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-   -   The Mobile Phone Thread - Queries, decisions, discussions all here (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadgets-computers-software/63048-mobile-phone-thread-queries-decisions-discussions-all-here-517.html)

Galaxy Ace is costing nearly 15K. Galaxy 3 and Galaxy 5 will soon be replaced with newer models by the names Galaxy Gio, Galaxy Fit etc. all of them spotting Froyo.

Why only Android?
Is it more stable than Symbian, Blackberry, Apple or other OSes out there?

I am still to understand what the fuss about Android is. Sure it is an OS that has support from multiple hardware manufacturers then so did Microsoft's Windows (IBM, HP, Dell, etc..) and we know how reliable Windows was.

A phone's first fuction is to offer reliable communication. The other applications are just gravy na? I am not saying that Android would be as unstable as Windows it is just that I cant understand what the fuss is about?

My wife has looked at the Samsung Armani (windows 6.1/6.5), Samsung Galaxy-S Pro (Android 2.1), and Motorola Milestone-2 (Android 2.2) amongst other phones (Nokia N900, Apple's 3G, etc..) and is now waiting to test the E7 and the SE Xperia Pro (Android 2.3) while her phone (N96) slowly crumbles.

That is the precisely point of contention, I.e. what is communication. For significant % of users, its no longer Voice and SMS.

For communication over voice+text, Symbian S40 is still the king. battery will last one full weak with moderate usage and phone would still have excellent voice clarity.

With smart phones, voice and SMS are "least" used features of the phone. Primary usage is Data/Camera/Apps for Digital communication E.g. email/IM/facebook/twitter.

Quite a few industry reports compared $ spent on voice as compared to data. Now, data trumps voice in terms of usage.

Nokia was a company ( until this recent announcement) which was setting example for the industry. If you look at any new standard or pioneering step (except may be touchscreen UI) Nokia was always the leader.
There are so many standards which are created by them and they always had implementation ready 2 years ahead of others.

Nokia CEO has actually given up without a fight with this deal. The situation was bad but still lot better then all other players in financial terms except may be apple and Samsung. They still had technical expertise , resources and money to stage a comeback.

Nokia was prime factor why Microsoft was unable to penetrate mobile market for whole of the decade despite minor success here and there.

In 2009 they had the right recipie to position Symbian at midrange and low end and Maemo for smartphone. In 2010 Nokia was forced to adopt an American CEO to placate the investors as if only US guy can fix the smartphone woes and they did lame step of not taking risk and continuing with Symbian for flagship N8.

In fact Nokia CEO is former Micorsoft guy and probably he can not think beyond his former employer :D for solution when solution was pretty much possible with in Nokia.


Now with this step Nokia is doing what Motorola did by abandoning internal R&D. Look at Motorola today it was saved from financial crisis and split up in to Motorola mobility but it is pale shadow of what it was.

Significant meaning over 33%? My guess (going just by the people I know) communication is still voice and SMS and maybe (blackberry) email (for business email).

This would include old foggies like me (and my wife), semi-literate folk like drivers, carpenters, plumbers etc (just about everyone has a phone now), and the "middle-income-group" (whatever that signifiies).

I just did an informal (by show of hands) survey where I work. We are about 140 of us here. We counted 16 Blackberry devices, 1 iPhone, and the rest were moslty plain vanilla devices for voice and SMS. Even those with better devices had not opted for the data / internet features due to either cost implications or skills required to use them or both. A in-phone Camera they all used becuase it did not cost extra (no service fee).

Hence I do believe that a good Camera, SMS, voice device would have a market. It might be a boring market but it is still a good market. How many phones make Voice, SMS and taking GOOD photos easy?

Obviously an ITES/BPO/KPO office would have different results but I think you get my point na?

Yes got your point, there is and would be a market for such phones. But that market is getting commoditized since cheap chinese devices are killing margins.

For example Apple, it sells far less phones than Nokia. But it still makes more money.

Thats why nobody is spending money on Voice+ Text R&D. All money is spent on software that enables Apps + Digital communication.

Are these chinese phones any good?

There is little R&D required for voice and text.

Is the money spent on software justified? Does the app market make money? After all how many apps does one person need.

On my pC for example I have only the following.

1. MS Office
2. Thunderbird for email
3. Anti virus
4. Ulead for my video prodcessing
5. IDEAS for 3D CAD and FEA

(the last 2 are not even essential for 90% of the users out there).

My point of view
A. Android is as stable as any other OS if not more.
B. For reliable communication needs from a cell phone any basic phone in the range of 2-3K would do the job quiet efficiently

But... People are looking for more functionality from cell phone day by day hence the price of modern phone in the range of 15-30 K.

About android OS

It is THE most versatile OS which can be customized by user as per his or her wishes, desire or fancy. Availability of lakhs of Android Apps make it a tool to perform many roles such as
1. Communication including various typing inputs/voice inputs
2. SMS, mail,chat etc. in line with ultrafamous BB/push mail
3. Entertainment-movie ,Youtube songs games media editing etc. etc. what not
3. Specialised productivity- Customizes scientific calculation, mapping tracks,cardiomoitor, survey tools, adventure trips etc.
4....
5...


Cheers

Doesn't sound nice or rational to say this, but coming from M$, he would need just a few heavy breaths from the heavies at M$ to 'bend into the wind'. He shouldn't have entered the tech territory - should have looked after business. Now he wouldn't know which way to turn to if something goes wrong.

Are there any statistics of model sales? That would give us an idea of what sells and what doesn't.

It is definitely debatable whether WiMo7 should displace S40, even S60 and derivatives. If one looks at it from OS p-o-v, then all the customers are doomed. I agree with Navin's p-o-v about usage. Even after using smart phones - professionally and personally for about 10 years now, I wish the basic phone part works reliably in smart phones, uncomplicated by whatever OS, UI or bells&whistles the manufacturer think I should have. Do all smart phones achieve that? NOT! Is WiMo 7 able to guarantee that? NOT! Does WiMo a give a unquestionably better interface as compared to Symbian, BBOS, Android, etc.? Very debatable, considering the sales of WiMo phones so far, including M$'s feeble attempt at their own phone.

So, do we have worldwide statistics on phone usage?

True, that! And media goes wherever the money goes. Even general public which expresses opinions behaves in the same way, right? So the guys who came up with the innovative building-block approach to phones don't find any interest! Poor chaps, they didn't have money on their side.

Like Someone said, Two turkeys dont make an eagle. Unless Nokia merges Symbian with Microsoft (is that possible?)

Yes, good enough for target demographic.

Voice requires large amount of spectrum. And current issues with spectrum in India shows that how significant it is. Reducing spectrum usage for voice calls requires lots of investment in R&D.

Justified or not, $ spend on Apps is going through the roof. people just can't have enough of "Angry Birds".

Total revenue from Apps was $5B in 2010, this doe NOT include revenue generated data traffic generated by Apps.

An analogy since we are a car forum.

Think about it as cars(mobiles) and features(apps).

We don't need all features to go from Point A to Point B.

Would you then recommend Android over Symbian, Blackberry, Apple for a reliable and stable phone.

Which version 2.1, 2.2, 2.3?

I assumed (maybe wrongly) that if the manufacturer has control over hardware and software the marriage between the two (software and hardware) would make for a more stable enviroment which is why Apple computers crashed less often than Wintel PCs.

With Android we are going to have atleast 2 variables.

1. Hardware Manufacturer (Sony, Samsung, Motorola, etc..)
2. Andorid OS (not variable)
3. Application creator (angry bird, angry crocodile, angry TBHPian :D)

If 2 applications require the same resoruce they might cause the phone to become unstable na? Or has Android somehow managed to take of this like Unix/Linux did (by having a core and shell).

I dont know enough about technology so please forgive my assumptions.

I read about the "numbers" but I suspect this could be a fad. If "Angry birds" caused me to loose an incoming phone call I'd be an angry customer.

Apple Mac OS did not crash because it used FreeBSD kernel which was opensource ( BSD license) Unix Implementation from Berkley. The license was liberal and allowed apple to retain the modifications in house.

The proven design of the OS is the main factor why it is stable not the control of one company.
From my work experience even a single big company is like multiple companies internally with warring BUs and Divisions and competition between various R&D divisions.

Andorid uses Linux Kernel , In fact Linux Purists were not happy Android being called an OS. In user space as well Android uses many traditional GNU components like DBUS, BlueZ for BT etc.
For Applications it uses Java without the JVM from sun, Google used Dalvik VM which is actually Apache Harmony created by IBM years ago.
In the Donut and Eclairs version of Android there were not many changes to Apache Harmony contrary to Google claims of optimization.

In Froyo there was JIT and thus optimization improvement.

The overall system achieves stability faster as there are many heads thus in Android 1.6 the Dalvik VM was 9 times slower then an IBM JVM on same hardware. With froyo the difference was just of 2 times.
The rest is made up by improvements in hardware so nothing in Gingerbread.

BTW : As per my info Google just has less then 100 people in technical team for Android. The Armies of engineers actually are in regiments of OEMs who develop features as per road-map and also do bug fixing while their productization.
The Google team ( known to world as nick name Google Code Inspector) does review and provide comments and decide if a patch should be included or not.
So control for release management is dictatorial and closed unlike Linux.

Pretty proven model from medieval times King has only elite knights and artillary , Counts and Barons provide canon fodder and foot soldiers.

IBM also uses same model for servers and this is also called Open Source Development model.

Android is Linux and iPhone is Unix (BSD). You can open command prompt and fire away shell scripts on both.

Both are nicer UI on top of Unix.

This aspect is taken care of in hardware. A separate chip (called "baseband") does voice. So app usage should not impact voice.

Lot of it is fad, but useful apps are being sold too.

Consider UPS/Fedex/DHL, they has to invest serious money into building handheld devices that could capture delivery of shipments.

Now they can purchase an android/iOS device off the shelf and install their software on this.