Windows Phone 10 : Developer preview

Exciting news, and not so exciting news........

Microsoft is the company which is right on the mission. As we pointed earlier, continuous ridicule and criticism led to the development of the windows 7 and the subsequent fantastic windows 8.1 which gradually grabbed a significant portion of market share of smartphones. Also since they have launched a series of budget phones which cater to the budget conscious smartphone users who want something hassle free and intuitive  than Android, their market share grew exponentially with the arrival of phones like the Lumia 630 and Lumia 520, loved by teenagers, girls and girls who are teenagers.

Windows gets many things right. First that the phones itself with minimal or outdated hardware under the hood deliver smooth and crease-less performance across the charts, never lag like Android neither nag like iOS. They are less resource intensive, battery efficient and easy on eyes. 

     

 

And several things they got wrong. The App store looks like a graveyard, no I am not comparing graveyard with the windows store because a graveyard at least has graves and flowers around inside. The available apps are either made by Microsoft (which are great and useful by the way) or just client apps of major services (like Instagram). Multitasking is a joke, since it never ever really multitasks, it just pauses and takes the application aside for another one to commence, just our Government office staff. Still it got a considerable fan-base and improves the shortcomings now and then.

 

 So here we finally have Windows 10, a well thought out update to the windows mobile platform and with major edits and tweaks to satisfy the ever demanding and growing consumer base, and Girls...

  Here is the preview running on a Microsoft device.

  Salient features:

 The Tiles layout has not changed that much, but now instead of fully transparent tiles or fully colored ones, they chose a middle path and made the tiles translucent, which looks super cool and more professional than sporty. Also it also fully utilizes the background rather than hiding it. A welcome addition by the way..

    

 

 Windows 10 comes with an inbuilt File explorer, reminiscent of the good 'ol Nokia and much useful, though they have an App called Files which does the job just fine. The file explorer may have been tweaked and enhanced for better data management and execution.

Project Spartan (now officially Microsoft Edge) is a next generation browser which is meant to provide a better web browsing experience than custom third party applications. This is a welcome move from Microsoft as Windows seriously lacked a good browser akin to Apple's Safari and Google Chrome (and various other applications). Internet explorer is not going away anywhere, I think to show how much better Microsoft Edge is, because truth be told, only six people I know use Internet explorer on PC's, the Gates family and Satya Nadella.

Another welcome addition is the all new drag-me-down task-bar, which is an upgrade to the windows 8.1 drag down task-bar but with much more tabs and a useful layout. The earlier task-bars were restricted to only 4 tabs, and made a laughing stock for other OS around them.

 Another major upgrade windows users may raise a toast to is Windows 10 comes with app portablity with Android's. In layman's terms that means you can run Android apps by side-loading them, which is jolly good and is akin to having a children's playground over the graveyard I mentioned above in this article. How they perform on Windows is a discussion for another day.

Cortana is back with a make-over and now feels and acts more assistant-esque than her previous version. Still sad that nothing  close to the beloved Jarvis......

Users around the world with the Lumia denim update will have access to Windows mobile 10, which will be this year I suppose. Indian and Chinese users may have to wait a little longer than they anticipate. That is the "not so exciting part" of this article by the way. 

Windows certainly has come a long way from the sluggish mothball it used to be, and I hope this update brings them neck to neck with the competitors, namely the iOS and Android. But still a long way to go. 

Stay in touch as we get a Windows 10 device hands-on soon.

Mi5 vs Oneplus two

The Ultimate upcoming battle

Xiaomi Mi5 v/s Oneplus two

Xiaomi Mi5:

 

This Latest masterpiece from Xiaomi is rumored to be released around November of this year, at a price of around 20K Rs.

This 5.3 inch 4G phone will come with a IPS LCD capacitive screen, having resolutions upto 1440 x 2560 pixels (~554 ppi). The screen don't have any kind of protection by gorilla glass.

It will come with the fingerprint sensor.

Coming on the platform, The device will be running Android 5.1.1 (lollipop) on the MIUI 6.0.

The device have Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset which is quite surprising at this price range.

The device will have a quad-core 2.2 GHz or quad-core 1.8 GHz CPU depending on the model both having Adreno 530 as GPU.

The Phone will have two models depending on the internal memory and CPU. The two models will have 16GB or 64GB of internal memory which cannot be extended with a microSD and have 4 GB RAM.

Coming to the camera performance, its expected to have a fantastic both primary and secondary cameras having 16MP and 6MP respectively, primary camera also have dual LED flash and some features like auto-focus, image stabilization etc.

Some sensors like Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer all are embedded in device which is obviously too common.

The phone will have a non-removable Li-Po 3030 mAh Battery which is expected to give a good talk time and standby time. It also supports NFC.

Overall on paper this phone is a masterpiece but will have to wait for it to actually lauch.

Oneplus Two:

 

Oneplus Two is a 5.5 inch 4G supported phone having a weight around 166 gms. The phone will be available in dual sim model having resolutions upto 1440 x 2560 pixels (~534 ppi pixel density).

The phone comes with coring gorilla glass 4. It runs on 5.1 lollipop android on the very well known Cyanogen Mod UI.

It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor which runs on Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 2 GHz Cortex-A57(depending on model) having Adreno 530 as GPU.

 

The phone is available in two models having 32GB and 64 GB of internal memory which cannot be extended via microSD, both models have 4 GB's of RAM.

It also has a 16MP primary camera with dual LED flash and auto focus and a 5MP secondary camera.

The phone has only Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass sensors, No barometer for this phone.

It comes with a non-removable Li-Po 3300 mAh Battery which is also expected to give a decent amount of standby and talk time.

This phone is also not yet launched but will be in market really soon for 25K for 32 GB model and around 28K for the 64GB version.

Who's the winner?

Well for me this is a tough fight but Xiaomi Mi5 wins for sure. Mi5 have a better primary and secondary camera. A barometer and even the price is about 5K less then the oneplus two.

Obviously in battery performance and screen protection oneplus two wins but overall Mi5 takes the stands.

 

Ode to the greatest smartphones ever made: BlackBerry family of devices (Part II)

 

Please read part one first!

                                                            Last article I left the discussion at a tantalizing note, that BlackBerry quietly climbed up the ladder and became the best selling smart-phone in the domain. Owning a BlackBerry was something to be proud of, akin to owning a Lamborghini even if the owner never ever gets his sports car past 90 miles per hour. People stood in lines waiting for the respective contractors to shell out the BlackBerry phones and behaved crazy when anyone criticized the phones. (On a different note..... does this sound very very familiar to you?? Hint: It's not one of my JOBS of mine to distribute free APPLES to you, lazy guy).
                                                                  Blackberry was a hit. Company thought it was etched in the stone that it might ever fail. Nearby competitors were a far cry from the cutting edge connectivity of the BlackBerry and also never evoked the same professional perception of the user, however good they were or expensive. (Again, does it sound familiar to you?). 
                                         Year by year the RIM launched several devices, each one of them a little more sleeker and advanced than the previous one, with the usual bell and whistles of a BlackBerry. Just to give you the overall perspective.....

                                  We see the devices changed for better, but nothing new out of the box. The people at top positions in BlackBerry thought "if it ain't broke, why replace?" and stuck to this ideology which proved to be a nail in the coffin for the rest of them.
                                       One fine day on his treadmill co-CEO  Mr. Lazaridis saw a curious looking device on the Television screen. It was a very simple design, with almost no buttons on the screen except the home button and was fully touch screen, a very bold move by a relatively new company in the market. And was expensive as crazy. "Why would someone type on a glass screen when more accurate and tactical keyboards are available in the flagship smartphones? " he told in a press statement. Although critics went gaga over this one, Lazaridis brushed it aside as yet another prototype device which would never sell in the market dominated by them.
                                    Did I told you it was the IPhone 2g by Apple?
  Yes, indeed the sales were modest. But Apple was banking on the rich and exotic user interface it had on IPhone and then after a few derivative launches stole the consumer base of all smart phone manufacturers by a landslide. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung and others dominated the lower and middle range feature phones and smartphones, their bread and butter, whereas the likes of Danger OS devices and Sony Ericsson and Motorola Smartphones  were still bought by those who could not afford Apple IPhone. This left BlackBerry alone to face the pre-gargantuan Apple series which ate through the share of pie BlackBerry had, The Pro-sumers. 
                                         These  were the consumers who were light professionals, imagine your local auto mobile dealer or your Professor in the university. Instant E-mails and messaging, however efficient and productive they were in real life were not a deal breaker for many. Also the rich multimedia experience and intuitive user experience they provided was a stark contrast to that of blackberry's, which was complicated and solely focused on the professional consumers, which still appreciated them for the connectivity and productivity they offered on the go. Sales plummeted, as the target base of BlackBerry grew smaller gradually day by day. Baffled engineers and marketing people at the RIM were left scratching their heads where did they go wrong, and the CEO s received much flak from the Investors and Board members for the poor performance of the company.

Pictured: Knock-out of the veteran

 Things changed for the worse when other manufacturers jumped into the touch screen bandwagon and launched plethora of devices which were, to put it moderately, inspired from the IPhone. Instead of getting a larger share of the pie Apple had, they knowingly or unknowingly diminished the already smaller consumer base of the BlackBerry which was akin to having Cancer and dying from diarrhoea. BlackBerry had suffered its worst blow.
                 Internet speed was not a selling point for blackberries any-more, and the keyboard was reduced to a niche selling point to the nostalgic users who still bought BlackBerry for they did not want to upgrade to anything else. With the advent of 3G networks across the world, connectivity was neither a issue any more. BlackBerry was confused and depressed at the same time and launched the BlackBerry Torch and Storm devices, which were decent devices but a little late and expensive compared to the rivals. It also banked upon the BlackBerry Pearl series which earlier used to draw the feature affection-ates but lost steam to Nokia and Sony Ericsson's in the mid range. All in all utter disappointments from the company in a row

 

  Stocks which were valued at $100 were now scrapping at the bottom of the barrel at a measly $9, which angered the stock holders and Investors alike. The Bold series continued to earn for the near bankrupt enterprise though.
           Things went downhill when BlackBerry announced that it was considering options to sell its stocks and the company for better prospectives. The products were outrageously expensive and even the professionals and suit-clads exchanged them for the now prestigious Apple IPhones which were now very close to the performance, efficiency and status symbol for the suit clad professionals. Outraged board members forced the co-founders and CEOs of the firm to quit, one of which was Lazaridis himself who was accused of being stubborn and arrogant person who vehemently opposed the shift of the BlackBerry line of devices to touch screen and instead recommended a platform overhaul which would pat the difference between qwerty keyboards and touch-screen devices. 
  It is difficult to decipher the ways of a genius. Lazaridis is one of them. Indeed this dilemma between touch-screen and qwerty became gradually more apparent when comapany stuck to touch-screen qwerty devices such as the Bold line up which was slowly losing itself in the "classic" gadget list. "Classics" by the way are things which everyone appreciates but no one buys. Much like Anurag kashyap films.
                                                           But the engineers never ever gave up  hope. Lazaridis, before resigning as a CEO then distancing himself from the board initiated the development of  BB10 operating system, an operating system designed to be as efficient on qwerty phones as on touch screen devices. The operating system, despite lack of funding like Google or a Hardware giant like Samsung, grew to be the best operating system in the Smartphone history till date. And I am not being sarcastic here.

Pictured: A look into BlackBerry OS 10 (and above)

                 Although Blackberry still ran into a wall when it ran this OS on Z10, an unfinished smartphone which evoked feelings that it had something amiss; the true nature and strength of the OS came into picture when it ran on Z30, a beefier version of Z10 and Z3, a downgraded one. It is a perfect testimony to the fact that the engineers at Waterloo are more than capable when it comes to user experience and robust efficiency than its rivals, despite being hegemons of their respective domains.



The recent BlackBerry Passport is no exception. For the first time BlackBerry gave the armoury to Passport to stand neck to neck against other devices which sell solely on specifications, coupled with even more cutting edge BB OS 10.3 delivering buttery smooth performance in direst of tasks thrown at it. On the top of it it's embedded with a 4.5 inch square display with a whooping 443 ppi density, way above than Apple's retina display. Connectivity is still cutting edge and the design philosophy got the heart in its right place. 
                                                 Signature BlackBerry innovation include a Square display for viewing wide spreadsheets and presentations, as well as a brilliant keyboard which doubles up as a gesture area and track pad since it is capacitive touch enabled.

 
                        These devices, evaluated just as Smartphones very well stack up-to their rivals, surpassing them in some aspects. But for a person like me who observed BlackBerry since their inception, BlackBerry Passport is the culmination and compilation of years of research and experience into one piece which is a marvel of pristine engineering and exceptional product design. Its a perfect gadget for someone who does not frequently change his smartphone or is too mature for the craziness attributed to Apple products. This is a timeless smartphone in the history of smartphones. No wonder Lazaridis is called "The father of smartphones". 
                                                              It makes me feel sad that a company who should be at the receiving end of applauses and admiration is always frequented as a failure. Mind you, it is not. The Greatest problem the company faces now is the pro-sumer base, which does buy phones but never know why they buy flagship phones when they still do the same stuff they have been doing for years. like checking mails and browsing the web.
            And if you are in the pro-sumer crowd, mark my words you will never ever regret a BlackBerry.