Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 29 Jun 2013 12:20

Finally iDEN is laid to rest....

Sprint to shut down iDEN Push-to-Talk network on Sunday

Still have fond memories of iDEN as writing a test suite for Java BT APIs on iDen phones as Motor Oil contractor was this nanha's 1st gig as a ITvity munna back in India. For chi chi munnas today complaining if their phones are even a tad thicker than 9mm, iDEN phones used to be around 1.5 inches thick becoz of the extra PCB for enabling super fast PTT functionality. iDEN is also an example of historical Motor Oil shortsightedness....the rot runs deep and Chacha has a major turnaround task on its hands.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 29 Jun 2013 13:48

^^^^
Those phones rocked. I used to have one back in 1999/2000 era when Nextel was the provider of the iDEN network and that walkie-talkie push-to-talk feature was really cool (all the guys in our startup dot-com company had one and it made communication really easy). I think mine was a Motorola i1000+ phone model. Who cares about the thickness (by the way, I think it was closer to 1 inch thick and not much thicker than my previous phone either, actually it might have been thinner because my previous phone was a Motorola brick.) That phone was one tough little ******** -- you don't want to know how many times I dropped it and it even went under a street sweeper once and came out looking a bit cleaner and still working perfectly. It was also one of the first phones that had an e-mail receiving feature, so I wrote monitoring scripts to email alert my phone whenever our servers went down.

Battery life on that thing was also better than my previous Motorola brick phone (I think my prev. one was a MicroTAC Elite, still have it in my spare parts box somewhere), because this one had an LCD display and the older phone had LED display and a standby time of only 8 hours (I used to keep my older phone off and carry a pager, so that way people could page me and I would switch my phone on and call them back). I really loved that phone and still miss that push-to-talk feature.

kenop · Post by **kenop** » 29 Jun 2013 16:13

I am looking for some quick comments on micromax vs samsung product choices in India.
One negative is, not being able to install applications/games on the SD card in Samsung Galaxy S Duos that seemed like within my reach from all angles. Same shortcoming present in the Micromax top line models too.
How I wish I could stay forever on Palm Treo 680 (2007-ish acquisition) where such restrictions did not apply.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 29 Jun 2013 17:04

^^million developers here and no answer to my previous question...

what laptop do you use for your development needs?

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 29 Jun 2013 18:30

you can move apps to SD card after installing

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 29 Jun 2013 19:07

Raja Bose wrote:iDEN is also an example of historical Motor Oil shortsightedness....the rot runs deep and Chacha has a major turnaround task on its hands.

I don't understand why is iDen considered as historical shortsightedness of MOTO? iDEN was a MOTO communications standard implemented mostly by NEXTEL in the mid 1990s when networks were limited and talk time was expensive. Construction businesses, law enforcement and governments were a big user of iDEN through the early 00s and it was largely successful in the beginning for NEXTEL. MOTO simply developed the standard similar to QCOM developing CDMA 2000 or proprietary TDMA.

It had it's place in time and now that Sprint is acquired by Softbank, there are much better ways to use the spectrum iDEN was allocated since there are no more customers for it anyway. Please explain, hum samjha nahin?

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 29 Jun 2013 23:36

mahadevbhu wrote:^^million developers here and no answer to my previous question...

what laptop do you use for your development needs?

Office-given laptop is a Dell Latitude E6410, which I dual boot on Windows and Linux. Most of my development is under linux (including occasional Android experiments). I only use the Windows partition for occasional PPT-giri and MS Lync. I'll be getting a beefier laptop from work soon, where I *MAY* run linux under VMWare like some of the other colleagues, or may dual-boot. Still undecided on that. Most stuff is developed on the laptop and in osome cases, I use that laptop to ssh into servers and develop there.

At home, I used a Macbook until SHQ snagged it when hers died. OSX is just a different flavor of *nix and most of the stuff I've done in the last 12+ years has been almost always *nix based. Developed some good stuff on it, for instance, the BRF Archiver was fully developed on that Macbook and the only reason I used a Windows Desktop later, was for testing the code to make sure it was cross-platform. The infamous BRF dictionary was also mostly composed on that Macbook.

I still have a Windows desktop at home though, mostly for gaming and occasional VC++/Delphi/python coding. And since SHQ has snagged my macbook, I also surf BRF mainly on the Windows Desktop.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 30 Jun 2013 01:04

Mort Walker wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:iDEN is also an example of historical Motor Oil shortsightedness....the rot runs deep and Chacha has a major turnaround task on its hands.
I don't understand why is iDen considered as historical shortsightedness of MOTO?

Mortu tau, hum samjhate hain. The shortsightedness was not in Moto developing iDEN - iDEN was effing brilliant as a technology. All police officers would carry Motor Oil iDEN phones as backup becoz they worked under all conditions. My first 2 mobile phones in massa were Nextel iDEN phones. The pakiness of Moto was being smug in their belief that nothing would threaten iDEN and they could just sit on their mush doing nothing and keep milking the cow without feeding it. Even more ironic is that a lot of the fundamental IP which later went into QChat was independently developed by the same Moto engineers who invented iDEN and guess what the Motor Oil execs and ppt masters did? They wilfully asked those engineers not to file patents for any of that work - patents which actually would have blocked QCOM from ever threatening iDEN and leading to its accelerated demise. Motor Oil is like India kirket team - they excel at snatching defeat from jaws of victory.

All companies are guilty of being shortsighted once they existed for a significant length of time but Motor Oil is just better at it - remember where the 1st BlackBerry handset was developed back when RIMM was a no-name pager company?

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 30 Jun 2013 05:37

anyone knows why intel's 4th gen dominance processors did not bring down the 3rd gen prices? this is evil intel!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 30 Jun 2013 09:57

Got some gizmo news from the Computer History Museum in Sillycon Valley that one of the artifacts I had donated this year is now on display in their main lobby. Given the probability of that happening is literally 0.01 onlee (the displayed collection is ~1,500 whereas their total archived collection right now is ~110,000 - its the largest collection of computing artifacts in the world), I can chalk it up as one of the few useful things I have done in 2013.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 30 Jun 2013 12:35

^^^ Thanks ArmenT.

Basically, I have a Lenovo Thinkpad Z61T from 2007. T stands for Titanium and also Tank.

(see what I did there ) Because its got a outer cover of Titanium on its top lid.
Its a T5500 , with a passmark rating of 900-1000.

I have another Samsung Princeton 3 series which I recently put a 11000 Rs SSD into, making it blazing fast. But its 11.6 inch and the keyboard is so so.

So I was salivating at some thinkpads online, to run dot net, SQL server, lite, Android on Eclipse etc. And was wondering what to buy, if at all to to buy anything.

Seems like it might just be better to put a big screen and an external keyboard on my 11.6 inch i3 Samsung and run it as a development machine. i3 2357 ULV, 4GB ram, 256 SSD.

Or should I get me one of those W520 beasts from Thinkpad. Its adapter is to be seen to be believed man! Or a T series? Or a Lenovo Edge.

I keep checking slickdeals.net, and there are some great deals for i7 QM Haswell , by HP and Lenovo. None of them are thinkpads, though....so one misses out on the great keyboard mouse combo...which is very valuable in its own right.

decisions!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 02 Jul 2013 21:43

Chacha needs to be real careful that they don't get a reputation like what Mickey got in the 1990s - Do No Evil PR will only go so far and unlike FruitCo, Chacha doesn't have such an influential and rabidly loyal fan base.

Smart TV manufacturers subjected to 'coercive sales tactics' by Google, says ETNews

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 03 Jul 2013 23:40

http://www.intomobile.com/2013/07/03/in ... ne-market/
India is now the world’s 3d largest smartphone market

During the first quarter of this year, India became the third largest smartphone market after China and United States. In the first three months, Indians bought more smartphones than users in Japan, who until that point held the third spot.Among the brands that dominate the local landscape are major companies like Samsung, Nokia and Apple, as well as a number of local players such as Micromax, Karbonn and Spice. These domestic players are especially interesting as they keep growing like it’s nobody’s business, experiencing 200-500 growth on an annual basis.According to Strategy Analytics‘ figures, some 10 million smartphones were shipped in India during Q1, almost tripling from 3.8 million a year earlier. And that’s just a start with India currently growing four times faster than the global average, 163 versus 39 percent. Yup, that’s faster than China, which is growing at still-impressive 86% per year.

Victor · Post by **Victor** » 04 Jul 2013 02:07

Raja Bose, that's very cool. Congrats!

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Jul 2013 05:32

Apple Offers Sneak Preview of the new Mac Pro (video)

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Jul 2013 07:25

Canon has released EOS-70D targeted at HD video makers.

habal · Post by **habal** » 05 Jul 2013 12:22

Using Chrome browser, but being 'Open Source' seems to have it's negatives too. Some threads that are often frequented by me seems to have been 'touched' by an unseen force. Just won't load fully. Using script locked browser like IE and Safari seems to solve the problem.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 05 Jul 2013 18:38

Singha wrote:Canon has released EOS-70D targeted at HD video makers.

It's actually pretty interesting AF system. It bodes well for future mirrorless cameras.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jul 2013 01:27

HTC profit down 83 percent from last year despite flagship launch

HTC doesn't seem to catch a break....and I am not surprised. Sammy is the top dog in Android, period. The various anal-e-cysts and tech blog geeks who periodically whine about how GB should have gone with Android seem to miss that point.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 06 Jul 2013 03:37

Raja Bose wrote: HTC doesn't seem to catch a break....and I am not surprised. Sammy is the top dog in Android, period. The various anal-e-cysts and tech blog geeks who periodically whine about how GB should have gone with Android seem to miss that point.

Sammy has problems too. S4 sales have been disappointing and they have missed their quarterly earnings forecast.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 06 Jul 2013 04:33

^^^20 million within 100 days isn't too shabby, considering every 6 months Sammy has a new phone. Yes, in comparison to Apple that sold 30 million iPhony5 in 100 days, it is a disappointment.

HTC has one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel. LG & Sony will be confined to being component manufacturers, though there may be some hope for Sony, but they're screwy.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jul 2013 04:40

Mort Walker wrote:^^^20 million within 100 days isn't too shabby, considering every 6 months Sammy has a new phone. Yes, in comparison to Apple that sold 30 million iPhony5 in 100 days, it is a disappointment.

Now you know where UX plays a role - its product stickiness and customer loyalty.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 06 Jul 2013 04:56

^^^To an extent. The iPhone - if it doesn't offer more features, sizes and color flavors may lose some of it's customers.
iPhunwa ladki ki hanth meh pasand ata hai. Likin kuch ladki ko lamba-chora ghusana ka shok hai.

Karan M · Post by **Karan M** » 06 Jul 2013 05:00

The HTC1 is an awesome phone. It is what iphone 5 should have been.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jul 2013 05:51

Mort Walker wrote:^^^To an extent. The iPhone - if it doesn't offer more features, sizes and color flavors may lose some of it's customers.
iPhunwa ladki ki hanth meh pasand ata hai. Likin kuch ladki ko lamba-chora ghusana ka shok hai.

Guess which is the fast growing and even today most economically influential segment of consumers today? It sure aint the DSLR toting male geek

Even universally, iPhone's appeal was never about the length of its list of features, colors or sizes - that's not to say they won't do those variations but their sales appeal to the end-user is not revolving on that.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 06 Jul 2013 05:58

Mort Walker wrote:^^^To an extent. The iPhone - if it doesn't offer more features, sizes and color flavors may lose some of it's customers.
iPhunwa ladki ki hanth meh pasand ata hai. Likin kuch ladki ko lamba-chora ghusana ka shok hai.

Actually, girls have purses to carry their phones unlike guys who have to stuff it in their pocket. Among the stuff they carry, a bigger phone doesn't amount to much. Atleast, I felt the size of the phone made less difference to girls than guys. Because of their small hands, girls usually use two hands even for smaller smart phones. So one handed use also does not carry much weight with girls, IMHO. Ofcourse, the snob value of iphone out weighs all other things.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 06 Jul 2013 09:06

Raja Bose wrote:HTC profit down 83 percent from last year despite flagship launch

HTC doesn't seem to catch a break....and I am not surprised. Sammy is the top dog in Android, period. The various anal-e-cysts and tech blog geeks who periodically whine about how GB should have gone with Android seem to miss that point.

And even more important - no one can match the marketing and sales outreach of Sammy, especially in India.

After being witness to their blitzkrieg of rolling out S4 and ensuring that it reaches every nook and cranny of India, one fundamental thing that I've come to understand is that it is not only about the phone. As an individual, I may well want to buy iPhone5 but if the darn thing is not available in the first place in my town, I will end up spending the money on some other gadget.

And here, Sammy wins hands down. Even GB does not come close. While the stores in smaller towns carry low end GB phones, the same is not the case with high end ones like LUMIA 920 or 925. But Sammy, riding on its consumer electronics business practices, has opened Samsung Smartphone Shops across the country - and these stock everything. To this, add the financing scheme and you have ensured that the purchase is pushed in one direction.

So, while the techno-geeks can indulge in intellectual m@sturbation about specifications, the battle for higher sales is being fought on a completely different paradigm. Don't know how many analysts understand this aspect.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 06 Jul 2013 09:10

I was talking to a marketing person in one of the big branded phone cos yesterday. one of the sweeteners that many of the chinese derived 'local brands' are doing is with the cheap phone they give a SD card with upto 40 pirated movies. it is apparently a great draw in smaller towns and villages.
also the avg +ve balance on phone accounts in india is around Rs 30 onlee per this person.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 06 Jul 2013 09:34

rohitvats wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:HTC profit down 83 percent from last year despite flagship launch

HTC doesn't seem to catch a break....and I am not surprised. Sammy is the top dog in Android, period. The various anal-e-cysts and tech blog geeks who periodically whine about how GB should have gone with Android seem to miss that point.
And even more important - no one can match the marketing and sales outreach of Sammy, especially in India.

After being witness to their blitzkrieg of rolling out S4 and ensuring that it reaches every nook and cranny of India, one fundamental thing that I've come to understand is that it is not only about the phone. As an individual, I may well want to buy iPhone5 but if the darn thing is not available in the first place in my town, I will end up spending the money on some other gadget.

And here, Sammy wins hands down. Even GB does not come close. While the stores in smaller towns carry low end GB phones, the same is not the case with high end ones like LUMIA 920 or 925. But Sammy, riding on its consumer electronics business practices, has opened Samsung Smartphone Shops across the country - and these stock everything. To this, add the financing scheme and you have ensured that the purchase is pushed in one direction.

So, while the techno-geeks can indulge in intellectual m@sturbation about specifications, the battle for higher sales is being fought on a completely different paradigm. Don't know how many analysts understand this aspect.

I think that is one of the reasons GB went with Microsoft. GB simply did not have enough cash (or did not want to risk whatever it had) in marketing its phones. It was also conservative in manufacturing its phones in sufficient quantities - perhaps because it did not want to write off inventory. Not only that, it was in the process of shifting its manufacturing from Europe to Asia. And then there were supply chain issues. Even now, it seems it is M$ which is picking up the marketing tab for GBs Windows phones in the US. Why it did not do so right from the start is hard to understand. Perhaps, it wanted to be even handed with other WP manufacturers. Once WP failed to pick up as anticipated and other manufacturers concentrated their efforts else where, M$ started advertising GB's phones. Funny thing is it chose to use a non windows phone feature to high light (OIS, low light photography)

. Shows how desperate M$ is, which is good for GB

. Also, since WP is still lagging in its ecosystem, there's no point in marketing it too aggressively. It has no choice but to wait till the ecosystem catches up with iOS and Android.

I think GB will eventually enter the Android fray after the end of the agreement with M$ if it still survives and has enough cash.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jul 2013 09:57

rohitvats wrote: After being witness to their blitzkrieg of rolling out S4 and ensuring that it reaches every nook and cranny of India, one fundamental thing that I've come to understand is that it is not only about the phone.

I don't about anal-e-cysts but most geeks/techblogs don't get it.

You bet the companies themselves get it becoz it all boils down to the old saying, "Technology does not sell itself". If you naively think that just building a good product will bring in customers, you might as well trust every promise made by the Pakis. Forget large companies even when you are pitching your piddly little startup to a VC, he is not thinking about how good your technology is, he is thinking about how well can your technology be presented to the masses - those are 2 completely different things. Good technology, bad marketing will never sell. Bad technology, good marketing, sells.

hanumadu wrote:Funny thing is it chose to use a non windows phone feature to high light (OIS, low light photography) .

Which phone is that?

Mickey is not looking to play a linear game in mobile onlee so for them WP is just another screen rather than the central focus of their efforts - the Mahdi's Wayne Gretzky quote comes to mind here. Even their ecosystem focus gives away a hint of that - the fastest growing app store ecosystem now is Windows (not Windows Phone), which is showing a growth rate faster than what Android or iOS had at similar points in their history. FruitCo's OS X app store ecosystem is nowhere even on the radar despite a head start. Think about it.....a platform where people typically load apps without going thru an app store and have been doing so for like 3 decades almost, has the fast growing app store in existence.

For GB mobile is their entire existence. GB's move to Android most likely won't occur in the same way as HTC or Sammy via OHA but if they do move, it will be more like Amazon or like what Chacha fears Sammy might do in the future.

suryag · Post by **suryag** » 06 Jul 2013 10:04

Folks who/what is GB sorry about the dumb question

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 06 Jul 2013 10:26

Raja Bose wrote:
hanumadu wrote:Funny thing is it chose to use a non windows phone feature to high light (OIS, low light photography) .
Which phone is that?

Lumia 920. What I meant was low light photography is not a feature of the WP software.

Suryag, GB is Nokia. GB stands for gumboots which is what Nokia used to make before it became a telecom company.

https://sites.google.com/site/brfdictio ... ng-company

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jul 2013 10:36

^^^Actually unless its supported by WP at the kernel level and is made part of the BSP which Mickey gives to GB, GB wouldn't be able to implement it. There is no separate layer which GB (or anybody else) slaps on top of the core WP OS - stuff like OIS/low light photography/HDR is not done at the app level. WP is somewhere between iOS and Android in terms of device manufacturer specific modifications and UX requirements for certification.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 06 Jul 2013 10:43

Raja Bose wrote:Good technology, bad marketing will never sell. Bad technology, good marketing, sells.

Not just bad marketing, inadequate marketing as well. That's what caused problems for HTC. The HTC One is probably the best smartphone out there currently. It even beats the iPhunwa in design and build quality. It has a good camera to boot. And I don't think HTC marketed it badly, they just couldn't match Sammy or FruitCo's blitzkrieg because they don't have their deep pockets. And now it seems they will never have deep pockets, so it's a vicious circle for them.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Jul 2013 12:03

Chacha should buy HTC and write off Motor Oil as a loss. Inadequate marketing is part of bad marketing.

abhischekcc · Post by **abhischekcc** » 06 Jul 2013 12:24

GB = Gumboot = Nokia

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 06 Jul 2013 18:42

Raja Bose wrote:Chacha should buy HTC and write off Motor Oil as a loss. Inadequate marketing is part of bad marketing.

Is this something you've been hearing? MOTO ne chacha ko bhudu bana diya. Phela se achae asset bech ke moto execs paise le ke bhaag gaye. Aur HTC firse yehe chaal chalana ka plan hoga.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 06 Jul 2013 19:14

Well, I don't have numbers to vouch for it but the Nokia Lumia series seems to be doing pretty well.

Especially, the sub INR 20K range - 520 and 720 are biggest sellers for Nokia in this segment. They've slashed the price of 820 to sub INR 25K range as well and with 925 to be introduced shortly, the price of 920 has come down to INR 31K. That is a seriously good phone in that price range.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 06 Jul 2013 22:25

suryag wrote:Folks who/what is GB sorry about the dumb question

It is an alias for Nokia. See why it is called GB here.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 06 Jul 2013 22:41

We do shit loads of gumboots sales data.

They are looking up in India.