Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 06 Jan 2014 06:46

>> but dont you like Google Maps Singhaji? GMaps is pretty good too.

google maps has a shaky offline feature wherein you can store rectangular parts of it offline I think, not the whole thing.
offline maps is a must have in india most of us do not have data plans and even if we did, they would not work in rural areas where we really need maps.
nok maps are fully offline capable. I have entire peninsula, mumbai and delhi offline.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jan 2014 08:13

chandrasekhar.m wrote: Is Sammy looking for any specialised domain knowledge or skills for all these jobs? Or generic coding ability and knowledge of algos+data structures is enough? I will check their website too. Thanks for the info.

They are looking for both specialized folks and general labour (after all they are Sammy, they love to throw people at problems

). If you have domain expertise in navigation & routing, maps, crowdsourced data, a combo of the two (such as working with OSM), they would be happy to talk to you. But Sammy is Sammy so their work culture hasn't really changed.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jan 2014 08:16

Singha wrote:>> but dont you like Google Maps Singhaji? GMaps is pretty good too.

google maps has a shaky offline feature wherein you can store rectangular parts of it offline I think, not the whole thing.
offline maps is a must have in india most of us do not have data plans and even if we did, they would not work in rural areas where we really need maps.
nok maps are fully offline capable. I have entire peninsula, mumbai and delhi offline.

Reminds me of the last trail race few days ago. Another runner was cursing his new Nexus 5 for that shortcoming as he lost his way coming in and got late for the race start.

niran · Post by **niran** » 06 Jan 2014 09:26

Sachin wrote: What is this ROM stuff? Can you provide more info?

clicky
warning: if anything untowards happen the me is not responsible nor me ever posted this link(onree some paki did it)

booster:
moi has used ROMs for S2 and S3 and Galaxy Tab2 without any hitch or witch.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 06 Jan 2014 09:53

Singha wrote:>> but dont you like Google Maps Singhaji? GMaps is pretty good too.

google maps has a shaky offline feature wherein you can store rectangular parts of it offline I think, not the whole thing.
offline maps is a must have in india most of us do not have data plans and even if we did, they would not work in rural areas where we really need maps.
nok maps are fully offline capable. I have entire peninsula, mumbai and delhi offline.

true. but do they have the same amount of places I. their database as gmaps does? dunno. maybe I'll check it out on a 620 my friend owns.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 06 Jan 2014 10:00

Raja Bose wrote: Both Surfaces seem to be sold out pretty solid right now so I am not sure which prediction is coming true? Anyways, for Mickey it doesn't really matter if 1 unit sold by XYZ OEM cannibalizes 1 unit of Surface becoz they sell the hardware pretty much at cost and the money is made off the software which the OEM pays for anyways when they sell one of their own units. There are pretty solid reasons why they did the Surface - that hasn't changed which is why they continue to make new versions. One of the reasons is the same rationale as why India had to do the 1st Mars orbiter which would not send back "anything new" as per its critics.

It probably is selling better than the original Surface, or MSFT made fewer of them like the article said perhaps MSFT had Christmas miracle on sales.

I see the Surface like the Nexus line. A demonstrator technology, but unfortunately low cost OEMs may in fact harm the "demonstrator line" as the UX is quite similar. Anyway, we've argued this enough.

Egad...now MSFT == ISRO ? ISRO makes tangibles out of dreams and MSFT makes tangibles nightmares.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jan 2014 10:02

^^^And gullible public pays them ~$70 billion a year for that and I earn a nice steady dividend

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Jan 2014 20:31

http://www.safaribikes.com/relax26t_inter.asp
nice mountain bike!

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 07 Jan 2014 06:50

$1,899 for Steam Machine.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/6/527986 ... indows-and

"PC Master Race" can build better more affordable machine on their own, but those who cant should buy USD 1900 machine over USD 400-500 consoles.

Yup, this will kill PS4/Xbox like Ouya.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/6/5281812 ... ware-specs

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 09 Jan 2014 07:14

Funny to see self driving technology Bimmer had back in 2009 (got it as a loaner for a week back then), revealed publicly at CES this year: Clicky

Mean-e-while, Chacha announces the Open Automotive Alliance. Guess from whom the author of this blog post (who heads engineering for Android automotive) learned the following marketing spiel?

Today, millions of people already bring Android phones and tablets into their cars, but it’s not yet a driving-optimized experience. Wouldn't it be great if you could bring your favorite apps and music with you, and use them safely with your car's built-in controls and in-dash display?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 09 Jan 2014 07:17

Nokia Normandy Android UI leaked

The question is, who is Ashima Banerjee?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 09 Jan 2014 09:23

I knew one Ashima (not Banner-JEE). Was knock-out looking.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Jan 2014 09:49

I know one Ash from bollywood!

btw, my iphone4 would not switch on after low batt.. i thought it was dead.. called up sprint, and she told to me hold both home and power button for 20 sec. the bitten phroot reappeared.

earlier told shq that my iphone konked, and might get back to droid soon. anyway, the contract is expriing may 1st.

btw, what is your take on http://www.amazon.com/Huawei-Ascend-Y30 ... B00CKZRG7I ?

archan · Post by **archan** » 09 Jan 2014 14:16

Chinese?

Hmmm...I always thought something was not right about you. Come to desh and pick up a Panasonic with quad core processor, dual sim, 720P display for some Rs 7500.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Jan 2014 20:09

done! heck with chinese turds. thanks archan.

now - you should see manything right about me... or the only thing you see from are the right things always.

of course me too human, so accept my err and maaf me.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 09 Jan 2014 20:53

Mard e momins, please to educate what is this chromebook thingy? thanks.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 10 Jan 2014 00:47

^think you have a laptop, and you have no controls on the data you have created or stored. in essense, that is chromebook. it is all cloud computing. of course it is safer than your local hard drive store, but i would not store PII or matters of security data using chromebook. remember google!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Jan 2014 01:26

Till now ChromeBook always strikes me as a solution looking for a problem.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 10 Jan 2014 08:07

^^^With the exception of a couple of models, it is a cheap way of getting a computer with basic capabilities. Which is what most people want. The chrome books are selling, but I don't know how well compared to other laptops.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Jan 2014 08:27

The delta in price is not significant enough for the compromise - maybe its the best way to make a cheap Linux machine. I have yet to see a ChromeBook in the wild anywhere even in chi-chi Bay Area. While deciding on a laptop for my older niece (10 year old), we had looked at ChromeBooks too but ended up getting a Windoze laptop for $20.- more (Toshiba was giving a deal).

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 10 Jan 2014 08:46

^^^If you got it with Office, then indeed it is a good deal. Of course one the perks some people may have are unlimited licenses for Office.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Jan 2014 10:37

^^^Check again.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 10 Jan 2014 10:43

windows laptop for $20. let me know.

Javee · Post by **Javee** » 10 Jan 2014 12:17

^^^^ give some love for MS Surface

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Jan 2014 21:08

Surface does not have cellular connectivity. You can buy him an iPad but he will probably have to carry around a chain of dongles to talk down to SDRE equipment like projectors

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Jan 2014 00:22

I don't understand Valve's strat-e-jee with SteamBox either from a user experience perspective or pricing. Its priced way out of league for a casual console gamer and its big screen experience is way behind XBox One. Going by the trend, console makers are making a move to take over living room entertainment (I will also expect Chacha to come out with something along these lines this year) and Valve seems out of step.

prahaar · Post by **prahaar** » 11 Jan 2014 03:49

Marten wrote:What's the best device to buy for a friend who doesn't want to carry a laptop around (sales role with some presentations and excel type stuff), has to have a good looking device, and needs access to 3g/4g.
Am gonna buy this in CA and pay for it from my pocket so want to balance functionality with cost. (Close enough for me to buy the device so please do give advice accordingly).

One option is Lumia 2520, good quality LTE. Although I do not know how well is the keyboard experience.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Jan 2014 04:26

I bought and returned chromecast. I could not plug it into my family room TV as it has only HDMI input fed by the cable box. Chormecast does not have a pass-through. So it is no use in my family room. I plugged it into my overhead projector (which is mounted on the ceiling) - the picture came out OK but no sound

should have guessed as the sound comes from a Denon receiver 5.2 channel. Unfortunately my receiver does not have a HDMI input so no place to plug in the Chromecast dongle. So back it went.

A week before x'mas the younger kid started behaving funny - like saying that "go away" for no reason and outing. So dug out from him that we haven't bought any present for him (and we did buy some jewelry for my older one) and he had his mind set on the new XBox one. Oh boy, was that expensive - $600 greenbacks (incl. tax). Anyway, got that for him and played with kinect etc. The UX (RB note

) is underwhelming and is a pain. All those "XBox go home, XBox watch TV" is all BS and extremely hard to navigate through. All kinds of small irritating things abound in the UX.

- By chance if one switches off the cable box instead of TV (cable box has a remote where one has to choose TV or STB and invariably 50% of the time one of us switches off STB rather than the TV by forgetting to choose TV before hitting the power button), then we have to recycle XBox. Why, what kind of BS is this?

- The sound decibels have come down, i.e. the sound is louder at the same setting without the XBox as the pass through

- Volume comes down to 15 every time we power cycle the TV irrespective if the volume at the time of turning off. We used to watch at 32 but now we have to pump it up to 40-42 for the same loudness. Whay does the volume get reset? Can't XBox remember the previous volume setting or something? Not sure. I can say "XBox volume up" but every time I do that it goes up by 2. So from 15 to go to 41, IU have to say this 8 times

Total waste of good money, but the kid doesn't understand that.

We moved his Wii to the basement media room, disconnected the VCR, and plugged the Wii inits place. We can watch Netflix now but the problem is there are no movies in there I wanted to watch - wanted to see "Up In the Air" with SHQ (older kid had gone to a friend's house for a sleep over and the younger kid was asleep). No can do - the movie was not there. Not many tollywood movies. May be after the initial free month, will cancel, move Wii to tye family room so the younger kid can use both Wii and XBox, and buy a Blue ray player/Receiver (with several HDMI inputs) combo for the media room. Not sure whether I should also get a long HDMI cable from the receiver to the projector and wire it from outside (do not want to pull it through as I am not very handy with this stuff of fixing the dry wall if something comes loose, finding studs etc.) as I don't care about the HMDI cable hugging the wall.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 11 Jan 2014 04:52

i was about to say lumia or lenov miix 8.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Jan 2014 07:02

matrimc wrote: A week before x'mas the younger kid started behaving funny - like saying that "go away" for no reason and outing. So dug out from him that we haven't bought any present for him (and we did buy some jewelry for my older one) and he had his mind set on the new XBox one. Oh boy, was that expensive - $600 greenbacks (incl. tax). Anyway, got that for him and played with kinect etc. The UX (RB note ) is underwhelming and is a pain. All those "XBox go home, XBox watch TV" is all BS and extremely hard to navigate through. All kinds of small irritating things abound in the UX.

You spent $600.- on a whim?!

Pliss to report to Elitemen Re-education camp where commandant Rahul Mehta will re-align your life's priorities.

Voice UI is the phyoochar according to all anal-e-cysts, hain ji?

Voice UI technology in its current state cannot be a primary mode of UI. BTW I am curious what did you use the Kinect for?

Not many tollywood movies.

Bong??

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Jan 2014 07:04

prahaar wrote:
Marten wrote:What's the best device to buy for a friend who doesn't want to carry a laptop around (sales role with some presentations and excel type stuff), has to have a good looking device, and needs access to 3g/4g.
Am gonna buy this in CA and pay for it from my pocket so want to balance functionality with cost. (Close enough for me to buy the device so please do give advice accordingly).
One option is Lumia 2520, good quality LTE. Although I do not know how well is the keyboard experience.

That might be a good option. Totally forgot about that.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 11 Jan 2014 22:29

Raja Bose wrote:Till now ChromeBook always strikes me as a solution looking for a problem.

Nice way to put it

What are your thoughts on the kind of people who are buying these?

sunilUpa · Post by **sunilUpa** » 11 Jan 2014 23:47

At last got a working extension cable for Kinect, and set up the kinect in the home theater. Within an hour daughter's guniea pig chewed through Kinect cable.....sigh...

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 12 Jan 2014 01:09

That Kinect cable is thick!

Satya_anveshi wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:Till now ChromeBook always strikes me as a solution looking for a problem.
Nice way to put it

What are your thoughts on the kind of people who are buying these?

One cannot judge people by what they buy as long they buy it with honest money.

As far as the ChromeBook is concerned, its 2 trumpeted USPs - price and maintenance-free operation are not that enticing for most consumers. The price point is not low enough for most consumers to buy a ChromeBook vs a regular laptop and a machine which requires connectivity to be operational is too heavy a price to pay for it being maintenance-free apart from having a weak ecosystem. See how hard of an uphill battle it is for WP to go up against the Android ecosystem's 800 million apps which is the largest mobile ecosystem currently, now imagine how hard it is to go up against Windoze, the largest ecosystem in computing ever.

That being said, the ChromeBook concept recognizes a very fundamental fact that people do spend a majority of their time online but the problem is their price is not low enough that people would be unwilling to pay that extra amount (~$50-60) to buy a machine which is basically a superset of ChromeBook out of the box. ChromeBooks are one extreme where everything is online while traditional platforms like Windows/OSX are at the other extreme. As I have stated before, the key is to be somewhere in-between....Mickey has moved in that direction, FruitCo is moving albeit slower. So Chacha does recognize that reality now and hence, the move to have ChromeOS type apps running on top of Win8. In the end Chacha is a services company, it could care less about the delivery mechanism unless there was a danger of that mechanism getting hijacked. In terms of ChromeBook hardware they have followed Mickey's WP approach by doling out hard cash to HW partners to encourage ChromeBook products....that is mainly why you see a spurt in new ChromeBook products in last 2 months.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 12 Jan 2014 06:36

Raja Bose wrote:You spent $600.- on a whim?! Pliss to report to Elitemen Re-education camp where commandant Rahul Mehta will re-align your life's priorities.
...
BTW I am curious what did you use the Kinect for?

Not many tollywood movies.
Bong??

Yes, there were a few bong movies but were listed under Hindi tab

As for the impulse buyy - no we had to buy him something but were undecided. We were thiking something cheaper like a Samsung Phone, but after he became a little sad (or acted so that we get emotional) and sprung this. SO had to scarmble as I was not sure I would not end up like Schwarzenegger in that xmas comedy (I forget the name now).

I am not sure what the Kinect is doing but it was included in the price. Kid did not want a Kinect enabled game - he went for Call of Duty. How is this game for 12 year old? Is it too violent? The older kid is complaining as to why we are letting him play the game. She thinks it is too violent (but she is a vegetarian too, but that doesn't compute - so is my younger one).

Anyway, I don't think I am one of NJBPRI. I am sure about the first 4 but guessing the last two also do not apply to me. I have nothing to do with Elitemen. Moreover my IQ is also in the range of 80-170 as any normal person

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 12 Jan 2014 07:08

CoD is too violent for young kids but that's just my opinion. I guess if you don't have any Kinect enabled games, you can use it for face recognition based login (basically it recognizes you and loads your profile after you yell "XBox On") and for Skype chat with parents/outlaws. If you get a chance to try the new Forza Motorsport, give it a try - the graphics on that are way out of this world...I have never seen such detailed lighting effects anywhere.

I am holding off on any console purchase till the game ecosystem grows some more for XBox/PS.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 12 Jan 2014 08:42

so planning for 1 month work from desh plan, i definitely need to be connected. asked folks to check out bsnl broadband connection, and availability of the 2799 plan. (ie Rs 2799 per month) that gives me the best 8mbps bandwith. they have no problems canceling the plan after a month or two.

so, question: i have couple of modems at home, will it work with bsnl service? what docsis version i should buy/take?

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 12 Jan 2014 11:29

Raja Bose wrote:That being said, the ChromeBook concept recognizes a very fundamental fact that people do spend a majority of their time online

But Android is also the superset of Chromebook and brings in much more (mobility, touch, aaps etc) and it could even be cheaper (?).

So, you agree folks buying these devices are ~~buddhijeeves~~ buddhichutyas?

member_28108 · Post by **member_28108** » 12 Jan 2014 11:44

BSNL will accept an ADSL modem . You can buy dlink ADSL modem.

If you have ACT Broadband you can get that too. We have both BSNL ADSL and ACT fiber broadband at home. Both work well but ACT has a higher speed which some family members need for (sometimes) for work related issues.

member_28108 · Post by **member_28108** » 12 Jan 2014 11:47

I am personally against most of these "violent" games. It has been shown that these hinder the mental development of children and cause behaviour alteration .So also for cartoons. I noticed perceptible changes when my child was watching too much of these and sharply cut down these and things normalized. It is better that they get games where they need to be creative and associated with their likes and interests.