Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Mar 2013 08:13

its a common thing for american/western hagiographers to project their cos as more "freewheeling" "open" "creative" and "bottom up" vs the "closed door" "hierarchical" and "copycat" cos of the far east. thats how they have produced course material on cross cultural collaborations as well using first mover advantage and reach of the anglosphere media and publishing.

knowing of some of the absolute nepotist, authoritarian foxconn certified and semi-insane types who run around being "leaders" and "startup founders" in the SJC thats rich.

I know of one guy who arranged for KB to purchase his close friends co, merged with his own unit with his friend as direct reportee, brought in another useless friend again as a highly paid direct reportee , is hostile and borderline abusive outside his close inner circle to subordinates, and is having whale of a time playing god. this has happened NUMEROUS times in all the large cos.
you can find your own cases if you look around.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 29 Mar 2013 09:24

=dang...I read militaristic as materialistic and hence edited out=
you may be referring to this:
How Samsung Became the World's No. 1 Smartphone Maker.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Mar 2013 16:40

three divers arrested in egypt yesterday after cutting a undersea cable.

this in addition to the big ddos attack. the effects are still being felt in india.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 29 Mar 2013 18:18

Indian companies like Micromax, Lava etc need this guy :-

Nokia India's Shivakumar disconnects
Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, March 29, 2013

Nokia’s operations head for India, West Asia and Africa, D. Shivakumar, has quit the Finnish mobile handset maker after spending eight years with the company.

Mr. Shivakumar, who led Nokia’s India operations from 2006 to 2011, before moving to Dubai to head the region, will continue in a consultancy role till June before coming back to India. Before joining Nokia India in 2006, he headed the consumer electronics business of Phillips.

While Mr. Shivakumar is credited with building the Nokia brand in India from number 71 to number 1 on the most trusted list, big misses under his watch were the slow adoption of dual SIM card phones among others.

He was also the ‘de facto HR manager’ at the company, and ingrained many HR processes to encourage learning among the next generation of leaders.

His exit, however, comes at a time when Nokia is facing tough global competition from rivals Apple and Samsung—making the emerging markets the new battleground. “Since 2006, Shiv has been fully dedicated to the company, playing an integral role in Nokia’s growth in India and beyond. But it’s not just what Shiv has done for Nokia externally – his personal convictions on the importance of leadership have resonated throughout the company, and he has sponsored many leadership programs throughout the region,” Chris Weber, Global Sales And Marketing, EVP, Nokia said.

“On behalf of Nokia, I thank Shiv for his contributions, and wish him all the best in the future. He will stay with us in a consultancy role until end-June,” he added.

http://www.thehindu.com/business/Indust ... 558959.ece

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 29 Mar 2013 23:57

"whoosh" (that is the sound of yahoo!'s shareholders' $30M flushed down the toilet).

Yahoo Paid $30 Million in Cash for 18 Months of Young Summly Entrepreneur’s Time

And despite its elegant delivery, that’s a very high price, especially since Summly has been downloaded slightly less than one million times since launch — after a quick start amid much publicity over its founder — with about 90 million “summaries” read. Of course, like many such apps, it also had no monetization plan as yet.

Having met the young man in question, who was in San Francisco in the fall on a fundraising trip, I can see the appeal. He’s both well-spoken and adorkable, as well as very adept at charming cranky media types like me by radiating with the kinetic energy of someone born in the mobile world (you can see that in full force in the video below with actor and Summly investor Stephen Fry).

adorkable? really? (Love Stephen Fry though).

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 30 Mar 2013 05:57

YumYum is the paris hilton of tech.

So FB is gonna intro a phone now on April 4? How much bet that this gonna crash and burn.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 30 Mar 2013 06:13

If they release a tablet, will it be called Facepalm ?

archan · Post by **archan** » 30 Mar 2013 06:49

Need a phunwa to gift dad. He is not super gadget friendly, though has been using PCs for years and uses an ipad once in a while. The idea is for him to not have to carry his laptop everywhere just for email checks. The requirements:
1. We are in India
2. Dual sim
3. Larger than 3in screen
4. Able to fetch gmail and google apps based enterprise email
5. Decent web browsing
6. Gps or maps a plus
7. About 13k budget
8. Should last a day worth of normal usage

Android can be a little intimidating for elderly but there's little choice here. I'm thinking are feature phones any good? How is a rex90 by Samsung? Would it have a 2 day usable battery?
Anyone use the lesser players like micromax, karbonn, celkon? Which are Indian companies to supportand which are Chinese to avoid?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 30 Mar 2013 07:28

If I were facekitab, I wouldnt make a phunwa. I would make a huge home-screen takeover app, which can launch facekitab in 4000 different ways, using to complete contacts to call, using facekitab messenger for SMS, backing up all photus to facekitab and "frictionlessly" sharing it, a widget on phone screen to show latest facekitab updates, and a app store with apps all of which use facekitab opengraph.

In essence a "Skin" like those useless skins OEM tack on to Android, with facekitab in the center. It is easier to implement, people will actually download and use it and easier to deploy. Let us see though if that is what they do and if people do really want to live inside facekitab.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Mar 2013 08:21

you can try the samsung galaxy duos for that budget of around 13-14k.

it has a 4" screen and android 4.0 ICS...there are offline maps now available for india which I use on this phone now.
the apps are fine. not as fast as higher end galaxies but adequate enough.

if you can obtain the micromax canvas HD its the same price but far more powerful - its always in short supply though and not available retail yet.
similar phones are there from karbonn and xolo now which are available on flipkart.

imo these phones are unlikely to crap out for 2 yrs atleast so any of the karbonn types are fine. all import the kits from taiwan and china.
none are more halal than the other. dont ask about support or khan style safety boo boos like RF signal strengths because nobody can tell.

think of phones as one of those 10 liter drums of tomato ketchup or salsa from BJs or costco. they last a while but are going to run out at some point, so throw them out and get a new jar. no point getting senti on it.

archan · Post by **archan** » 30 Mar 2013 10:31

I'd hate to gift anything that would cause any trouble, or out comes the "your generation doesn't value money" argument.

I also noticed HTC has some android offerings in the 10-13k range. Good ?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Mar 2013 10:40

both HTC and Samsung offerings will generally be less powerful than karbonn/mmx/lava/xolo at same price point.

you are probably better off spending 9K and giving him a slab of glass from these vendors with ICS , that will last some 2-3 yrs for sure(no need to mention that)

u can buy it online in flipkart and have them deliver it direct.

habal · Post by **habal** » 30 Mar 2013 11:20

recently got a dual-sim tablet from big bazaar, some offer was on. Performance seems decent with 1.5 Mhz processor and barebones 512mb DDR-3 RAM but the clincher was *full replacement-guarantee* for 6 months. And repair warranty for another 6 months. Any issue, and just give it back to Big Bazaar itself. All this for just 7K. Since this is expected to last only for 1 year and any years over that is bonus. Clearly a win-win deal.

Amongst budget phones Xolo Q and X series (900, 1000) are Intel-based phones. Intel chips & Intel modular architecture, all parts supplied by Intel, just assembled by Xolo. Seems quite good value, but only drawback would be that the chip being Intel, is not optimized for Hardware performance benchmarks like Antutu etc.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 30 Mar 2013 14:43

Anujan wrote:If I were facekitab, I wouldnt make a phunwa. I would make a huge home-screen takeover app, which can launch facekitab in 4000 different ways, using to complete contacts to call, using facekitab messenger for SMS, backing up all photus to facekitab and "frictionlessly" sharing it, a widget on phone screen to show latest facekitab updates, and a app store with apps all of which use facekitab opengraph.

In essence a "Skin" like those useless skins OEM tack on to Android, with facekitab in the center. It is easier to implement, people will actually download and use it and easier to deploy. Let us see though if that is what they do and if people do really want to live inside facekitab.

your competitors fruitco and chacha will not approve of the app, as it destroys their attention seeking apps.

archan · Post by **archan** » 30 Mar 2013 17:33

So none of you qafirs has bought a karbonn/Celkon/xolo/wynncomm/insert desi startup using chini kits with a bijionary founder/ product yet?

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 30 Mar 2013 17:43

Karbonn A9 sahebji. Doing my bit

Any reviews of Lenovo Thinkpad 430/530? Costs about 50k Rupees. Will it last well for about 4-5 years - with all manufacturers of all parts -screen, ets- in market for overall maintenance?

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 30 Mar 2013 21:37

How long can a monopoly last? ARM is about to find out

There’s nothing like the word “monopoly” to make an ARM executive wince. The UK-based chip designer (market cap: £13 billion) maintains a culture of careful modesty, having achieved global domination — or what it’d prefer to call “success” — by tiptoeing around the giant egos of its customers.

But regardless of which terms we use, the fact is that ARM holds sway over virtually the entire smartphone universe. Whether we buy Apple, Samsung, Nokia or BlackBerry, we’re also inevitably buying ARM and contributing to the nearly one billion ARM-licensed chips that are expected to ship this year.

It’s a status quo that goes back a long time, through many quarters of double-digit profit growth, through numerous generations of mobile devices, back to the beginnings of Android and the iPhone, and back even further to genesis of mainstream Nokia cellphones in the 1990s.

You may never have heard of Imagination Technologies, or indeed of MIPS. But the former officially acquired the latter last month, for the tidy sum of £70 million, and together these two chip companies are worth getting to know.

As a combined unit with hundreds of experienced engineers, their mission is simple: to carve themselves a double portion from ARM’s market share. It may take some time, but they insist it’s bound to happen.

“If there’s a Pepsi, there has to be a Coke”, says Amit Rohatgi, VP of Mobile Solutions at MIPS.

“Every industry needs that balance.”

In other words, monopolies are unnatural. And if Rohatgi believes in this maxim, then Imagination’s PR Director, David Harold, clings to it even more fervently now that his company has placed such a big gamble on it being true

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 30 Mar 2013 22:09

archan wrote:So none of you qafirs has bought a karbonn/Celkon/xolo/wynncomm/insert desi startup using chini kits with a bijionary founder/ product yet?

Come to think of it, my room mate and ex-colleague started a kumphiny a couple of year's ago with his friends. Their business model is to have a mobile company with some "differentiators".

They got an order for 100,000 units and made an order for same to a chini company and paid 50% advance. Naturally the Chinese company turned belly up...

The friends are now stuck between rock and hard place. Lost money and don't know what to do with the order.

They tried to work with some Noida based Fab but don't know why it didn't work...

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 30 Mar 2013 22:14

^^
I remember a visit by a big blue SVP to our chee chee Yum-Bee-Yeh class. He told us that the chip used by near 100% video game consoles is manufactured by a consortium of big kumphinies.

Similarly there is a possibility that ARM is owned by another consortium.

The logic given was that there is no single company in the world that can fund the ever more expensive chip design and fab setup.

SriniY · Post by **SriniY** » 30 Mar 2013 23:19

vishvak wrote:Karbonn A9 sahebji. Doing my bit

Any reviews of Lenovo Thinkpad 430/530? Costs about 50k Rupees. Will it last well for about 4-5 years - with all manufacturers of all parts -screen, ets- in market for overall maintenance?

My Lenovo Thinkpad T60 lasted through my entire grad school, 2007 to Jan 2013. Had no issues at all. Only screen became slighly yellowish / white wouldnt display properly over the last year. Needed only one battery replacement in 2009. Second battery lasted 4 years and still holds 3+ hrs of charge. T60 was definitely bang for buck. Bought a T430 with matte screen from them 4 months back . Chicklet keyboard is ok to use. I really like the matte screen. It is a slightly pricey machine but IMO worth the moolah. Should see how long the SSD lasts though.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 30 Mar 2013 23:50

RamaY wrote:
archan wrote:So none of you qafirs has bought a karbonn/Celkon/xolo/wynncomm/insert desi startup using chini kits with a bijionary founder/ product yet?
Come to think of it, my room mate and ex-colleague started a kumphiny a couple of year's ago with his friends. Their business model is to have a mobile company with some "differentiators".

They got an order for 100,000 units and made an order for same to a chini company and paid 50% advance. Naturally the Chinese company turned belly up...

The friends are now stuck between rock and hard place. Lost money and don't know what to do with the order.

They tried to work with some Noida based Fab but don't know why it didn't work...

Well your friends got choona applied liberally on them by the chipanda odm. They should have given max 20% advance upfront that too not out of their own pocket and the rest in tranches based on delivery milestones.

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 31 Mar 2013 00:29

Dhanyawaadam SriniYjee.

Is it worth to buy Thinkpad T530 just for bigger dimensions considering 15.6" screen is not common as 14" is?

Also hearing that DVD Writer are to slowly getting obsolete with newer models coming in market without DVD W/R, will that trend catch up with thinkpad/vostro/probook/pavilion type business series laptops too?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 31 Mar 2013 03:24

RamaY wrote:^^
I remember a visit by a big blue SVP to our chee chee Yum-Bee-Yeh class. He told us that the chip used by near 100% video game consoles is manufactured by a consortium of big kumphinies.

Similarly there is a possibility that ARM is owned by another consortium.

The logic given was that there is no single company in the world that can fund the ever more expensive chip design and fab setup.

He was probably talking about Cell, made by IBM, Toshiba and Sony. It was a pain in the Mush to program and it turned out programmability was the biggest deal in game consoles. So next gen game consoles all have AMD inside them (both Xbox and PS4). AMD is certainly not owned by a consortium.

On top of that ARM does not have any fabs. They only design their processors and license the designs for a few cents per chip to anyone and their grandfather. They also allow "rebranding" of their designs. The clients typically made modifications (Qualcomm for example interfaces it with the radio on the same die and calls is Snapdragon and Nvidia puts a GPU on the same die and calls it Tegra) and fab them. So in that sense, think of ARM as a standards setting committee and not really a "monopoly" in the true sense. There are 3 reasons why ARM is in the top of the pile

1. ODMs know how to make boards etc for ARM SoCs
2. There are plenty of tools, compilers etc for ARM-based SoCs
3. ARM sells just the designs and allows other people to make derivative products. They allow other people to rebrand them.

Many people have been trying to dislodge ARM without success. Intel is a prime case. Their parts (now) are finally meeting the power/performance curve to be successfully used in cell phones and tablets, but Intel has a devil's choice: (a) They have to integrate their own radio which is a pain in the mush IIRC they bought a division of Infineon for doing this or (b) They have to license their design to someone else, which they will never do. Hell will freeze over before you can buy an Intel design, modify it, and give it a whole another brand name.

The friends who got hold of MIPS, even if they design a superior part, have taken just 1 step in a 100km long journey to unseat ARM. It is not happening anytime soon. If it happens, it will be due to Intel.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 31 Mar 2013 03:43

Anyone following the biggest story in Mobile these days? Chipanda screaming themselves hoarse against FruitCo?

Dont know what Bawarchi did to piss off Chipanda, but their official mouthpieces have all been screaming against FruitCo. Ofcourse with untruths, half truths and embellishment. There was full front page headline along the lines of "Break FruitCo Arrogance!!!!" or something like that (Chicom propagandu is always funny). It is full spectrum with some random Chicom owned studio suing FruitCo and all that:

http://9to5mac.com/2013/03/29/apples-ch ... udio-sues/
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/41480 ... nese-media

Anyway, dont know what triggered this. (a) Massa refusing to buy ZTE and Huawei stuff? (b) FruitCo thinking of shifting manufacturing to Brazil? (c) Chicom getting scared about the influence of Massa brands?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 31 Mar 2013 06:17

Definitely first two points played its part. Even lenovo is under scrutiny.

Yogi_G · Post by **Yogi_G** » 31 Mar 2013 06:19

Just wondering, if android hadnt happened, between 2008 and 2011 (before other linux based mobile open source OS) started arriving, Chinese made smart phones wouldnt have taken off at all. Singha mentioned that on this thread some time back, but again would it have been so difficult for the Chinese/SoKo companies to take the linux kernel, built a OS around it and use that?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 31 Mar 2013 06:50

^^^
Turns out that things that look simple arent so simple at all!

Yes, you can install linux and make a OS around it with a nice UI. But tell me, in the era of dumbphones, which company had a good UI? Moto Razr made you look for a Razor to cut yourself and die. That UI was that bad. Turns out that expertise in hardware manufacturing does not translate into software. Look at it a different way. With all those software engineers, UX department and all that, WinMo churned out horrible stuff before iPhunwa came along. Turns out world's largest software company didnt/couldnt want to dedicate the resources for a good phone UX on top of their existing software. When iPod was a hit, it was clear that the next device was a phone/music player combo. That information was available to everyone. Look at what they did -

Hardware companies like Moto and Sony came out with Moto Rockr and Sony walkman branded dumb phones which were horrible.
Software companies like M$ came out with .... Zune! The UX, form factor, software, content market and price sucked when compared to even the iPod, leave along the iPhone.

And then there are applications and services. Turns out that it is more than the OS that is important on the phone. People want to backup and restore their contacts. So you have to build cloud services to do that. Turns out people want a browser -- you have to implement a mobile browser. Then you need a email client. Then you want maps. And then youtube. And the a host of other apps to access facekitab, twitter, notes, etc. Lets not even get started on Music/Books/Movies/Content that people want.

Soon it grows into a full blown UX, Software, Online services, Developer relations, negotiating content licenses etc. That is why companies with traditionally a software bent of mind (M$, Chacha, FruitCo, Palm) have had the more successful efforts (I count the Palm pre as successful in producing a good product) rather than pure hardware Cos.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 31 Mar 2013 06:54

Anujan wrote:Anyway, dont know what triggered this. (a) Massa refusing to buy ZTE and Huawei stuff? (b) FruitCo thinking of shifting manufacturing to Brazil? (c) Chicom getting scared about the influence of Massa brands?

Wouldn't they try to cover (b) through BRICS?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 31 Mar 2013 07:01

You can spot Chipanda hands from miles away, whenever the news is along the lines of "Cheenis being treated in an inferior way!!!!!!!! ZOMG!!!!" after which all cheenis gather, loot and ransack the said companies' stores and products. Remember the incident when they picked up a fight with Japan after which some cheenis gathered and burned cars made by ... Hyundai

Cheenis have a combustible mixture of inferiority complex, insecurity and commie patriotism that Chicom exploits.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 31 Mar 2013 10:30

imo the best feature phone OS in ease of use for calls and SMS was symbian S60 on Nokia N series. I still recall fondly my slider N81 with a couple flicks I could get it done even when driving just by feel.
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... ibXfSVJQFg

ofcourse other aspects like internet browsing were no good but that was the era before internet browsing in a phone was not common, people were happy to get some access to mails thats all.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Mar 2013 11:19

^^^hehe Singha saar, that 'feature phone' OS even back in the days had way more capabilities and better efficiency than the 'smart phone' OSs of today. Problem was harnessing all that efficiency came at the cost of programmability. Programming in Symbian C++ is like Ajit's liquid oxygen. And that basically resulted in poor UX in apps which lead to its demise in a mobile world where app is king. Most people don't realize it but pretty much all the things we take for granted in smartphones today whether it is web browsers, video calling, multi-threading, apps or even app stores - all of them came from Symbian. Even today Android follows the same app store model as Symbian - Fruit Co./WinPho are more restricted and allow 1 app store onlee.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Mar 2013 11:26

Anujan wrote:They also allow "rebranding" of their designs. The clients typically made modifications (Qualcomm for example interfaces it with the radio on the same die and calls is Snapdragon and Nvidia puts a GPU on the same die and calls it Tegra) and fab them.

Actually back in the days ARM gave out licenses to select partners which allowed them to modify the ARM architecture itself. Intel was one of them. And then in a display of tactical brilliance they shut down their XScale unit and sold everything including that license to Marvell.

---

Armen mullah, got back today after a marathon drive from SD to Bay Area. Thanks to LA traffic, the 7 hour trip took 9 hours.

But at least I got to see the Central Perk set from Friends during this trip.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 31 Mar 2013 11:46

IMHO chipz took the right decision. First of all XScale wasn't doing anything useful. A little birdie told me that just like every SDRE in the bay area gets his wife admitted into SJSU every SDRE in Chipz got his wife a job on XScale.

Also from Intel's point of view if X86 can be used in mobile processors isn't that a better stat-e-jee than helping standardize ARM ISA?

Although they don't have a mobile part, money wise they are doing fine. All the cellphones have caused a demand for online services and they are making money selling server class chips whose margins are much more than the pittance they can get out of cheaper mobile parts.

The main reason they have to get into the mobile game is because the volume can keep the utilization high if they want to build new fabs in lower process sizes.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Mar 2013 12:00

XScale was just a side-show and selling that is not the takleef - the takleef is with selling that coveted ARM license along with XScale! The reason ofcourse was the view that x86 is good for everything. Ofcourse if ChipZ succeeds Wall Street YumBeeAyes will be hailing the tactical brilliance and guts of ChipZ and if it fails, those same YumBeeAyes will be mocking the tactical brilliance of ChipZ and gutting them. Such are the vagaries of opinion.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 31 Mar 2013 21:32

X86 might be good for everything. For a long time (starting from Pentium pro IIRC) intels pipeline does not execute x86 directly at all. It executes an ISA almost similar to ARM. Writing programs in x86 has other advantages over RISC ISA like ARM. So they enjoy best of both worlds in a way.

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 31 Mar 2013 23:46

surface to air missile-
one wag commented- when on surface you dont need to be on (mac) air.

KJo · Post by **KJo** » 01 Apr 2013 06:43

What's a good Video player free app for iPad? The "Video" app that comes with iOS is crap.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Apr 2013 08:40

KJoishy wrote:What's a good Video player free app for iPad? The "Video" app that comes with iOS is crap.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html

But you need to compile from source

Anujan wrote:X86 might be good for everything. For a long time (starting from Pentium pro IIRC) intels pipeline does not execute x86 directly at all. It executes an ISA almost similar to ARM. Writing programs in x86 has other advantages over RISC ISA like ARM. So they enjoy best of both worlds in a way.

Their power consumption is the worry. But they seem to be getting there. If ChipZ succeeds expect ARMH to tank becoz ChipZ is totally integrated in its offerings whereas ARM is not and when it comes to processes and manufacturing, nobody does it like ChipZ. Already I see how ChipZ is going after smaller fish like Nvidia. With TI out of the game, pretty soon it will be Sammy and QCOM left.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Apr 2013 08:44

pandyan wrote:bhat is this fantasy about wrap around displays? how would they handle fish bowl effect?

Conformal displays are nothing new - you see them in airports all the time. Why would you have a fishbowl effect in a cylindrical conformal display?

BhairavP · Post by **BhairavP** » 01 Apr 2013 09:06

Kjoishy saar, if you need to play non-Fruitco approved videos on your iPad Videos app, run them through Handbrake using the iPad preset. Encoding takes some time, even on my i7-2600k @ 4.4GHz, but the resulting files will play 400% on the iPad Videos App.