The Smartphone Prologue

The  mobile  platform  has vastly  progressed  in  the  past few years. Ten  years  back  how  many  of  you  actually knew  what a  smartphone is?  I  am  not  quite  sure whether  any touch  phone  was  there in  the  Indian  market at all!  Today  we  almost  spend  our  every  bit  of our energy  in  scrutinizing  the  specs  of  a  phone  before buying  it.

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Gone are those days when people would call you a freak if you discussed about a phone's ram or processor. These days RAM and Processor are quite common terms among the tech lovers. We all are driven by the Bandwagon Effect  of checking the specs properly before buying any flagship phone.

 
What is a smartphone?

"Defined in Wikipedia as a mobile phone with an advanced mobile operating system. They typically combine the features of a cell phone with those of other popular mobile devices, such as personal digital assistant (PDA), media player and GPS navigation unit. Most smartphones have a touchscreen user interface, can run third-party apps and are camera phones. Most Smartphones produced from 2012 onwards also have high-speed mobile broadband 4G LTE internet, motion sensors, and mobile payment mechanisms."

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DID YOU KNOW?

The world's first smartphone was launched way back in 1994 by IBM. Click this link to find out more!



Mobiles and other handheld devices are now even considered as a secondary  replacement for laptops and desktops since -
 

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1. They are handy hence portable.
2. They are less bulky compared to laptops.
3. They are generally cheaper.
4. They are fashionable and are the latest trend.

So what the essential requirements of a smartphone ?

• They should meet the primary criteria of quality voice calling and texting.
• They should ensure high speed internet usage.
• They should afford multitasking.
• They should meet the daily needs of professionals, service men, office workers like word processing, powerpoint presentations, email, mms facilities, printing, storing valuable data etc.
• They should be ideal for watching movies, pictures and listening to songs for full on entertainment.
• They should enable  social networking , update us on daily news and progress etc.

  

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• They should be capable of capturing pictures (#selfie is a popular twitter trend)

  

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• and lastly the most necessary for many of us ----- GAMING.

Now that was a long list...............

 

So what are the aspects of a smartphone that needs to be looked at -

• The processor - the soul of a phone. It should have multiple cores along with high CPU frequencies for lag free performance. Ex :Snapdragon , Mediatek ,Exynos etc. 

•  RAM - The performance largely depends on this.

• Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) : Now for 3D games , 4K videos, 4G connectivity a top class GPU is an elementary necessity.
• Operating System (OS) : The brain of the phone. Collaborates and necessitates all the activities.
• Camera: If you are a photo freak consider the camera before buying a phone.
• Connectivity : In today's generation Bluetooth, Wifi , USB connectivity are must for a phone.

 
I will give you the latest information on the best processor , RAM and other aspects of the modern generation phones. Along with it I will recommend the the budget phones with good specs and give an info on the best phones in the market.

 
Stay tuned for my next post since this is just a Prologue to something exciting!!!!!!


If terms like Snapdragon, Mediatek  ,Adrenos fascinate you, wait for my next post specially for the discussion of a phone's architecture! 

Source: Google Images

Why Internet Speed Not Same As Advertised

Hey everyone!

Ever wondered why the various internet plans you subscribe to do not give you the speed they promise? Hmm did my question just match your long unanswered query? Yes? Okay I will explain it.

Image Source : Google Images

I had subscribed to a connection from local cable some days back. I was promised a download speed of 24mbps!! Just imagine!! That kind of a speed meant I could download a whole Game Of Thrones season approximately in five minutes! Sounds like euphoria!     

Image Source : Google Images

But I was jaw dropped when I found that my download speed reached a maximum of 2.8MB/s only. About one eighth of what they promised! Just imagine my situation. I am sure many would have faced the same problem and thought that they have been cheated. But believe me the ISPs are not lying to you!

Let me explain to you the concept here. The internet service providers market their speed in bits per second. So when they say that your download speeds will be 24mbps they mean 24 megabits per second!
But the catch here is that the computer browsers measure the speed in bytes.

Image Source : Google Images

And almost anyone knows one byte equals eight bits. I am sure now it is clear to all as to why the speeds do not match with the ones promised! When they say 24Mbps(mega bits per second) they mean 3MBps(mega bytes per second). Any file that you download  will show you the download speed in mega bytes per second; Hence if you have a download speed of 3MBps for a promised speed of 24mbps , the ISPs are well and truly playing a fair game with you !

Now comes the practical part ! Remember I said that I received speed only upto 2.8MB/s for a promised speed of 24mbps? Why not 3MB/s ? Here comes the term " Bandwidth" .      

Image Source : Google Images

"Defined in Wikipedia as the amount of information that can be transmitted over a network in a given amount of time, usually expressed in bits per second or bps. It is often confused with speed."

  
Generally there are a lot of factors  (listed below) which interfere with the bandwidth of a network and hence results in lowering of the maximum possible speed.

By far the civilization we are living now , having an internet connection  is similar to having a kiss scene in a Bollywood movie. Yeah that is funny! So amidst all the network traffic if you get a speed of 480 KB/s for a promised speed of say 512 KB/s you should be more than satisfied. Trust me! 

Now let me come to the factors that interfere with your internet speed :

•  Hardware Issues: Suppose you have been using a router or a modem for a long while you cannot it expect it to catch high speeds and updated configurations as it used to. Further a poorly configured wifi connection can also result in lower speed.               

  

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• Congestion:If you are trying to use a connection that is being used by several others in your neighborhood , naturally you end up suffering  to a congested connection. So expected speeds are obviously less!

• Time of Usage:Since you are using a shared connection, naturally there is congestion during the peak hours say from 6 pm in the evening. Therefore the server speed will be naturally slow.

• Throttling: Internet service provider may slow down (or “throttle”) certain types of traffic, such as peer-to-peer traffic.They have a right to this especially when you have exceeded a certain data limit (this is applicable even for unlimited internet plans).

• Server-Side Issues:Sometimes the download speed depends on the server you are downloading from! If the source server has a slow data connection naturally your download speeds will be slower than expected.