Raj Agrawal

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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 It’s a bulky and completely outdated phone by todays standards, but back then it was an absolute beauty.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.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: 3310, 6600, apple, google, iOS, LG, nexus, nokia, samsung, sony

Zoho Projects – Free [Android] [iOS]

October 19, 2013 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

‘There’s an app for that’. You’ve most likely heard this phrase at least once. If you’re a part of a team working on a project and finding a way to manage it on the go, then yes! There’s an app for that! Zoho as a company, has several web based products, and Zoho projects is one we’re discussing today. It’s a free web based project management/ collaboration tool, which is also available as a native application on smart phones. 

I’ll quickly share a brief summary of what the app is about. Zoho projects is perhaps one of the prettiest and functional project management tools for smart phones currently available on the web. To start using this Android/ iPhone project management app all you and your team needs is an Android or an iOS phone with an internet connection and team ready with the app setup on their phones. With these taken care of, you can quickly start creating and managing tasks, view live feeds with hot topics and people discussing them, share images, log your work time, get instant alerts to name a few. The following video from the company explains the concept of Zoho projects as project management tool:

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: Android, iOS

Adobe Photoshop Touch – [Android] [iOS]

March 21, 2013 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

[Android] [iOS] – iOS and Android users have access to a never ending list of apps for download. The App Store and Google Play are one of the most visited websites through internet enabled and compatible devices. Well known desktop apps have been ported to iOS/ Android platforms and some of the popular names include Skype, MSN Messenger and FX Movie Maker. Now Adobe Photoshop, a popular photo-editing tool that’s used by millions of developers and consumers around the world, is now available for Android and iOS smartphones as Adobe Photoshop Touch.

A bit of history

This isn’t the first launch of Adobe Photoshop Touch – it was already available for iPad and Android tablets. Due to the growing popularity among the platforms, the app has now been extended to smartphones too. The tablet version went mainstream quickly after the more features were picked up from the desktop version.

The smartphone version, however, doesn’t contain any new additions from the developers and is almost similar to its tablet counterpart. The only difference was the re-sizing and re-engineering that developers at Adobe did to make the app work smoothly on the phones with smaller screens. The app is also optimized for the taller display of the sixth-generation iPhone.

Photoshop users who have been using the desktop version of Photoshop can quickly grasp the concept and features of the app.

Runtime

Once the app is launched, the user will be presented with an option to proceed with a new project or whether or not to follow a tutorial. The tutorial is helpful to locate the tools and the positioning of the toolset isn’t similar to the desktop version of the software. This will also help first-time users to get accustomed to the user interface.

There are 13 tutorials in total, and they guide the user through different functions of the app such as how to use different effects, shadows, blends, colors and background effects. A small banner appears at the top of the screen displaying the instructions, and the user also receives a pop up notification stating the required tool on certain occasions.

With respect to the user interface, some tools are on the main screen, while others are located at the bottom corner. However, a small arrow can be swiped to display them. There’s also a layers palette on the right side of the screen. The top layer is the one that’s the top in the stack, just like on the desktop version of the Adobe Photoshop. There’s also a 3D view feature that can be accessed by double-tapping any layer.

Users will be able to add a photo as a layer, use the pencil, deselect options, edit levels and saturation, add different effects and customize images.

The app is available on (Android and iOS app stores) for $4.99.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: adobe, Android, iOS

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