4 ms·

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.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - weland 12y ago
        > it's not unreasonable to say that there are parts of California that are one order of magnitude worse than areas of India. OP was talking about Rwanda, not India. 60 minutes per year, as disastrous as it sounds for California, is hardly comparable with the outages of several hours per week they have there. I get it, I get it, California life is hard, but seriously...
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Pacific Corp serves relatively rural northern California (most of their customers are in adjoining states). Infrastructure cost per customer is high there (and a sparse layout creates situations where redundancy doesn't make a lot of sense). Your Indian company is a quasi-government entity (or government influenced entity, I didn't dig into it very far) intended to improve quality of service in the the capital city of the country. Wikipedia says the SAIDI for the U.S. is ~1.5 hours, so NDPL should anyway survive comparison to some more relevant U.S. providers (but I speculate that you have not found an average provider for India).
- 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.

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.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - weland 12y ago
      > it's not unreasonable to say that there are parts of California that are one order of magnitude worse than areas of India. OP was talking about Rwanda, not India. 60 minutes per year, as disastrous as it sounds for California, is hardly comparable with the outages of several hours per week they have there. I get it, I get it, California life is hard, but seriously...
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Pacific Corp serves relatively rural northern California (most of their customers are in adjoining states). Infrastructure cost per customer is high there (and a sparse layout creates situations where redundancy doesn't make a lot of sense). Your Indian company is a quasi-government entity (or government influenced entity, I didn't dig into it very far) intended to improve quality of service in the the capital city of the country. Wikipedia says the SAIDI for the U.S. is ~1.5 hours, so NDPL should anyway survive comparison to some more relevant U.S. providers (but I speculate that you have not found an average provider for India).
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.