6 ms·

The big surprise for me was that they nixed the rear LED flash. Not because anybody would take pictures with that camera, but for a phone made for the developin

The big surprise for me was that they nixed the rear LED flash. Not because anybody would take pictures with that camera, but for a phone made for the developing world not having a "flashlight" is a huge knock against it. Seriously, flashlights are a big selling point even on simple dumb phones here in Rwanda, and I just can't imagine having a phone without it When the power goes out a few times a week, having a source of light on you is a big boon. (and no the screen doesn't count!) Seems like a misstep to me.

levosmetalo 12y ago
What do you mean that flash is needed only in developing world? Is it somehow not needed in developed countries, cause days lasts longer and Sun is shinier?
- humbledrone 12y ago
  Presumably, among other things, the electricity that powers the lights in the developed world is more reliable than in the developing world.
- jmathai 12y ago
  I believe he meant this... > When the power goes out a few times a week I know when I visit my parents in India that candles have a very different purpose than they do here in California.
  - eloisant 12y ago
    Actually California doesn't have the best track record in power reliability!
    - enscr 12y ago
      You are comparing power failure of hours/day vs minutes/year.
    - weland 12y ago
      You have no idea how hard it is to resist posting a snarky comment here. For the love of McCarthy's parentheses, there's at least an order of magnitude of difference in terms of duration between the two!
      - ghshephard 12y ago
        Turns out there is a lot of variability in California, depending on the provider - here are some hard SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration) numbers. California ranges from 60 minutes of outages (SDGE) to 931 minutes of outages (Pacificorp) http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/ElectricSR/Reliability/annualreports/saidi_1998to2008.htm http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/ElectricSR/Reliability/ann... In this slide, http://desismartgrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Towards-Indian-Smart-Grids-.pdf http://desismartgrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Towards-..., for North delhi power limited (NDPL), they improved their SAIDI from 56 to 47 minutes. So, (very ironically) - you are correct - it's not unreasonable to say that there are parts of California that are one order of magnitude worse than areas of India. I realize that's not the point you were trying to make, but I always find it interesting to chase the data and see what it has to say. From a bigger picture, though - California really does have notoriously bad power quality in terms of outages, not even including the rolling blackouts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis) we had back in 2000/2001 (and justified me being allowed to purchase about $500K worth of generators, Diesel Belly tanks, and UPS systems for our server room) On my walk to work, at least once a month in the morning, I hear all of the buildings in Redwood City firing up their generators to do their monthly tests - nobody "relies" on PG&E Power for critical services, they plan for the outages. Just as a comparison - I'm in Singapore right now, and their SAIDI is .53 minutes/year. I've yet to see a generator being tested outside of Critical Facilities like data centers/emergency facilities.
        arjie 12y ago
        Tamil Nadu. Look at Tamil Nadu, one of the most prosperous states. Many areas there have outages longer than they have power. Chennai has shorter scheduled outages but because of the immense shortage of generation, this results in the rest of the state suffering. New Delhi is the capital. The north has less of a shortage, but capitals (like Chennai) are usually more insulated from blackouts anyway so looking at them alone will give you a poor idea. Also, do your figures include planned outages? Many places in TN, India have daily planned outages called load shedding.
  - levosmetalo 12y ago
    So the base feature of phone torches is backup for power blackouts. I always thought it was to be able to just use the phone for a few seconds when the light in the building switch off while you are at the stairs. Or to quickly read some note outside in the not so light place. Using phone LED instead of real battery is really poor bad, since it drains battery very quickly.
    - dlhavema 12y ago
      not to mention most phones have a note that says something along the lines of "extended use will damage your phone" those little LED's will still heat up if they are left on long enough, hopefully they have good thermal management.. when i took apart my S3 this weekend after it took a bath in the toilet there was nothing around the LED for the flash at all in the way of heat syncs...
      - jmathai 12y ago
        What I meant was that power outages in India are much more common; sometimes scheduled. The utility of having a flashlight on you is an order of magnitude higher in places where the electricity goes out on a frequent basis. Even if you only use it to find a candle.
- apetrovic 12y ago
  Grumpy today, huh? Quote: "but for a phone made for the developing world not having a "flashlight" is a huge knock against it". He didn't said that developed countries don't need a flash; he can't understand why phone made for developing countries lacks essential feature.
fpgeek 12y ago
I agree it isn't ideal, but hitting that price point isn't easy. And a Moto E and a flashlight is still quite a bit cheaper than a Moto G, so I understand why they might have made that cut.
- funkyy 12y ago
  You really think that a flashlight adds more than $1-2 to the production cost of a mobile phone? They are doing this to attract more people to their premium models... The key selling point of Nokia 1100 was strongest flashlight on the market and the low price... I bought it for its flashlight phone as working as technician few years back...
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    At the very low end, $1-2 is a lot in terms of the production cost of a mobile phone. I'd wager that's why Nokia dropped it from the 520 as well, since they're at $70 off contract now.
lukasm 12y ago
It's not only for developing world. Everywhere. It's one of 10 top features.
jokoon 12y ago
a led flashlight isn't so expensive. if you could afford $120 for a smartphone, I think there's some room for a flashlight. I admit that led flashlight don't come with a rechargeable battery, but they last long. and a white screen is a good substitute. it's still a $120 device that allows you to go on the internet.
- lmm 12y ago
  > a led flashlight isn't so expensive. if you could afford $120 for a smartphone, I think there's some room for a flashlight. It's not about the price. It's about not having to put an extra thing in your pocket all the time.
  - kamaal 12y ago
    In India, at one point of time Nokia phones sold like hot cakes for just having this one feature. Power cuts are very frequent here. So when there is a power cut in the night and its all dark. All you needed to do was to turn on that flash light in your phone, till you could find a candle. These days UPS have gotten cheaper and you can have a UPS at home for some thing like 17K(High end smart phones are 20K+), which will give decent back up for a ceiling fan and lighting for some hours. But yes, a flash light would be really helpful.
    - batmansbelt 12y ago
      noob question: why is the power always going out? Are the generating stations not making enough electricity, or is the grid in a state of poor repair?
      - JohnTHaller 12y ago
        India's overall infrastructure is pretty shoddy and there have been problems with coal shortages for the past few years. A quick Googling will turn up some good articles in The Economist and India Times about it. Even the US has its own power issues what with major blackouts over the years, rolling blackouts in major areas like California, etc. Heck, we lost all power in our whole neighborhood in NYC for a week during the summer several years ago when the feeder lines all burned out (barely maintained by ConEd for 50 years). And we regularly have explosions of underground transformers that occasionally catch cars on fire. One of the many joys of living in NYC. Still, it's NOTHING compared to what my colleagues deal with in India.
trurl42 12y ago
Turn screen brightness to max and turn all pixels white. Now you have a flashlight.
- petepete 12y ago
  That's a mode on Smart Tools' torch https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.aboy.tools https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.aboy.tools
- jonah 12y ago
  For some definition of flashlight. I use the LED on my phone for a flashlight several times a week and a white screen just doesn't cut it. * Your hike took a bit longer than expected and now you're coming back down the trail after dusk. * There's a rustling noise in the bushes, is it a raccoon or a burgler? etc.
  - philjohn 12y ago
    This. I used mine on a long run into the mountains last year on holiday, left super early (5am) before the sun rose and it got unbearably hot. No lights on the dirt path we were running along so the iPhone flash worked a treat.
- rbonvall 12y ago
  For the 2010 earthquake (which was at 3:30 AM) electicity went off in the whole city and I didn't have a flashlight handy in the room I was living in. The only luminous thing I had handy was my cell phone screen, and no, it doesn't help very much in complete darkness in a room scattered with debris and fallen-down furniture. I'd rather have had a flashlight.
enscr 12y ago
Flashlights on mobile phones are like the 'Leatherman' of the underprivileged. I've seen almost every technician / handyman put it to good use to illuminate a dark nook of your home while doing his job.
dpweb 12y ago
"power goes out a few times a week".. I'm going to think about this today as I reflect upon my own #firstworldproblems
- wubbfindel 12y ago
  When my sister-in-law spent three months in Tanzania it was pretty much guaranteed that that power would go out every day. They spent more time without power than with it.
- monochr 12y ago
  "First world" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I think that reinforces his point. That crisis involved only a small number of blackouts (four periods of 1-2 days of blackouts over the course of a year, according to that page), and this was still considered bad enough to make headlines and be labeled a "crisis".
    - enscr 12y ago
      The difference is, third world countries have these 'crisis' on a daily basis and it's a part of life. That's not a real crisis anymore for them.
adolfojp 12y ago
I think that they're just following Nokia's lead. Nokia released the Lumia 520 without a LED flash and it has been their best seller, especially in emerging markets. The big difference, however, is that the Lumia costs half as much as the new Motorola.
- enscr 12y ago
  > Lumia costs half as much as the new Motorola You are mixing carrier subsidy. Price is in the same ballpark. > big difference, however Lumia 520 is far behind in features. It has single SIM, no Gorilla glass, smaller screen, smaller battery, half the RAM (although double internal storage)
  - adolfojp 12y ago
    The Lumia 520 costs $70 in the USA without a carrier subsidy and without a contract. I know this because I own one and because I just checked a few online retailers to see if they had increased the price. And for that price difference the differences in features become irrelevant, especially when you take into account the surprisingly good build quality of the device and the fact that WP runs very well on low spec devices.
    - sandyarmstrong 12y ago
      The AT&T version is actually $59 [0]. I think the advantage the 520 has going for it is that MS and WP app developers have realized that the vast majority of WP users are on 512MB devices like the 520. So, MS has committed to excellent support. Even these low-end WP8 devices are getting the 8.1 update, and it runs really well on them. MS has every reason to support these devices throughout the complete WP8.x lifecycle. And MS is heavily pushing for developers to make sure their apps work there. This was a huge focus at the recent MS Build conference. Contrast this with the Moto E, which is only promised "at least one update" to another version of Android. My original Nexus 7 became quite sluggish after a couple of OS updates. Of course, I'd rather own an Android phone than a WP phone, and app availability is just a totally different ballpark. But for a "basic" smartphone, given the price, performance, and support, I think the 520 might win for a ton of users. [0] http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/No-Contract-Nokia-Lumia-520-for-AT-T-+-Free-Case/productID.300181200 http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/No-Contr...

levosmetalo 12y ago

What do you mean that flash is needed only in developing world? Is it somehow not needed in developed countries, cause days lasts longer and Sun is shinier?

humbledrone 12y ago
Presumably, among other things, the electricity that powers the lights in the developed world is more reliable than in the developing world.
jmathai 12y ago
I believe he meant this... > When the power goes out a few times a week I know when I visit my parents in India that candles have a very different purpose than they do here in California.
- eloisant 12y ago
  Actually California doesn't have the best track record in power reliability!
  - enscr 12y ago
    You are comparing power failure of hours/day vs minutes/year.
  - weland 12y ago
    You have no idea how hard it is to resist posting a snarky comment here. For the love of McCarthy's parentheses, there's at least an order of magnitude of difference in terms of duration between the two!
    - ghshephard 12y ago
      Turns out there is a lot of variability in California, depending on the provider - here are some hard SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration) numbers. California ranges from 60 minutes of outages (SDGE) to 931 minutes of outages (Pacificorp) http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/ElectricSR/Reliability/annualreports/saidi_1998to2008.htm http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/ElectricSR/Reliability/ann... In this slide, http://desismartgrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Towards-Indian-Smart-Grids-.pdf http://desismartgrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Towards-..., for North delhi power limited (NDPL), they improved their SAIDI from 56 to 47 minutes. So, (very ironically) - you are correct - it's not unreasonable to say that there are parts of California that are one order of magnitude worse than areas of India. I realize that's not the point you were trying to make, but I always find it interesting to chase the data and see what it has to say. From a bigger picture, though - California really does have notoriously bad power quality in terms of outages, not even including the rolling blackouts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis) we had back in 2000/2001 (and justified me being allowed to purchase about $500K worth of generators, Diesel Belly tanks, and UPS systems for our server room) On my walk to work, at least once a month in the morning, I hear all of the buildings in Redwood City firing up their generators to do their monthly tests - nobody "relies" on PG&E Power for critical services, they plan for the outages. Just as a comparison - I'm in Singapore right now, and their SAIDI is .53 minutes/year. I've yet to see a generator being tested outside of Critical Facilities like data centers/emergency facilities.
      - arjie 12y ago
        Tamil Nadu. Look at Tamil Nadu, one of the most prosperous states. Many areas there have outages longer than they have power. Chennai has shorter scheduled outages but because of the immense shortage of generation, this results in the rest of the state suffering. New Delhi is the capital. The north has less of a shortage, but capitals (like Chennai) are usually more insulated from blackouts anyway so looking at them alone will give you a poor idea. Also, do your figures include planned outages? Many places in TN, India have daily planned outages called load shedding.
- levosmetalo 12y ago
  So the base feature of phone torches is backup for power blackouts. I always thought it was to be able to just use the phone for a few seconds when the light in the building switch off while you are at the stairs. Or to quickly read some note outside in the not so light place. Using phone LED instead of real battery is really poor bad, since it drains battery very quickly.
  - dlhavema 12y ago
    not to mention most phones have a note that says something along the lines of "extended use will damage your phone" those little LED's will still heat up if they are left on long enough, hopefully they have good thermal management.. when i took apart my S3 this weekend after it took a bath in the toilet there was nothing around the LED for the flash at all in the way of heat syncs...
    - jmathai 12y ago
      What I meant was that power outages in India are much more common; sometimes scheduled. The utility of having a flashlight on you is an order of magnitude higher in places where the electricity goes out on a frequent basis. Even if you only use it to find a candle.
apetrovic 12y ago
Grumpy today, huh? Quote: "but for a phone made for the developing world not having a "flashlight" is a huge knock against it". He didn't said that developed countries don't need a flash; he can't understand why phone made for developing countries lacks essential feature.

fpgeek 12y ago

I agree it isn't ideal, but hitting that price point isn't easy. And a Moto E and a flashlight is still quite a bit cheaper than a Moto G, so I understand why they might have made that cut.

funkyy 12y ago
You really think that a flashlight adds more than $1-2 to the production cost of a mobile phone? They are doing this to attract more people to their premium models... The key selling point of Nokia 1100 was strongest flashlight on the market and the low price... I bought it for its flashlight phone as working as technician few years back...
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  At the very low end, $1-2 is a lot in terms of the production cost of a mobile phone. I'd wager that's why Nokia dropped it from the 520 as well, since they're at $70 off contract now.

lukasm 12y ago

It's not only for developing world. Everywhere. It's one of 10 top features.

jokoon 12y ago

a led flashlight isn't so expensive. if you could afford $120 for a smartphone, I think there's some room for a flashlight. I admit that led flashlight don't come with a rechargeable battery, but they last long. and a white screen is a good substitute. it's still a $120 device that allows you to go on the internet.

lmm 12y ago
> a led flashlight isn't so expensive. if you could afford $120 for a smartphone, I think there's some room for a flashlight. It's not about the price. It's about not having to put an extra thing in your pocket all the time.
- kamaal 12y ago
  In India, at one point of time Nokia phones sold like hot cakes for just having this one feature. Power cuts are very frequent here. So when there is a power cut in the night and its all dark. All you needed to do was to turn on that flash light in your phone, till you could find a candle. These days UPS have gotten cheaper and you can have a UPS at home for some thing like 17K(High end smart phones are 20K+), which will give decent back up for a ceiling fan and lighting for some hours. But yes, a flash light would be really helpful.
  - batmansbelt 12y ago
    noob question: why is the power always going out? Are the generating stations not making enough electricity, or is the grid in a state of poor repair?
    - JohnTHaller 12y ago
      India's overall infrastructure is pretty shoddy and there have been problems with coal shortages for the past few years. A quick Googling will turn up some good articles in The Economist and India Times about it. Even the US has its own power issues what with major blackouts over the years, rolling blackouts in major areas like California, etc. Heck, we lost all power in our whole neighborhood in NYC for a week during the summer several years ago when the feeder lines all burned out (barely maintained by ConEd for 50 years). And we regularly have explosions of underground transformers that occasionally catch cars on fire. One of the many joys of living in NYC. Still, it's NOTHING compared to what my colleagues deal with in India.

trurl42 12y ago

Turn screen brightness to max and turn all pixels white. Now you have a flashlight.

petepete 12y ago
That's a mode on Smart Tools' torch https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.aboy.tools https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.aboy.tools
jonah 12y ago
For some definition of flashlight. I use the LED on my phone for a flashlight several times a week and a white screen just doesn't cut it. * Your hike took a bit longer than expected and now you're coming back down the trail after dusk. * There's a rustling noise in the bushes, is it a raccoon or a burgler? etc.
- philjohn 12y ago
  This. I used mine on a long run into the mountains last year on holiday, left super early (5am) before the sun rose and it got unbearably hot. No lights on the dirt path we were running along so the iPhone flash worked a treat.
rbonvall 12y ago
For the 2010 earthquake (which was at 3:30 AM) electicity went off in the whole city and I didn't have a flashlight handy in the room I was living in. The only luminous thing I had handy was my cell phone screen, and no, it doesn't help very much in complete darkness in a room scattered with debris and fallen-down furniture. I'd rather have had a flashlight.

enscr 12y ago

Flashlights on mobile phones are like the 'Leatherman' of the underprivileged. I've seen almost every technician / handyman put it to good use to illuminate a dark nook of your home while doing his job.

dpweb 12y ago

"power goes out a few times a week".. I'm going to think about this today as I reflect upon my own #firstworldproblems

wubbfindel 12y ago
When my sister-in-law spent three months in Tanzania it was pretty much guaranteed that that power would go out every day. They spent more time without power than with it.
monochr 12y ago
"First world" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
- mikeash 12y ago
  I think that reinforces his point. That crisis involved only a small number of blackouts (four periods of 1-2 days of blackouts over the course of a year, according to that page), and this was still considered bad enough to make headlines and be labeled a "crisis".
  - enscr 12y ago
    The difference is, third world countries have these 'crisis' on a daily basis and it's a part of life. That's not a real crisis anymore for them.

adolfojp 12y ago

I think that they're just following Nokia's lead. Nokia released the Lumia 520 without a LED flash and it has been their best seller, especially in emerging markets. The big difference, however, is that the Lumia costs half as much as the new Motorola.

enscr 12y ago
> Lumia costs half as much as the new Motorola You are mixing carrier subsidy. Price is in the same ballpark. > big difference, however Lumia 520 is far behind in features. It has single SIM, no Gorilla glass, smaller screen, smaller battery, half the RAM (although double internal storage)
- adolfojp 12y ago
  The Lumia 520 costs $70 in the USA without a carrier subsidy and without a contract. I know this because I own one and because I just checked a few online retailers to see if they had increased the price. And for that price difference the differences in features become irrelevant, especially when you take into account the surprisingly good build quality of the device and the fact that WP runs very well on low spec devices.
  - sandyarmstrong 12y ago
    The AT&T version is actually $59 [0]. I think the advantage the 520 has going for it is that MS and WP app developers have realized that the vast majority of WP users are on 512MB devices like the 520. So, MS has committed to excellent support. Even these low-end WP8 devices are getting the 8.1 update, and it runs really well on them. MS has every reason to support these devices throughout the complete WP8.x lifecycle. And MS is heavily pushing for developers to make sure their apps work there. This was a huge focus at the recent MS Build conference. Contrast this with the Moto E, which is only promised "at least one update" to another version of Android. My original Nexus 7 became quite sluggish after a couple of OS updates. Of course, I'd rather own an Android phone than a WP phone, and app availability is just a totally different ballpark. But for a "basic" smartphone, given the price, performance, and support, I think the 520 might win for a ton of users. [0] http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/No-Contract-Nokia-Lumia-520-for-AT-T-+-Free-Case/productID.300181200 http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/No-Contr...