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.
Nokia's future depends upon it. Microsoft needs it as it head-butts its way into mobility, But what is it to you and me? The Lumia 920 is here in India and it’s time to figure out what this snazziest of smartphones brings to the battlefield. As it enters the arena, the 920 joins a clique of elite smartphones from Samsung, Apple, HTC, Sony and soon, Research in Motion, all of whom face challenges of their own. How it will fare, is difficult to guess. The Lumia LookZinging with colour, weighing a fair bit, and seeming larger than life, the Lumia 920 is for those who wear their phones boldly and love the feel of a solid well-built device in their hands — even if it's twice as heavy as other smartphones its size. You either belong in the camp that can't get past the dimensions, or you're among those who can adjust to different form factors. You both love the colour and know which one you want straight off, or you can't understand how you could live down carrying a yellow phone to work. I'll happily count myself among the colour camp because I got the cherry red unit to look at and loved the colour afresh each time I picked it up. The other colours are cyan, yellow, black and white. The headphones match the device and so does the wireless charger, except that you don’t get it bundled in the pack in India. Also Read: Flipping Over It: Dell XPS Review The review in Print: High On Looks You feel the 920’s 185 gms straight away. I’m not sure what makes it so heavy but it may well be some of the components that make the camera on this phone special. It would cause some pain to the pocket of a light cotton shirt or some such, but otherwise, in this age of 5+inch phones, obviously people don’t mind the heft. The Lumia look really dazzles when you turn the phone on and have a look at that gorgeous screen. The 4.5-inch screen uses a technology they call PureMotionHD and Clear Black and it makes the blacks blacker and colours more vibrant and clear. The pixel count is 1280 x 768 with a density of ~332 ppi and yes, there are higher spec’d screens but this one still looks fantastic. The screen also behaves fantastic, even if you have gloves on. It’s super responsive and very fast and liquid-smooth. The Windows 8 live tiles look wonderful as they melt from one image to another. The 920 has a unibody form, gently curved on the back and on the sides, making it easy to hold, especially as it’s also narrow enough to fit your hand well. Buttons are minimal and there’s really nothing extra except a dedicated camera button. There’s no microSD card but it has 32GB of storage. The 920 runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core 1.5 GHz processor with 1 GB of RAM. I thought it should have more but since it’s working fast enough, why question it. The battery, which you can’t get at, is a 2,000 mAh and lasted me the day on light usage. Signature Windows 8Windows 8 really shines on this flagship device, though it's standardised across smartphones. A manufacturer can't really make changes to much of what is on a Windows 8 phone, but they can enhance the experience for the user with additions. That's something Nokia has been able to do with some of its own signature applications such as Nokia Drive, Maps, City Lens, and Nokia Music. There’s no FM radio on this phone, by the way. I will not get into what Windows 8 is all about here, except to point out briefly some of the pluses and minuses for those considering buying. Windows 8 is familiar to those already using a Windows 7+ device, while newbies will probably find it refreshing and unencumbered by many settings. In that sense, it’s closer to Apple’s iOS. Savvy Android users are likely not to find enough to fiddle with the customisation will not be nearly enough and will feel lost without being Google services and apps at hand. And Apple users would sorely miss the universe of apps that makes the iPhone a compelling product beyond its much loved design. Windows' apps are growing in number, but it's been a struggle to get 46 of the top popular 50 apps. For those who really want a different experience or who come to smartphones without previous baggage, Windows 8 phones like the 920 should be a nice alternative to existing ecosystems. That Special CameraThose who are aware of how the first PureView branded phone, the Nokia 808, brought in startlingly advanced capabilities to a smartphone camera, will be curious to see what the second PureView does. The 808 had a huge lens and used an interesting new method of stuffing the information from 7 pixels into every pixel resulting in a 41 megapixel camera. The 920 does not take up where the 808 left off. Instead, Nokia has shifted the meaning of PureView to include all their phone camera innovations, and the 920 comes with a new one without including the pixel oversampling trick. The new innovations are about two things: OIS or optical image stabilisation, a method of putting components on springs internally so that its less sensitive to physical shaking, and low light photography. Both these aspects have been chosen keeping in mind that shooting casual photos and video has become wildly popular with most smartphone owners. Shake-free Pictures And VideoThe optical image stabilisation (OIS) on the 920’s camera is most evident with videos. I couldn’t even believe it when I turned on the video mode, bobbed up and down and shot a short video which turned out to be smooth. No wonder Nokia demonstrates the OIS by taking the phone for a helicopter ride and shooting from there. The result with photos is a little less dramatic. You can’t really guarantee blur-free unshaken pictures because of many other factors, one of them being the pressing of the shutter button, if you’re not careful and prepared with the button depressed halfway down and ready to go for the click. Even while being as careful as I could, I came up with blurred images in some situations, especially low light. Interestingly, cameras that have voice command capabilities reduce this shake and the 920 does not have this built in but there’s an app for that. I tried it out though and have never come across something more annoying than this app that talk back to you – in a terrible accent. Low Light Star PerformerYou can’t help but gasp in surprise the first time you take a low light picture and see an image filled with light. I took a shot of a statue in a dark corner of my room with just one yellow 40 watt CFL on in another area. To my shock the picture cam up all lit up. But it’s not all roses here. Comparing with the Nokia 808, I found the image less light-filled and more noisy, yet sharper. The same was with the Galaxy Note II’s camera which gave me even more noise but did have some light and captured the statue a bit sharper. Unfortunately I didn’t have an iPhone 5 for comparison but I have taken some sharp pictures with that phone earlier and not in the best of lighting conditions. All these are minus flash and with night mode or automatic. In sum, the low light capability on this camera is surprising and exceptional but the results will depend on many factors other than the presence of that extra light. When all else is fine, people go and move and ruin a photograph anyway. So if one is planning to take lots of pictures in dark restaurants, just try your luck and sometimes you’ll get good pictures, sometimes not. They will be more lit up. Everything ElseThe camera otherwise has minimal basic settings, sharing and editing on board though there’s a bit of a “where is everything?” feel to it. For photo buffs like me, the lack of settings to fiddle with is annoying, but to those who don’t want to bother, you got it. Another annoyance is that features that are usually built in to cameras on other smartphones have to be downloaded as apps or ‘lenses”. There’s no face recognition, for example. But in the small collection of lenses are some very interesting ones. Cinemagraph lets you animate some part of a photograph and you select the area to be animated just by brushing in with a mask. There’s also Smart Shot which will take several shots together so you can end up with the best one. HDR, panorama and other lenses and effects are also available. On other phones, they’re there to begin with. Yet another thing I found particularly annoying is that in the screen-tap focus can’t be controlled – tap and it focuses and shoots without a chance to do much about it. The shutter button, though two-stage, is also a bit tricky to use, especially if you want to take many quick shots, for which there’s no burst mode. Annoyances aside though, the 920 uses a 26mm wide-angle 1/3 inch F2.0 Carl Zeiss lens. Its backside illuminated and outputs at 8 megapixel for a 4:3 ratio and 7.1 at 16:3 ratio. It shoots photos at 3264 x 2448 resolution in 4:3 mode and 3552 x 2000 in 16:9 mode. The flash is LED. All in all, the 920 is better at stable video than other smartphone cameras and better at bringing light into photos taken in low light conditions, but in the end it doesn’t have a very much bigger lens and there’s only so far you can go unless you put in a big lens. Sharpness is by no means guaranteed. It’s really a mix of pluses and minuses and not as revolutionary as the 808 camera was but rather a nice evolution. Quick ComparisonsLumia 920 vs HTC 8xBoth these phones are thought of as signature devices for Windows Phone 8 and considering Microsoft doesn’t allow too much tampering with the insides, it’s interesting that there’s enough differentiation between them to give customers an actual choice. The starkest difference is the design. The HTC 8X is the most “holdable” phone in its size bracket. It’s slim, has a soft-touch material, and is very light. It’s the one to consider if you’re sensitive to weight and dimensions. If you’re really put off by big phones, the HTC 8X will not feel as big as it is at 4.3 inches. The Lumia 920 is a slightly larger, wider, thicker phone — and much heavier. It’s nice for the hardware-centric among us who like their phones to be solid and feel reassuringly well-built. The 8X has an understated elegant look with its matt finish colours — all of which are not available in India — while the Lumia 920 has some zingy bright glossy colours. It’s the 8X that’s easier to carry. Both phones are about as fast as the other and the screens, though they use different technologies, are both very good. The Lumia 920 has an edge because its high sensitive screen lets you use it even with gloves on. The 920 has an even bigger edge because of its camera. In very low light, the 920 will give you a picture that’s visible and usable while one from the 8X may not even be visible. The 920 also has the special new image stabilisation and makes for great video shooting. The HTC 8X camera is somewhat easier to use as it’s more familiar. On the inside, Microsoft doesn’t allow for too much tampering with its new operating system. But the Lumia 920 has an edge because of the smattering of Nokia apps like Drive and City Lens. The 8X, on its part, has Beats Audio and great sound. In India, the 8X is somewhat cheaper than the Lumia 920 but then, the 920 has just launched. Lumia 920 vs PureView 808These two devices are poles apart and wouldn’t be compared at all if it weren’t for the branding, PureView. A few months ago, everyone expected the Lumia 920 to carry the revolutionary oversampling technology of the 41 megapixel Nokia 808 forward into Windows 8 and add something more on top of that. But instead, Nokia put in a different camera innovation though they called it PureView and shifted the goal post a little by saying that PureView was the label for all Nokia’s imaging innovations. So that leaves the 920 and the 808 with different camera technologies. The 920’s 8 megapixel camera specialises in low light casual photos and image stabilisation. It takes good pictures in daylight and doesn’t shake as much as other cameras do. The 808 takes big detailed pictures that can be very sharp if you learn how to pick your settings for different situations. It has a bigger lens and puts 7 megapixels into 1 to capture detail. It was a revolution in smartphone photography while the 920’s camera is more of an evolution. The camera on the 920 is far easier to use for everyday shots. You cannot take the setting of the 808 for granted even though it too can give good low-light results. Other than the cameras, the two devices don’t compare because of entirely different operating systems. Lumia 920 vs The Top SmartphonesThis is a useless but inevitable comparison. As a piece of hardware, the 920 holds its own with its solid build, glossy bright colors, and beautiful interface. It’s very fast and smooth. But that doesn’t mean it compares with phones like the iPhone 5 or the Galaxy S3 because of the fact of the operating systems and ecosystems being completely different. As far as being able to customise your phone, Android is on top. As far as apps go, the Apple App Store has the very best, no matter who’s got how many. As far as accessories go – and these are very important – Apple has many industry-fulls of these. Against this backdrop, Windows 8 phones are still new and developing. There are annoyances to be tackled, app stores to be populated, and a new interface to be tried out. All the same, they offer an alternative for those who like great looking phones but aren’t tech inclined enough to be involved too much with devices and for some reason or the other, don’t want to go Apple. A Version Of This Review Appeared In The Businessworld Issue Dated 11-02-2013, Under The Headline: High On Looks
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The beauty starts even before you take the Dell XPS 12 out of its box. Ah, I rather like the big sturdy but expensive looking box they use to pack this convertible into. And as soon as you set eyes on this laptop-tablet you see how well-made it is.Also Read: All Set To Dazzle: Nokia Lumia 920 Review The Print Version: High On Looks Also ReadThis high-quality piece of hardware has obviously been created with great attention to detail. The body is covered with a soft touch rubbery carbon fibre material. It's sort of grey-black with a pattern ingrained into it. On the sides is a brushed aluminum skirting; this is on both the top and underneath the device. The edges glint slightly as they curve into the inside of the device. No doubt, this device will look just great in the CEO's office as the look really spells top management. When you open it, this machine is a laptop, or rather, an ultrabook. Slide a subtle button on the side of the laptop to power it on and take a deep breath. Before you exhale, Windows 8 will have loaded up, completely ready for you to use. And might I add that it looks totally beautiful on the lovely screen of the XPS 12. The 1080p IPS screen is vibrant without being awfully bright. It has great colours and contrasts with no compromise on viewing angles. It's made of Gorilla Glass and will reflect light in certain positions so think about this if you have a poorly placed bright light on in your office or if you have a big un-curtained window letting in light straight on to your screen. This is a touch screen of course — a super responsive one — and the first thing you can do is swipe around on the Windows 8 start screen. There are a few video tutorials to get you started on what is probably an unfamiliar interface. But this is no regular laptop or ultrabook: Reach out to the screen and push it back gently. It will unfasten from its magnets and tilt all the way back and around leaving the borders to become a sort of easel. Now you can either flip the screen, which swivels all the way around, to face the other side or let it turn to settle over the keyboard. Ladies and gentlemen we now have a tablet. Very clever, except that it's too heavy to be an iPad-like tablet or similar to any of the Android competitors tablets either. Together the keyboard and screen weigh about 1.5 kgs which is about three times heavier than a typical tab. So now what? You will have to think of a device like the XPS 12 as an enhanced laptop but a less than perfect tablet. There are some situations when you can use it in tablet mode such as when you want to sit back and do a short spell of reading or when you want to move out of regular laptop form to flatten the device and draw something, look at a plan with co-workers or swipe through something that is really designed for touch. The tablet mode will also be perfect when using many apps. It's just that 1.5kg weight will be difficult to hold without a backrest for very long. If the screen had been detachable as it is on many hybrids, it would be of course easier to use as a tablet though it's still too landscapey to hold and too elongated in portrait mode. In laptop mode, the XPS 12 has a wonderful keyboard, much like the XPS 13 ultrabook. It is soft and backlit and the keys are chicklet style. It works fast and there's absolutely no lag. The processor on this convertible is a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U (Turbo up to 2.6GHz) and there's 4GB of RAM. For storage we have a 128GB Samsung 830 solid-state drive. There are 2 USB 3.0 ports, and a display out port. No SD card slot. The battery is a 6-cell 47WHr Li-ion and lasts about 5 hours. The specs are enough for everyday work, but this isn't a high powered gaming machine — nor is it meant to be. You may be able to get increased specs from Dell as they allow different configurations. This beautifully built machine is at Rs 90,000, as expensive as convertibles are turning out to be. It’s very sturdy despite all the moving parts that make the screen circle around as it does. Your ChoicesYou could buy a separate tablet and lower-end laptop for the price of the Dell XPS 12. But again, budget may not be your problem and you may be perfectly happy to own a separate tablet and appreciate the flexibility of this convertible. Another choice is to consider some of the hybrids, on which the screen detaches. But also see the build and the possibility that device may be too fiddly for you to manage. I myself am a little uncomfortable with screens that detach because I am scared of dropping it and annoyed with fitting the screen back in carefully. If the hybrid is device sturdy and easy to use, see if that form factor fits your work habits better. With the PC and laptop market being under severe pressure from tablets and smartphones, you may also want a tablet plus companion keyboard. This is fine only as long as you don’t heavily use applications that need much more control than you get with a tablet. Many tasks and actions we take for granted on computers such as cut and paste and drag and drop are just plain annoying on touch screens and tend to slow you down. Working with large spreadsheets or specialised software, large files, graphics-heavy software etc is also not ideally handled by tablets even when accompanied by a keyboard. A Version Of This Review Appeared In The Businessworld Issue Dated 11-02-2013, Under The Headline: High On Looks
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The romance starts even before you take the Dell XPS 12 out of its box. And as soon as you set eyes on this laptop-tablet you see how well made it is. Flipping Over It: Dell XPS ReviewAll Set To Dazzle: Nokia Lumia 920 Review This high-quality piece of hardware has obviously been created with great attention to detail. The body is covered with a soft touch rubbery carbon fibre material. On the sides is a brushed aluminium skirting. When you open it, this machine is a laptop, or rather, an ultrabook. Slide a subtle button on the side of the laptop to power it on and take a deep breath. Before you exhale, Windows 8 is loaded up and looks beautiful on the lovely 1080p IPS screen. It’s made of Gorilla glass that reflects light in certain positions. This is a touchscreen, of course — a super-responsive one. Nokia’s flagship smartphone will turn heads with its sizzling youthful colours But this is no regular laptop or ultrabook: Reach out to the screen and push it back gently. It will unfasten from its magnets and tilt all the way back, leaving the borders to become a sort of easel. Now you can either flip the screen, which swivels all the way around, or let it turn to settle over the keyboard. Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a tablet. Very clever, except that it’s too heavy to be either an iPad-like tablet or similar to any of the Android competitor tablets. Together, the keyboard and screen weigh about 1.5 kg, which is about three times heavier than a typical tab. So now what? Think of the XPS 12 as an enhanced laptop but a less-than-perfect tablet. There are some situations when you can use it in tablet mode such as when you want to sit back and do a short spell of reading. It’s just that at 1.5kg, it will be difficult to hold without a backrest for very long. At work, it’s great for looking at documents, spreadsheets or diagrams with colleagues and for making presentations. In laptop mode, the XPS 12 has a wonderful keyboard. It’s soft and backlit and the keys are ‘chicklet’-style. It has a 1.7 GHz Intel Core i5-3317U (turbo up to 2.6 GHz) processor and 4 GB of RAM. For storage, we have a 128 GB Samsung 830 solid-state drive. There are 2 USB 3.0 ports, and a display ‘out’ port. No SD card slot though. The battery is a 6-cell 47WHr Li-ion and lasts about 5 hours. The specs are enough for everyday work. At Rs 90,000, the XPS 12 is expensive, but a great CEO kit.Nokia Lumia 920 low light pictures and stable videoSignature Phone for Windows 8The Nokia Lumia 920 enters the arena when the battle between smartphones is nice and tense. For Nokia, which has lost market share, much depends on the 920’s success, and that of the other Lumias, especially as Nokia is, in a sense, between two platforms — Symbian, to which it has officially bid goodbye, and Windows, on which it is staking its future. So what’s its snazzy flagship phone like? For a start, the 920 zings with colour. The cherry red and lime yellow are glossy on the polycarbonate body. The cyan, if available, is matte and so is the black. The Lumia 920 is meant for those who love the feel of a solid well-built device in their hands — even if it’s much heavier than other smartphones its size.You feel the 920’s 185 grams straight away, but also get used to it pretty fast. The Lumia really dazzles when you turn the phone on and take a look at that gorgeous 4.5-inch screen. The screen uses a technology they call PureMotionHD and Clear Black, which makes it more vibrant and clear. The pixel count is 1280 x 768, with a density of ~332 ppi. It’s super responsive and liquid smooth. There’s no microSD card but it has 32GB of storage. The 920 runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core 1.5 GHz processor with 1 GB of RAM. The battery, which is a 2,000 mAh, lasted a day on light usage.Windows 8 really shines on this flagship device, though it’s standardised across smartphones. A manufacturer can’t really make changes to much of what is on a Windows 8 phone, but it can enhance the experience for the user with additions. That’s something Nokia has been able to do with some of its own signature applications such as Nokia Drive, Maps, City Lens, and Nokia Music. Windows 8 brings a beautiful interface to smartphones, particularly large ones. Moreover, it connects you with other Windows-based applications such as Office. You can create and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. And if your company uses Microsoft’s products, you can use Office 365 and also save automatically to Microsoft’s cloud service, SkyDrive. If you’re a previous Windows phone user, the look will be familiar but better, with features such as the ability to create Rooms where you interact with others exclusively. There are, however, many minuses. The poor availability of apps is one of them. For example, you can’t use Dropbox, Instagram, Instapaper and many other apps. The 8.7 MP camera on the phone is a star attraction. It carries the PureView brand, but disappointingly, it isn’t a 41 megapixel shooter like the one on the Nokia 808. It does, however, have a different set of capabilities, including OIS or optical image stabilisation, which steadies the capture. The results show up best on a video. I took a video from my car on a bumpy road only to be amazed at how smooth it was. The other capability is low light shots. Put the camera on night mode with flash off, and you will get a picture filled with light. This is not to say the camera doesn’t have its annoyances. Pictures are not always sharp because you don’t have complete control over focus when you tap the screen. Pressing the two-stage button can often blur the image. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 11-02-2013)
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Much better too, is their slick swipey re-imagined operating system, BlackBerry 10. It's smooth, fluid and quite evidently easy to use. Behind it, is Vivek Bharadwaj, the Indian who heads BlackBerry's software. Sadly though, investors don't give it a 10 and BlackBerry (BBRY) stock took a dive post the launch event in New York. Why? What else could the poor guys have done, besieged as they are by Apple and Samsung?I guess what the investors would have wanted is something revolutionary and unpredicted, not merely a return to the land of the living. That's very tough to do, at a time when even Apple is showing some signs of strain and will need innovation to convince its investors it hasn't lost its mojo after Steve Jobs and can stand up to Android. Samsung, king of Android, may have its own challenges looming as it begins to face a flood of inexpensive devices flowing in from smaller companies. Yep, no one can take their place at the top for granted, and that's just what BlackBerry did when it was Research in Motion, so why blame Apple and Samsung, really. Even today, from the CEO Thorsten Heins, right down to the last PR kid, they look through other smartphones as if they didn't exist. But being more of a gadgets person, it's the devices and what's on them that interests me over what will become of BlackBerry the company. So, looking from my narrow focus lens, let me say that the two devices, the upper tier Z10 and the QWERTY hanger-on, Q10, both look more or less on par with today's smartphones. Both are well-designed and it's interesting how the Q10 actually manages to look contemporary despite the full keyboard. Perhaps the Z10 should have been a quad core and had more battery heft to it, but let's leave something for a next iteration. Plus, it's working smooth enough from what we saw of the alpha devices. Talking of smooth, the "flow" on this OS is looking good. To pack in quite a lot and allow it to be used by one hand - or just one thumb, really — needed fluidity and intuitiveness and that is there. It's a bit like the swiping around on a Windows 8 tablet or laptop is the most fun part — it's a similar experience here. Also really impressive is the fact that everything is just a swipe away. Whatever screen you're on, a thumb-swipe gets you to the BlackBerry Hub, where all your communication with the world sits. While it can be messy to get all your messages and updates from the social networks together with your mail and texts in one place, you could really be among those who will appreciate this ability if your work is structured to take in inputs from multiple sources. You can also filter out different streams when viewing your Inbox. Maybe the young and super-connected will like it too. The Hub is designed so you can pull out communication from it and act on it anytime without disturbing or exiting whatever else you were doing. The seamless integration of everything with everything else is also impressive. I haven't used the new device at all yet — only seen the near-final, but one can see that different parts of the software talk to each other. In th future, if all goes well and works as advertised, this is the sort of capability that would help work this OS into other situations, like in cars, more easily. The information you need coming up when you want it could be a powerful thing. BlackBerry has been thought to have been held back because of the shortage of apps and indeed, even Windows, which started later, has more apps now. More apps added each week are promised by BlackBerry, who always talk of how strong the support is from the developer community. But I would say it's also important to look at the OS and devices as what they can do for productivity even without the apps — and there I think that it's possible to use BB10 to add real efficiency to a work day. Everything is reachable and actionable, in context and collaborative. If you meet such a system halfway, you can act on emails, discussions quickly done on Skype, a message sent out on BBM, and get stuff done even before you get around to making a to-do list.Whether BB10 is a booster shot of adrenaline which will bring BlackBerry back to relevance and parity for now, or it ensures a firm third place in the smartphone race will now depend on what happens next. mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter
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Ever since its controversial IPO, everyone has been waiting for Facebook to get a strong mobile strategy together. When an announcement was to happen on 16 January, there were hopes that this would be it. Instead, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced a “Graph Search”. Graph Search is not as mathematical as it sounds, though the algorithms needed to make it work certainly will be. Graph Search basically is supposed to put together the information you already put out on Facebook and make it relevant to specific questions you might have. For example, I could look for friends who love photography. Or friends living in Delhi who eat pasta at restaurants. Or even friends of friends who like classical music. Before you go up in arms about whether this violates your privacy, Facebook already thought of that, specially given its iffy history with users’ privacy. Your Facebook privacy settings are taken into consideration by the new Graph Search and nothing that has been made completely private will show up in searches publically. This does mean though that you have to pay attention to your privacy settings — not necessarily a bad thing. Graph Search is strictly in beta and not even outside of the US yet. You can ask to be notified when it’s available and rolled out to you, but for not there’s nothing you can do but try a small demo search. Facebook plans to watch how Graph Search is used before letting it loose in the wild. One of the first things that comes to mind is whether this impacts Google adversely. Well, not so far. In fact, it’s Google’s stock that went up. Facebook’s search is not the same thing as a Web search and that’s a point that was clarified. Web search is raw, a big volume of results with the more relevant ones up front. Facebook’s Graph Search is very specific to your network and network’s networks. And it’s highly contextual. You should be able, for example, to search for engineers who like biking — but not all engineers in the world; just those relevant to you. One can’t yet try out the efficacy of this search as it isn’t open, but the idea is certainly interesting and one even wonders why it wasn’t done before, given the data Facebook has on each of us. Another issue is that of whether this new search will help Facebook sell space to advertisers looking to get a really finely targeted (and hence narrower) audience. After all, this audience would be more likely to act on advertisements relevant to them. But it’s too early to say as Facebook seems wary of thinking of Social Graph in revenue terms yet. It’s “only the beginning” so we know that the plan will unfold in good time, but there are no direct revenue implications immediately. mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter
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We are on the brink of an era of 'cognitive computing'. Man and machine will meet in ways that are already beginning to be evident but are not quite there yet. Give it five years, says IBM, in its '5 in 5' predictions, which give us a glimpse of where technology is headed within the coming five years. Up until now our gadgets have been great at computing and calculating and being programmed to follow commands. That will now begin to see amazing enhancements as these devices start to interact with us via senses, theirs and ours. We humans have our senses; gadgets have their sensors. And both of us have intelligence — artificial or otherwise — and the ability to learn. These will come together to create new experiences and make devices like smartphones more useful in leaps and bounds. Touch: We already use haptic feedback on phones. That little buzz when you press a key or touch a screen. Imagine what would happen if this technology is developed further to fine-tune the vibrations depending on the content on a screen. That means, for example, that you would get one vibration pattern when you touch an image of a piece of fabric on the screen and another pattern when you touch wood. You would finally be able to feel the texture of something you want to buy online. Imagine too, the implications for education: being able to experience touch would enliven the learning in interesting ways. Sight: On smartphones, you can use photos from the camera to search for or get information on the data in the image. Technology is being developed so the camera can understand what properties and attributes are important in different situations, such as color on a beach. IBM says this will have implications for medicine. For instance, there are already some apps that will let you take a picture of yourself for a skin problem and you can get first cut advice on whether you should consider going to a doctor. Hearing: There are sound and vibration sensors that can be put to use interpreting sound patterns to give timely information and alerts. A coming avalanche, for instance. Or a tree weakening and about to fall. An IBM video shows how a parent with hearing disabilities can understand baby-speak because sensors can translate the patterns of a baby’s cries. Taste: With all that we record on our smartphones, what we eat is getting more and more known. But this can go much further to put to good use in the area of healthy nutrition. Putting together your health data and your food preferences, you will be able to get advice on eating healthily. I am sure this won’t take as long as the five years IBM thinks it might! Smell: A cognitive computing system will put together all the information that is relevant when you smell something. Can you imagine if your phone could smell your breath? And figure out whether you have a cold before you sneeze? This too is something that IBM predicts could be important in personal healthcare. IBM’s Chief Innovation Officer, Bernard Meyerson: “One of the most intriguing aspects of this shift is our ability to give machines some of the capabilities of the right side of the human brain. New technologies make it possible for machines to mimic and augment the senses. Today, we see the beginnings of sensing machines in self-parking cars and biometric security–and the future is wide open.” (This article is based on IBM’s “5 in 5” annual predictions) mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter
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So much happens in technology that you could look back at any given year in the past two decades and think: “Phew, what a year.” But far stronger words wouldn’t begin to describe 2012. It’s been the year that terms like ‘mobility’ and ‘cloud’ have leapt right off the slides of presentations and into our everyday lives. Like how I found a friend of mine using an app to keep track of his blood sugar. And another who wanted to know how to bank on her tablet to create and deliver presentations to clients. Such examples are no longer either surprising or countable. Mobility was the pulse for almost everything that happened over 2012 in technology. We always knew it would happen, but at the same time, tech has become more unpredictable than ever. You can say there’ll be lots of tablets and smartphones in 2013; there’ll be more and better apps, and there will be interesting ‘converged’ hybrid products and many more connected things. But you can’t tell who’s going to make them happen. Because if there’s one thing we’ve seen this year, it’s that the awareness of mobility as a driving force is no guarantee of a company’s success. In fact, even for companies that have been born into mobility, the challenges have been extreme and surviving them hasn’t been a matter of one single thing that the company can do. So look at the struggles that have plagued our favourite tech titans: Apple may have had a spectacular year but it’s shown that it’s not without competition; it’s not perfect after all; and it’s not assured a top-of-the-pack status unless it continues to innovate and surprise. For Apple, the bar of expectations is set higher than for any other company. The fabulous iPhone and iPad have been industry-defining and have the universe of an ecosystem tied into them, but the OS is showing its age as slicker and fresher interfaces come up to compete. Notice how you now rarely hear the phrase ‘iPad killer’ or ‘iPhone killer’ as often. Many choices besides Apple’s expensive products, including the MacBooks, exist. And of course, many of those choices come from Apple’s big rival, Samsung, which in 2012 toppled Nokia as the No. 1 phone maker. In a world where 1.2 billion smartphones and tablets are expected to sell in 2013, according to analyst firm Gartner, Samsung will be showing no signs of slowing. Reports from a Korean publication state that Samsung will ship half a billion smart devices. Riding a wave of success despite many costly skirmishes in court, Samsung probably has fewer challenges than others, although staying on top is a feat that takes a different set of measures than those needed to get there. Google has its own way of doing things, not many of them making sense to an onlooker, but in Q3 of 2012, Android mopped up 75 per cent market share on smartphones, according to IDC. Google’s Nexus smartphones and tablets have been much sought after, though one doesn’t know how well these actually did. Google, like Amazon, kept its prices low (in the US) but like its own fragmented but interesting Android system, Google faces the need to create some cohesion to put all it does together. It’s even supposed to be working on a secret phone, codenamed the X Phone. Both Google and Microsoft have tried, at the risk of upsetting their OEM partners, to use Apple’s formula of total control over all aspects of their ecosystem — hardware, software, marketing and delivery. It hasn’t quite worked as advertised. The giants have not only played nasty with rivals but also with friends and there’s no telling how this will play out in 2013. Microsoft’s particular challenges are no secret. The Surface didn’t take the world by storm and Windows 8 cannot be said to have either flopped or succeeded in its very first year and version. It’s just a new beast and the shift for users isn’t easy, particularly when it comes to navigating the system itself. Microsoft will have to play its cards right to sell its products at their high prices and get developers to build the apps ecosystem so critical to the company. Microsoft has to reorient the company, not just Windows, to meet its ambitious goals— including but not limited to being a service, being a seller of software, being a producer of hardware (perhaps) and becoming more of a search entity. For a bunch of one-time tech giants, 2012 has been nothing short of disastrous. What happened to HP? And why did Nokia lose momentum on its most-anticipated Lumia phone? And will Research in Motion’s BB10 bring it back into the race? Looking good as an OS and interface is no guarantee that there’s an entire compelling ecosystem and killer reason to choose the upcoming BlackBerry smartphones over Android, Apple and Windows 8 devices. But you never know. It would be nice to say “what a year” post 2013 too. mala(at)pobox(dot)com ,@malabhargava on Twitter (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 07-01-2013)
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What Samsung started with the Galaxy Note is threatening to become an epidemic. Few guessed that the 5-inch-or-so smartphones would become so popular. After all, they’re not that easy to carry and making calls on them is a different experience from using smaller phones. But the in-between size merged portability with screen real estate, which meant being able to do a lot on the go. With the battery life and hardware to support it — why not? Many companies have come up with their versions of the Note for around Rs 10,000. Minus the polish, minus the stylus, minus the hundreds of features— but pretty workable. Spiced Up With SpeedThe high-end feel of Spice Mi-500 Stellar Horizon quite surprised me. I had a look at the white version. The device was about the same weight as the Note II and didn’t look half bad. It was in a white flip case, which I’m told it ships with. All around the body is a metal-like skirting and a screen that is nice and bright (480 x800 with 187 ppi density), but compromises on viewing angles. Still, browsing was super fast. If I touched the browser button accidentally, it would be up and straight into Google in less than a fraction of a second. Spice, intex and micromax have come out with their versions of the phone-tablet hybrid The processor, incidentally, is a 1 GHz dual-core. There’s 512 GB of RAM and just 4 GB online storage, some of it for your use. There’s a microSD slot for expansion up to 32 GB. The Stellar is on Ice Cream Sandwich. You can get all the apps you want from Google Play and improve the experience of many things on the phone, such as inputting text and adding widgets. The camera is a 5 MP and has many settings including panorama and HDR. It does have a flash. There’s a 1.3 MP secondary camera. This gadget has a good music player app and watching YouTube videos on it wasn’t bad at all. There are many pre-loaded apps, including an anti-virus app NQ Security that can be upgraded to a premium version. Inside, when you take the cover off, you see a big 2400 mAh battery which takes you through a day. The two SIMs in its neat interiors are GSMs. And all of this for Rs 12,000 or so.Light And EasyThe Intex Aqua 5.0 also feels great to hold. It’s slimmer and lighter than the Stellar Horizon, but still has a high-end look and body. It’s easier to hold than the Note, which is 0.5 inches bigger. The back is again white plastic (I got the white to look at) and it’s sort of ribbed diagonally. Not exactly classy, but nothing you’d be overly bothered by either. The back panel comes off with a little difficulty, but this is a minor point since you won’t be repeatedly removing it — hopefully. Seen from the front, the Aqua is much like other Android phones, only much bigger — black bezel and screen, the usual slab form and some slightly rounded edges. Along the sides, you have a metal strip. Overall it reminds me of a big Galaxy SII, a phone I’ve lived with for over a year until recently. The Aqua has a 480x800 screen that is bright and has nice colours, but less-than-perfect viewing angles, like the Stellar. There are four buttons on the bottom: home, settings, back, and search. It felt a tad slower than the Stellar when watching videos but browsing and navigation were fast. In fact, it’s speedier than many smaller and more expensive phones we come across. Here too we have a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and a secondary 1.3 megapixel front-facer. The Aqua is running on Android 4.0 or ICS. We have the NQ mobile security app here too. And Flipkart, IRCTC, Nimbuzz, Skype, and more. The Aqua costs Rs 9,990. Five-Inch CanvasThe Micromax Superfone Canvas 2 borrows a bit from Samsung’s styling. It has the shape of the Galaxy SIII, especially in white, and the name Canvas may rankle with Samsung, which positions the Note as a creativity device. It, too, has a plastic back, but in matt finish, ensuring it doesn’t look cheap. The back peels off ever so easily. The 2000 mAh battery should last a day unless you use the screen for hours. The Canvas 2 echoes all the specs of the other two phablets except for the camera which is an 8 megapixel with a 0.3 secondary one. The settings on the main camera are ambitious with best shot, a selection of how many shots to capture, white balance settings, colour scenes, HDR and more. There’s a flash and a light sensor. The results are about the same as you’d get from a mid-range phone and not comparable to the top-end ones. The screen is marginally brighter, at 480 x 854 pixels with 196 ppi density. The software, such as on the camera for example, on all three devices is similar. The interior battery compartment in all them is neat and looks well made. On this smartphone too, browsing and navigation are fast. Dual SIMs (mini for all), microSD card slot, etc., are the same as well. There are pre-loaded Micromax apps and access to a Micromax store. This one is also for Rs 9,990.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 07-01-2013)
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G PowerIf you’re the ecstatic owner of an iPhone, make sure you upgrade everything Google on your device. After Apple threw out Google Maps, created its own messed up version, got egg on its face and, all embarrassed, it decided to let Google services back in, now Google Maps is back, better than ever before. You have turn-by-turn directions — by voice if you like — and you have the choice of getting directions on transport as well. The one word people use to describe the end of the whole maps fiasco is ‘relief’ because the dependence on Google Maps is so high that many users actually avoided upgrading to the iOS6 as that would have meant losing access to maps. In the end, users have less reason to give up on Apple as they now have all they need, so I’m not sure who won this round. Another essential that was refreshed is Gmail. If you’ve been staying clear of the app on your iDevices, check out the free revamped version. Now Gmail has support for up to five accounts, integration with Google+ and a better swipey and clean interface. If you’re not addicted to the mail app, you might like to check it out. Another Google casualty on iOS devices was YouTube and that too is back, slicker and more powerful. Seeing as Indians are particularly fond of watch-listening to music on YouTube and of course getting at all the videos, you should think of giving the new YouTube app a whirl instead of hunting for what you want via browsers. The new app looks good and lets you easily manage the channels you are fond of and make playlists. You can’t upload your videos from here though. For that, try Capture. Free and fullKingsoft Office is nothing short of shocking. It’s a full-fledged office suite — and it’s free. Available on Android and just perfect for all those using phablets and large smartphones. I mean it when I say this is a complete office suite. You get in and, after you’ve connected with whatever cloud storage you use, start a new document. This could be a word processor, spreadsheet or presentation. It’s not easy to input content into a smaller device when you’re used to doing this on a computer, but for quick bursts of work, it’s just fine. I’ve managed to write an article or two into the word processor, but that’s made easier than ever because I’m using the stylus on the Note II. If you travel a lot and want to do light work using this suite, invest in a stylus and see if that makes life any easier. Kingsoft is not a handwriting recognition program though, and you’d need to add it via an app like WritePad. You can also make input easy if you use SwiftKey. And once you upgrade to Jelly Bean 4.2, the keyboard has a predictive action. Getting into any of the three types of document creation modes, you’ll be amazed at the familiar features from Microsoft Office. For word processing, you have everything from text styles and footnotes, revision and paragraph settings to reading mode and web layout. That’s more than you get with most app-based editing apps. However, it’s less than what you’ll get on your computer, with Microsoft Office or Libre. Kingsoft supports some 25 formats including doc, docx, xls and ppt. You store files within the app or on Dropbox and other cloud services. It’s so intuitive that you don’t need to learn anything to use this app-suite.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 07-01-2013)
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The resounding thought in my head as I first held the iPhone 5 in my hand — don’t drop it, don’t drop it, don’t drop it! It’s unexpectedly slippery and glassy and drop it is just what a friend of mine did seconds after being gifted the revered gadget by a doting husband. It promptly responded with a chip on one side. It soon found a home in a case where its beauty will never be seen again. Think about it: once it’s all covered, it’s no longer such a piece of jewellery, is it? When not hidden in a case, the iPhone5 is crystal-perfect. Cool, clean, sublime. No one who holds it is immune to the classiness of its form and the satisfying neatness of its lines. They made it as light as they could, even letting go of a long-established connector in favour of a new one, and let me tell you: never has a mere connector received so much press as the “Lightning” as it was discussed threadbare for weeks. Turning the iPhone5 on, I found the familiar iOS interface, and I actually didn’t specially notice the five rows instead of four or the longer form factor of the device. This is probably because I’m accustomed to larger smartphones though I did not find the 4-inch iPhone5 feeling tiny. Of course it fit perfectly in one hand and was easy to use. It’s faster, taller, narrower, lighter, prettier, silkier, smoother than all previous iPhones… no one can argue with that. It also does have a great camera — among the two or three best ones on a smartphone. With fewer settings than on any other camera on a phone, it took shots that were almost artistic. While perhaps not a dramatic difference from the previous iPhone 4S, it is better with low light shots which are sharp even when there’s a bit of noise. This time, the iPhone frenzy galvanised Indians, the disposable incomes of whom I’m impressed with considering this smartphone costs close to half a lakh. But it’s often out of stock or out of sight and it’s rare to be able to walk into a store and walk out with one. I was amused at a story I was told about someone who barged into a store wanting to buy 10 iPhone5s. He certainly did not get them but in what was a nasty stroke of misfortune, he lost track of his money bag and was soon poorer by several lakhs. Beautiful as a piece of hardware it may be, but the sameness of its interface is no longer doing it justice. If there’s one thing I’d hope Apple does to the next iPhone, it is to completely overhaul the interface with the now boring row of icon after icon on every screen and make it, dare I say it, more Android-like. Now that users have matured a lot more in their use of smartphones, it’s time to un-wall that walled garden a bit and allow for something interesting to happen throughout the interface. With an Android device you can all but put our own interface onto it, if you know how to use some of the many launchers available on Google Play. You can have a different look every week, if you like — and I often do. Even Windows 8 has an interface that is often called ‘refreshing’, which really means that it’s a welcome departure from the grid of icons we’ve had for too many years. With some customisation and personalisation possible, the iPhone would combine nicely with its unmatched universe of apps, each bringing interesting experiences. My friend who’s just been gifted an iPhone5 never really wanted one. She wasn’t ready for the intense involvement she feels a high-end smartphone requires. But then, she’s quickly grown to be able to use it because, as she says, “It’s only a smaller iPad.” For those who’ve already been using an iPhone and are confirmed fans, all that will be in the way is finances to get the iPhone5. If that’s no bar, they will want any improvement to a device that’s been beloved to them. Another friend of mine owns the 3GS, 4 and iPhone5 and miraculously uses the lot. But for others who are just graduating to smartphones, consider that the cost must match the subsequent use and involvement to be worthwhile. If it’s a first smartphone, and you want the iPhone5 because it’s what everyone says is the best, it would be rather sad to waste it by feeding it and yourself with no apps — and hence no discovery of new ways of doing things. I have often thought that people are more ready for the hardware than they are for newer software and experiences — other than the usual chatting, videos, music and a smatter of games. That’s when half a lakh to make calls and SMS seems quite out of proportion. mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 24-12-2012)
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