7 ms·

Indian phones are weird

92 points by twapi 10y ago

DS_Store 10y ago
Dees nuts
ysh7 10y ago
Not sure, what was the point of this post.
- sofaofthedamned 10y ago
  Yup, it's bizarre random blog crap.
  - freshyill 10y ago
    You should try doing two seconds of research before making stupid statements like that. The work that Peter-Paul Koch does is actually very valuable for many web developers, and people care about his perspective. But I guess if you're lazy, you can just call it bizarre random blog crap.
- cocotino 10y ago
  To show that Android stock browser/Chrome versions are hell
- lucideer 10y ago
  It's Peter-Paul Koch. He's well known for providing painstakingly detailed tests and compatibility tables on browser capabilities and web standards support, particularly js. I'm not sure what stats are like for users of the specific devices he's looking at here, but India's a big market: I'm guessing browser compatibility here is going to be of some interest to more than one or two folks.
- freshyill 10y ago
  If you find it pointless, then why do you comment on it?
- prof_hobart 10y ago
  I think the problem is that out of the context of the blog, the title makes it sound like it's going to be more interesting to the average reader than it actually is. If you're reading his blog anyway, you'll probably be aware that much of it is about compatibility questions in browsers and wouldn't be surprised that an article on Indian phones is likely to be related to that. Just seeing the headline in isolation, I was (and I suspect you were) expecting much more "weirdness" - odd shapes, strange keyboard choices, obscure OS options etc. That's not a fault of the blog, just a result of seeing a headline outside its context.
_Marak_ 10y ago
Slightly related, one of the worst things about the Indian phones and telcos are the spam advertisements that have subscription opt-ins by default. Essentially, you will get several sms messages a day which if you accidentally hit one of the keys on your phone ( which is actually very easy ), you get billed $1 every week ( think daily fortunes / love poems / etc ). It's very easy to accidentally opt-in to several of these. To opt-out of these advertisements you need to find a hidden number on the telcos website, send an sms message, and wait 10-14 days until the advertisements stop. I have to think that the telcos are taking in millions of dollars every month from these spam ads.
- philovivero 10y ago
  I used one telco provider in Philippines for a while that did something like this, sending lots of SMS spam. I had to threaten cancellation to get it slowed down. In the USA, T-Mobile spammed me like this. Again, very difficult to stop the spam. I think eventually this will be unstoppable, at which point I guess I'll stop using SMS and/or stop using phones. I can't wait 'til the day I'm sitting in a group, and everyone keeps pulling out their phones every 30 seconds to clear another SMS spam, and then call me a luddite when I say I don't have a phone.
  - pkaye 10y ago
    That is strange regarding T-Mobile. I've yet to get any spam from them. The only thing I get is an SMS a few days before billing occurs monthly.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - nononosisisi 10y ago
    It is fairly easy to block a number now.
    - bitJericho 10y ago
blackoil 10y ago
Most Indian company started with no technical capabilities, they bought complete package from Chinese OEMs and handled only marketing, distribution and service. As the grew larger, they added technical teams and have more control on the phone. So possible for Intex, OEMs added Chromium browser since they don't have Google in China, then added Google play services with Chrome, and finally has a marketing deal with Opera to add it as only browser on main screen.
voltagex_ 10y ago
Does anyone know if the Firefox phones are still around / in use in India? I actually had a friend import the Intex Firefox phone (don't remember the name, it's got 128mb of RAM and a dead-end FXOS version). It's utterly painful to use - I hope the situation has gotten better for users there.
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  > Does anyone know if the Firefox phones are still around / in use in India? Since Mozilla stopped developing and selling Firefox OS smartphones a while back, you don't get to see those for sale on major retailers. I still own (and use) one. Agree that it's a bit of a pain. But if you need a phone for making/receiving calls and test messages, it's reasonably good (especially for the price). Not bad if you get a phone for $30 and you're still using it for almost 2 years.
- gopalv 10y ago
  > It's utterly painful to use - I hope the situation has gotten better for users there. I bought the bright orange ZTE Open C fxos phone to try it out. Haven't done much more with it that travel around with it, mostly using it as a primary phone for calls. The battery life is insane on that one - I went about 4-5 days without charging it when I was traveling (barely any calls, mostly standby). The good part was the HERE maps downloaded onto its SDCARD and I could use at least some of the GPS functionality when it is offline. However for the same amount of money I could easily buy a Micromax or Karbonn phone which would have 2 killer apps to use - PayTM and Ola Cabs.
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    > I went about 4-5 days without charging it when I was traveling (barely any calls, mostly standby). To be fair, most Android devices and iPhone would achieve similar battery life if you're not actually using the phone. Apple claims to get 10 days of standby out of an iPhone. I would imagine with 'barely any calls' or using the device you would get somewhere between 5 to 10 days. 5 days doesn't really sound that impressive.
maheart 10y ago
I know that Intex will soon be shipping (currently is shipping?) phones with SailfishOS (Jolla's OS). I've been using SailfishOS for almost two years, and I confidently say that underneath the GUI, it is just a regular GNU/Linux system[1]. Why do I bring this up? Jolla, and the community are developing a more inclusive mobile OS (that has Android app compatibility, and can be ported to Android devices relatively easily using libhyris[2]). I'm hopeful that it will help minimise the hackery described in the article. For example, SailfishOS ships with Gecko engine v31 at the moment (soon to be updated...), QtWebkit, and (soon, after the port to Qt5.6 is complete), QtWebEngine (Chromium). I'm hopeful that more Indian (and Chinese) phone manufacturers can start contracts with Jolla. I'm not aware of any software houses (as opposed to internal) that customise Android for your device. [1] glibc, systemd, BlueZ, Pulseaudio, gstreamer, connman, Telepathy, Python, gcc, Qt, etc. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29
- sreenadh 10y ago
  Which device are you using for your SailfishOS? I am planning to install it on my Nexus 5.
  - maheart 10y ago
    I'm using the first Jolla phone. Note, that if you use the 3rd party port of SailfishOS on your Nexus5, it doesn't come with the Myriad/Alien, Android compatibility layer. The community however has developed and released sfdroid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOU8fa0ZLT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOU8fa0ZLT0
- skykooler 10y ago
  One thing to note there - currently Android compatibility is only available on Jolla phones, not third-party ports, due to their licensing agreement with Myriad. Hopefully, any official releases on third-party phones will be able to include it as well.
  - maheart 10y ago
sundarurfriend 10y ago
Just to give people some context, Indians generally use the usual Samsung/HTC/Moto/Xiaomi/... fare, and the ones reviewed here are _~~made~~ marketed and sold by Indian companies_ but don't have a very high market share here. They're also lower end phones generally used by relatively poor folks - I haven't checked, but all of these are probably <Rs.8000 (~$115) phones. One reason I post this is because I was hoping the article was something about changes made in international brands for Indian context, which might reveal some aspect of Indian telco environment I wasn't aware of. No such luck, just the usual lack of attention to detail by not-paid-enough employees at the phone companies.
- anilgulecha 10y ago
  Phones are not made by indian copanies. Intex and friends source and rebrand from china.

92 points by twapi 10y ago

DS_Store 10y ago

Dees nuts

ysh7 10y ago

Not sure, what was the point of this post.

sofaofthedamned 10y ago
Yup, it's bizarre random blog crap.
- freshyill 10y ago
  You should try doing two seconds of research before making stupid statements like that. The work that Peter-Paul Koch does is actually very valuable for many web developers, and people care about his perspective. But I guess if you're lazy, you can just call it bizarre random blog crap.
cocotino 10y ago
To show that Android stock browser/Chrome versions are hell
lucideer 10y ago
It's Peter-Paul Koch. He's well known for providing painstakingly detailed tests and compatibility tables on browser capabilities and web standards support, particularly js. I'm not sure what stats are like for users of the specific devices he's looking at here, but India's a big market: I'm guessing browser compatibility here is going to be of some interest to more than one or two folks.
freshyill 10y ago
If you find it pointless, then why do you comment on it?
prof_hobart 10y ago
I think the problem is that out of the context of the blog, the title makes it sound like it's going to be more interesting to the average reader than it actually is. If you're reading his blog anyway, you'll probably be aware that much of it is about compatibility questions in browsers and wouldn't be surprised that an article on Indian phones is likely to be related to that. Just seeing the headline in isolation, I was (and I suspect you were) expecting much more "weirdness" - odd shapes, strange keyboard choices, obscure OS options etc. That's not a fault of the blog, just a result of seeing a headline outside its context.

_Marak_ 10y ago

Slightly related, one of the worst things about the Indian phones and telcos are the spam advertisements that have subscription opt-ins by default. Essentially, you will get several sms messages a day which if you accidentally hit one of the keys on your phone ( which is actually very easy ), you get billed $1 every week ( think daily fortunes / love poems / etc ). It's very easy to accidentally opt-in to several of these. To opt-out of these advertisements you need to find a hidden number on the telcos website, send an sms message, and wait 10-14 days until the advertisements stop. I have to think that the telcos are taking in millions of dollars every month from these spam ads.

philovivero 10y ago
I used one telco provider in Philippines for a while that did something like this, sending lots of SMS spam. I had to threaten cancellation to get it slowed down. In the USA, T-Mobile spammed me like this. Again, very difficult to stop the spam. I think eventually this will be unstoppable, at which point I guess I'll stop using SMS and/or stop using phones. I can't wait 'til the day I'm sitting in a group, and everyone keeps pulling out their phones every 30 seconds to clear another SMS spam, and then call me a luddite when I say I don't have a phone.
- pkaye 10y ago
  That is strange regarding T-Mobile. I've yet to get any spam from them. The only thing I get is an SMS a few days before billing occurs monthly.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- nononosisisi 10y ago
  It is fairly easy to block a number now.
  - bitJericho 10y ago

blackoil 10y ago

Most Indian company started with no technical capabilities, they bought complete package from Chinese OEMs and handled only marketing, distribution and service. As the grew larger, they added technical teams and have more control on the phone. So possible for Intex, OEMs added Chromium browser since they don't have Google in China, then added Google play services with Chrome, and finally has a marketing deal with Opera to add it as only browser on main screen.

voltagex_ 10y ago

Does anyone know if the Firefox phones are still around / in use in India? I actually had a friend import the Intex Firefox phone (don't remember the name, it's got 128mb of RAM and a dead-end FXOS version). It's utterly painful to use - I hope the situation has gotten better for users there.

0xmohit 10y ago
> Does anyone know if the Firefox phones are still around / in use in India? Since Mozilla stopped developing and selling Firefox OS smartphones a while back, you don't get to see those for sale on major retailers. I still own (and use) one. Agree that it's a bit of a pain. But if you need a phone for making/receiving calls and test messages, it's reasonably good (especially for the price). Not bad if you get a phone for $30 and you're still using it for almost 2 years.
gopalv 10y ago
> It's utterly painful to use - I hope the situation has gotten better for users there. I bought the bright orange ZTE Open C fxos phone to try it out. Haven't done much more with it that travel around with it, mostly using it as a primary phone for calls. The battery life is insane on that one - I went about 4-5 days without charging it when I was traveling (barely any calls, mostly standby). The good part was the HERE maps downloaded onto its SDCARD and I could use at least some of the GPS functionality when it is offline. However for the same amount of money I could easily buy a Micromax or Karbonn phone which would have 2 killer apps to use - PayTM and Ola Cabs.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  > I went about 4-5 days without charging it when I was traveling (barely any calls, mostly standby). To be fair, most Android devices and iPhone would achieve similar battery life if you're not actually using the phone. Apple claims to get 10 days of standby out of an iPhone. I would imagine with 'barely any calls' or using the device you would get somewhere between 5 to 10 days. 5 days doesn't really sound that impressive.

maheart 10y ago

I know that Intex will soon be shipping (currently is shipping?) phones with SailfishOS (Jolla's OS). I've been using SailfishOS for almost two years, and I confidently say that underneath the GUI, it is just a regular GNU/Linux system[1]. Why do I bring this up? Jolla, and the community are developing a more inclusive mobile OS (that has Android app compatibility, and can be ported to Android devices relatively easily using libhyris[2]). I'm hopeful that it will help minimise the hackery described in the article. For example, SailfishOS ships with Gecko engine v31 at the moment (soon to be updated...), QtWebkit, and (soon, after the port to Qt5.6 is complete), QtWebEngine (Chromium). I'm hopeful that more Indian (and Chinese) phone manufacturers can start contracts with Jolla. I'm not aware of any software houses (as opposed to internal) that customise Android for your device. [1] glibc, systemd, BlueZ, Pulseaudio, gstreamer, connman, Telepathy, Python, gcc, Qt, etc. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29

sreenadh 10y ago
Which device are you using for your SailfishOS? I am planning to install it on my Nexus 5.
- maheart 10y ago
  I'm using the first Jolla phone. Note, that if you use the 3rd party port of SailfishOS on your Nexus5, it doesn't come with the Myriad/Alien, Android compatibility layer. The community however has developed and released sfdroid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOU8fa0ZLT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOU8fa0ZLT0
skykooler 10y ago
One thing to note there - currently Android compatibility is only available on Jolla phones, not third-party ports, due to their licensing agreement with Myriad. Hopefully, any official releases on third-party phones will be able to include it as well.
- maheart 10y ago

sundarurfriend 10y ago

Just to give people some context, Indians generally use the usual Samsung/HTC/Moto/Xiaomi/... fare, and the ones reviewed here are _~~made~~ marketed and sold by Indian companies_ but don't have a very high market share here. They're also lower end phones generally used by relatively poor folks - I haven't checked, but all of these are probably <Rs.8000 (~$115) phones. One reason I post this is because I was hoping the article was something about changes made in international brands for Indian context, which might reveal some aspect of Indian telco environment I wasn't aware of. No such luck, just the usual lack of attention to detail by not-paid-enough employees at the phone companies.

anilgulecha 10y ago
Phones are not made by indian copanies. Intex and friends source and rebrand from china.