Is Xiaomi's Mi3 the new sensation?

Snapdragon's 2.3 Ghz quad core processor, 2GB RAM, 5 inch IPS Retina display with 1920 X 1080 resolution, 13 MP Primary shooter, 2 MP Secondary shooter, 3050 mAh battery....... If these were specs of a Samsung's or htc's flagship phone, I would't be writing and you wouldn't be reading this. But these are the specifications of a sub 15000 phone (Actually 13999/-) which made no compromises stating its economical price as a reason. This phone came from a company called Xiaomi (pronounced Shiao-Me) and the name of the mobile is Mi3.

As soon as I took out Mi3 from the box, I felt my adrenaline pumping. Watching all the reviews and coverage surrounding it, I expected it to have a cheap plasticky feel to it. Apparently, I was wrong. Edges are clean, buttons are tactile, no light leaking from the panel whatsoever, display was stunning and the speaker grills were chiselled to perfection. 

Display is stunning in this phone with superb viewing angles and excellent colour representation. Resolution is 1920 X 1080 and you get a density of whopping 441 pixels per inch. As you can tell these pixels can't be discerned by a human eye. Colour representation is apt and brightness levels are good. I didn't have any sort of difficulty in handling this phone under sunlight and at the same time it did't strain my eyes under the blanket at night with automatic brightness turned on.

Performance is this beast's forte and it does exceedingly well in this aspect. Throw at it the best titles of action and racing games that are high in graphics and detailing, Mi3 chews them apart. It recorded geek bench and sun spider scores on par with many flagships. Coming to camera, both primary and secondary shooters did fine. Image quality is pretty good but detailing could have been better. Pictures taken in day light are unaffected but at nights, noise does its part to affect the quality of the picture. 

Battery life is the primary reason that we use our mobiles little less than what they are capable of these days. But take my word beyond a doubt that Mi3 will not disappoint you in this aspect. You can have your data turned on, put the brightness to your comfortable zone, use it as much as you want, you'll still have 30% juice left at the time of your dinner. Here I'd like to mention a software feature that I liked. Mi3 will be able to switch to "Marathon" mode automatically whenever it gets below the percentage of battery we decide. If we want that point to be 20%, after Mi3 gets to that point, it automatically turns off the data, reduces the brightness and makes necessary adjustments so that you could still get more than 10 hours of standby time. Whenever you connect your phone to power source, it switches off the "Marathon" mode and returns to normal mode. There are apps that provide such functionality but doing this natively is quite nice.

You'll also get Xiaomi's free 5GB cloud storage to host all your contacts, settings, phone logs, messages, photos, etc.. There are built in security features like "Find my phone." Mi3 interface takes a lot of design cues from iOS. There's no separate launcher for apps like many android interfaces does and this needs getting used to if you've already used some android mobiles. 

Mi3 has got plethora of sensors like GPS, GLONASS, AGPS, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, Accelerometer, Digital Compass, Gyroscope, Barometer, Proximity Sensor, Dual LED Flash and all the sensors that you'd expect in a premium phone. All in all this is a compelling purchase no surprise that the second phase sales of 10,500 devices got over in just under 5 seconds in flipkart. The only place I felt Xiaomi could have done better is in manufacturing of charger. If there's a part in the whole package that feels a little cheap, it is the charger. It is solid but a little bulky considering the design of the chargers of its counterparts. But the functionality of the charger is fine. Mi3 charges up pretty fast.

Now finally to the justification of my title - I can just say that 10500 units being sold out just under 5 seconds is a testimony to the fact that Mi3 is indeed revolutionary but I'll not end here. Let us look at the market scenario. Emerging markets like India and china are full of people who are budget buyers. They instantly fell in love with Mi3, no wonder sellers chose India as the target market after China. Many companies should acknowledge the fact that Mi3 is a storm or else they are going to loose market share pretty fast and will be irrelevant soon. What is the first company that comes to your mind when I say that the sales of that company may hamper? If you are thinking of Samsung, you've probably guessed right. Samsung was comfortable a year ago having their flagships offering the features the premium buyers wanted and at the same time catering to the needs of budget buyers through their less powerful cost efficient phones. That scenario has just changed now. Mobiles like Mi3 are offering the same specs as Samsung's 25000 priced phone is offering at much lower price. Xiaomi is posing a greater threat to Samsung by fixing Mi3's price point below 15000. You might think, even Apple gets affected from phones like this. If you presume so, you don't know Apple and its loyal customer base. As I've already said, buyers of iPhone are aware of the thin line between owning a smartphone and owning an iPhone. They would have anyway bought those cheap phones from Samsung if they are like normal buyers.While Apple had reported 12% growth over previous quarter, Samsung's shipments fell in no of units sold. With mobiles like Mi3 giving Samsung a run for its money in economical markets, Apple is already there waiting in premium markets. Mi3 may not affect the sales in countries like US because it is quite unlikely that Xiaomi would take the risk to launch Mi3 in US for its stringent IP protection laws unlike markets like India and China.

With advent of Mi3's interesting things are going to happen in mobile space. Smartphones are going to get cheaper and cheaper (Moto G had got straight Rs. 2000/- price cut in flipkart). End of the day buyers of Economy market are going to get beautiful and tasty benefits with the debut of Mi3.  

Doubt not Mi3 is not just another cost efficient mobile, it is going to create a silent storm. Period.

Apple - Looking like doing things it shouldn't be doing..

Yes this is different. Apple under the reigns of Tim Cook is different to what Apple under Steve Jobs is. Remembering from the past, one of Jobs' last advises to Tim Cook is to never ask what Steve would have done. Just do whats right. He may be right from his Disney's experience but one gets a serious doubt that Cook may be taking this advice too seriously than what Jobs would have hoped for. At least that's my opinion.

And the results? iPad Mini cannibalizing the sales of iPad 4 thereby driving lesser profits for the company. One might argue that this product is for portability lovers and it is different from bigger iPad and truly so... But the rumors of a cheaper iPhone dubbed iPhone 5c are really terrifying if we dig deeper. What's Apple's north star? Doing the best but not doing the most! But painfully and much to many's surprise, for the first time, Apple's trying to sell the most for the first time with iPhone 5c!

Previously

Let's observe the previous scenarios where Apple tried to do just this. And with this thought, they ended up doing Mac Mini. Here Apple successfully produced a product that had a prize tag to bring it to affordable range to many. Here what I want to double upon is that this is the area where the type of the product allowed such budget constrains. One might argue that it is still costly but for Apple's quality assurance, it is quite affordable.

But at the end, Mac Mini didn't lure Macbook buyers to this less profitable product. Its altogether a different breed and didn't hurt sales of Macbooks as the customers buying this product are the first time Mac buyers. But does the same theory apply for iPhone 5c?

iPhone 5c

Going by gut instinct and by observing Jobs for several years (at least  from the time he had returned to Apple) one will say that Jobs wouldn't have approved this product.

Many part leaks suggest that iPhone 5c is indeed in the picture. Now what happens to the market share if cheaper iPhone becomes a reality? Yes the market share for iOS indeed increases but will it that be at the cost of draining profits for the premium iPhone? Is that feasible? Jobs once said "We prize aggressively and go for volume." If that mantra works here, we could indeed see more and more people foray in to the iPhone space. But the profits from the premium iPhone decreases. If Jobs' mantra works here, profits from the cheaper ones will be so much more that they may indeed gain more profits than the previous model of selling only premium iPhones. At least they might end up producing just as much profits as the previous model. But that celebration is not going to last forever for Apple. 

Here's Why

People are gonna absolutely like iPhone 5c. Budget buyers are going to love this and cannot live without this. But will that relationship last forever? There's a difference on where a user might opt for iOS or Android in a given budget. The average user (I don't mean them less intellectual but most in number) opts Android for that it looks interesting. For an average user, iOS is boring. They don't have widgets, live wallpapers, plethora of customizations like themes, etc.. alike Android. iOS is for people who are sturdy going and people who wants stability and take things one at a time. Moreover people don't want to buy premium apps. They want to sideload them. People don't want to buy music. They listen by sending through Bluetooth. People don't have internet connection too often. So its very tough to exchange photos. Most % of the budget buyers don't have computers in their homes. No computer implies no iTunes and no iTunes means it is very difficult to maintain an iPhone (People might have more resources in relatively richer countries like US but we are speaking of volume and should look at India or China). All these adds up to insecurity among iPhone buyers and they are going to hate this. Buying and maintaining iPhone requires spending money for the content but that's not the case that Budget buyers might feel happy doing.

There will still be people who understand these implications and truly know why they are buying an iPhone. These people would have opted for a premium iPhone by any means by going through the difficulty of earning more money. But these people who would have bought a premium iPhone will now turn their wallets to a cheaper one! 

So on the long run, market share increases, profit decreases and it will be painful to see. Apple is never feared of cannibalizing its own products but this is definitely a different scenario. 

Then what should Apple do?

If Apple really has this candid notion of making iPhone available to budget buyers, they should differentiate cheaper and premium phones so much more to an extent where the old premium buyer should still opt a premium one for the extra features it had to offer but cheaper iPhone should welcome only the new buyers. Yes it is very very tough to achieve but has to be done to truly dive in to mass market and still get the same or more profits!

(Throughout my article I've referred to terms Premium iPhone and iPhone 5c. By them what I mean is that the premium iPhone is one that is available now which costs around $650-$700 when unlocked and $200 on a contract. And iPhone 5c is the purported cheaper unlocked iPhone under shelves which is yet to be unveiled which is rumored to cost around $300-$400)

Update: Turns out, they have great advisers than what I had expected them to have. iPhone 5c is not unlocked and costs $99 on contract! Guess what? It costs $549 off-contract. Just a $100 shy of iPhone 5s. So, I believe there will be no decreasing profit as they seem to have making same amount of profit on 5s and 5c

Use Smartphone, Internet Wisely and Productivity Jumps.

                       Many are using internet and smartphones today. But here in India, many use internet for Facebook and Smartphones with out an internet connectivity to it. Internet has may things to help in our daily lives. As a Student or a Professional, not using internet productively is a wrong thing to do because Internet has many uses.

                   

                  

                            Any thing of your interest can be found on the internet today. Then why waste time asking others? If you are interested in technology then there are a lot of sites waiting for you like Engadget, Gizmodo, etc... If you are an automobile lover then there are driveinside, autoexpo, etc... Likewise you can find hundreds of sites on whichever field you are interested on. And many don't know the potential of google today. Whichever information you want, google keeps in front of you in a matter of seconds. And you cant believe, google searches an answer for every question that exists. Thanks to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Also use Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha well for any sort of information and mathematics. Wikipedia has the largest collection of articles to read on whichever topic or whatever person you want and wolfram alpha solves every mathematical equation(at least the ones Aryabhatta, Euclid or Newton can!) 

              

                            Having said that, Smart phones without internet connectivity is the biggest dumb thing to do. You've invested some money, got a smartphone and will you use it just for listening to music and playing games? Thats just insane! Smartphones with internet connectivity opens up a whole new world for you because all the above things mentioned can be done anywhere you are if you feed your smartphone with a internet plan. Its a great thing to have because all your doubts can be clarified then and there on the go and so you don't have any half-thoughts on any topic. This is great because many of us find ourselves forgetting lots of things. Moreover you can have the information up to date on all the happenings around the world on the go! 

                            

                                

                              So, go start browsing, feed your brain with such content and have the feeling of missing all these before. In few days there will be lot of websites sitting on you which you follow and they constantly scorch you to read them and you'll have scarcity for time while doing productive work! So students, never join a college that doesn't offer speed, reliable Wi-Fi. check this particular thing twice before you join a college. :-)

P.S: I don't mean fb is a waste of time. Fb too is productive if you start commenting and having debates which build your character.

Apple TV - What I think its going to be like!

                  It all started with the statement of late Steve Jobs claiming that he had 'cracked the TV problem' in the biography of walter Isaacson. Lets get into insight of what I think its going to be like.

Present day TV experience: 

       Some people are content with what TV has to offer today. But lately with the invasion of world wide web, many internet things are creeping in to television sets and many are now slightly dissatisfied with the interface and connecting procedures of TV and Internet. TVs today offer Wi-Fi connectivity and a little browser is attached to them but on the whole the experience sucks. So what's available today is not enough for a seamless way of having browsing experience for the user and more importantly the interaction device remote has lot of space to improve. 

Apple TV:

                  Then came a little hobby thing Apple TV. Though they called this as hobby thing, it proved to be productive for lot of people. Apple TV is now being used in offices and class rooms for Air-Playing iPad screens for teaching and presentations. Air-Play is a very little hyped technology today but it would prove to be a key technology for future Apple products. Apple TV streams all your content present in the computer to a TV and it even shows videos in YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo, etc... Apple is making profits from these but not as much as main stream products like iPhone or iPad. 

Apple iTV speculations:

             After the statement of Steve Jobs, speculations started to take rounds that Apple is building the whole TV not just streaming box like Apple TV. When asked about this to Tim Cook by Walt Mossberg at D conference, Cook didn't say a definitive no. So there may be some works going on as there is a saying 'There will be no smoke if there is no fire.' 

      Naming pattern in Apple:

                   Apple Computers Inc. is the name before Apple entered to iPod and iTunes business. But after they invaded this market, they have changed the name to Apple Inc.. iPhone had iPhone OS in it at first. But after invasion of iPad, they have changed the name of its iPhone OS to just iOS. And now they have changed Mac OS X to just OS X. Is it an indication of adopting OS X to Apple TV? I don't t think so but this naming would be a long time merging plan of OS X and iOS. 

iTV:

                  So I think Apple TV will be built around Airplay technology. That means many apps will be built that use TV as a display and iPad or iPhone as remote. Problem in front of Apple is that they are a hardware driven company and they make most money on their hardware products sold. And problem with Apple TV is that people don't change their TVs more often as much as they do with phone or a tablet. 

                   

                   Solution is that Apple TV would be a smaller device like iPad which streams the content from TV. That means you would have one Apple TV per room and they stream content from Cable network. Any one can watch any channel on their choice. Personalisation would be possible with this kind of approach. But  they have a harder task in their hands pleasing people with small screens with this kind of approach. The best thing to do is build the displays with utmost care as they did with the iPhone 4 because Colour saturation is on the spot and there is lesser glare which are the main things that please the user. And sure Siri would be a part of whole experience.

                   Knowing Apple that its concentration is on end user experience and integration of hardware and software and knowing that everybody hates present day TVs, they would not leave this TV space to others. All this is just imaginative thinking of me and I would be completely wrong if Apple makes a full sized TV but not small screens as I've claimed. Lets see what Apple has in its product pipeline!

NFC Tags - For an automated life.

                     NFC is the latest short-range radio communications standard taking the mobile world by storm. NFC stands for Near Field Communication and its a standard that allow devices to establish radio connection whenever brought within close proximity of one another.

                      Majority of users use NFC to "beam" contact info, use them for payment services like Google Wallet and to transfer media in high-speeds. But we can now use NFC tags for automating the mobile.

                    With a simple touch of your device with this NFC tag, you can launch apps; set alarms; switch Bluetooth, WiFi, Navigation; and much more. With this small tag you can automate your tasks by just tapping your NFC-enabled Phone with it and have time saved and yes you can configure your tag. In the sense, you can configure your tag - which task to perform when tapped with a Phone.

                   NFC tags have a plethora of use case scenarios and that’s where the app NFC Task Launcher comes in. This application which is present in Google's Play Store supports NFC Forum Type 1, Type 2, Type 3 and Type 4 Tags as well as third party NFC Enabled tags like the MIFARE Classic, DESFire, Ultralight and Ultralight C and allows any NFC enabled device to create and perform tasks such as:

Create:

• Task Tags
• Switch Tasks – use 1 NFC tag to toggle between two Task tags
• vCard Tags
• Smart URL Tags
• Text Tags
• URI Tags (Tel, SMS, Mailto)

Task Tags currently support the configure or execute the following tasks:

• Turn Wifi on or off
• Turn Bluetooth on or off
• Make Bluetooth Discoverable
• Turn Air-plane mode on or off
• Launch any installed Application
• Configure a new Wifi connection and connect
• Configure and enable Portable Hotspot
• Turn Auto-sync on or off
• Turn Auto-rotation on or off
• Turn Notificaiton light on or off
• Set Display brightness and auto-brightness
• Launch any Tasker Task (for users of Tasker)
• Chang Ringtone
• Change Notification Tone
• Changing Ringer Mode (Normal/Silent/Vibrate)
• Changing Ringer Volume
• Changing Media Volume
• Changing Alarm Volume
• Changing Notification Volume
• Set vibration
• Set Alarm (both a fixed time and as a timer)
• Check in with Google Latitude, Foursquare, Facebook and Google Places
• Send a tweet on Twitter directly from the tag
• Start / Stop media playback
• Turn GPS on or off (root Required)
• Turn Mobile Data on or off (root required)
• Changing Display Timeout
• Changing Auto-Rotation
• Changing Notification Light  

                      And this list goes on. But for all this to perform, you should have a NFC-Powered Mobile and if you have, start automation and save time.

Example 1:

            We can create a simple Silent/Vibrate mode to a NFC tag and add it to a key chain. So whenever we see a board "Switch of your Mobile phones" in places like Movie theatres, Hospitals or at College, we can simply tap our mobile to this tag present in our pocket to keep the mobile in Silent/Vibrate mode.

Example 2:

          We can create a NFC tag to just open Google maps app and stick this tag to a mobile stand in the car. So whenever we sit in the car and place the phone in the stand, it automatically opens maps App and its a little time saver.

                  So there will be no end to the imagination if you start thinking. All you need is a NFC-Powered Mobile, a few NFC badges and a little geeky coolness!

                 

                      

Android - A Fragmented Market

Android is mobile OS designed by google corporation that sees 12 activations per second. It is the most adopted OS in the world ( Though some of it's users don't know what an app is and what an app market is.) Android has an advantage of adoptability- It is open and can be adopted by any manufacturer. But the result is many apps undergo crashes and many apps needs updates like once every 2 weeks (mostly). This drives user crazy. For example, I have 100 apps in my phone and I want them to be up to date. So I update all my apps and in just a week, I get 15+ updates. So as they are not divided into crash-updates or feature-updates,I have to go to every app and should read the description to find out whether that app is worth upgrade or not.

          Actually we see this many updates because devices are more,screen resolution is different and skin used varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. This becomes hard for a developer to write apps bug-free. Because one app would work perfectly well on a device and the same app would crash on the start on an another device though they both run the same version of Android. If they run different versions,thats an another story.

          Talking about software-updates, here is where Android is broken. You get a phone with some version out of the box and chances are more that you might end-up with the same software for years till you purchase a new phone. This is because liberty of Android to make manufacturers and carriers to run their custom skins. My strong view is that many phones today can run the next version of pure vanilla Android. But adding a skin to would slow down the phone and so manufacturers are not willing to update their phones. The reason for my belief is- a 600 MHz processor powered X10 Mini can run ics if rooted and ported with custom rom but why not an unrooted Xperia Play which is powered with more than a GHz processor?

           And if you are lucky enough to get a software update, you will be using the latest version for a maximum of 3-5 months. Because, after Android releases a software update, manufacturers play with that version add new skins, test that for at-least 6 months and then start the roll out. This rollout would take at-least 2 months to reach the users according to their carriers and SI numbers and all. Then 2-3 months after the update of your phone Android releases the next version of their OS making the last version obsolete. ( In Google I/O this year, in the demonstration of 'Project Butter', they made ICS obsolete by showing how fast their latest version is and how laggy the ICS is captured in a high speed camera though. The reason for me mentioning this is Xperia Mini has received the update just the day before I/O event and users are content that they are using the latest version for just a day )

             Team Android had promised a partnership with OEMs to provide software support for at-least 18 months after the user has purchased a phone in last I/O conference. No discussion on that has taken place in this year's I/O.  

              Keeping users' aspects aside, developer community is the one that is affected the most. Because, though Android has great APIs to offer for developers in the newer iterations of versions, they can't make use of them because they can't write Apps for a significantly smaller portion of that pie. Today, according to stats released by google according to traffic in play store in 2 weeks, 64 % of users use GingerBread, 10% users use ICS and the others use still previous versions. A developer can't opt to write apps for just 10% of users. Instead he opts for 74% (Gingerbread and ICS) and so he cant use new APIs which ICS has to offer. So quality of Apps is significantly reduced. But in iOS which is hated by most tinkerers who doesn't like control of manufacturers, more than 80% use the latest version iOS 5. 3 year old iPhone 3GS runs the latest version and there's a planned upgrade to iOS 6 though some features are eliminated. So developer feels very happy because the Apps he writes making use of the latest APIs can run on more than 80% of devices. And as there's just a single store in iOS, developers need not fear for App piracy.

           
Finally, as it is better late than never, Android should concentrate on fewer models and fewer resolutions as Microsoft did with Windows phone 8. Android has defeated iOS on market share but there is not a single Android phone that competes directly with iPhone. And more over phones running the latest software of iOS are more than the phones that are running the latest software of Android. So Android, address the issue of fragmentation!  

Cloud Technologies- The real future where the world is heading to..

           Cloud Technology- The word frequently listened in modern days of technology. Cloud technology is anything you get to work through internet. Cloud stores the data in the data servers or the real machine you can work on. Cloud technology is very helpful in storing your data in data servers which aren't owned by you. At first gmail called itself a cloud technology giving a free storage of 6 GB 10 GB for every user. Cloud services help users to access the data anywhere, anytime, on an any machine with internet access. The only thing an user need to do is to trust a server, store his data and just forget about it.

           We can call photo sharing web-sites like Picassa, Flickr; mail offering sites like gmail, Yahoo!; file hosting sites like mediafire, rapidshare, etc.. as cloud services. The advantage with cloud services is that you need not fear that your data might be lost due to technical snags in your machine in the future. Cloud services acts as backup to your important documents that can be retrieved anytime.

              These are just starting days for cloud services. With post-PC products rushing in to the market, cloud services moved to the next level. With cloud services on the go, you need not have great hardware support to your devices. For example, if your media on whole is lot compared to memory size of the device you carry, cloud services will be the savior for you. All you need is a reasonable speed for internet.

             And its not just limited to memory size, but also for the processor. If your device doesn't do the needful to you, computers in the cloud do the work. For example, in an iPad, if you cant run flash , the flash animations can be shown to you with the help of a computer that is present in the cloud. There is an App for that (iSwifter) We can also run Microsoft Office using App like On Live Desktop. So without having all these soft-wares installed on your device, you can do the total work with the help of devices that are on the cloud.

               Apple Inc, has takes these cloud services further by providing many services to users as a freebie naming the service as  iCloud. Key features of iCloud are:

• You can download any song on any device and just leave. The other iOS devices automatically download the song for no extra charge. All you need to do is sign in with the same account on all the devices.
• You can take a pic on your iPhone and it automatically appears on your iPad and your Mac without you doing anything. It automatically and wirelessly pushes all your content to all the device straight away. We can forget syncing these devices again and again.
• We can work on a presentation or read a book on an iPad, keep it in office and can continue the work on an iPhone from where we have left.

                 Cloud technologies just evolved from hard-disk in the cloud to the " Center for all the Media". And it would be wrong if I hadn't named Dropbox here. DropBox is a software available for multiple platforms like Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, etc.. where you have to install it and signin with the same id. And if you place a file on just one device, it automatically appears on all of your devices. Steve Jobs reportedly offered an undisclosed 8-digit sum to the founders of DropBox to strengthen his cloud Services which was rejected.

                    On the down side, security is a problem with cloud services. If the security gateway of just one data server is manipulated, much of the confidential information you have already stored in that server will be in wrong hands. Authentication should be strengthened in cloud services.

                    With cloud services, a cheap smartphone or a tablet can do all the work a computer does. All you need is a blazing speed for the internet so that we can greatly rely on these cloud services for day-to-day needs. In a word a Cloud technology enables a tablet user to work on a computer, he doesn't know where it is but gets his work done.