[BoneCollector]

TOI reports that Xiaomi has been banned from importing and selling phones in India. Its mostly due to some patent issues with Ericsson. Any more ideas guys? If its true, what will happen to those who are using it?

Xiaomi banned from selling, importing phones in India: Report
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/t...w/45457541.cms via @timesofindia

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by BoneCollector

TOI reports that Xiaomi has been banned from importing and selling phones in India. Its mostly due to some patent issues with Ericsson. Any more ideas guys? If its true, what will happen to those who are using it?

Xiaomi banned from selling, importing phones in India: Report
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/t...w/45457541.cms via @timesofindia

Short answer Nothing will happen to those already using the product.

Now the longer details

End users have nothing to do with patent disputes. All patent litigations are essentially trade dispute between companies in an ecosystem.

It was just that PR firms of a particular brand which had mostly User Interface and design patents created a hype and led ordinary folks to believe that it impacts consumer in any way. Fanboys carried this to disproportionate levels

Xiomi needs to settle the patent dispute if they want to continue selling phones here.
This will not just end with Erricson someone else may sue them sooner or later.

Most 2G and 3G patents are owned by Erricson , Nokia , Motorola and Qualcomm ( mostly 3G) for 4G / LTE apart from these players Samsung also has patent pool. All these companies pay in cash or kind ( patent pool exchange) to each other , In reality cash settlement is not there because each established player has something to barter. These patents are called FRAND patents as they are part of standard patent holder has to necessarily license them for a reasonable cost to the user of patent ( manufacturer)

To avoid patent royalty costs China has developed it's own TS-CDMA which is slight modification to CDMA / W-CDMA to avoid Qualcomm patents and all the codecs used there are slightly tweaked to avoid royalty costs and no-one can win against any Chinese company in Chinese courts.

However in any other country the Royalty issue may pop-up. This is the reason that mobile manufacturing becomes quite expensive if you are not a Chinese company ( A government backing you)

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by ghodlur

I own a Zenfone 5 and can say that the camera is very good (atleast by my standards). 2MP front camera and 8 MP for the rear one. The low light pics are good enough if not great. Outdoor shots are fantastic.. The only grouse is the low shutter speed which makes picture taking a little painful exercise.

You mean blurred without a steady hand?

Originally Posted by pratyush6

Zenphone's camera is not at all good. The photos come out rather dull. And this is coming from a house that has both Zenphone and Moto G. Both are fairly comparable phones but Moto beats the camera of Asus every single time. Asus on the other hand can handle a lot of multitasking - something that might be a problem on the Moto.

Mrs G won't multi-task. Well... she would probably hold a different phone call in each ear if she could

Originally Posted by rohan_iitr

... ... ... Zenphone 5 has one of the best cameras in its segment. Go for it. It is currently in stock on flipkart and also has a discount of 1k (flipkart app sale).

Rohan

Originally Posted by pratyush6

In fact the only reason I would not suggest the Zenphone is the camera. And oh.. the volume - which is abysmally low on Youtube/online streaming.

Hmmm... Some say yay and some say nay. On the whole, I'd be happier if she just went for something more expensive with a non-contraversially good camera.

(Or just carried a camera around with her, and gave up the phone bit. But hey, even I need to phone her sometimes, and this is the android thread, not the phone-induced-marital-stress thread )

Originally Posted by arunphilip

Did you consider one of these hybrid thingies? The Asus Padfone? Granted, that'll make one of your Fonepads redundant :(

EDIT: Christ - Fonepad vs. Padfone. Honestly. Who comes up with these names?!

Well... we only just bought the tablets, so probably 'no' to that idea. Also, she wants something not-too-big.

One can make phonecalls on the Fonepad! It reminds me of holding one of those huge land-line hand-pieces from fifty years ago, but it does work. Lousy camera, though. Which is where we started on this.

And yes, those names! I used to read The Register, before it got boring (and they stopped people pointing that out in the comments, which, previously, had been fun) and they coined the general term fondleslab for tablets. I thought of phablet for the ones that can actually be held to an ear (although, no patent claims, I may well not have been the first to stumble on that obvious idea). We could have just left the whole thing to Asus.

[turbodude]

My friend just bought a Moto G 2nd generation a couple of weeks back. It costed him 12999 - 1250 (SBI discount) + 90 Rs. quick delivery charge = 11839 Rs. I got a chance to experience it and also helped him to migrate from his windows lumia phone.

I was able to add his windows live account contact list using corporate email option provided. Then the HERE maps which he loves because of offline maps are now available on http://here.com/download. Application and Maharashtra/Goa maps costed 400 MB approximately but the experience is great. Without internet, just on GPS; HERE maps work pretty well.

Only thing we could not migrate are the sms / text messages from Lumia to Android. Can anyone help us to do this?

[tbppjpr]

Originally Posted by turbodude

Only thing we could not migrate are the sms / text messages from Lumia to Android. Can anyone help us to do this?

There is an app in Android - "SMS and call log backup". See if its cross platform, if not then try to search for similar app which supports cross platform. You can even backup and restore the call logs using such app.

[extreme_torque]

To Android experts. How difficult it is for vendors to run stock Android on their phones? Does Google provide it as a build or just provides the source code and vendors make their phone related changes and build the software for consumption.

I am asking this because I have recently purchased a Oneplus One and given Cyanogen Mod will not be giving out OTR updates, how difficult would it be for the Oneplus to have a their own build of the Android?

Originally Posted by tbppjpr

There is an app in Android - "SMS and call log backup". See if its cross platform, if not then try to search for similar app which supports cross platform. You can even backup and restore the call logs using such app.

It is not cross platform. All it does it create an XML file containing all your messages and restore it.

[ajay_satpute]

Nokia's HERE map application is now available for Android phones. I downloaded it today morning and set my office route just for the heck of it. The app is slightly better than the Google maps.

When I was near a very busy and important junction, the tall and famous buildings in and around that junction suddenly grew as if it was 3D. That was something really nice. Please note that I was NOT in the "Satellite" mode of the maps.

Overall, its a nice app, but I can't think of a reason to replace Google Maps with this one desperately.

[superbhikari]

I thought it would be better to have separate thread for requesting & sharing OnePlus One invites than unnecessary cluttering other threads relevant to their specific purposes.

Request all bhpians to request & share invites to fellow petrolheads in this thread.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Pardon my complete ignorance on the topic- what's a One plus one?

Google tells it's a phone. But what is so special about it? Why do we need invites for it? And why does it need a seperate thread?

[thebfg]

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

Pardon my complete ignorance on the topic- what's a One plus one?

Google tells it's a phone. But what is so special about it? Why do we need invites for it? And why does it need a seperate thread?

It's like this really awesome phone made and powered by Cyanogen Mod (best known for its custom rom). It costs ~Rs.20000 in India and has killer specs for that. The supply-demand balance is way out of whack with this one though. You require an invite, which you get from an existing owner or are randomly selected. It is a very desired phone in the tech community, but most people don't even know about it, therefore, it is one of the most polarising phones out there. One one hand, people are killing for it and on the other people aren't aware of what it is.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by thebfg

It's like this really awesome phone made and powered by Cyanogen Mod (best known for its custom rom). It costs ~Rs.20000 in India and has killer specs for that. The supply-demand balance is way out of whack with this one though. You require an invite, which you get from an existing owner or are randomly selected. It is a very desired phone in the tech community, but most people don't even know about it, therefore, it is one of the most polarising phones out there. One one hand, people are killing for it and on the other people aren't aware of what it is.

Thanks. I've used CyanogenMod with my Galaxy S2 few years back and found it very impressive. Have been out of touch with the android community ever since I made the (stupid) decision of shifting to an iPhone. Never knew Cyanogen is now into phones.

Will google more on this for sure. Thanks once again.

[sagarpadaki]

My Redmi 1S battery backup is terrible . With no internet connection and hardly 5 mins of call a day the battery lasts a max of 24 hours. Is this normal? Or should i look for warranty claim?

[milestogo]

Redmi 1S battery discharges very quickly. That's the only problem I have with this phone as well. I don't think a replacement will resolve the issue for you.

[BBR_SHR]

I got the phone but there is a not so good news for Indian users. There will be no updates. All cyanogen updates will be for micromax phones only. So if you buy the phone, please keep this in mind. As for invites, it has been 4 days since I got the phone and Oneplus/Amazon have not sent me invites to forward yet. I guess they are going by stocks at hand.

[Sheel]

With the Lollipop 5.0 update, I see an improvement in the battery life of my Nexus 5.

After the update, it appeared battery life has gone down, but in the past week, I see it improving over what it was prior to the upgrade, though not in the league of Note 3/4 battery life.