publication, media and ad kind of worlds it is 100% Mac. Most digital editing and processing work in those kind of places is mac and those guys are understandably pretty demanding about their end product. So Mickey has a pretty good offering there. Think of a corporate presentation with all the bells and whistles and blow out effects done for you by a professional ad agency. So even if you get the final version via email as a ppt attachment, chances are that it was authored on a mac. Similarly a document like an annual report or some gee whiz looking CEO stuff for distribution.

'

sirjee,

In this digital publishing side, what people do is, that they will create the basic framework / wireframe on a office document.

and then....ditch all of office for windows and mac , this and that, and go for.......

adobe creative suite, and most probably Illustrator to make that fancy ppt/pdf on either windows or mac.

So, ms office will not be used in any professional grade application for creating a document.

And all of mucknesee and asssenter will give those add ins for quick ppts usually in windows version of office onlee.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Oct 2013 03:21

California woman gets ticket for driving with Google Glass

If this comes to court, the case will form a good precedence for future use of near eye displays and even content when can be displayed on HUDs integrated into cars.

saip · Post by **saip** » 31 Oct 2013 03:28

oops! My Son has been driving with google glasses for a While now!

saip · Post by **saip** » 31 Oct 2013 03:30

Doesnt Cadillac have a some kind of infra red projection for night driving?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Oct 2013 03:36

saip wrote:oops! My Son has been driving with google glasses for a While now!

Based on how the display of the current version of Glass works, ask him not to. Our eyes are not designed to switch focus between near and far so quickly and that can cause accidents especially in congested roads regardless of speed. This problem is very well studied for HUD design in cars which is why HUDs only project the most rudimentary information and that too a certain distance beyond the windscreen. The Glass display does give the impression of a larger projected display but its UI is much more dense/complex to parse (so higher cognitive load) plus the display technology in use currently essentially makes it non-glanceable in most conditions (in that aspect its somewhere between a HUD and a phone screen) especially when exposed to external noise.

saip · Post by **saip** » 31 Oct 2013 04:09

Considering that this is going to be a major precedent I am sure Google will defend that ticket. Meanwhile, they might put a policy in place for using the Glasses especially for their employees. As it is they are so damn secretive about it and users are banned even from lending the device to others.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Oct 2013 04:13

^^^Its not about Glass but rather in general about unregulated displays in a car and near eye displays. I doubt Google will do anything about it except bring this up in front of Washington DC through its lobbyists though in this case its going to be hard as the device does seem to fail driver distraction requirements for pretty much NAM and EU.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 31 Oct 2013 07:45

the latest bmws have a projection on the windshield featuring speed limit, current speed and some navigation info. user can control what is displayed and contrast,brightness etc.
seems to work quite well in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiUUTcrmhII

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 31 Oct 2013 08:15

Raja Bose wrote:The HTC One build quality is crap (HTC hasn't changed in all these years ) - the face plate housing the speaker grill bends and dents like anything, leaving gaps between the joins for all sorts of crap to get in.

Hmmm. I've never had that issue as I've dropped, scratched and dinged mine a few times. The fit and finish is actually quite good, IMHO, on par with iFruit. Perhaps your kampany bahadur gave you a prototype or initial test unit. I dunno, but I disagree with your assessment.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Oct 2013 08:53

Mort Walker wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:The HTC One build quality is crap (HTC hasn't changed in all these years ) - the face plate housing the speaker grill bends and dents like anything, leaving gaps between the joins for all sorts of crap to get in.
Hmmm. I've never had that issue as I've dropped, scratched and dinged mine a few times. The fit and finish is actually quite good, IMHO, on par with iFruit. Perhaps your kampany bahadur gave you a prototype or initial test unit. I dunno, but I disagree with your assessment.

I should have clarified - I am talking about the durability aspect of build quality. Yes, in terms of fit & finish, HTC One is as good as the iPhunwa5. In terms of durability its still same ol' HTC from early 2000s.

Speaking of iPhunwa, if anybody has purchased/is going to purchase iPhunwa5S, be warned that the coating on the Ive antenna is prone to puncture marks and unsightly burst boil like gashes if exposed to pointy sharp objects.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 31 Oct 2013 08:57

No iPhunwa5s, but seriously thinking about the iPad Air. Very thin and light weight. Seems to be very enticing in that many people will have it with them due to large working surface area, but relatively small size.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Oct 2013 09:09

I think FruitCo nailed it with the iPad Air - it is exactly what the iPad should be like. Lets see if my hypothesis is borne out by reality.