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 It’s a bulky and completely outdated phone by todays standards, but back then it was an absolute beauty.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

LG Optimus 4X HD Launches In India – First Look

July 27, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

LG isn’t a newcomer when it comes to high end smartphones. They’ve been in the mobile space for a long time, but have never quite been able to penetrate the market as effectively as some of their peers. They were one of the first companies to release handsets with dual core processors, and although the same cannot be said for the quad core sector, they’re here, and they looking to create a stir. With phones such as the One X, and the Galaxy S3, one may say that the quad core scenario has already peaked in terms of popularity. Even so, there is always room for improvement, and the LG Optimus 4X HD seeks to prove as a worthy adversary to the aforementioned heavy hitters and make a name for itself.

At first glance, the Optimus 4X HD looks like a larger version of the much acclaimed Galaxy S2. The edges aren’t rounded, well they are, but they’re still square edges only slightly rounded at the very tip, and the phone is ultra light, exactly the reasons why we loved the S2. Hardware wise, it’s no slouch. The 4.1 core Tegra 3 processor is speedy and keeps response time to a minimum. It comes packed with 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB storage, an 8 mega pixel snapper, and almost all the features you’d expect from a high end smartphone. The screen size is 4.7 inches, on par with the One X and the Galaxy S3, and for such a huge phone, it is surprisingly light. The screen looks gorgeous, but the glare is apparent while viewing the screen under direct sunlight.

Optimus 4X HD front
Optimus 4X HD front

But that’s not all the phone has to offer. Quick memo offers the users the ability to quickly edit their photos and videos. Also possible is video zooming with the ability to pan across different sections of the zoomed video without much loss in quality. Using the newly implemented Icon Customizer, you can now have custom icons for all of your apps. Also added is the ability to share files via other devices with the use of NFC. You can also quickly change the settings of the phone with the use of the awesome NFC tag, plus the system. The phone will come packed with three such tags and each can be rewritten to accommodate several settings that the user wishes to achieve. The settings will then change everytime the user simply taps the tag. Also added is the ability to remotely control your phone via your computer using a DLNA specific service called Smartshare.

The 4X HD also sports some India specific features, at the center of which stands LG mobile TV, a television media service which will stream a select group of channels straight to the phone. The service is free for the first 3 months, and will be chargeable after that. There is no online media library on the phone at the moment, but it is in the works and might hit the phone late next year.

The LG Optimus 4X HD is priced at Rs. 34,990

Overall the phone feels like a good edition to the high end paradigm, and although it won’t be giving Samsung of HTC nightmares, it is still looking like a very nice alternative to the other phones in a saturated market. Our little hands on with the phone left us cautiously impressed, but i’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of the phone, to better understand whether it can actually stand the test of time, or fall like countless others. The fact that it even made me contemplate asking that question, is an achievement in todays world, where no two products are very dissimilar or genuine.

Filed Under: Consumer Technology Tagged With: htc, LG, Mobility Market, nfc, samsung

An Era Of Cloud Gaming Technology Is Booting Up

June 17, 2012 by Omkar Jadhav Leave a Comment

UPCOMING TECHNOLOGY – Speaking of new games released in the era of The Witcher 2, Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs, Star Wars 1313 and the likes, you no longer have to worry about upgrading your PC configuration or owning the latest consoles, ever. All you need is a display screen – be it a TV or desktop monitor and an internet connection with at-least 3 Mbits/s bandwidth; most importantly the internet connection must not be limited by download or upload caps.

Ezio Auditore

What I’m talking about is the Cloud Gaming Technology – NVIDIA GeForce Grid is a service launched on the 25th May 2012 by NVIDIA and Gaikai (one of the premier cloud gaming companies) as a collaborated effort. It offers a high fidelity and immersive console/PC gaming experience on any device such as a TV, tablet, PC, laptop or your mobile irrespective of the underlying configuration. Streaming Xbox 360 Games, PS3 or PC with the exact visual and audio experience on any screen, without the need of expensive hardware is now possible. The game is first processed at the server side and then streamed at the user’s end. Cloud Gaming has been termed as a hardware and a software solution, this can potentially aid in making gaming the #1 form of entertainment in the world.

Cloud gaming isn’t a new phenomenon. It has existed in the market for a while now with OnLive providing the service since March 2010 (Check OnLive vs. Gaikai see below). Though both the aforementioned companies have NVIDIA technology as the underlying basis, how it has aided them to provide a next-gen cloud gaming experience is commendable. They have successfully aided both the cloud gaming companies in overcoming the hindering barriers which marred the previous cloud gaming experience. The latency (delay) over broadband networks, the quality of the video images and the high cost per user are now a thing of the past. So imagine playing a game, that you could never run on the most ambitious ‘ULTRA high settings’, on your average PC with gaming experience beyond your machine’s capabilities and performance smoother than imagined.

NVIDIA has its GeForce Grid running on Gaikai’s 24 data centers worldwide and Gaikai is already offering its global cloud streaming network as a service. It’s live in 88 countries, serving 400 million monthly unique users on hundreds of gaming sites and with retail partners that include Walmart, BestBuy, YouTube, the Electronics Arts’ Origin store, Ubisoft’s UBIShop, Capcom, and Eurogamer.net.

The Face-Off – OnLive Vs. Gaikai

OnLive launched its cloud gaming service on March 10,2010 and almost a year later Gaikai joined in. The two competitors, though offering identical services, are targeting different markets. Gaikai provides more flexibility to game developers and its technology partners by allowing them to provide a collection of customizable offerings (not restricted to games) and allowing them to brand their offerings, whereas OnLive focuses more on providing an end-user experience for gamers through their game systems and playPack subscriptions.

The partnership with LG and Samsung

OnLive has partnered with LG and has been in the market for almost a year more than Gaikai, who on the other hand has allied with Samsung. OnLive will be utilizing the Google TV as a platform built into LG TV’s. They also have tapped into browser based gaming and released an Android app last year, which allows players to use their portable devices as gaming consoles streaming games over Wi-Fi or cellular networks.They also are likely to launch their service on iPad.

What about mobile devices?

Gaikai hasn’t yet ventured into the mobile scenario but is soon going to launch a 3D-ready gaming tablet with physical controls, which is in collaboration with WikiPad. Both companies are relying on NVIDIA’s graphics processing units to provide the best experience possible. AMD has not entered the cloud gaming market yet, so NVIDIA has no competition for now. But the major competition here is more between the hardware manufacturers (Samsung & LG) than the service providers as the number of devices a brand sells would reflect the number of customers a service provider can garner.

The Future

Cloud Gaming Technology is still in its infancy. There are vast prospective markets which are yet to be penetrated with today’s high-consoles and PCs , so for such markets cloud gaming might just be a pipe dream. There lies another obstacle that hinders the ability to experience cloud gaming, it is nothing but the core pillar – networking infrastructure. So the true potential of cloud gaming can only be realized once this connectivity medium has reached the desired level. With that potential realized, one can say that cloud gaming possesses the ability to replace consoles as well as PC gaming entirely.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: cloud, LG, nvidia, samsung

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