Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

negi · Post by **negi** » 08 Sep 2013 13:26

^ Sir the brat in 3rd yr Engg had a Xperia SP (it costs 20k + INR).

Lilo · Post by **Lilo** » 08 Sep 2013 14:05

Sammy's seige has lost its mojo and has become a permanent tent encampment now constructing(instead of laying seige to Aaplil's) its own ivory towered castle facing Apple's Castle .

So, I am now waiting for the cheen birathers like Xiomi and Lenovo to throw the gauntlet into the smart phone fight. Need of the hour is to knock off Aapil from its teetering ivory towered castle and bring it into the street fight it so deftly avoided till date due to its chi-chi status - and make other fighters busy constructing their castles to stop in their tracks.

Then Aapil too will have no choice but to begin competing on both the innovation AND price fronts like every other mortal - and public will finally stop paying for show value and start putting up money for personal and intrinsic utility value.

Coming to Xiomi , its MiUi has long been one of my favorites. It has stripped googal apps from its offering lately (definitely to the chagrin of chacha). More will go down this path. Chacha too should see the writing on the wall and stop worrying about how to monopolize web services in android. Instead it should try to make those services itself better and better. Then people will by themselves begin to install and use those Google apps they wish to use - even on originally stripped down ROMs.

Once the current tech aware college guys become adults and take up jobs they will start demanding that same openness and freedom on their now premium phonewas they were used to during their phata Abdul stage.
Major brands beware of this demographic change in their clientele.

More cross platform mobility for all major apps is the need of the hour and only way that can occur is when like ecosystem lockdown becomes a thing of the past. The adoption of excellent and varied range of custom Roms (especially on the Android side )and the relative reduction of churn in popular app space (now more or less dominated by long established apps) should help start this. This will begin when variety of excellent ROM offerings in Android becomes a major USP and hitherto tfta Aapil and windoze will be forced to follow suit and make their mobile offerings open source.

Open source community based development has become mainstream in mobile OS (MiUi has already done this in China and CM Roms in the rest of the world) . It is only a matter of time when mass type players in Chinese and Indian space will give Roms like Cyanogenmod , MiUi , Ubuntu Os, AOKP , Paranoid Android(another favorite) ASOP as choice in their offerings - in comparison to the chi-chi Aapil and SoKo types - which prefer a lockdown to their own flavor.

Future there can even be customization at the purchase stage itself with sales guys doing a free upgrade to the customer's preferred ( compatible ) ROM at the branded shop it self.

In the mean time customers will force popular app developers to give concessional pricing and data back up when they shift to a new OS platform. This when happens will be the crack in the core foundation of OS lockdown based projection's and monetization strat-e-gees currently in place.

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 08 Sep 2013 14:11

Yeah , our driver bought a HP tablet online , owns a samsung smart phone, so not surprised with the kids, they would like to show it off

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 08 Sep 2013 20:32

negi wrote:I was surprised to find college and high school kids roaming with 15-20ish K INR phones and some of them are kids of my relatives. What is noteworthy is some of them come from very middle class families where father is the only earner in a Gobmint job

Abbey saale forget these relatively "influential" kids....back in early 2000s, eldest son of the guy who cooks/cleans in our home in Dilli used to strut around carrying a Nokia worth INR 10-11K (he was in high school then)....back then we didn't even own a cellphone in India. Heck, I remember our relatives in Kolkata who used to own a cellphone (all Nokia) would deliberately carry it in their hand as a status symbol and reverently place it on the centre table of our living room whenever they came to visit as if it was an object of art to be flaunted to the unwashed.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 08 Sep 2013 23:43

GD wrote:the problem is simple - the next 1 billion iphone consumers cannot afford the $650 it costs for a unlocked phone and carriers are too poor and bania and untrusting to go for subsidy model and 2 yr plans here. nobody can track his brother here let alone a consumer who dumps and runs.

What you describe is also true for other consumer loans like automobiles. A credit rating system like the one in the US, but not crazy lending like the US, would help the Indian economy. Not for phones or mobile consumer electronics, but for someone who wants to run a home based business and needs to setup a network of a couple or three desktops, printers and fax machines.

I can assure you in the US we need the opposite, hard to get credit, because so many middle class American families are deep in to debt, partly due to all the consumer electronics stuff, which is very fleeting. An example is Apple, you can get Apple credit pretty easily. If you have a job with history, you'll be approved for purchase of a couple of iPhones, a little better and you can easily get a whole plethora of iMacs and MacBooks, albeit at 25%+ interest rates! Another thing in the US, there is 12 months no interest payment, but on the 13 month, you'll be billed for 25% interest on the original principle! Legalized robbery. If the US was like India and you could get no credit, sales of all smart phones and consumer goods would drop like a rock, and people would start carrying $50-$100 phones. Not to mention many telecom providers like Verizon and AT&T would be in deep financial trouble as well.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 08 Sep 2013 23:49

nachiket wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:They need to suck up to the unwashed turd world. I am not sure about FruitCo in 5 years honestly....really hard to tell at this moment if they will be around as the top dog they are now. Already we can see some mange on the dog's fur.
They prospered for so long without doing that. What has changed?

China mobile has 700 million subscribers. Half of them carry smartphones. FruitCo tried to arm twist them with the same carrier subsidy and monthly payments they expect from other carriers. China mobile flatly refused and Apple is a no-show in Cheen.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 09 Sep 2013 04:24

^^^I thought FruitCo just sealed the China Mobile deal, no?

I bet they GUBOed to the chipandas like every le-educated Khan company.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 09 Sep 2013 06:41

Bawarchi is a quick learner. 5c with C for china, and apparently chi-panda is getting the phone first. (Replete with hot pink/green/blue colors) which seem to sell well in asia.

Apparently FruitCo is having a Cheen event after the Sep 10 main event.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 09 Sep 2013 10:20

next-gen brats are nothing if not mentally agile and adaptable. ofcourse they will apply pressure for a good branded product like galaxyS3, but they cannot get it (and most parents will draw the line on not giving a 25K phone esp as their canteen,class,city bus travels increase risk of losing it or theft) they will seamlessly move into micromax or something similar.
girls esp seem to prefer the big screen models. boys paradoxically except a small niche of gamers are not so into big screens.girls seem to like carrying phablets in the hand.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 09 Sep 2013 11:17

Singha wrote: the problem is simple - the next 1 billion iphone consumers cannot afford the $650 it costs for a unlocked phone and carriers are too poor and bania and untrusting to go for subsidy model and 2 yr plans here. nobody can track his brother here let alone a consumer who dumps and runs.

so they have a problem ... and they have no experience or track record so far of making value for money mid range kit unlike the competition. some critical elements like big screen and SD card that is a must to attract the eyeballs and wallets of turd world consumers is sorely lacking. many turd worlders do not have a separate tablet for watching video and gaming hence the wild sales of phablets here. this again is one area where APPL has no clue and no plan on.

ab turd world akhara mein kushti larna hai to rules are different.....here all that gora chi chi turtleneck sweater attitude wont fly...wear a langoti and roll in the mud with tough Jat wrestlers or dont be a player at the table.

GREAT similies singhaji.

Wonder why people sometimes refer to you as GD? Initials?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 09 Sep 2013 11:54

Singha wrote:next-gen brats are nothing if not mentally agile and adaptable. ofcourse they will apply pressure for a good branded product like galaxyS3, but they cannot get it (and most parents will draw the line on not giving a 25K phone esp as their canteen,class,city bus travels increase risk of losing it or theft) they will seamlessly move into micromax or something similar.
girls esp seem to prefer the big screen models. boys paradoxically except a small niche of gamers are not so into big screens.girls seem to like carrying phablets in the hand.

Here in the massa its the opposite. Wimmens prefer small iPhunwa as opposed to large Sammy phablets.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 09 Sep 2013 19:54

^^^Because they like sticking the phone in the back pocket of their jeans and sit down on it. Have you ever seen wimmens at beaches or pools with phones and where they put them? A phablet doesn't fit , especially big Sammy phablets.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 09 Sep 2013 19:56

it is cost effective for banks to hire goons/collection agencies if people default on cars or home loans. these are big sums. the ROI of sending a NEST team supported by apaches to nab a munna running away without paying off a iphone4 is not so great. but even then, for trackable munnas with company salary slip etc EMI schemes are easy to get and flipkart also has a tieup with some credit card cos.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Sep 2013 19:59

krishnan wrote:Yeah , our driver bought a HP tablet online , owns a samsung smart phone, so not surprised with the kids, they would like to show it off

I had a dream yesterdin.. i land up in my old desh village.. grandpa's monarch is in ruins.. i discuss that on the way to meet an aged relative and take his blessings.. so, have a chat with the driver [actually the vehicle is next generation bullock cart - smooth, rack and pinon, AWD system, neat design, slim and advanced materials, specially designed shimano certified gears, li-poly batteries for night lights, regenerative disc breaks, etc.. bullocks are well fed and happy to run miles.. ].

reaching destination, he asks me to flash my smart phone to his smart phone to complete the transaction.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Sep 2013 20:54

The second iPhone is expected to be a cheaper version of the soon-to-be-outdated iPhone 5, coming in a variety of colors, with a plastic case instead of aluminum. Analysts expect the full price of the lower-cost iPhone to be $300 to $400, positioning it as a midtier product.

so fruit is going cheap plastics!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 09 Sep 2013 20:57

SaiK wrote:so, have a chat with the driver [actually the vehicle is next generation bullock cart - smooth, rack and pinon, AWD system, neat design, slim and advanced materials, specially designed shimano certified gears, li-poly batteries for night lights, regenerative disc breaks, etc.. bullocks are well fed and happy to run miles.. ].

AWD? All Wheel Drive? I thought bullock carts are all wheel drive?

So how is the shimano gear system linked to the propulsion?

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Sep 2013 21:01

dunno man.. it is all specially crafted next gen vehicle for our favorite bulls. i vaguely remember a a/c cabin for the bulls too in the front.. their legs are covered with leather under sheath to keep the skins cool, while the legs continue to work on the RPMs [just like the rubber protection on arjun turrets].

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 09 Sep 2013 21:04

^^What dunno? Its your dream

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 09 Sep 2013 21:06

dunno about why such a system was in my dream. i can only tell it existed.

Sushupti · Post by **Sushupti** » 10 Sep 2013 22:27

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Sep 2013 22:54

Apple iPhone Live Blog

Plastic iPhone 5C with multiple colours (borrowed from GB) - Check

Polycarbonate with steel reinforcement (borrowed from GB) - Check

64 bit A7 processor with fat memory pipe in the iPhone 5S (chaiwallah was accurate) - Check

One more thing? - TBD

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 10 Sep 2013 23:06

^^^I miss the mahdi. His presentations were always the best and I would never miss watching them live.

Nowadays, I prefer to watch JK Shin and the Sammy players.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Sep 2013 23:55

Yeah I agree. FruitCo presentations are too cut and dried nowadays with no excitement. The Mahdi was a real stage performer....Bawarchi has the stage persona of Igor.

Press going gaga over the innovations of the plastic iPhone

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 11 Sep 2013 04:40

http://www.apple.com/iphone-5c/videos/#video-product

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Sep 2013 06:24

This would have never happened under Mahdi. The phone reads "Non"

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 11 Sep 2013 06:49

Why do they still refuse to enlarge the screen even a little bit?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Sep 2013 06:55

with a price tag of $550 unlocked this is so DOA in the developing world.
for less than that I could get a S3 and a host of other phones.

the only way it would have worked was a price tag of 20K.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 11 Sep 2013 07:03

Singha wrote:with a price tag of $550 unlocked this is so DOA in the developing world.
for less than that I could get a S3 and a host of other phones.

the only way it would have worked was a price tag of 20K.

That was never on the cards. They didn't want to lose the "Premium Brand" tag despite the 5C.

Anyway this doesn't seem to be targeted at India anyway. They don't even have a release date for it. This is specifically for China. $550 would be more affordable there I guess.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Sep 2013 07:26

I am predicting chinese will go for xiaomi types instead. "loss of face" theorem indicates you dont buy something perceived as cheap or 2nd line...you buy the best 5S and show off

college kids will go for xiaomi which imo looks and feels better.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 11 Sep 2013 07:47

I'm selling my AAPL shares after the holiday season bump. No longer worth keeping them for the accrued gains from buying when the price was in 2 and lower 3 digits. Best to use as a trading stock now. FruitCo is clearly losing their innovashun; design by committee presented by a CEO with the charisma of a wet towel.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Sep 2013 07:54

its mystifying why not increase the screen size of flagship 5S upto to 4.3" atleast...? they had a year to get it done.
it must be the only phone in high price bracket left with such a small screen.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 11 Sep 2013 07:56

iphones are becoming like our age old amby car.. mark2, 3, 4 etc. just bumper lights here and there.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Sep 2013 07:57

dont forget the maruti upgrades with new headlights, chrome trim, wheel rims and smart new paint

I think only a section of die hard apple fans (middle age goras) will stick to it...rest will move on or have already done so.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Sep 2013 08:21

Singha wrote:its mystifying why not increase the screen size of flagship 5S upto to 4.3" atleast...? they had a year to get it done.
it must be the only phone in high price bracket left with such a small screen.

Apps have to be re-written. That is the big issue.

Apparently 5S has a 64 bit chip. How long before it makes its way to macbook air?

Gus · Post by **Gus** » 11 Sep 2013 09:04

Singha wrote: some critical elements like big screen and SD card that is a must to attract the eyeballs and wallets of turd world consumers is sorely lacking.

i sorely missed SD card on phones here. plenty of times, somebody would be playing a song and i can't get it from them...have to remember it and come back and download it later on PC and sync blah blah.

gave a cousin my old 3gs. the guy was struggling to adapt to it.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 11 Sep 2013 09:15

i thought all android devices have sd-hc,xc slots.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 11 Sep 2013 09:15

Anujan wrote: Apps have to be re-written. That is the big issue.

Why? Android does fine with the myriad screen sizes. WP doesn't seem to have a problem either.

Lilo · Post by **Lilo** » 11 Sep 2013 09:19

^ 64 - bit.

BTW after this tech event can some one give a future prognosis if Apple's ivory towered castle is going to crash or not ...?

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 11 Sep 2013 09:46

SaiK wrote:
The second iPhone is expected to be a cheaper version of the soon-to-be-outdated iPhone 5, coming in a variety of colors, with a plastic case instead of aluminum. Analysts expect the full price of the lower-cost iPhone to be $300 to $400, positioning it as a midtier product.
so fruit is going cheap plastics!

Going back to plastics, you mean. People forget that the iPhone 3G and 3GS had polycarbonate plastic cases.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Sep 2013 09:52

nachiket wrote:
Anujan wrote: Apps have to be re-written. That is the big issue.
Why? Android does fine with the myriad screen sizes. WP doesn't seem to have a problem either.

I was about to ask the same question. android runs everywhere from 3.2" to 6.3" phone screens.
I would agree on a tablet sized screen 7+" it might need some rework but 4" -> 4.5" is a minor bump surely ?