Author
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
Looking at today’s smartphones, you’d never believe they born at least 40 years ago, if you consider the day that Motorola engineer Marty Cooper made the first cell phone call as the start of the revolution. If you were to as much as hold in your hand, an iPhone, an HTC One, or an Xperia Z, you would find it difficult to associate these beautiful devices with the clunky cell phones that first made their way into the hands of consumers.I made my acquaintance with mobile phones some time late 1995, when we were still using pagers. Funny things they were, those pagers, making everyone look ridiculously like doctors with no emergencies to rush to when they beeped urgently. You would rush to a landline (except we never used the term landline as all phones were land) and try to look busy enough and wanted enough to justify those pager beeps.But then came the real mobile phones, at a time when cordless phones were still frowned upon by MTNL and were sort of fancy. Those mobile phones were a marvel as they untethered you from being connected only from a phone plugged to a wall – depending on the signal you got, of course. But cellular companies were setting up quickly and we began to see more and more devices, eagerly figuring out how to test them out and work out review processes. My first one was an Ericsson GH-something, a little red thing with barely a few words showing for a text message. Our initial tests were all focused on sound quality on calls, battery life, ability to receive a signal under different conditions, how heated up the phone would get and physical characteristics such as the size of the aerial, and the overall looks and sturdiness. The Nokia phones could survive a drop from the second floor and the stairs in my office building were neatly designed for us to be able to send those hapless devices hurtling down. We also worked hard at creating identical conditions that would allow us to test phones fairly.From rather early on, I adopted Samsung phones because those were the best at bright high-contrast displays and I remember my first, a True-I which was shaped like a curvy Porsche and which I was so possessive and sensitive about I’d spring up if anyone touched it as it lay on my table.But involved as I and my colleagues were in mobile technology, none of us could ever have guessed the scenario that exists today, in a world gone so wireless that to be un-connected even for a few minutes causes many people restlessness and anxiety. There are still people around me who ask me for suggestions on a simple phone that only makes phone calls and such phones do exist, but they’re getting to be a rare commodity as all mobiles turn smart. The earlier phones may have been able to connect to cellular networks and to each other, but there was no connection with the internet. And what a revolution there was when it did come. We take connectivity on our phones completely for granted today, and rarely stop to think how this has impacted the way we relate to each other, do our work, and stay abreast of what interests us.It’s certainly not been all good – as with anything we human beings make. There’s an addiction to technology, a reliance on it that many feel is unwarranted, and of course, as much misuse as use. But overall, I’d certainly say that the mobile has been more of an empowerment than a problem, specially for those who had no connection beyond the limits of the small world around them.And now as we go on to the next 40 years, it’s equally difficult to predict what our connected life will be like. The mobile phone may become obsolete as wearable technology makes its way into our world and digital surfaces and augmented reality bring in what almost seems like a parallel universe. Our brains get rewired and the brains of an entire new generation get wired differently as they’re “born mobile.” Who knows what the connected future that started with mobile phones will be like – but a the very least, it will be fascinating.
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A Beautiful PortrayalOne of the most elegant apps I’ve seen, Portray (on iOS) really does turn your photographs into a work of art — something that just about every photo app promises to do but doesn’t quite. Take a picture of someone’s face, a simple landscape or an interesting object and open it in Portray. After fitting the photo on the page, you get a big selection of settings as a starting point. These could include an ancient canvas look, a grungy artistically scratched-up effect, a swirly sketch, a watercolour painting, and more. Once your photo turns into artwork, you can try different looks by changing the basic look or by using different art supplies such as a rough pencil or charcoal etc. You can also change the canvas for a very different effect. There are some colour presets too, all rather attractively titled. There’s one called A Hint of Cinnamon, another is Warm Glow and many more from which to choose. A number of these presets are free, but there are also sets that need to be purchased in-app if you take a liking to what Portray does and want more options. You canbrush out the edges or any other parts of your painting for extra effect. The results are quite spectacular with this app. The rough pencil look, for example, really looks hand-drawn and impressive. Swipe For Designsdreaming of a new home? You could hunt through magazine after magazine for ideas. Or you could swipe through thousands of images on the architizer app on the iPad. This is the type of app that you’re unlikely to find on android or elsewhere and an example of the reason Apple’s app store is still leaps above others in quality, not just quantity. Architizer is based on the website of the same name meant forarchitects and related professionals but also for those interested in picking up ideas to use in their own homes and offices. What you get is many pictures for each project. The projects can be filtered by broad category such as apartments, interiors, offices, etc. Just sit back and flip through beautiful images till you find something you like. Stealing Coloursone little app has a clever but mischievous way of making a living. It steals the colour off one photograph and puts it on to another. The interface of Colour Thief, an iPad app,is amazing in its simplicity and smoothness and this is one of the reasons it’s worth a look. You open it up and get a split screen. On top are the photos that will be the victim of the colour theft. On the bottom row are the images that will steal the colour. These are all from your own camera roll. As you flip from one photo to the next, the colour change just happens from the top photo to the bottom photo. Sometimes the result is funky, sometimes messy, and sometimes beautiful. Colour Thief costs Rs 110.(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 08-04-2013)
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Seems like the Google Play store has been around so much longer than a year. Of course it was the Android Marketplace before that. I remember all the discussion around the decision to call the store Play and the guesswork on what the name was telling us about what would be available in the future. Well, the Google Play Store not only has 700,000 apps, but some 5 million ebooks, and 18 million songs; it even sells hardware and it’s thought that by the end of the year, 1 billion smart device users will have access to all of this. Google will be getting into music services as well. To celebrate the sheer spread of Android and the one-year anniversary, Google is giving away freebies and reduced prices for a week. But so much more is needed to take Android to the next level. As far as an Android app is concerned, a rude four-letter word that rhymes with it is most often used when describing the experience faced by the user. On the one hand, no one can deny that the Play Store has really been sexed up and it’s getting more interesting by the day. Soon, gifting options will be available. But it’s also equally true that there are enormous and serious problems that Google should tackle. A report from security firm F-Secure says that Android accounted for 79 per cent of malware in 2012. Compare that with Apple’s 0.7 per cent and you can see why Apple fans have a right to crow. Of course, the sample size for this study seems to have been 301, so one can’t say whether these percentages would be as dramatic if one were to do a larger study. Fragmentation has long been a problem with Android in general and it shows up in the app store as well. Even at the top-end of Android, there are apps one just can’t have because they belong to the next minor upgraded version and won’t run on versions prevalent on the most popular Android-based phones – not without some serious tampering anyway. Many of the apps that were once the sole domain of iOS — Instagram, Instapaper, Flipboard, and many others — are today on Android. But they often don’t work as well. But most serious of all is the fact that despite there being so many Android tablets, there are barely any tablet-optimised apps. This is a stark difference from apps for the iPad, which more often than not, offer up a compelling experience. So right now when the world has more Android tablets than it can handle, there’s often little to do on those tablets but customise the home screens. Smartphone apps just don’t give the same experience on a tablet and it’s the user interfaces and extra features that some manufacturers put in, that improve the experience rather than anything the Play Store has done. Customising smartphones and tablets is sheer joy and nothing matches what’s available on Android to let a tech inclined user do this. There is zero room on all seven of my screens for more widgets and apps, but even this is not as easy to do for the average user as it should be. Launchers and themes available on the Play Store can lead a user into a labyrinth of settings and changes that can be quite confusing. Even though so many people own Android phones, not quite as many manage to use the apps and widgets available to them. There’s absolutely no way of knowing which of these are fakes and which are safe to use. Apps and widgets also don’t necessarily get along, so you could end up with instability and crashes and lag in the device’s functioning that will be difficult to diagnose and fix unless you’re very comfortable with Android. There are Google staff recommendations but those can stay the same for months on end with nothing new showing up to interest a user. So, while we wish Google’s Play Store a happy first birthday, as we blow out the candles we can’t help wishing it becomes a friendlier, easier and safer treasure house of great apps for all that fantastic hardware going around.mala(at)pobox(dot)comTwitter: (at)malabhargava(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 08-04-2013)
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You wouldn't buy an expensive smartphone because it’s waterproof, but the ability to seal off against dust and water is one of the Xperia Z’s distinctions. It’s also supposed to be more resistant to shattering. This much-hyped smartphone, thought by some to be Sony’s best so far, made an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and is now available in the market. What I wouldn’t give to have a good look at the purple version but I have the white and will have to be content with that. The Xperia Z is all perfect straight lines except the very tip of its corners. It’s thin and light, narrow enough to hold easily except that the edges are abrupt and hard. The attempt has been to give it a minimalistic look, so it’s all glass and gloss back and front and the buttons are all subtle except for an unusual stick-out round power button which I rather like as it doesn’t take an effort to feel for it. It’s got flaps to seal off the sim, micro USB, SD card and even the headphone slots. That way, it can take a dip in water for about 30 minutes, though it’s meant for accidental spills, etc, to pass off without damage. The mono speaker is placed in an odd position and readily gets covered with your finger, especially in landscape mode. There’s NFC capability but not the wireless charging that is so fashionable these days. And that would have been nice as it would have reduced your need to handle the flaps. Oh well. The screen and camera are Sony’s pride and joy on this device. While the colours are sometimes nice, I find there’s very low contrast and when you tilt the phone, the picture gets washed out. In comparison, the HTC Butterfly actually has a spectacular screen. The screen is however, very high res, and text is clear and sharp on it. The screen in particular has had a very good reception in the US and it’s very smooth and responsive. The camera sports 13 megapixels, which seems to have become the standard for 2013. But as we all know, megapixels are not all and can even lead to lousy pictures if combined with poor optics. The Z’s camera takes great outdoor pictures with rather nice colours and is feature-rich — I see some of the settings and options from my Sony camera making an appearance here. It also tries to reduce noise for indoor photos. This will always be at the expense of sharpness unless the lens is bigger, but for casual everyday photos, it’s good enough for most people. Video recording quality is pretty good. With specs that high, the performance of the Z can hardly be in question. It’s working on Android 4.1 and will soon move up to 4.2. The battery is a 2330 mAh and should have been adequate except that the screen drains it a lot. The Stamina mode is a bit of software trickery that turns off apps and connectivity when not in use. The Xperia Z really has some tough competition. Coming up is the Galaxy S IV and there’s the recently launched HTC One, to name just two. Here in India, anticipation has built up over the Tablet Z, shown at the Mobile World Congress a few weeks ago. But interest went up when the price of the Xperia Z was announced — Rs 38,990.mala(dot)bhargava(at)gmail(dot)com (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 08-04-2013)
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Sandwiched between the Galaxy S III and the Note 2, is Samsung’s new Galaxy Grand, another entrant in the 5-inch space getting crowded with low-cost super-phones. While others are priced at around Rs 10,000, the Grand is Rs 21,500, actually just about Rs 6,000 short of the doubly powerful S3, which is just a little smaller at 4.8 inches. Compared to the low-cost contenders, the Grand is smoother and clearly has more finesse. Despite the plastic back, the build is solid and unmistakably Samsung. The TouchWiz interface works well with the hardware to give smooth, fluid performance. I was able to compare it with a low-cost phablet and the Note II and see how the Grand really sits in the middle. The lower cost phablets are catching up though, at least on some parameters, such as the screen resolution and processor speed. Compared to the higher cost Note 2 and S III, the Grand is actually half the specs, though it has been given a lot of the functionality available on those devices, except things like the digitisation for the S-Pen. You can use all the fancy split-screen, Smart Stay, and other neat tricks on the Grand as well. Performance is not compromised as the phone browses, plays videos, and games. The 5-inch 480x800 ~ 187 ppi density TFT LCD screen and the 8 MP camera are both mid-range but very usable. The phone works on a 1.2 GHz dual core processor and has a 1 GB RAM. It operates on a 2100 mAh battery and has a dual sim GSM capability. It operates on the Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean). Did Samsung really need the Grand in its already well-populated portfolio? Only Samsung knows. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 08-04-2013)
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When i first held the HTC One in my hands, I wanted to dump everything and bolt off with it into the blue, never to be heard from again. The beautifully crafted gadget, in all its understated classy elegance, called out the gadget lust in me like few other devices. Most people will agree that the One is the best designed and built phone out there right now, except perhaps to say that it borrows something from the look of the iPhone, the device that’s been the benchmark of desirable design, globally. If only the troubled HTC could deliver and market this smartphone to the hilt, we’d have serious competition in the mobile space. Instead, the company is struggling because of its product cycles and marketing that doesn’t cut it. But — let’s see if the One can help HTC get back on track! This smartphone has to be held and beheld to be believed. Its smooth aluminium unibody is curved on the edges and back, and lightly bezelled to give the gorgeous screen plenty of space. It’s solid while still being light and very thin. Over the last few phones, HTC has been fine-tuning its minimalistic design skills, a fact that can be seen right away in the neat look of the HTC One. The buttons, in particular, are barely there. They’re so flush against the phone that you need to know where they are to use them. Yes, one will have to get used to that, but it takes a day or two and the effort is worth the while. The top-level specs of the HTC One go to power a beautiful high-res screen on a phone. I thought the HTC Butterfly had a lovely enough screen, but now there’s this as well. I do think the Butterfly is still a worthy contender, by the way. What’s nice about this screen is its crispness and colour and superlative viewing angles. It’s just a pleasure to look at. The screen needs to be nice to see because right on the home screen you have one of the differentiating features of this phone, the BlinkFeed. This is an endless scroll of content in all its picturesque glory for you to browse when you pick up your phone. You can set your social network feeds and content from other sources that have tied up with HTC. It’s very attractive looking and a perfect showcase for the screen, but it’s greeted with mixed reactions because many don’t want to have their home screens decided for them. You can easily shove it off to the side and choose to customise another home screen with regular widgets and use that. The updating and refreshing can be set to happen on wifi. There’s some worry about this taking its toll on the 2,300 mAh battery but you can move it aside and turn off services. I didn’t find the battery draining out over the day but this was with moderate usage, not on 3G and not with gaming, though there was enough video and music. I did feel that the phone readily became a bit warm though. It takes a while to charge up. And while we’re on to music, the HTC One happens to have the best sound I’ve heard on a phone — you won’t need any of those little external speakers for personal listening, though hooking it up to a sound system is always nice. The sound has well rounded full frequencies and is quite pleasing, even if it goes by the silly name of Boom Sound. The HTC One comes with a refreshed version of HTC’s interface, Sense 5, with which the focus is to be smooth and not get in the way, a goal which it achieves. Everyone expected the One to be exorbitantly priced but at Rs 42,900, it’s the same as other top-tier phones —and it deserves to be. HTC One Camera: Up To 4 MegapixelsWith everyone moving up to 13 megapixels, HTC decided to reverse the megapixel race and actually drop the count to 4 megapixels. But they kept the sensor size the same as it is on higher megapixel cameras. They now have 4 megapixels, but bigger ones, and they call them ultrapixels. The idea is that now, more light will be let in for indoor photos. And yes, it’s true that this does happen. Taking pictures with a small lamp in a room, I was able to get light-filled shots which were not that grainy or noisy and not shaken up. This was with both normal and night mode — minus flash, of course. File sizes were just shy of 1MB. In daylight, pictures were okay but with slightly overdone colours at times. The camera has an f/2.0 sensor and focuses quite fast, though it’s awfully noisy. There are plenty of settings and effects. While this camera doesn’t have the capabilities of, say, the Nokia 808, it does work very well for people taking casual shots of friends and family. Video too is quite decent. A distinctive feature of the One’s camera is ‘Zoe,’ the results of which users may enjoy for casual sharing. Zoe takes a short video, going back a bit to capture a snap before you started. You can pick the best pic. But more than that, multiple Zoes can also be set to music in a longer little clip. Just a fun feature that comes out quite nice.mala(dot)bhargava(at)gmail(dot)com(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 06-05-2013)
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Zip And ManageThree dollars is a little too much for this app, but if you’re struggling to find a way to control your Dropbox and iCloud files, you might consider the iFile Browser for the iPad and iPhone. It’s not the only file manager for Dropbox, which has its own file management as well, but it has the additional ability to zip and unzip files — and that’s a handy thing in a file browser. Once you install it, you connect to your Dropbox and iCloud. Your folders and files appear as they would in any file manager. Now, you can navigate to whatever files you want, rename, print, delete, cut and paste (particularly useful with photos) and you can zip them up and put them away to take less space. You don’t have access to system files and you can’t see any documents stored on your iPad as that’s not the Apple way in any case. But you can access files on a computer by connecting to the device and going through iTunes. There’s a pdf document to show you how to use the file manager and also some sample files. Of course, if you have files for which security is important, I wouldn’t suggest putting them through a middleman app or maybe not even on public cloud storage at all. But for photos, music, etc., iFile could be most helpful. Keep The NotesIf you're not an Evernote user and are looking for somthing simpler, you may want to consider Google's new note taking app, Keep. It is an Android app and free on the Google Play store. You log into it with your Google account and whatever notes you have will sync with Google Drive and also be available from the app's web version. The app is simplistic and doesn't have too many features. For instance, you can make a checklist of items but can't set reminders. You can't categorise note or lists though you can colour them in a handful of bright shades. You can also add photos and voice memos. Voice will convert to text. I rather like it, and although it doesn't compare to Evernote's entire ecosystem of functions, it's quickand easy to use. Caller HistoryYou know how it is when someone calls you and you go totally blank, unable to remember your last conversation with the caller? That's where the app Refresh Me comes into play — on the Google Play store. It lets you attach a note to a call. When you recieve or make a call, Refresh Me puts a menu of buttons in front to let you look at previous notes or create a new one. The app is free right now but expected to go premium with some much-needed features such as being able to attach a note to an SMS. The customisation settngs are also going to see some enhancement, according to the developer. For now, it may be limited but is still very usable. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 06-05-2013)
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Happy now? Those demanding a sound mobile strategy from Facebook should be pleased at this latest move from the House of Zuckerberg. Or should I say, Home. Instead of making a Facebook phone, which would have just been a risky reinventing of the wheel, Facebook cleverly decided to ride piggyback on the biggest mobile player — Android — and set up home there. In any case, it’s hardly in business of hardware. Instead, it came up with another solution. ‘Facebook Home’ is an Android launcher and for those not familiar with that, it’s an interface that sits on top of the operating system on the device. The launcher determines what you see on your home screen and to some extent the immediate access you get to apps, settings or other items depending on the design of the launcher. There is no dearth of launchers, and Android power users are constantly trying them out for customising the look of their phones and tablets. And now, there’s an all-Facebook launcher that makes an Android smartphone look like a Facebook phone. And I’m dismayed. The Facebook launcher actually looks very nice, from what we can see in pictures and videos in demos. It takes up the lockscreen and home screen and turns it into a “cover feed” of big pictures and statuses of whatever your friends are posting. Better hope they post good-looking content that you can swipe through contentedly every time you reach for your phone. To begin with, only some devices such as the HTC One, One X+, top Samsung Galaxy phones etc., can get the Facebook Home launcher and perhaps only in the US. HTC has partnered with Facebook and come up with a phone called First wearing this launcher, but that too isn’t announced for India yet. In any case, you neither have to buy the phone nor get the launcher if you don’t want to. That’s not the problem. What worries me is that Facebook Home now opens the door for Facebook to build on a mobile strategy to get further enmeshed into users’ lives. The possibility of creating a launcher has existed for years since it’s something any developer can do, so it’s surprising it took so long for Facebook to get to. Mark Zuckerberg says it’s all about putting people first, but that bit of marketing cliché is something of which we’re surely growing weary. With a Facebook-oriented phone, a user will certainly be hyperconnected with friends all the time. You’d never miss a cat photo or baby snap. You’d get your dose of useless life-changing quotes, you’d know who ate what and you’d get our fill of people moaning about it being Monday again. Luckily, my feeling is that not very many people will want this. It’s one thing to have the choice of getting to your Facebook app when you’re good and ready and spending however long you want catching up. It’s quite another to have the entire device, which we use for so many things, all Facebooked. Reception of Facebook Home has sparked off fears of how even more access to user data will be in the hands of a company which has figured out how to fine-target ads to users. But as long as these are not intrusive and getting in the way of what I want to do, I don’t see that as a big problem. I worry more about how users will be projected in search results and future features on a platform that is mobile and growing faster or even crushing the PC industry. Do I want my face popping up on someone’s phone screen when he or she does a search for something? Do I want my location, which may be public in some place, to be further known where I did’t expect it to be? Facebook makes reassuring noises about that sort of thing now, but have they really gained the trust of users so far? If I were to be optimistic, I’d hope that Facebook will learn that it has to quit surprising users with changes that they didn’t ask for and assuming that all anyone wants to do is Facebook 24/7. Yes, it’s become a verb. mala(at)pobox(dot)comTwitter: (at)malabhargava(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 06-05-2013)
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What is it that made Jeremy take one look, gasp in amazement and go “Unreal! It’s totally amazing!” exclaiming that whatever was in the box was also his favourite colour? What… black or white? Come on kid, take off that tie and live a little. He couldn’t have been bowled over by the S4’s looks for it isn’t so very different from its older brother the S3. But perhaps Jeremy is too young to have been interested before this. Just like the iPhone 5 the Galaxy S4 is an iteration over its flagship top grosser, S3 smartphone. Will it get as much criticism for not being a total revolution as the iPhone 5 did? Possibly, but that’s not about to bother Samsung. At least not for the moment. As they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If Samsung’s star is in the ascendance, why would it want to change anything, including the design of its main line, Galaxy. If and when the tide turns, the Korean giant is probably smart enough to respond, I think. Until then, the essential “design language” of the S4, is much as the same as for its older brother, the S3, which by the way, remains an excellent buy as it quite possibly begins to dip in price. If you don’t have anything particularly special planned with an eight-core processor and a 13 megapixel camera and an additional 0.2 inches, go for it. What’s more, sooner or later, you may get some of the fancy new features that grace the S4 on other top end Galaxy devices, just like the S3 finally got the software goodies that the Note 2 has. Instead of it being all about the hardware, the Galaxy S4 is all about being stuffed with features and additional possibilities via interesting accessories. If we rewind to a year ago, so was the S3, actually. Some of those features worked out well, some are iffy, and some are just lain fun gimmicks. But just as I felt last year, so I do today, that there’s no harm experimenting with features – as long as you, the user, sacrifice nothing for their presence. Like paying much more for things you’re not sure you’ll use. Like a battery that drains out like a cola going up a straw. Like usage being so complex you lose your hair figuring it out. If not, what’s wrong with a smartphone being a feature creature? We’ve become revolution-spoilt. Each new flagship device can’t possibly keep up with expectations if what we’re looking for is knock-out must-have jaw-dropping innovations. If Samsung is experimenting with software features, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Someone’s got to do it. Of course, it’s particularly a good thing for Samsung as it will give the company a head-start with something to differentiate their devices. How many ways can there be to make a rectangle? How much more crisp and clear can you make a display without it going beyond what the average user can spot? There are still camera innovations to be discovered, but even there, many software features are enhancing the way casual photos can be shot and shared. We may well have reached a peak with phone design – for now – and need to move on to usability and features. With the S4, Samsung has features coming out of its ears. It’s not only got features that others tried out, such as the hover that was introduced by Sony on its Sola phone, but has put in new ones that are yet to e proven to work out in the wild. One that is causing much chatter is the eye tracking capability that will play or pause a video with a look. Users may not want to pause a video just because they look away for a moment for example. Or, tilting the phone to scroll on the page. That too may end up in too much or too little scroll. As a user of the S Pen on the Note 2 and its Air View feature, I can say that while I do often use the pen lifted away from the screen to scroll, I sometimes find it runs away too quickly and abruptly, for example. Another capability that you could call a feature or a gimmick depending on your usage, is voice commands for the camera. When I want to stay very still and take a photo I use the voice command to click the shutter whereupon it’s a great feature. When the phone however shoots a picture because my car horn went off, it turns into a quirky gimmick. So much depends on the execution and the fine tuning to how people use devices and that’s quite difficult to know precisely beforehand because there’s so much variation in the way people interact with their devices. I do believe however that you never know until you try and for that reason, find it difficult to judge the addition of features that seem to be gimmicks today. They may work out in the future or they may be eminently forgettable, but if someone’s dreamt them up, it’s time to try them out.
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Such a dizzying number of phones have been launched these past two months. First at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and then at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. And sandwiched between these events have been releases from Samsung for mid- and lower-range phones, a couple of flagships from HTC, the Z from Sony, and BlackBerry — lots of low-cost large-sized smartphones, and many others, leading up to the Galaxy S IV launch on 14 March. We may well also see a new iPhone later. Anyone wondering just how many more phones the world can handle would have to be forgiven. But guess what, things are going to get more complicated. At the top, the competition is so tight that the big players will have to give their best shot. Apple will have to re-energise its iPhone and Samsung will have to keep up the innovation and continue to carpet-bomb the planet with phones at every price point. We also know there’s a big struggle for that famous “third place” that both Microsoft and BlackBerry want. In the in-between range, there will be interesting chaos with a multitude of players from one geographical region to the other. But in the “budget” segment, the numbers are huge and many firms want to stake their claim on “the next billion” to connect to the Internet via smartphones. And this will happen, not just because of pieces of hardware but because of software that will sit on them— get ready for more operating systems (OS) to join the mix. Mozilla’s Firefox OS, which was launched at the MWC, got a great reception. Much like the browser so many of us use, the Firefox OS is built with the Web at its core. The idea is to blur the boundaries between apps and the Internet. Key in a search term and the screen will fill up with relevant apps that you can press and stick on to your device. These will be based on HTML5, so there are enough developers already for it. There is also a Firefox Marketplace, but one is not tied to using it. Mozilla showed devices from a few firms, including Alcatel and ZTE, and even has a vote of confidence from Sony, which will develop a device for the OS. Otherwise, too, Mozilla Firefox has some 16 carriers and 21 partners, including Huawei and LG, both of which have considerable numbers. It is meant for emerging markets and will not be on the really expensive devices. The lower end of the phone market is large enough, so even a few percentage points of the market share mean a lot is to be gained. But it’s not like others don’t realise the potential of the budget market. Samsung recently launched some Java-based phones in a new Rex series, aiming to take some market share away from Nokia and its Asha series. There are many other players, of course, and many of them Chinese. Samsung, not on board for a Firefox device, has an OS of its own in the works. Tizen, being developed with Intel, has features like the TouchWiz interface and Samsung’s Bada, which has now been incorporated in it. This OS also supports HTML5. Samsung may be able to spread Tizen devices across different segments. Other OSs are gesture-based Jolla, put together by ex-Nokia MeeGo developers, and Ubuntu, the Linux variant developed for mobiles by Canonical. There are plenty of sceptics who don’t think Firefox or any others can put a dent in the pie that is being fought over fiercely by Samsung and Apple. They don’t believe there’s room for more and feel that any others entering this competitive arena will have a tough time developing an ecosystem. Well, they may be wrong and I certainly hope so, because like Mozilla’s CEO Gary Kovacs, I too think no technology should be owned by one or two companies. What’s great to see is that while devices based on the Firefox OS won’t be commercially available until later this year or maybe even 2014, there’s something tangible to show already, and it looks good.mala(at)pobox(dot)com(at)malabhargava on Twitter(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 25-03-2013)
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