Month: December 2014

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All Day Christmas Meditation

Today was All-day-Christmas-meditation day at our Ananda Chennai Center.  My average meditation time is just  about 20 minutes and when I left home to the Center,  I thought I wouldn’t last an hour.  But I meditated for a long time; maybe more than two hours of the five hours that I spent there (could be even more, I didn’t time myself) .

The meditation began at 10 AM and ended at 6 PM with small breaks in between. People can enter and exit during any of the allotted break times.

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What kind of Evil companies are Micromax and Cyanogen?

First, Cyanogen ditched OnePlus right on the eve of their India launch and signed up for an exclusive partnership with Micromax, which was an unpardonable sin.

Now, Micromax has somehow managed to ban OnePlus phones in India because it ships with Cyanogenmod. How crazy is this? It is because of OnePlus that Cyanogen exists in India.

I never had a taste for Micromax phones, but after this I will never buy a Micromax phone. I request all of you to never buy a Micromax phone ever again and never ever flash a Cyanogenmod ROM on your Android phone. This is pure evil.

More can be read here.

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The Best Designed Smartphones

  My love for smartphones began, not with the 2007 iPhone, but actually with the 2011 Samsung Galaxy S2. When people were oohing and aahing over the iPhone 1, I just wasn’t able to see what was so great about it. A flat screened rectangular touch phone with rounded corners was nothing new. The first iPhone that I really liked was the iPhone 4. Now that was a good design. Even then, I didn’t fell in love with it. To me iPhones are like diamond jewellery; I can see the beauty in them, but of what use is a diamond necklace to a man? Can a man wear a diamond necklace just because it’s beautiful? I always loved Android and the fact that Android is Linux (GNU/Linux is my favourite operating system) made me love it even more. That being said, the only Apple made hardware that I like are the macbooks; too bad I don’t like its Mac OS X operating system. Without further ado, let me list my all-time favourite (design-wise) smartphones:

  • Samsung Galaxy S2 (2011): My first love. I was crazy about this phone back then in 2011, and I visited many phone stores just to touch and play with this device. But I thought that 30,000 Rupees was just too much for a phone and I never bought it 😦 . Fast forward to 2014, my enthusiasm for this phone is not the same as before after seeing so many better designed phones. But I will always remember how I drooled at this phone!
  • Samsung Galaxy R (2011): This was a limited edition Galaxy S2 clone that Samsung released in select markets just a few months after S2’s release. It’s specifications were tad lower than S2’s and was priced for about 23,000 Rupees. I thanked Samsung for producing a Galaxy S2 like device for those of us who couldn’t afford the original S2.
  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus (2011): I still love this phone so much. Its front is completely covered with glass, and when it’s powered off, it’s hard to say where the display ends and where the bezel begins. I had this strange feeling of wanting to bite this phone when I first saw it. Till date, this is Samsung’s best designed Android phone.
  • HTC One S (2012)
  • HTC One X (2012): I still use this beauty.

A few better designed phones have been released after 2012, but I don’t love these phones as much as I loved the above mentioned ones. But the following ones are worth mentioning.

  • HTC One M7 (2013)
  • LG Nexus 5 (2013)
  • HTC One M8 (2014)
  • Moto X (2014)

Sadly, Samsung veered away from the Galaxy S2’s design and I stopped liking the Galaxy S series from the Galaxy S3. From what I’ve seen, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus seem to be the best designed iPhones till date, but I still haven’t played with those phones yet to add them to this list. I know that I have not mentioned a single Sony phone in this list; this is because I personally don’t like Sony’s smartphone design and it’s custom UI. There is something about Sony’s smartphone displays that I completely dislike and I don’t really know how to explain it. For comparison, I think,  Samsung’s and HTC’s smartphone (high-end) displays look more bright and vivid. Also, I think that in Sony’s phones, the distance between the inner display and the outer glass is higher when compared to any other smartphones — I don’t really know if this statement is true, but I have been suspecting this for a long time (if you own an iPhone 5s or 6 I am sure you know how the icons seem to float very close to the screen. I am yet to handle the iPhone 6 personally and I can say this just by watching videos on Youtube!). Right now I like the Nexus 6 very much, but it’s just too big for my pocket.

moto x 2014

galaxy nexus

The beautiful Galaxy Nexus! Can someone tell me where the display ends and where the bezel starts?!

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The next iPhone’s processor will also be of Samsung make

 Some people just don’t understand Samsung’s hardware expertise. They think that Samsung’s an unimaginative company that prints out hardware parts in an assembly line just like some paper printing company. Tell you what folks, Samsung’s technological prowess is one of the best in the world. They contribute so much to the world of technology in so many areas like building faster and better RAMs, SSDs, processors, telecommunications, and much more that have become industry standard. They even contribute to the world of Open Source and Linux! Contributing to Linux? I mean which big company does that? Everybody knows that Apple hates Samsung, but even Apple can’t stop themselves from partnering with Samsung. They tried to move away to another Taiwan based company called TSMC, but Samsung’s increasing standards and frequent innovation on the processor manufacturing sector has forced Apple to come back to Samsung. I read about this interesting information on The Verge. I am quoting the entire article below.

When it comes to chips, Apple just can’t quit its Samsung habit

                                                                                                                       -Vlad Savov

Korea’s Electronic Times reports today that Samsung has begun manufacturing Apple’s A9 system-on-chip, the successor to the A8 series powering the iPhone 6 and the latest iPads. Using Samsung’s newest 14nm process, the new chip is said to have entered production yesterday, December 11th, at Samsung’s facility in Austin, Texas. There’s been varying speculation about who will be building the next generation of Apple’s processor after the A8 saw Apple shifting most of its manufacturing orders to Taiwan’s TSMC. Now it appears that Samsung has reclaimed the lion’s share of Apple’s production needs, which is something the Korean company foretold in comments made to the press in October. Dr. Kinam Kim, the president and general manager of Samsung’s semiconductor business, told reporters that the company’s profits “will improve positively” once it begins supplying Apple with chips from its 14nm line.

Samsung was expected to begin production by the end of the year, so the current revelation is simply adhering to the established roadmap, but the company has so far refused to divulge details on when it will start delivering components to Apple. For its part, the iPhone maker is still expected to split its orders between Samsung and TSMC, making sure it’s not wholly reliant on just one supplier, though it looks like the balance for the next-generation chip will swing back in favor of Samsung. As much as Apple has tried to reduce its dependance on its nearest mobile rival, Samsung’s technological prowess appears to be keeping it as a necessary partner.

The above article was taken from the link below:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/12/7381149/when-it-comes-to-chips-apple-just-cant-quit-its-samsung-habit