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Mobile Post Apocalypse – Holy Wars

June 23, 2015 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

I remember holding a Nokia 6600 and being in awe of how revolutionary and cutting edge it looked. It’s a bulky and completely outdated phone by todays standards, but back then it was an absolute beauty. A never before seen form factor, bulky but good-to-hold curves and a brilliant camera for its time really made the phone desirable by many.

I remember the Sony Walkman phone, which was in a league of its own. Sony owned the camera battles back then, but the Walkman phone offered more; unprecedented sound quality, and walkman-like music management. There were other players – you bought a Motorola just for the looks. There was nothing like a Razr back then, and there is nothing that looks like the Razr even now. Every major competitor before Apple brought something new to the table. There were no lists of consumer-friendly phone specs that you could compare. You simply had to choose one which fit your needs the best. DPI, megapixels, cores, rom; none of these things mattered much. And the phones were generally very stable.

There will not be another Nokia 3310, or at least a phone which will be as popular. Why? It’s because back then, spec sheets did not matter much.

Mobile post apocalypse - Analogy (Poussin, Nicolas: The Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites - An excerpt from the The Jewish Bible) — Mobile Post Apocalypse – Pictorial analogy (Poussin, Nicolas: The Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites – An excerpt from the The Jewish Bible)

Apple revolutionised mobiles. It’s true. Whether or not you’re an Android fan, this is something you simply have to accept. Touchscreens were never very popular. Using a stylus to operate smartphones today can get really cumbersome. O2 had a lot of clout among the business elitists, but the world was mainly either Nokia, Sony Erricson, Motorola, or Blackberry. Blackberry owned the majority of the business market, and the other three ruled everything else. All Apple had to do was make a good Touchscreen phone. And it did. And it brought something new to the table; something which was acceptable as the next big thing; something which did not seem ahead of its time. That’s really all you need to do; make something which feels like a logical follow up without really trying to change the world. Apple did just that, and suddenly they were innovators. Every new piece of technology they put into the iPhone became a standard. DPI became the next screen rating. Cameras suddenly felt obsolete in comparison. Music was already their bread and butter and coin. It’s like the world was just waiting for a good ‘smartphone’ – a term that brings about mixed feelings, but that”s for another time.

War is, on many levels, a mind game. Your strength lies not in the strength of your units, but in your ability to use them properly. You cannot always be innovative in a war. You simply have to do what’s necessary; fight fire with lava. And sometimes you just have to do what your opponent does, but for free. And that is what Google did. Android created a mobile ecosystem, which was comparable to iOS, was free, and was open source. Their aim was not to cater to the few elite believing in shelling out a bomb for quality. Their aim was to cater to everybody. They created a model where mobile manufacturers did not have to worry about software. All they had to do was create good hardware which could support Android, much like a PC. Apple was untouchable uptil then, having a daunting monotony on the mobile market. Android is the natural competition the world needed to strive in an Apple dominated world.

The result – Samsung is now one of the top phone manufacturers in the world. HTC have left that O2 image behind and made some excellent phones. This automatically enables a sense of doubt for Apple, which makes it strive to make it products better. And any competition is good competition.

As an end user, I can rest assured that the next phone I buy will be of higher quality than the last, and this trend will only continue. At a certain point, Android left its Apple-copier image, and started taking initiatives of its own. It did what google does best, integrate search into the ecosystem, which is Google’s main source of income. They initiated the Nexus series of phones – the purpose of which was to increase their search base, by selling premium quality phones at mid range prices. And this has worked very well for Google. Nexus 5 is now the standard by which Android phones are measured with. Sure there is the Nexus 6, but it feels like a failed experiment, with its obnoxious pricing. The Nexus 5 is Google at its best in the Android space, and the remastered 2015 edition coming out is a testament to that.

My main gripe with this holy war is this – there used to be a magical (sorta) feeling about holding a mobile phone. When I had held a Nokia Communicator, the sense of awe I got was completely different than holding a 6600. The joy of flapping and unflapping a Moto Razr was unlike anything out there. I could throw around a 3310 and know that it will still ring when I get a call. There was art; art with flaws, but art nonetheless.

Being a software engineer, I now realize that the best way to build a software fast, is to reuse. Almost every phone today is reusing the same curvy edges slim trim design. Almost every Android phone today has a home screen which looks exactly the same.

It still feels great to hold a LG G4, but there’s not much that can surprise me. Sure the phone can look after my every need; way more than any phone back then could possibly do, but it just feels part of my daily life, and not something that I should treasure. And I see this in almost every industry these days. Maybe that is what customers want; a fixed standard set of specs for their daily lives. But when every phones feels the same, you don’t have much of a choice. I used to get butterflies at the thought of buying and exploring a new phone. Now it just feels like i’m buying upgraded software.

Tablet Computing Technology Takes A Leap Ahead

December 16, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

UPCOMING TECHNOLOGY – It’s quite an effort to keep a track of the ‘new’ with incessant updates in the technology market . This is especially true for the cell phone and tablet industry. And the warm success of tablet computers has led more manufacturers to come up with their own versions. As such, some tech companies are working with their unique ‘twists and whacks’ to spill out the next-generation tablet computers. Here’s a quick look at the upcoming tablet computer technologies.

Razer’s Gaming Tablet

Despite the popularity, tablet computers have never been able to gain a notable support from the gaming communities. And it’s justified. Currently, even the best tablet in the market lacks enough hardware to run graphic intensive games to match the quality of new age gaming consoles. So here’s an update. Once a concept gaming tablet from Razer (Project Fiona), now confirmed for production – the device promises an integrated Intel Core i7 processor with a sound system certified by THX. Though it’s said to have a 10.1-inch display, the screen size seems pretty small for a proper console-like gaming experience. But hey, there are ways to stream games from any device to a larger display!

Bendable or Foldable Tablets

The next generation of tablets may be even more portable than they are now. These may be made of an OLED display and folded like a newspaper and placed in your back pocket. Sounds genius, right? Interestingly in the year 2011, Samsung released a concept video and confirmed the introduction of such a bendable and transparent device sometime in the year 2012. Well, the year has almost ended with no such thing happening – 2013 may be?

Electronic Skin and Wrap-Around Glass

A solar-powered stretchable touchscreen device is being developed by Stanford University. The idea is to create wearable gadgets that are light, flexible, and thin as your daily apparel. A tablet or smartphone ingrained on the sleeve of a shirt – a common element in sci-fi movies may soon be a reality. Corning Inc. manufactures the ‘Gorilla Glass’ popularly used in today’s cell phones and tablets and the company is working on a glass display that could be wrapped around a device. This would mean that touch-screen gadgets may no longer be limited to rectangular shapes.

Tablet Projector

Hold on, this one’s is already available in the market! SmartQ U7 tablet from SmartDevices has introduced a tablet with a built-in projector! While Samsung may be working on a Windows tablet with a built-in projector. This would allow the projection of presentations or videos from the back of the tablet.

So, how would you like to have your tablet computer? Discuss your ideas and expectations in the comments section below – the manufacturers might actually pick them up!

Is google really trying to make a profit with Nexus 7?

July 3, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

Google unveiled a new tablet late last month called the Nexus 7. Now there are plenty of affordable Android tablets in the market and most of them lack at the hardware or the software end. But, Nexus 7 is special. This first ever tablet from Google promises great set of features at a surprisingly low price, which is too good to be true. Google isn’t exactly popular for being a money-leecher; they aren’t popular for being generous either. This leads me to question Google’s intentions. Is profit really on their minds, or is it something much more strategic than that?

The Nexus 7 comes packed with a quad core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and a 12 core GPU, which effectively makes the device capable of using 16 cores at a time. It has a 7 inch screen with a display resolution of 1200 * 800 pixels, and features a Gorilla glass laden LCD display. On the memory side, it has 1 GB of Ram, and up to 16 GB of hard disk space. And front facing 1.3 megapixel camera, with no camera on the back panel.

It comes loaded with the latest version of Google’s flagship Android OS, called Jellybean. Jellybean comes with a lot of new improvements over ICS, which includes Google Now, a revolutionary new platform for searching and user interaction which goes beyond Voice search and AI. It also has a lot of new tweaks such as Google’s “Project Butter” initiative, which makes scrolling much smoother, almost “buttery”, and the OS much more responsive as a whole. It’s clear that with all of these bells and whistles, that this is a top tier tablet intended to compete with the best out there.

Now here’s the real deal. The tablet is priced at just 199$ for the 8 GB version, and 249$ for the 16 GB version. In case you do not find this surprising, let me remind you that the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s goliath in the tablet space, sells for the same price, but cannot hold a candle to the specs Google are offering with the Nexus 7. The Kindle Fire is a tablet with very limited capabilities and actually justifies the comparatively cheap price tag. The iPad though, now that’s a different story. But even so, in terms of features, the Nexus 7 probably goes neck to neck with Apple’s A-sexual lovechild. One may say it even trumps the mighty beast.

nexus 7 vs kindle fire — *Image credit – PCMag.com*

Which brings us to the main point of discussion, why price so cheaply? If you ask me, I say it’s a ploy. None of the Android tablets have really made an impact which they were expected to make, mainly due to the stiff competition from Apple, and Amazon. And what do you do when the competition starts getting heavy on you? You try and neutralize the competition. By pricing the Nexus 7 as much as the Kindle Fire, Google has ensured one thing; if there is a question between which Tablet to opt for, the price being a factor, it’s a no-brainer. Google hands down has the best tablet around. They want to hit Amazon, and hit them hard.

But won’t this affect the current lineup of Android tablets too? Most Android tablets out there may feature similar specs but are very highly priced. As such, won’t Google be harming its own partners? Well yes and no. Even though the current generation of Android tablets will become obsolete, it will pave the way for future tablets to follow Google footsteps in the pursuit of making better tablets at around the same price range. Brilliant strategy in my opinion.

You can call this transition as rebooting of a brand. If one strategy does not work for a long time, start over. If Google is able to capitalize on the market as they will be hoping with this bold move, then we might see a new era of cheap, high performing tablets in no time. For the customer, it’s a major win, which is all that matters.