Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 16 Jun 2014 21:39

archan wrote:Hearing rumors about Nexus 6 being cancelled, and then not being cancelled..
any perspectives?

What cancellation?

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 16 Jun 2014 23:29

Raja Bose wrote:
archan wrote:Hearing rumors about Nexus 6 being cancelled, and then not being cancelled..
any perspectives?
What cancellation?

There were rumors that Nexxus 5 was the last Nexus phone and Chacha was replacing it with Android Silver devices from multiple manufacturers.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Jun 2014 00:09

No commento. BTW there is a beautiful blue sky outside today.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 17 Jun 2014 00:16

negi wrote:^ Hardware as service is just one aspect of cloud, Platforms, Softwares and even Solutions are now available as a service on cloud .

Understood, but when you are talking about mobile computing in non-business world, there only niche requirements.

Other than that, large businesses have their own cloud solutions.. the small & medium scale businesses are the target areas., and most likely would prefer the cloud computing model.. and most of the solution space is storage based.

what I am saying is now days are ahead where I can slam a micro sd card to get 128GB for .5cents per GB or even lesser as we go.
so, when the cost of local storage decreases, and the performance of mobile computing matches that of laptops, the cycle comes back to device computing power than cloud space computing and platforms.

Picklu · Post by **Picklu** » 17 Jun 2014 00:22

Dell is notorious to time their components life within the warranty. Their parts start failing with in the week the warranty expires.

All my friends suffered for it. I took 3 year warranty to beat them. A bunch of components failed after first year and replaced by Dell - no question asked. They continued fine even after one more year without failing.

Emboldened, took a few more for friends and relatives with 3 year warranty. Then, the free replaced parts started failing within the week 3 years got over. @#$@%%

And don't touch VAIO with the largest pole available, will become so slow as unusable within 2 years whichever model you take and however much you pay for it. I took one SZ (costed me more than $2k

) and within 2 years became unusable even after multiple formats.

When it comes to pricey stuff, as per my experience, you get your money's worth from fruit co and fruit co only. My prehistoric 80 GB ipod 3rd generation not only still going strong but still retains at least half of the battery life which is still impressive and beats most of the recent smart phones hands down. My iPhone 3GS is also still going strong and I do not see any reason to upgrade other than GPS accuracy for running apps.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 17 Jun 2014 01:05

sony is not any better ..
Lenovo is much better of the lot in terms of robustness.

HP comes close(not all things - say 90% especially elite series), but so is Toshiba. Of course Mac is uno as of now in terms of quality builds.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Jun 2014 01:19

You are comparing an iPod's battery life with that of a smartphone?

Picklu · Post by **Picklu** » 17 Jun 2014 02:19

An Ipod with a hard disk, almost 8 years old. Still providing music playback for 10 hours.
Yes, you are absolutely correct, can not be compared with most smartphone.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Jun 2014 02:23

Totally different power profiles and usage models. Its useless to compare them like that. Its like comparing an artillery gun with a tank.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 17 Jun 2014 02:46

May has come, and two contract up! sprint is allowing me to own 5c, lg 52, gal mega, s3, for free and others for some amount 49 to 250 bucks.

5s is 149. s5 is 99. also the htc m8 harmon for 229

vina · Post by **vina** » 17 Jun 2014 04:34

Picklu wrote:An Ipod with a hard disk, almost 8 years old. Still providing music playback for 10 hours.
Yes, you are absolutely correct, can not be compared with most smartphone.

Gumboot's stuff is pretty rock solid as well. My feature phone ( me phata abdul feature phone onree) , six years old, holds charge for 2 days and has taken much abuse, but everything works fine.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Jun 2014 05:10

SaiK wrote:May has come, and two contract up! sprint is allowing me to own 5c, lg 52, gal mega, s3, for free and others for some amount 49 to 250 bucks.

5s is 149. s5 is 99. also the htc m8 harmon for 229

m8 and 5s are both good. Stay away from s5.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 17 Jun 2014 21:52

thx! 5s is 99 bucks, but will spend it if it is worth upgrading from 4.

btw, I bought this MS mobile mouse 4000 for yoga 2 pro.. now I'm used to double click for text selection using the mouse. does anyone know how to get that ? btw it happens only in edit mode or when you type a post in brf. after submit, text selection is fine!

this brf problem or my mouse?

Sanju · Post by **Sanju** » 17 Jun 2014 22:34

Marten wrote:Folks, what is the best way to access Hulu off a FireTV or Chromecast? Need to set up a smart proxy but no free services available.
Is there a solution that I am missing? Used a web proxy earlier, but that service has closed down early this year.

Thanks in advance for your help.

The free options that I was aware of, either have disappeared or are as per anecdotes - frustrating . There are cheap VPN solutions - however, as the operative word is cheap so is the connection.

StrongVPN is a provider that is really good. Their base option starts at $55 per year. Their service is par excellence.

The only caveat is that you will need a Tomato compatible router (or dd-wrt). E-3000 from Cisco is very popular AND stable one that Strongvpn themselves suggest.

You can get Netflix & Hulu Plus (you may need a US cc for Hulu Plus).

negi · Post by **negi** » 17 Jun 2014 23:31

SaiK wrote:thx! 5s is 99 bucks, but will spend it if it is worth upgrading from 4.

iOS8 will not run on 4

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 18 Jun 2014 02:04

gotcha.. btw, anyone knows what amazon is up to in talking about 3D smart phones?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 18 Jun 2014 02:36

SaiK wrote:gotcha.. btw, anyone knows what amazon is up to in talking about 3D smart phones?

pseudo 3D.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 18 Jun 2014 07:46

Gosh! It is after all Microsoft
[img] http://tinypic.com/r/dqkbqv/8 /img]

Happened on yoga2pro

James B · Post by **James B** » 18 Jun 2014 10:45

Marten wrote:Folks, what is the best way to access Hulu off a FireTV or Chromecast? Need to set up a smart proxy but no free services available.
Is there a solution that I am missing? Used a web proxy earlier, but that service has closed down early this year.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Martenullah, search for nVPN. They charge $6/month or if you pay annually they charge $40. Speedwise I have seen it to go up to 10MBPS so no problem streaming stuff. I have personally used this for at least 2 years & I must say its reliable & VFM plus they have proxies of around 10-15 countries.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 18 Jun 2014 10:46

have you tried the hola plugin for chrome? it was free last I tried and could view some usa-only bcast of the bostonM.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 18 Jun 2014 14:13

I would really advise against office VPNs as a mode of watching matches etc. such long running high-bw streams will inevitably attract attention to misuse of co resources. sys admins nowadays have passive scripts that run 24x7 to detect misuse even on servers like someone running gcc where they should not, a bright bold mail comes saying cease and desist and the gcc gets killed.

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 18 Jun 2014 14:23

script or not, any admin would figure out you are upto something

James B · Post by **James B** » 18 Jun 2014 16:37

Marten wrote:Thanks James B, but there is a limit of 30GB, right?

There is no limit saar. Its unmetered bandwidth & no throttling. Take a one month subscription ($6) & test it out. I also suggest a paid OpenVPN client like Viscosity (https://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/) for stable connections. There are free Open VPN clients but they are complicated & unstable. Just a suggestion.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 19 Jun 2014 06:03

Amazon launches the FirePhone

The faux 3D as expected is questionable but FireFly is what Google Goggles should have become but didn't.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 19 Jun 2014 06:11

What will a 3-d phone do? Slap on my face to wake me up?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 19 Jun 2014 10:33

Raja Bose wrote:Amazon launches the FirePhone

The faux 3D as expected is questionable but FireFly is what Google Goggles should have become but didn't.

What is firefly?

negi · Post by **negi** » 19 Jun 2014 10:39

Firefly

On a serious note is this 3d on similar lines as John Caramac's (designer of Quake and Doom game engines) venture ?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 19 Jun 2014 10:45

I do have the DVDs in unopened box. No can do watch these as my kid had been pestering me to watch hobbit II with him which we did this last weekend. Now I have several Jeeves and Wooster DVDs and Dana Carvey stuff in line before I get to firefly. But wha dies that have to do with goggles? I mean some 3d goggles are required to use this phone or what?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 19 Jun 2014 17:08

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 22 Jun 2014 19:53

Picklu wrote:Dell is notorious to time their components life within the warranty. Their parts start failing with in the week the warranty expires.

All my friends suffered for it. I took 3 year warranty to beat them. A bunch of components failed after first year and replaced by Dell - no question asked. They continued fine even after one more year without failing.

Emboldened, took a few more for friends and relatives with 3 year warranty. Then, the free replaced parts started failing within the week 3 years got over. @#$@%%

And don't touch VAIO with the largest pole available, will become so slow as unusable within 2 years whichever model you take and however much you pay for it. I took one SZ (costed me more than $2k ) and within 2 years became unusable even after multiple formats.

When it comes to pricey stuff, as per my experience, you get your money's worth from fruit co and fruit co only. My prehistoric 80 GB ipod 3rd generation not only still going strong but still retains at least half of the battery life which is still impressive and beats most of the recent smart phones hands down. My iPhone 3GS is also still going strong and I do not see any reason to upgrade other than GPS accuracy for running apps.

Have entirely different expoerienec wrt SONY.

1) Have a VAIO of 2003 model still working fine-- very fast boot with linux. windows does not work anymore obviously. It rivals my other laptops and office one using MS windows.
2) shq has windows with HP model 2009 model- ok but keyboard has lost some keys(my son helped in this

)
3) have another VAIO model 2010- windows - have installed linux- super fast booting. commonly use it for many purposes including typing this now.
4) sony phones xperia- stunning screen and sturdy. love it. have almost always used sony phones since 2001. only exception is HTC for 2 years (2010-2012 period). My old sony phone still works well.

Javee · Post by **Javee** » 25 Jun 2014 11:54

I have a 2011 VAIO Z series laptop that I got for my personal use, absolutely delight to work with, has all the bells and whistles, a great battery life. The build quality of the laptop is top notch and the laptop itself is light and rock solid.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 25 Jun 2014 13:45

the pace of change and improvement in smartphones seem to have plateaued and finally ground to a halt like DVD player cycle.

people are adding cpu cores, but RAM and internal mem are generally 1-2GB and 16GB only, the screen techs has no changed, neither has the battery life and size improved beyond the usual 2000-2300mah. nobody really wants a screen beyond 5' most are ok with 4.7' , human eyes dont really care beyond 300ppi ...

between 15k-25k these are 100s of mobiles with no clear differentiation. all sharing the same components, pros and cons and perhaps back end shanzhai factories also.

atleast the iphone avoids this unhold mess and sits pretty atop the hill @ nearly 50k !! you see a iphone you know what it is atleast.

neither is the app world exactly setting the sky on fire. for all the 100000.....^1000000000 apps in android store or apple store, which are the world beating ones seen in last 12 months that we must have?

its very ho hum.

SRoy · Post by **SRoy** » 25 Jun 2014 14:06

from the app world, expectations are that we get apps that gets us going with day to day tasks, very mundane stuff. they may not be world beating stuff.

SandeepA · Post by **SandeepA** » 25 Jun 2014 22:20

Anything cooking at Google I/O?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 25 Jun 2014 22:24

Api for wearble android hw i believe.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 25 Jun 2014 22:48

Marten wrote:The next dimension of growth will be found in 3D calling and holographic imaging.

Too radical. Growth comes from mundane stuff, finally done right.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 25 Jun 2014 23:23

SRoy wrote:from the app world, expectations are that we get apps that gets us going with day to day tasks, very mundane stuff. they may not be world beating stuff.

a simple app that is adaptive will be the "world beating stuff".

- i can program the environment (sensor integration)
---- gps, people, ir, humidity, time, etc.
- map the schedule
---- automatic predefined schedule/profile type
- alert system adaptive logic
-- location awareness, take action, time sensitive decisions, can't make or break must get off the highway now, don't take this route due to weather, traffic, submit your proposal by 2pm, shq warning alerts, lal mullah sandwich time, mortification alerts so that prep works can begin.

yeah.. why we need human brains anymore?

SRoy · Post by **SRoy** » 25 Jun 2014 23:41

^^

well, all the phone OS's have API for the tasks listed.

sure you can program the environment. but for that the bottleneck lies with 'dumb' equipments.
have done stuff like remotely controlling HVAC by DTMF tones...sort of smart home. that was 15 years ago.
smartphones are much more capable. you need network aware HVAC's, door controller, photo sensors etc. on standard protocols.

indie developers cannot invest in such equipments. if these types of equipments standardize on interfaces and emulators emerge, then such smart apps development will take off in a big way.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 26 Jun 2014 01:28

I bought this Samsung microSD card with adapter for 27 bucks on amazon prime. had some discover 5% cashback for this and other purchase like microHDMI connector and a kamor case for my yoga lap. very satisfied!

the sd card is blazing speed pro version - 32gb at 90MB/s.

sroy, I was talking about situation awareness systems on mobile platforms- as the sensors are going on moore's law basis... it is ideal now to take on these integrated solution apps..

if I had millions, I'd invest in such venture.. and make a ton of money.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 26 Jun 2014 01:31

Marten wrote:^Difference between visionaries and developers. :p

The Mahdi was a visionary? Nope. He just got things to be done right. FruitCo didn't invent touch screen phones, multi touch, app stores, mp3 players or tablets. They just did it right. Visionaries are good for $10000/session innovation seminars onlee.