Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 08 Mar 2014 15:46

archan wrote:The highest end phones are typically 48-53k here. Add tax and it goes beyond 60.

I mean at Rs. 60K is crazy considering that in 18-24 months you'll be wanting to upgrade.

archan · Post by **archan** » 08 Mar 2014 16:33

Mort Walker wrote: I mean at Rs. 60K is crazy considering that in 18-24 months you'll be wanting to upgrade.

Yep, for the cost conscious, your suggestion of Moto G can't be beat.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 08 Mar 2014 19:08

the same 60k phone is available for free in massa, with a nominal or no monthly charge for models that are 1-2 years old.. indic market is anyway crazy on electronics, as people are crazy about it.

this is alway been my plan:
Zero device cost, and monthly not more than 40-50 bucks service plan - unlimited data, and limited voice.

archan · Post by **archan** » 08 Mar 2014 22:43

I guess you do pay some $1200 for service for the 2 yr contract you are on. Idea here has a plan with some 450 local/STD/roaming minutes (remember India still has the roaming and circles crap) and 1GB of 3G data for Rs. 325 a month! After tax ityadi, one is likely to pay no more than Rs 400. That is less than $7 a month.
So a phone which you get for free there (2 yr old tech or mediocre phone) might cost say Rs 20-25k here. So I pay, Rs 4800/yr (Rs 9600 for two years) for service and say 25K for the phone. Over two years, I pay about 35K for the phone+service. For the same thing, you pay $1200 or about Rs 72K. The numbers may vary here and there as I have simply used estimates but your cost is more than twice here, so it is unlikely to be even comparable even after correction.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 08 Mar 2014 22:50

SaiK wrote:the same 60k phone is available for free in massa, with a nominal or no monthly charge for models that are 1-2 years old.. indic market is anyway crazy on electronics, as people are crazy about it.

this is alway been my plan:
Zero device cost, and monthly not more than 40-50 bucks service plan - unlimited data, and limited voice.

No. You pay for it in subsidized cost and it is locked to the carrier, further if it is VZW or Sprint, then the GSM section will be limited to 3G. I'm paying $140 USD/month for 5 phones of which 4 are smart phones with 2GB/mo of data on 3 lines and 500MB/mo on the other 2. I own my phones outright.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 08 Mar 2014 23:08

Mort Walker wrote:^^^I think that is a joke. Surely billudada and Satya wouldn't waste the day on Windows installation. Even a duffer like me would stop after 90 minutes and use another machine.

I can see Bill Gates doing that though. He's the sort of guy, who, when confronted with a problem, will try his best to see it all the way through (also, he's rumored to have Asperger's syndrome).

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 09 Mar 2014 00:19

That story is a spoof. Anybody will know that even the lowliest abdul on his 1st day gets a PC already imaged.

Asperger's you say? He is bordering on autistic. He has definitely mellowed down from his heydays due to his wife and charity.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 09 Mar 2014 02:10

Mort Walker wrote:I'm paying $140 USD/month for 5 phones of which 4 are smart phones with 2GB/mo of data on 3 lines and 500MB/mo on the other 2. I own my phones outright.

That is mucho better than my VZW. What carrier?

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 09 Mar 2014 03:28

^^^TMO, but VZW coverage is better off of highways in less populated areas. Not worth the extra $90-$110/mo to me as I can get to a land line.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 09 Mar 2014 04:46

The reason why we are with VZW is bcoz we are in Phursatganj and when we are on the road, we encounter towns/villages every 20+ miles on the average.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 09 Mar 2014 08:41

What a smartwatch should look like

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Mar 2014 08:46

^why does a smart watch need those archaic protruding buttons and crowns?

archan, those rupaya per month charges for what services? my $40 is for 3G/4G where available, unlimited data, 500 min talk plus eve+weekend mins, decent coverage if not the best like verizon, and of course 2 year contract via employee quota.

furthermore, i need a sound 3/4g for work from remote activities - like 4 hours/day webex activities - requires >3G services- the coverage in desh is where needs improvement. i'm sure wireless services is bound to increase in desh and mobile cloud service traffic to leap exponentially.

the bandwidth matters for me in addition to unlimitted data.

Victor · Post by **Victor** » 09 Mar 2014 08:54

What a smartphone shoulda looked like. I miss my Treo

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Mar 2014 08:55

why do you need a separate/sliding qwerty button panel?

saip · Post by **saip** » 10 Mar 2014 23:23

Some three years back I was in Kolkatta and needed Internet access. So I went to Tata and bought a dongle. Looks like I got myself a post paid thing instead of a prepaid thing. I dont remember why. It was probably cheaper and it did come with some 2 gig or so data. I did not use all that data and after two weeks later I left India. I got couple of bills from Tata by emali and ignored them. Finally they said my account is closed and i left it at that.

So today out of the blue I got an email purporting to be from an attorney asking me to pay up or else. I dont remember what address I gave when I got the dongle. May be just the hotel address. So how do these Indian companies go after 'dead beats'? I know there is something called CYBIL in India. So how else do they come after guys like me? Do they send some muscle to beat up people? It is not much, just 2000. But I never used the data.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Mar 2014 00:59

Raja Bose wrote:What a smartwatch should look like

Where are the speaker and mic? Batteries in the strap is a bad idea as the strap is one of the weakest parts and usually goes first. If battery is also in the strap, then the cost of replacing the strap will go up. All my watches I had previously (when I was wearing them, now I don't as my smartest feature phone but still $0 with 2 yr contact serves that purpose), the strap broke first and I never bothered to buy a new strap as the watch itself was quite cheap. Just bought another watch as a new strap (even if available) was almost as expensive as the watch. You might have guessed that I don't wear Rolex/Tissot. I am a Swatch kind of a guy.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Mar 2014 01:02

Why do you need a speaker on the watch? Mic placement is not that big a problem.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Mar 2014 05:37

Then how does one make a two-way call on the watch? or are you saying that you just yackety yack into the mic and hangup?

the new normal instead of a good listener be a good talker the latest yuppie way of influencing people and winning friends

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Mar 2014 06:02

Problem with designers is that they design their perfect little creations, criticize everyone in the market, wait till technology catches up and then tell people "I told you so".

You know what I want in a smartphone? "sheets" 1mm thin, foldable like my wallet, 30 day battery life, with pages like a pocketbook that displays graphics, which I can flip to go to different apps, notifications, which I can talk to or write on and which naturally understands my eye gestures and then guesses what I need based on my context. See where its going?

The problem with that watch are many
1. What kind of display? If its not e-ink, it cant stay on for a long time without draining all the battery.
2. How thick? If its too thin, hard to cram in a battery inside that.
3. Is it all metal? How do you propose to put in an antenna inside it?
4. You press pickup call and then what happens? Speakerphone? Is that how you want to take calls in public?
5. Apart from looking good and a few nice renders, whats the value proposition. What else can it do?

There are three ways of doing design. The snobbish designer types who say "I dont care for technological restrictions, I want to design the best possible product" -- these fellows should quit and become scifi writers and/or cinematographers. The mediocre ones who think "whats the technology enable today" and design for that and the truly great ones who design with just about enough technological assumptions which make the engineers catch up and innovate. They set goals for engineers, which when met, becomes a great product. This unfortunately is in the first category.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Mar 2014 06:05

matrimc wrote:Then how does one make a two-way call on the watch? or are you saying that you just yackety yack into the mic and hangup? the new normal instead of a good listener be a good talker the latest yuppie way of influencing people and winning friends

er...you don't use the watch for calls. That is one fundamental mistake Pranav Mistry did with the original Galaxy Gear. One doesn't need to have a wearable go about replicating every I/O functionality of a smartphone. That is a kitchen sink recipe for disaster. The watch should be meant for discrete notification and allow the user to judge whether taking out the phone at that moment is worth it or not. It should not be meant for doing calls through it.

The mic however has other uses such as voice control and augmented noise cancellation.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Mar 2014 06:11

My problem with smartwatch is simple. Its not the appearance which is the easier problem to solve.

A smartphone enables you to make calls and check emails while walking, listen to music while running. It enables you to carry it around and read news while you are waiting for a bus. You can pull up directions while driving. Not only can these activities not be performed on a desktop, they are actually quite cumbersome to the point of being infeasible on a laptop as well. Sure you can call people using a laptop, are you going to carry it around in a backpack and pull it out everytime you want to make a call?

The issue with a smartwatch vis-a-vis a smartphone is: yes it is a bit more discreet than a phone in terms of notifications, but apart from that, it doesnt really enable anything that you cant do with a smartphone. The rest of the activities (reading text and notifications) are arguably worse experiences than a smartphone (hard to type on such a teeny screen for example and therefore hard to reply to texts). This is biggest hurdle. Lack of a convincing use case.

Any idiot can "innovate" on appearance, same doesnt hold true for functionality.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Mar 2014 06:17

Anujan wrote: There are three ways of doing design. The snobbish designer types who say "I dont care for technological restrictions, I want to design the best possible product" -- these fellows should quit and become scifi writers and/or cinematographers. The mediocre ones who think "whats the technology enable today" and design for that and the truly great ones who design with just about enough technological assumptions which make the engineers catch up and innovate. They set goals for engineers, which when met, becomes a great product. This unfortunately is in the first category.

I am curious, why do you think it is in the first category?

Exactly which aspects of this specific design according to you, assume something which is beyond 1-2 years of product development (not advanced development but regular product development)?

- The circular display and watch glass? Nope. This has been available for last 2-3 years now.
- The knobs or buttons? Nope. Watches have had them for ages.
- Battery? Nope. You don't need the battery to be put into the strap unlike what the designer might think. The z height for these watches are thick enough to have a good battery in it. The only thing is it cant be off-the-shelf ODM sourced and must be custom made...something the likes of Apple can very well get done.
- The industrial design? Nope. This is how a high end watch looks today so clearly manufacturable.
- How to put antennas in an all metal body? This is a pretty well known in any mobile/wearable devices and is solved with either cut-outs which are colour-coordinated plastics or plastic rings. Heck, if its Apple they will put the antennas in the leather watch strap and suddenly people will no longer feel the need to keep changing their straps and if they do, they will start happily paying $100.- for the privilege.

The reason why I posted the above design is becoz I think its firmly in category #3 - good design and just enough challenge for the engineers unlike the current crap being dished out by Pebble and Samsung which fall in category #2.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Mar 2014 06:22

Anujan wrote: The issue with a smartwatch vis-a-vis a smartphone is: yes it is a bit more discreet than a phone in terms of notifications, but apart from that, it doesnt really enable anything that you cant do with a smartphone. The rest of the activities (reading text and notifications) are arguably worse experiences than a smartphone (hard to type on such a teeny screen for example and therefore hard to reply to texts). This is biggest hurdle. Lack of a convincing use case.

That's what they said about a smartphone back in the days too. oooh...what good is a smartphone, I can't do PowerPoint/Photoshop on it!

Did the smartphone replace your laptop? Nope.

That is the point I am making - why does a smartwatch need to replace all activities of a smartphone? Why this need for mutual exclusion. That's like saying my TV is useless coz I can't compose Word documents on it like my desktop.

In order to be a value proposition, what a new device category needs to do is to make a user's life easier. That's what the smartphone did vis a vis your laptop. In case of a smartwatch, it can be summed up in one sentence: "Free the user from the need to pull out their smartphone for every little thing". And guess who complain most about smartphones in the same way people complained about the cumbersomeness of laptops? Its women. And guess why? Becoz most of them don't wear clothes with pockets on a regular basis.

Apple knows this well. If they bring out a watch like the above, suddenly wearing watches will be back in fashion.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Mar 2014 07:55

^^^
You are arguing a strawman. Let me repeat -- there is one frequent and common activity, that has emotion, need and urgency associated with it that a smartphone can do much much better than a laptop. That is making calls. In that use case, smartphone is much better than a laptop by miles. What is the similar activity with emotion, need and urgency for a smartwatch? Ability to check if you got a Sext in a meeting without people seeing? "A smartphone frees you from your desktop" is a gamechanger as far as mobility is concerned. "A smartwatch frees you from your smartphone" and therefore? You dont need to pull it out?

Yes there are activities that can be done better by a laptop, I acknowledged that and pointed out that there are other activities that *cannot be done by laptops in a meaningful way* which a smartphone can do. This was readily apparent to anyone -- Remember the Palm pilot days? Remember the iPod days? Those were very much the rage before the iPhone. A smartphone can do all that *and* make calls.

Again I repeat, the value proposition a watch frees you from having to pull it out of your pocket is *pretty weak* when you compare Smartwatch:Smartphone and Smarphone:Laptop equations.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Mar 2014 08:04

Anujan wrote: Again I repeat, the value proposition a watch frees you from having to pull it out of your pocket is *pretty weak* when you compare Smartwatch:Smartphone and Smarphone:Laptop equations.

For one, its not a weak argument if you are a woman - in fact expect more in this space from the likes of FruitCo. Don't underestimate the value of glance-ability, context-based pushing of info and the convenience afforded by it (the reason why Google Now is so well liked). Hindsight is always 20/20 in these cases like the statement you made about utilities of smartphones. Remember the famous statement from the Motor Oil CEO (before selling the BlackBerry device to RIM): "Who wants to do e-mail on their phone???".

The value proposition in all these cases is essentially one of emotion and convenience, rather than comparing or mapping a laundry list of technical capabilities. In fact, let me put in this way, Smartwatch::Smartphone is no weaker than Tablet::PC...in fact the former is a stronger value proposition than the latter even though its in the same theme and its definitely stronger than Tablet::Smartphone.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 11 Mar 2014 08:07

For me a watch is indispensable. It gives me precise time and heading information. No way I'll be pulling out a smartphone during mijjle flight!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Mar 2014 08:24

A closer look at Titanfall's not-so-secret weapon: Microsoft's cloud

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Mar 2014 08:36

Anujan wrote:You know what I want in a smartphone? "sheets" 1mm thin, foldable like my wallet, 30 day battery life, with pages like a pocketbook that displays graphics, which I can flip to go to different apps, notifications, which I can talk to or write on and which naturally understands my eye gestures and then guesses what I need based on my context. See where its going?

Those specs are fantastic. Love it. If somebody can build a (functioning

) gizmo like that a couple of million will pay whatever the price (>= $2000) for that geegaw. After skimming that market, the prices for the next tens of millions can be at $700 or so.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Mar 2014 08:41

Anujan wrote:(hard to type on such a teeny screen for example and therefore hard to reply to texts).

Voice recognition (if the processing power required for a very very good variety can be fit into such a small form factor) would solve that problem (or sub-vocalization and some very sophisticated signal processing after picking up from bone vibrations - that is probably in the SF realm though).

Victor · Post by **Victor** » 11 Mar 2014 23:09

SaiK wrote:why do you need a separate/sliding qwerty button panel?

Thanks for asking. This is a major pet peeve of mine and I blame Mahdi for going to India and becoming a Buddhist hippie for it.

I tend to enter a lot of text into my phone and find it difficult to use the virtual keyboards, specially one-handed. It can be done and Swype is a nice advance but it is not as good as a physical keyboard for me. It is also impossible to use glass slabs with gloves on which is a biggie where I live.

But its not just keyboards. The tactile feedback from physical buttons and knobs is a huge usability factor on personal gadgets that has been rendered dead and buried by the iDiotphone and all of the glass slabs that blindly followed it IMO. I have been using PDAs since the Palm m100 and was blown away by the Treo which came close to replacing my laptop for a lot of stuff. Since then, IMHO, usability and efficiency of both operating systems and hardware have gone downhill steadily for everything other than video games. What used to come ON and be available in a single click instantly now needs 3-4 presses of glass while the screen thinks. Using the big-ass phablets as phones/PDAs is as ridiculous as driving around the block in a Hummer to buy a 6-pack. Why not go all the way and just wear a freaking 10" tablet as a hat.

I am hoping that there will be blowback and that knobs and buttons will make a comeback on phones, along with physical keyboards and one-handed sizes.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 11 Mar 2014 23:22

Voice recognition will have a hard time disambiguating between accents. My theory: mankind will come a full circle and go back to something like a modern form of morse code for data entry in smart watches. In a few years all the cool SF hippies will be tapping on their iWatches and giggling. But remember, you heard it here first. BRF. Always on the (nose)bleeding edge.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 11 Mar 2014 23:56

Suraj wrote:Voice recognition will have a hard time disambiguating between accents. My theory: mankind will come a full circle and go back to something like a modern form of morse code for data entry in smart watches. In a few years all the cool SF hippies will be tapping on their iWatches and giggling. But remember, you heard it here first. BRF. Always on the (nose)bleeding edge.

I believe iOS and Android will let you select the accent for English.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 11 Mar 2014 23:59

Mort Walker wrote: I believe iOS and Android will let you select the accent for English.

And then Sammy will add 20 different sub-accents, tout that as a great feature and their watch will fail to recognize any of them 50% of the time, freeze up and reboot because of bugs in the code.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 12 Mar 2014 03:50

^^^Dont forget it will also provide 20 handwaving gestures to select each accent and call it the S-Accent.

kenop · Post by **kenop** » 12 Mar 2014 04:13

Victor wrote: I am hoping that there will be blowback and that knobs and buttons will make a comeback on phones, along with physical keyboards and one-handed sizes.

yea.
Add the 4:3 screens on laptops to the list.

archan · Post by **archan** » 12 Mar 2014 06:21

Raja Bose wrote:^^^Dont forget it will also provide 20 handwaving gestures to select each accent and call it the S-Accent.

Don't forget the elaborate head movements, shaking, bobbing that some do while speaking.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 12 Mar 2014 07:01

nachiket wrote:
Mort Walker wrote: I believe iOS and Android will let you select the accent for English.
And then Sammy will add 20 different sub-accents, tout that as a great feature and their watch will fail to recognize any of them 50% of the time, freeze up and reboot because of bugs in the code.

This is really unfair to Sammy. Your statement would be true 3 years back, but they've come a long way since. They've put more resources in s/w, limited the bloatware as now seen in the Galaxy S5, and improved their h/w. I like using the S-Pen on the Note 2 and Note 3. It is really it is quite handy and surprisingly no one else has anything like it.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 12 Mar 2014 07:12

archan wrote:Don't forget the elaborate head movements, shaking, bobbing that some do while ]speaking

Ideally shouldn't this go into L&M also?

Anand K · Post by **Anand K** » 12 Mar 2014 09:38

Oh good.... Lydia sucked in Skyrim! I hope the next sellsword/companion I get in TES VI is powered by Skynet Class AI in Bethesda HQ.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 12 Mar 2014 12:24

Raja Bose wrote: - How to put antennas in an all metal body? This is a pretty well known in any mobile/wearable devices and is solved with either cut-outs which are colour-coordinated plastics or plastic rings. Heck, if its Apple they will put the antennas in the leather watch strap and suddenly people will no longer feel the need to keep changing their straps and if they do, they will start happily paying $100.- for the privilege.

Actually, my old Swatch Paparazzi SmartWatch had its antenna in one side of its its rubberized strap. Luckily, the other end didn't have the antenna, so I was able to get the watch guy to cut off a bit and reattach the clip on it, so it would fit on my wrist properly (Swatch must have planned for this, as the other strap had multiple segments on it, each with a convenient hole drilled in breadthwise, so you could take the strap off, clip off a few segments to shorten it, then pass the little metal bar through the breadthwise hole of the last segment and reattach the strap to the watch.)