Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 22 Jul 2014 19:43

negi wrote:Imagine if Chacha had bought Nokia instead of Motorola , Nokia's lumia range with Android would have definitely captured much bigger market than Lumia with Windows, imagine INR 10-12k Lumia 520 runing Android.

Looks like Chacha is not too big on phones as margins in this area seem to be wafer thin .

Android one is a new program aimed at the low end of the market. The initial phones are very good.
http://bgr.com/2014/07/16/android-one-s ... ease-date/

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 22 Jul 2014 20:11

mahadevbhu wrote:
Raja Bose wrote: er...its all CM onlee. So you pay money, chipanda will do high-end QC. You don't, they won't.

And every factory has the knowledge of QC through all levels? Not So. Older manufacturers have an advantage here. Eg. Nokia

Nokia uses those same CMs mostly. Unless they are some hole in the wall CM, they have pretty good idea. The irony was that the CMs had better QC than Nokia's own factories in the last 2 years or so. For example, the Lumia 920 made by Compal in SoKo vs Nokia in Reynosa.

negi wrote:Imagine if Chacha had bought Nokia instead of Motorola , Nokia's lumia range with Android would have definitely captured much bigger market than Lumia with Windows, imagine INR 10-12k Lumia 520 runing Android.

Looks like Chacha is not too big on phones as margins in this area seem to be wafer thin .

Except for vertical players like FruitCo, the margins are thin. Now you know why the whole "restrict yourself to making HW onlee, leave apps/services to others" argument doesn't hold water. Actually few years back, Chacha did try buying Nokia when talks of a collaboration went nowhere (mainly due to Chacha insisting on the "restrict yourself to making HW onlee...." requirement) but those acquisition discussions were DOA too as the offers were not even in the serious ballpark range.

Android One is a good move to partner with smaller companies which don't have app/services ambitions, while attempting to capture the mid/low-end and make the UX better. Its too early to say whether the new phones are really good or not - in small quantities everything looks nice and there are some critical issues which need fixing right now. But its a move in the right direction for sure.

Ranjani Brow · Post by **Ranjani Brow** » 22 Jul 2014 20:39

Flipkart spokesperson wrote:“We sold out within the first 30 minutes. However, we cannot comment on the number of units sold. We will be getting the phone back in stock next week,” a Flipkart spokesperson told The Hindu.

Flipkart faced a similar situation when it launched Motorola’s Moto E and Moto G, again under an exclusive partnership. Flipkart has sold about million devices across all Motorola models in the five months since the first launch.

Xiaomi Mi3 sold out in half hour on Flipkart

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 22 Jul 2014 21:13

Asus apparently was selling 10,000 zen phones a day in flipkart the first week of launch.

android one sounds like the move from big complex minicomputers each with own quirks and patches to 1000s of rack mounted servers managed through mostly automated scripts and UI tools remotely. a soothing vision no doubt if what is today going for 15k can be pushed down to the 6k price point. with enough scale and wise hw choices no reason why not. these vendors anyway live on thin margins.

other thing is improving the HSDPA coverage, price point and quality in india, which is pathetic and patchy even in middle of bangalore, often lapsing back to EDGE

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 22 Jul 2014 21:34

I'm beginning to understand this UX thing - for me, NEXUS 5 seems to be so tightly knit together with Google Play that one would be excused from considering it as proprietary of only NEXUS/Moto range. I think the same thing happens with Apple and the whole iTunes store thing.

Example - the moment I opened my phone and plugged in the SIM, I got upgrade message. The phone was first upgrade to 4.4.3 and after couple of hours, got second upgrade message to 4.4.4. All of it happened within couple of hours of phone being activated.

And the best part was this - The phone prompted me for Google Account ID and password and the moment I entered the same, all the apps which I have ever downloaded on my S2 or Samsung Tab 2 became visible. I had to simply pick and choose to download them to NEXUS.

I still feel Windows has the potential to offer great UX like Apple. For me, the experience on LUMIA 800 with Windows 7.8 OS was very good. Yes, the phone sucked in terms of specs but overall, the integration of various facets was pretty nice. The Social Media integration with Phone-book, MS Office suite and Outlook, all were done pretty neatly.

For M$ to make dent into smart-phone market, they'll need to own the ecosystem (TM Raja Bose). A smart phone w/o strong ecosystem is nothing. It has to be and end-to-end experience where Phone is just one component allowing you to do various things.

PS: Just read the news the Google may well launch NEXUS 6 with their new Android OS and which is likely to have 2K display. With price range expected in same bracket as NEXUS 5.

PPS: Samsung S5 seems to me has suffered the quickest drop in price of any high-end smartphone. It's retailing at INR 35K on flipkart.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 22 Jul 2014 21:41

S5 is a turd. Sammy has amazing chutzpah and inertia to think that if they keep churning out turds, people will keep buying them. But then many people think that and the cycle continues.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 22 Jul 2014 21:41

rohitvats wrote: PS: Just read the news the Google may well launch NEXUS 6 with their new Android OS and which is likely to have 2K display. With price range expected in same bracket as NEXUS 5.

Beyond a point, increasing pixel densities on smartphones won't make much of a difference since the human eyes have a limit of their own. And it brings problems of its own in terms of higher battery use and more processing power required. This must have been LG's idea. Their new G3 has a 2K display I believe. Chacha should have stood firm and kept a 1080p display with a larger battery. If they wanted to brag about specs, they could have bragged about the battery life then.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 22 Jul 2014 21:54

I think 50000mah mil grade battery packs will retail in a years time.

Ranjani Brow · Post by **Ranjani Brow** » 22 Jul 2014 22:06

^will they be foldable?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 22 Jul 2014 22:10

Singa: my guess us that mist massa people buy with a contract with verizon or other telcos. When I walk into any verizon dealer in my ilAaqua all I see are mahdi maal, Sammy, and on LG and one or two moto models. A deaf as Sammy is concerned, they have half a dozen models on display. Sammy gets lot of shelf space. Of course nexus is a no-no. Otherwise how can they hook people into contracts? Massans have lot of disposable income and they change phones every two years and cars every four years. They are on the treadmill and hence the world goes round. Bread and circus.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 22 Jul 2014 22:13

As far as get battries are concerned there was some news a few months back that MIT researchers developed a battery that can be manufactured in sheets and can be cut into different shapes and is also very thin. Couple bendable electronics to this and viola you got a foldable battery. But things will take time or the need for them will disapper. The technology will die in papers in write only journals or arxiv.org.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 22 Jul 2014 22:24

Bendable and conformal are two different things. Conformal is bend once and easier to achieve. Even Nike Fuelband had conformal batteries.

I would rather they use a top class 1080p display with great colour saturation and viewing angles rather than indulge in meaningless pixel wars, just like the megapixel wars. Anybody remember the "gorgeous" Nexus 10 display with super high resolution and crappy viewing angles?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 22 Jul 2014 22:29

I am suggesting the batteries be made with the same polymer that bendable eke tropics is printed on. I also said there is no need for super high res anything on phones as long as your input methods are primitive. These kind of technologies find (may find) applications in some extreme conditions and the need would be very few in numbers. Of course, the price can be exponentially high.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 22 Jul 2014 22:49

rohitvats wrote:I'm beginning to understand this UX thing - for me, NEXUS 5 seems to be so tightly knit together with Google Play that one would be excused from considering it as proprietary of only NEXUS/Moto range. I think the same thing happens with Apple and the whole iTunes store thing.

Example - the moment I opened my phone and plugged in the SIM, I got upgrade message. The phone was first upgrade to 4.4.3 and after couple of hours, got second upgrade message to 4.4.4. All of it happened within couple of hours of phone being activated.

And the best part was this - The phone prompted me for Google Account ID and password and the moment I entered the same, all the apps which I have ever downloaded on my S2 or Samsung Tab 2 became visible. I had to simply pick and choose to download them to NEXUS.

I still feel Windows has the potential to offer great UX like Apple. For me, the experience on LUMIA 800 with Windows 7.8 OS was very good. Yes, the phone sucked in terms of specs but overall, the integration of various facets was pretty nice. The Social Media integration with Phone-book, MS Office suite and Outlook, all were done pretty neatly.

For M$ to make dent into smart-phone market, they'll need to own the ecosystem (TM Raja Bose). A smart phone w/o strong ecosystem is nothing. It has to be and end-to-end experience where Phone is just one component allowing you to do various things.

PS: Just read the news the Google may well launch NEXUS 6 with their new Android OS and which is likely to have 2K display. With price range expected in same bracket as NEXUS 5.

PPS: Samsung S5 seems to me has suffered the quickest drop in price of any high-end smartphone. It's retailing at INR 35K on flipkart.

The other phones sold as Google Play Edition on the Google Play Store are very good too. They are from Samsung, HTC and Sony. They are all running pure Android. I don't know if the next Nexus phone will be called the Nexus 6 or something else, but it should be out by the end of November. The Sammy S5 wasn't too different from the S4, so it really didn't generate much buzz. Sammy has incrementally made changes to the Galaxy S line, but that won't work in the current market.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 22 Jul 2014 22:54

Mort Walker wrote: The other phones sold as Google Play Edition on the Google Play Store are very good too. They are from Samsung, HTC and Sony. They are all running pure Android.

Their problem is that they are neither subsidized by the carriers nor are they priced competitively compared to Nexus 5. GS4 Google Play edition costs $649 for example. Who's going to buy that. There was no GS5 Google play edition released apparently. I have no problem with Sammy's "turd" level plasticky hardware. It's durable and I'll happily use it. I have a huge problem with their software and would have jumped at a carrier subsidized GS5 Google Play edition. Or even the latest HTC One GP edition. But it costs $700. So I'll wait for the Nexus 6.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 22 Jul 2014 23:36

^^^Well, some people get them subsidized by their employer or muft like RB babu.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 23 Jul 2014 00:04

You expect me to buy turds with my own scarce khota sikkas, hain?

Then I will have to starve onlee

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 23 Jul 2014 01:19

Raja Bose wrote:You expect me to buy turds with my own scarce khota sikkas, hain? Then I will have to starve onlee

At least they will be Galaxy Turds!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 23 Jul 2014 01:24

You mean close encounters of the turd kind?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Jul 2014 06:30

well well Apple is lining up a massive production run of 80 million iphone6

Galaxy6 is going be in a tough place if they dont deliver something special.

from April6, 2014 india cellphone market share - I expect the 'Others' to see changes as new entrants join the fight

http://www.xperiablog.net/2014/04/05/so ... -in-india/

as for Samesung and their 43%, that might be their high tide mark....December year end sales pie chart should be interesting.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Jul 2014 07:10

microsoft results:

The company saw big gains in commercial cloud revenue (up 147 percent), Windows licenses and server products. Other honorable mentions include Bing (up 40 percent), Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions and revenue from PC makers

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 23 Jul 2014 11:05

Microsoft will merge separate versions of Windows into one unified operating system

And the convergence continues.....remember that you read about it here first, many moons ago.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 23 Jul 2014 13:34

Singha wrote:I think 50000mah mil grade battery packs will retail in a years time.

I've done SOME

work in this field.

1. Battery manufacture is part of a very large chemical industry supply chain. Earth shaking innovation is slow and steady in this field, and will take a lot of time.

2. Flexible batteries

There is a startup I have done in this field and I will say this; there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.

Will the customer pay more money, for less battery capacity, if it is flexible? Or will he go for solid, non-flexible batteries which are tinier and denser, in a flexible device

3. The combination of the capital intensivity of this field, combined with the customers predilection to pay less for better technology in IT , is at odds. Batteries require a lot of money to sustain. There have been quite a few Solyndras in this field, like A123 systems, and it will continue to be a field which acts old-school, slow innovation, much like a chemical company, rather than an IT company. Ironically, IT is where the end applications lie.

Ranjani Brow · Post by **Ranjani Brow** » 23 Jul 2014 16:03

Apple installed security backdoors on 600 million iPhones, iPads: Researcher

Mihir · Post by **Mihir** » 23 Jul 2014 18:02

Raja Bose wrote:Microsoft will merge separate versions of Windows into one unified operating system

And the convergence continues.....remember that you read about it here first, many moons ago.

So basically, an F-35

KrishG · Post by **KrishG** » 23 Jul 2014 18:49

I saw heard good reviews of MotoG so got one for my sister. 1 month and everything was fine, good actually. Then one fine day the phone decides to shutdown all by itself. We thought it should be out of battery and put in for charging. Tried to start it, it wouldn't. Then looked on the net and found that it was a known problem with this phone. If it shuts down there's no guarantee that it will startup again. It hasn't! Completely dead! Even after 24 hours of charging and trying a hundred different methods on the net. Trust me! When our phone does this, its one the most frustrating things! Don't know how Motorola can sell such things and take us for a ride!

Planning to switch back to one of the trusted Lumias!

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Jul 2014 19:54

Allah!

KrishG · Post by **KrishG** » 23 Jul 2014 21:39

Singha wrote:Allah!

And Motorola has the most horrible support. They say the phone never be allowed to run out of battery and that they still don't have a fix for this. Supposedly MotoG is using "advanced" Li batteries which take a very very very long to charge if it's completely drained. I was lik WTF! Have mailed Flipkart for an exchange or to credit back the amount so that atleast I can buy a phone that charges!

Ranjani Brow · Post by **Ranjani Brow** » 23 Jul 2014 22:18

^ Is there any Phone brand bar Apple Co. that provide decent after-sales support in India.
Why can all be like Dell?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 23 Jul 2014 22:30

How was Nokia? Didn't they have Nokia Care stores or something?

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 23 Jul 2014 23:24

BTW, saw the Dell tablets with Window OS in Chroma. Couldn't play around much with SHQ dragging me out of the store but must say, very sharp images and smooth UI. Worth a look, I say. Till then, I though only Apple could come up with such sharp display.

PS: Typed using my new NEXUS 5...what pleasure of not having to pinch in and out of screen on 5 inch display (4.95 actually)

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 24 Jul 2014 01:21

So apparently there is a new way of outsourcing support. New to me but maybe not to other mujs here. Assume dell has outsourced support to some Desi call center. The call center offers cheap rates. Almost unbelievable. How you pooch? They have ad agreements with other companies and they sell everything from credit cards to home security systems to people who call

What innovation!! So the more people call about their shitty laptop or phone, more detergent they sell to such people keeping profits high and effective support costs low. Call center outsourcer is happy with low costs, fellow who runs the call center is happy with high profits and customer is happy because his clothes are clean now that he brought a box of detergent along with fixing his problems with his laptop

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 24 Jul 2014 02:46

Xiaomi CEO does a Mahdi including black turtleneck and 'one more thing...'

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Jul 2014 07:19

Someone had to carry the flame and he did.
plus HBji has a point to prove he can achieve outside the cozy google+VCs+stan circle in SV. plus that other issue of one of the founders seeing his ex. revenge is a powerful emotion!

Javee · Post by **Javee** » 24 Jul 2014 10:49

hecky wrote:^ Is there any Phone brand bar Apple Co. that provide decent after-sales support in India.
Why can all be like Dell?

HTC has it, I think they tied up with Reddington in the south. LG & Sony also have decent after sales service in India.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Jul 2014 15:23

http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#hisstyle4

is the android watch wave going to do nuke swiss watches the way smartphone killed the digital music player and PDA?

negi · Post by **negi** » 24 Jul 2014 15:53

^ No because target segment and use case is different, even the atomic watches did not have an impact on sales of luxury Swiss watches ironic as it may sound even a 10k USD Rolex or Panerai is not as accurate as a 1k INR quartz watch but former are still sought by collectors for snob value and sentiments which only a watch collector can understand.

The smart watches based on Android/iOS will only fascinate the CE gadget aficionados for swiss watch buyers it is anyways pocket change (I presume smart watches are gonna cost around 200-250 USD ) put it in perspective it takes USD 250-300 to just service a Rolex/Omega (just service no repairs).

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Jul 2014 17:32

Fr older ppl the lumia might be easier to use.
but moto is a good deal cheaper.
i also need to gift my main sept and finally move her into smartphones.
was thinking of the moto e or redmi.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 24 Jul 2014 17:53

Singha wrote:http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#hisstyle4

is the android watch wave going to do nuke swiss watches the way smartphone killed the digital music player and PDA?

Nope.

Anyhow Android Wear watch makers are waiting mainly for FruitCo to come out with some iconic design they can copy parts of. Right now except Moto360 rest are uninspired turds. Part of the problem is Chacha is a bit more hands off in the Android Wear program as compared to Android One. But that is also probably due to the fact that they don't have a concrete idea either on what makes or breaks a smart watch. So all wait for the fruit to fall from the tree.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Jul 2014 20:25

I knew it. samesung probably has a C3I center dedicated to monitoring all leaks about apple, and a message boy rushes with printout to the executive suite.