When the Mayans predicted that the world will end, they didn’t really mean total annihilation.  What they were really worried about was phone screen sizes as big as their soldiers’ shields. Phones becoming tablets and tablets becoming phones. I have to admit, I wouldn’t have cared until it affected me (we are all shallow like that). In this case, it unfortunately does.

Nobody wants to make a fast, powerful and handy thing anymore. Flagship phones are not a millimeter less than 4.7 inches and that is my bone of contention. But before I rant, let’s try to understand how we got here.

When
It all started with the Galaxy S. Until then, people were happy ripping Apple off with 3.5 inch screens and if the phone designer had a fight with their wife before work, it would be 3.7 inches. Ah, the good old days. Samsung, being the classless fools they are, thought the only way to get a one up over Apple would be a bigger screen size. Or was it?

Why
To be fair to Samsung, Android had many inefficiencies back then. Still does, in some places, but we’re still way better than the days of Eclair and Froyo. But that inefficiency meant that the CPU was running on full steam longer. Which meant more battery consumption. And that desire to improve battery life lead to larger phones.

And to top it off, everyone and their uncle were making bloated skins on top of Android like HTC (non) Sense, Samsung (bloop bloop) TouchWiz, Sonys, oh well, you get the drift. MOAR battery.

Logic, Anatomy?
I really don’t get it. The three mega Android brands Samsung, HTC and Sony come from Asia.  For the most part and unlike our western cousins, we have small hands. Well, not tiny but small. Basically, nothing to warrant 5+ inch phones. This is where Apple’s design just scores over every Android phone out there. Ergonomics is a small word but means a lot when it comes to a device that you have on you all day long.

What I’ve seen
Almost every second day I see people pulling out a humongous 7 inch device out of their pockets or talking into one. (Most of it around Dadar). Even the sales people at electronics stores will tell you whether you can or not talk into a tablet. I tell you, this is the beginning of the end.

That is why Samsung is making such a killing. Just look at their stock price, for crying out loud.

Innovation, where art thou?
Android has gotten way better than in the recent past and a 1.2GHz phone with a gigabyte of RAM can churn out usable daily performance. But clearly, that isn’t enough. Our phones still need to be plugged into a charger every few hours. Is it possible that multi tasking get smarter and more battery efficient? I recently added Greenify to my root-ed Pantech Burst, only to notice that battery life has improved by 15-20%. Or Windows Phones for example. A 1GHz processor with 512MB of RAM delivers more than enough for day to day tasks.

What I believe (not that anyone cares, but still)
Although our phones are doing more and more, it still is a phone first. Not that large devices are not phones, but portable devices should be handy. When I went out to get a new phone that was no more that had a screen size of no more than 4 inches and had a GB of RAM, all the options I had were the Pantech Burst and the Apple iPhone. Which is kind of sad, because there are many people out there who want small but powerful devices. I think this comes from my love for hot hatchback cars, but I digress here. Convergence need not mean large devices. Small may just be the new big.

[This post by AndroGuru Nikhil Daphale aims to unravel the mystery behind the wildly popular Micromax Canvas series]

Let’s look at what Micromax calls themselves, first.

“Micromax is an Indian consumer electronics manufacturer located at Gurgaon, Haryana,India. It focuses on the manufacturing of mobile telephones and LED Televisions. It has 23 domestic offices across the country and international offices in Hong Kong, USA and Dubai.^[4][5] Presently, the company has about 1400 employees. Micromax Informatics Limited has announced its foray into Maldivian telecom space through an exclusive partnership with Sense Wood Maldives (Pvt) Ltd.

Micromax is the 3rd largest manufacturer in India and 12th largest handset manufacturer in the world”

That sounds great on paper.  But Micromax isn’t a device manufacturer at all. It simply rebrands chinese phones. Micromax A60 is the ZTE Penguin,  the  A85 is Aliyun W-800 and A90 is Gionee 868.

Obviously, none of that matters to most people, as Micromax is a “brand” now. In India, you can become a brand in two dichotomous ways. First way is to create iconic products(Nokia 3310) and give exemplary service. The other is to sponsor a bunch of events(Sunburn, few music awards, India-Sri Lanka “domestic matches” and so on.) without having a substantial product.

Till now, Micromax was a nonentity in the premium segment, until it launched the CANVAS HD.  It was the first budget quad core device to be taken seriously and surely it got sold out in minutes. The phone itself is good. But here are my problems with it.

1) It is not Canvas HD but a rebranded Ginoee GN878, I’m not too sure, but it looks like that to me.

2) The term quad core is misleading. The high end quad core phones are actually ARM cortex A9 quad core phones whilst Canvas HD is a cortex A7 quad core phone.

“What is this cortex thing. Why can’t I have this phone in pink?” is what a female acquaintance asked me today. The next few lines will need an elementary understanding of microprocessors.

Cortex A9:

Cortex-A9 MPCore offers up to 4 processors delivering when needed, on lightweight workload as well as peak performance. Its configurability and flexibility allows Cortex-A9 to scale across a wide variety of markets and applications.

ARM Physical IP is available to support a synthesizable flow optimized for lowest power or highest performance, as well as a choice of hard-macros reducing risk and shortening time-to-market to a minimum. Enhanced ARM Graphics IP like Mali-624 as well as ARM System IP such as CoreLink NIC-400/301 network interconnect and CoreLink DMC-342 dynamic memory controller allow a rapid system design. ARM Development Suite 5 (DS-5™) tools and enhanced CoreSight Debug & Trace IP like CoreSight SoC-400 and CoreSight Design Kit for Cortex-A9 (DK-A9) allow instant software development that is backed by a broad software ecosystem.

Cortex A7:

The ARM Cortex™-A7 MPCore™ processor is the most efficient application processor ARM has ever developed and dramatically extends ARM’s low-power leadership in future entry level smart phones, tablets and other advanced mobile devices.

The architecture and feature set of the Cortex-A7 processor are identical to the Cortex-A15 processor, with differences in the Cortex-A7 processor’s microarchitecture focused on providing optimum energy efficiency, enabling the two processors to operate in tandem in a big.LITTLE configuration to provide the ultimate combination of high-performance with ultra low power consumption.

A7 is inferior to A9 and a quad core A7(canvas HD)  is equivalent to dual core A9(Samsung Galaxy S2)

(I guess this is how the phone can be sold so cheap – Satish)

3) Micromax is tacky.

4) If you like tacky, buy the original OEM, it’ll get OS updates. Micromax has never and I mean never upgraded the phones. They sell the phones and that’s that. They don’t even release the kernel source(which is mandatory according to GNU-GPL)

Bottom line: Canvas HD is a good phone, but its not canvas HD, it won’t get any software updates(officially) and it is not a true quad core device.

Still, as I type this, 5 people are buying Canvas HD from various websites. The irony.

[Ed's note - Problem is no one cares about the finer things. India wants cheap and India wants them 'apparently' good. I personally would start recommending Micromax if they released the kernel source and started giving out software updates.]

OSes have come, OSes have gone. Some flourish, most fade away. But there is something exciting about new platforms that promise the moon. Say hello to the latest kid on the block, Ubuntu for mobile. I must add, it isn’t easy to excite me about consumer technology anymore. Yes, I might have grown up or might have finally started respecting money for what it’s worth. But Ubuntu for Mobile got my complete, undivided attention right from the word go.

They have a point. Smartphones are getting ridiculously powerful and should be happily be able to run most desktop applications without breaking a sweat. One OS, one experience. Hey, I like such connected, convergence jazz, yo. That, plus I love Ubuntu. (no, seriously. I massively <3 Ubuntu.)

Ridiculous, right? Here’s one more video of Ubuntu 13.04 on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

I am fully psyched, yo. Cannot wait!

It all started when mizzer Zuckerberg said that ‘HTML5 isn’t ready’ or something similar. The dudes at Sencha didn’t like the statement. Sencha are a cool bunch of people who build tools to build HTML5 apps with. So they went the whole hog and built a facebook app for mobile and cheekily called it ‘Fastbook. , And true to its name, its fast. Although it needs quite a few too many permissions to get things done, it does a really nice job.

fb.html5isready.com

The time was 2007 when I first discovered the beauty that Google Finance was. It was a moment between ZOMG-BACON and ZOMG-DONUTS to know that they had Indian stocks. What more, the graphs were utterly sexy and I could zoom in and out on the price-time graphs all day long.  They even had graphical descriptions of news and dividend payouts that appeared and disappeared with the zooming in-out action!  PHUN!

But amidst all this frolic, one certain feature, the stock screener, the all important tool that big-fat hedge fund managers probably need to decide which third world firm they want to laden with their billions, didn’t include Indian scrips. (They still don’t.) Heck, I even noticed that Google Finance took little note of special trading sessions, bank holidays and the mahurat trading by completely botching up the prices. I rebounded with MoneyControl who, although didn’t have those SexyGraphs™ but were far better as portfolio managers even despite the inherent lack of a stock screener.

And then, @BombayLives tweeted about Screener.in along with a superlative adjective which made me involuntarily click the link.

Probably the sexiest and coolest stock screener for Analysing Indian Stocks screener.inNice work by @ayushmitt

— Satish Vijaykumar (@bombaylives) October 1, 2012

And sure enough, when I landed on the page, it was an analytics junkie’s fix. Lists upon lists of stocks sorted by growth factor, the magic formula,  healthy cash flows, the works. They have a stock specific page full of some more data bacon.

And here’s the kicker. THEY HAVE SQL STYLE QUERIES, MACHA! Before I go all geeky on you, SQL is a language to interact with databases and Screener queries are pretty much similar.

Let’s say I want companies with a market capitalization of over 1000cr with a quarterly YOY profit growth of 20% and a price to earnings ratio of less than 12. I’ll write a query like.

Market Capitalization > 1000 AND
YOY Quarterly profit growth > 20 AND
Price to Earning < 12

You can go pretty darn crazy with these things till you feel like they match up to your investment ehtos. They’ve even got custom ratios like ‘Growth Factor’, the Piotroski score and what have you. You can happily go and create more screens and custom ratios to your hearts content (think programming, class derivations and the like)

You can even create screens by clicking on the ‘Show Variables’ button to mix and match visually.

I know this sounds maha complicated and you must be like ‘abbey yaar, I’d rather get a data administrators job’, but once you get used to it, you’e going to feel utterly saxay. Happy and saxay.

http://screener.in

If you are reading this, then you’ve pretty much been lusting after the Nexus 4 since the past few weeks. Or your are just an Indian looking for a good deal.

The Nexus 4 is the holy grail of smartphones. Excellent HD screen(without the pentile awfulness), fastest processor in town(SnapDragon S4 Pro kicks everybody’s ass) and unadulterated android  4.2 experience. All for an all too tempting price of 299$.

BUT..

There’s always a but if you’re a gadget lover in India or basically have too much money earmarked for buying gadgets . LG is selling the Nexus 4 for a very thin profit in the US. So, they’ve decided to recover those profits from other regions. That sounds crazy, right? Almost reverse Robinhood-ish. [Dear bankers, gtfo.]

Look at the Nexus 7 16GB sells at 214 USD shipped. Which translates to around 11,770 INR but is ridiculously priced at 19,999 INR in India.

So a $199.99 device is 19,999INR in India. Amazing.

I was afraid that same thing is going to happen to Nexus 4 and so called up LG India. What I heard next shook my core.

8GB Nexus 4 is going to be priced at around….wait for it….28000-32000 INR.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

So, what are our options here other than  gathering at the LG office and going for a hunger strike.

Fortunately, many.

I’ll show you many ways to get NEXUS 4 for 16-17k in India….(DRUM-ROLLS)

1) Call up a relative in the US, tell them to buy it for you. Pay them back when Rupee is strong vis-a-vis the dollar. I know, right!

2) So, no relatives in the US, are you screwed then? Not at all. Try eBay.

You can buy imported phones from ebay.in’s global easybuy gateway. Prices are competitive and you have ebay protection. Definitely a win.

Example: ATRIX HD AT 21k INR http://orders.ebay.in/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ImportHubViewItem&itemid=170943129275

The phone is easily better than the Samsung SGS3(without that pathetic excuse for an interface in BloopWiz) and priced 40% lesser. So, keep your eyes open and wait till the list nexus 4 here.

3)  What globaleasybuy essentially does is that they take your money, buy phones from ebay.com and ship it to you. what if you do that on your own. This is where Shopnship India  helps you. For a small fee, they give you a US address and you can shop from google play and ship it to that address and then they ship it back to you. Its cheaper tha globaleasybuy but you don’t get the ebay protection.

4) Another option is MyUS, its just like ShopNShip but it goes one step further. Even if you don’t have a credit card, it allows you to make payments via other modes and then pays Google Play with their credit card. Shipping is faster compared to ShopNship.

So, this is how you can laugh at the face of LG India and get the coveted nexus 4.

WORD OF CAUTION: This is your hard earned(or dad earned) money we are talking about. Be careful while doing online transactions.

I take no responsibility for failed transactions, broken parcels or a thermonuclear war.

What if I told you that you could make a sickeningly gorgeous slide deck and run it right off your browser? And that its got awesome effects for all and sundry? And that it exports right to PDF? And that its free as a bird? Awesome, right?

It’s called reveal.js (you can breathe now) and frankly it has blown me away with what it can do. The effects, the web-readiness, the subtle touches. OH MY GAWD, YA. Expensive presentation suites from Apple and Microsoft can safely be kissed goodbye.

Of course, if you don’t like editing HTML, the creator has also gone the whole hog and created a web service rvl.io. If you’re asking me, it takes WYSIWYG to a whole new level. (Or maybe I’m being biased because I’m trying to pull off something similar for friendfund.in )

You can store any number of presentations here and play them from here as well. For best effect, do upgrade your browser to the latest versions. I’ll leave you to do your Steve Jobs in peace.

via Tirthesh

• I realized the true power of git when the 5 member team I was a part of seamlessly pushed, pulled, fetched and merged code.
• Experiment. Do new stuff. Your daily job is not going to allow you the freedom to learn technologies that you decide to use on a whim.
• The joy of presenting it front of a room full of battle hardened techies and gaining their appreciation is an amazing feeling.
• You can actually stay awake for insane amounts of time (in this case, at least 38 hours) if you’ve got a crazed bunch of people around you.
• There are nice firms on the planet who support the growth of a local hacker culture and loan you their entire office, no questions asked. In this case, Infibeam. They also have the best cardamom chai and for miles around.

  Team BrowseAround at work.

• Nothing soothes the insides like hot chocolate at 4am.
• Get your app ready a good 30 minutes or so before the stipulated time. That way, you can prepare for show&tell. (Made this mistake, didn’t present my idea properly and fumbled unnecessarily.)
• You should have some form of a war cry to be able to stay awake through the night. It has to be borderline irksome to have the desired effect. Heh.

{If you’d like to come for the next edition, do RSVP on the event page. Looking forward to hack with you. (: }

You know the drill. Every 6 months Google comes out with a new flavour of Android and names it after a delectable sweet which sets tongues salivating the world over. As if that weren’t enough, they also go the whole hog and plant a humongous installation of aforementioned sweet on their lawns. Here’s proof.

And Google’s Android has been embraced the world over in various forms. You name it, they’ve hacked and rooted it asunder to make it their own. That is the power of open source and that is what drives Android to greater heights.

But there’s been a bit of an anomaly in this story. All of them are given names of classic American sweets. Beyond a donut or eclair, we don’t really identify with gingerbread or ice cream sandwich. (Frankly, my first concern with ICS is that the ice cream will melt the biscuit. ME NO WANT SLUDGY DESSERT.)

Allow me to make a case for calling Android 4.2 by an Indian name. Amongst Google’s fastest growing markets is India with a 500% yoy increase in installations. You could scream ‘base-effect’ all you want but you can’t change the fact that in this part of the world, a smartphone with a touchscreen means Android.

I’d like to share an observation here. Here in Mumbai, our local trains are divided into 1st and 2nd class. Till a few years ago, 2nd class would see a lot of feature phones and BlackBerries in the 1st. Take a ride now and you’ll find Android everywhere! It sorts out the life of the college going kid and handles the demands of the hard working office goer with aplomb.

Google has managed to put a smartphone into the hands of the Indian masses and people like it for what it allows them to do. So what better way to play to the gallery and name the next version of Android 4.2 as Kaju Katli?

 Sign the petition and if Google does call it Kaju Katli, you know your signature would have played a part. Excuse me while I stuff myself silly with some delicious kaju katli.

We live in a world of free speech. Therefore we have freely voice-able opinions. Opinions are like the end of your small intestines and I might be one. Which is precisely why this comes to you a wee bit after the dust caused due to Hurricane iPhone5 has somewhat settled.

I’ll lay this bare. I DON’T like the iPhone5. I hate it. Bigger-longer-stronger-whatever-er is not my idea of innovation. Will Apple get away with it? Of course. Will it boost their bottom line with this hat-trick? Of course. But I hate it. (And not even slightly because I cannot buy it.)

Allow me to take you through the wave of emotion I went through during the course of the launch of the biggest thing to happen to the iPhone since dinosaurs.

Before The Release

I know people who’ve peed and/or shat their pants when Steve Jobs used to go ‘oh, and one more thing’. But what else could be done with a phone GODDAMIT? Everybody believed Apple did everything they could with the iPhone in terms of eyeball-popping, expletive generating feature additions upto the 4S. The leaks were disappointing for all except probably the gazillion dollar phone case manufacturing industry. It felt as though design logic went out the window and Apple bowed down to market forces with a larger screen.

The Morning After

I slept through Tim Cook’s keynote because I knew once the live streams start, it’d disrupt my sleep cycle for the entire week. Or maybe because I forgot. (Yeah, sue me (In an Indian court.).)

I saw the product video and for the first time ever, I did not have a raging desire to empty my bank account and hand over all my money to Cupertino. That seriously felt like a Swiss wrist watch video with more talk about the process of making it than the product itself. I didn’t even want to watch the keynote after that. Johnny Ive’s Brit accent and that chamfering video to smoothen the edges are all that people are going to take away from it.

After Twitter/FB/RSS

After the customary (and rather involuntary) information gathering process, I concluded that the iPhone5 had

1. A bigger screen
2. LTE
3. A new cable
4. Nano sim
5. New earbuds that direct-sound-into-the-ear-oh-my-gawd
6. Panorama feature on the camera app
7. Faster processor

That’s it? Like seriously? Where’s the wireless charging? Why doesn’t Apple want to join the NFC party? Where is my ‘and-one-more-thing’. Oh, well. Apple doesn’t exist to satiate my desire for shiny, new thangs. That’s what p*rn is for. (I ain’t giving you comment trolls a chance, yo.)

Sleaze apart, Android has had these things since ages and Android versions 4.0 onward are getting perilously close to the iPhony experience. Hoo-ray for a free market *closes patent war article tab*

Post-iPhone5-Blitzkrieg-Opinion

An opinion section inside an opinion piece? Wow. The writer of this post must be an Inception fan or the most massive-est douchebag ever. (I’d prefer the former.)

But I have to admit, after Steve Jobs demise, Apple feels like just another consumer electronics firm which makes well designed, eyebrow raising high end products. It seriously lacks the character and the aura it carried before. In my opinion, if you already own a 4/4S, buying the iPhone5 might not be that much of an upgrade. I’d recommend waiting for the iPhone 5s (or 6 or whatever it’s going to be called) before writing Apple off.

But you know what? My opinion matters squat to people who religiously buy a new iPhone/iPad every year. It’s hard to quantify their reasoning, but it’s a bit like being caught in a web they don’t want to get out off. And that is the magic of a tightly integrated eco system.

Like someone, somewhere in some corner of the web said, ‘it takes time to slow down a juggernaut’. Amen.

I’ll leave you with this video that sums up everything the hate camp feels about the iPhone. It’s a bit like the Shiv Sena, you know. Everyone on the outside hates them but everyone on the inside still believe in them. Until iNext, then.