Xiaomi M2/MI2 review

Where to get one: http://www.ibuygou.com/crazy-discount/

Specifications: http://goo.gl/T6PaQ

How to get one:

The one I got was a 32 GB version of the Xiaomi M2. You can get one here. The offer is for a limited stock but keep watching this space for offer on the device. The website (www.ibuygou.com) accepts PayPal as well as other standard online payment methods. They have various shipping options including DHL, Fedex, EMS and Registered Airmail and Airmail and ship internationally. The cheapest is the Airmail (free). But I recommend at the very least opting for a registered airmail so that you can track the package. I personally changed my shipping to DHL because I couldn’t wait for the device to arrive. The customer care executive was extremely helpful when changing the shipping method.

The device was shipped in a day and arrived within a couple of days once I changed my shipping method to DHL from registered airmail. The packaging was appropriate and there was no damage. The device however, ships with minimal accessories and in-box items. The seller fortunately, added a connector for my country.

Device Hardware:

The Quad core 1.5 GHz device flaunts a 2GB RAM and Adreno 320 GPU. The amazing 342 ppi – 1280x720 4.3 inch screen is supported by a 2000 mAh battery. It has an 8 MP rear camera and 2 MP front facing camera. The only thing I miss in this device is the memory card slot so make sure you opt for a highest possible capacity version you can afford. The phone has all the other standard stuff that smartphone have like GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.

One thing I was concerned about was the battery life. Even though there is an option to buy a battery with 3100 mAh capacity (here); the only downside you need to put on an ugly black color cover instead of the standard one. But to my surprise the battery is powerful enough to last for about 8 hours with heavy usage and a whole day for light users.

The camera on the device is extremely responsive and has a good quality lens. The photos are crisp and have no lag between continuous shots. There is a led illumination available. The front facing camera is decent and enough for video chats. The GPS works as expected. The hardware is powerful enough to play graphics intensive games like Vector. But the hardware does tend to heat up with extensive use on GPU intensive games. The heating is something Xiaomi has to look into.

The call quality is crystal clear but the speak phone volume is limited. The speaker volume for the device is to a lower side in general but not so low that it becomes unusable. The signal quality is decent and does not cut off at poor signal reception places.

Device Software:

The device comes preloaded with MIUI JBLv11 (based on Android 4.1.1). For international users, there is no Google play store. But one can go to the MIUI market app and download it without any hiccups. MIUI is basically an acquired taste but is an excellent shell over the standard Android OS. It comes preloaded with a number of features that provide excellent customization options.

With the 2GB RAM the device runs like butter. Even with around 200 applications installed on my device it still runs very fast and has 1GB of RAM available at all times. MIUI comes with preinstalled task manager, specialized apps like Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, MIUI market, themes, etc. People who miss the Android JellyBean experience can install a custom launcher like GO Launcher EX and get an Android JB theme.

One thing about MIUI that a user can appreciate is there are frequent updates available and if you choose to root the device and install a development build there are weekly updates. The OS still has some quirks that you would notice from time to time on the English version but overall the experience is fulfilling and not incomplete. Some things you have to get used to are Chinese names/characters in names for online library of themes, wallpapers, etc.

There is something called a MiDrive that serves the same purpose as the Apple Cloud service. You can backup many things online along with files you specify and are available at i.xiaomi.com

Overall review:

The Xiaomi M2 is a great phone at a great price. The specifications are amazing and are available at a relatively cheap price. The hardware performance is great and the software is highly customizable. The camera performs well and the battery life supports the superb device. My opinion is if you want something compact at a reasonable rate that fits in your pocket unlike the latest trend of 5 inch phones, this is a great device. The seller has multiple reviews and accepts PayPal so your purchase is protected. The only problem I found was the lack of a memory card slot on the device. My experience using the device has so far been great and I would recommend this to anyone who plans on upgrading to a quad core super powered Android device.

Note:

Screen Shots, Camera Shots and other images available at http://goo.gl/UkoKz .

Sample Video from Xiaomi M2 primary camera at http://goo.gl/LqBv9

Sample Camera Shot:

News Channels and Attention Deficit Disorder

Yes, we live in an information age. Find the remote control for your television set and try to count the number of news channels that you are subscribed to! Amazing isn’t it… for a diverse country like India with so many languages dividing us regionally – the news broadcasters have managed to create a network of news channels covering all the languages and regions. My one question is – do we have some much news worthy of reporting?

One advantage of this is you never miss a news – petty or otherwise; Additionally, regional news seems to have gained a lot over regional newspapers and tend to create bigger fuss over smaller issues! Though all of this is true and seems like progressive step, no matter how infinitesimal, is pushing us to move in the right direction. But then I use my remote control again and surf to ‘Aaj Tak’. Suddenly, I am awakened to a new aspect of the information age – news spicing and bombarding! And make no mistake this is not limited to Aaj Tak but also encompasses apparently reputed news networks like Times Now, IBN 24x7, Headlines Today, etc. Try switching over to your favorite news channel and count the time they spend on one story and the way the limited visual footage they show of the incident. I will bet you this will definitely blow your mind. The whole news story will have no content that cannot be explained in less than 1 min and still goes on for about 10 with at least 2 commercial breaks to show the same reel of a file footage and same readout from the newscaster over and over again. This brings me back to the same question do we have enough news happening around us to be updated with or is the news corporation trying to rewrap and resell the same stuff over and over again. I miss ‘Doordarshan--days’ when boring/interesting was not a measurement for worthy news broadcast – it was the governed by precision and sense of bias.

Another thing worth mentioning is the attention span of human beings i.e you and me! With so much happening around us we have been continuously stuck in a state of overwhelm! It is like the Tata Vista advertisement our eyebrows never seem to return to their God-given state. We have been bombarded with so much information since the beginning of time that we have hardly had any time to process it. We have developed a super power and it is called ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Our environment has stunted our attention spans from few hours to few seconds. Try this out – switch on the TV set with the intention of watching a new channel and hold the remote in your hand; set it to one of the many news channel. Now time yourself for the amount that it takes for you to shift to another channel or just to start channel surfing. You will realize the one thing we are missing from our homo sapiens ancestors is the virtue of patience! We are so easily bored and/or swayed and/or irritated by everything around us that unless it is eye catching and/or shocking- we do not even bat an eyelid. Another good example of small attention spans is this video.

Gone are the days when simple really meant simple and complex was something unexplainable. Today news corporations create their own spindle of yarns to weave their own fabric of truth and reality. Choosing sides is essential part of democracy but biased news is not. I believe in being my own censor and missing out on the ‘san sani khej khabre’ !

I used to think that my use of a smartphone was not smart enough. I did not use enough features to actually make the cut to comment on the ability of a smartphone. I have come to realize, however, I use my smartphone better and more efficiently for extensive number of applications than most techno savvy people do. This was one of the reasns I had convinced myself with when buying a new Apple iPhone 3GS ( - thats the newest one with all the perks). For the most part I liked the iPhone. But after a while I missed being able to multitask  and browse videos from any website other than Youtube and even not being able to  use any other program to sync my smartphone except the shitty and slow itunes. Finally fed up with the inefficiency and incosistency of the device I had to abandon it for the new and upcoming and seemingly very promising Google Nexus One.

Bought it about a week ago. Though it overcomes most of the problems with the iPhone, it fails to deliver where iPhone worked brilliantly. Google Nexus One does a great job of integrating Gmail with the phone but still fails to create an attachment feature for the email system. The screen and the resolution is definately at par with the iPhone but the screen transitions not as smooth. The GUI experince is not smooth at all. Hard to believe its a multitasking phone with no internal memory management. No aplication to reegulate or user control it. Fiortunately a tons of applications are available for it in the Android market. Not necessarily a good thing though. A lot of choice but not enough quality, almos like Google search results! 

The Android market is amknig a lot of buzz in the mobile world and attractinga  lot of people/companies. The problem: you cannot find the original application from the service provider for a service like Dropbox. Try it!

Another problem with the search feature is that application names with common words return hundreds of choices and not the one you are looking for. try searching for the hugely popular where app on Android. I wasted around an hour trying to find it today. Android market needs a clean up crew. Open OS development and free and all is find but it is frustrating when there is no quality control.

What's with the five screens ? I get that people like it but why isn't there an option to shut it off or reduce it to 1 screen to save memory or something! Google cloud thing is fine but I like to manage my phone on my desktop or a laptop. I would prefer to work on a full size computer and manage my smartphone from there. Guess what there is no app for that! No you cannot find apps on a website and have direct link to download it on your phone or your management software on the PC. A one up on iPhone is an excellent contact management in the Nexus One. You can add Facebook, Twitter and Google and Microsoft Exchange contacts easily into the phone. 

Some of things that make me pull my hair and both the smartphones fail to accomplish are the battery life, memory management and the cool looking hand gestures from 'Minority Report' (Of course, I can forgo this one for a while!) But all in all, the technology in smartphones is still not smart enough to reduce my work load. All the devices around me tend to add into my daily routine rather than seamlessly moving into it.

Update post:: The Dropbox official app is now available in the Android market. But a missing multitasking app still needs to be added to Android. Awaiting the 2.2 FroYo update!

World has decided to change its way of thinking. With so much social understanding towards clichéd statements like great ideas are more important than when executed. What actually has lost its meaning in all of this is the right form of judgment. Nothing on its own is too good to survive and usually useless unless planned and implemented to perfection with right objectives in right priorities. Today most of the businesses try to implement a fairly good (not a great one) without a clear perspective of the objectives and goals. The best examples of these are Facebook, and recently Twitter. How do you ever start a business (at least that is what the owners call it) without setting a price model for it? I understand that not all things are about money but it is the single most important thing that drives people today or at the least keeps them able enough to believe in whatever other goals they are trying to pursue. The businesses fail to realize that they may have started a project with the imagination of social benefit but it still has to deal with the world and employ people that live in it. No one’s going to give you a free pass to life just because you care for the environment. I believe a lot of people would disagree here saying why these people shouldn’t get the free pass considering they are doing a social good. This has always been the problems with societies and their spiraling down moral fiber. All of us have to realize that it is a duty to work towards social benefits and not the other way round. Don’t put people on pedestal just because they are doing their jobs instead provide them with the appropriate compensation. Once we start to appreciate people for even the normal things they do or which they are supposed to do societies try to change the standards of merits to standards of duty. And most likely this is how we change a duty based job to a merit for duty based job.

The new internet based startups like Twitter started without a specific plan to make money. Now that venture capitalists have invested millions into the company it still does not know how to make money. Twitter has to come up with ideas to and the newest one is to have a pro user accounts for a fee. How do you not ad support a service that talks about everything and everyone all the time? If you put Google ad sense like text based ads for every 5 posts a person writes, how do you expect to see Twitter make with just the clicks? I presume even if 5% of the people click on the ads it would be a lot considering a 131% increase in March alone in the memberships. Twitter still needs to make sure it has an official Twitter desktop application to run which does not compromise the user’s privacy and makes a profit doing so. A picture based ads display on the same would mean more revenue. Ad supported twittering would also account to a lot of revenue considering all the free users would be asked to choose a subject of choice they would receive ads on every 3 hours or so. How do not make use of a network that is so big and caters to almost all the population of all the psychographics.

My endnote – people hate making successful businesses. What other conclusions do you deduce when people act without a monetary incentive in accordance with their primary goals when you have hundreds of people working for you in a company accomplishing a goal someone else created for them? It is physically impossible to have people from all the economic ranges thinking like the founders or innovators when it’s not yours.

Sitcoms

The best part of a routine life is there is always a new episode waiting for you on the television set. It does not matter how pathetic the in-law drama or the crime solving all mighty multi-(sci-fi)-gadget-ed hero/heroin of the act is. It is what makes a regular-all-alike-daily life adventurous and audacious. No, I do not mean to support or justify the cons and pros of these sitcoms. But it merely provides the lonesome, less outgoing teen or too-tired-to-meet-her-gossip-friend housewife or the 9-to-5 working class metropolitan fatigue feeling cyborg with miniscule of entertainment. Is it really that hard for us all to believe that the people that work the whole day and have been following the same regime for the last few months find it relaxing to watch mindless and unfathomable sitcoms? There was a time I always wanted to know if people are really that childish to watch some in-studio sitcom posing to be a military campus or are they proven to be so much incompatible to distinguish between the funny and unjustifiably torturous mind shirkers or rather have gone completely insane so as to believe in a joint family with no aging members keeping useless secrets and problems to themselves just for the shake of completing thousands of continuous episodes that most of the time do not even follow the chronology of the events such as ‘death’. And I think I found these people aren’t insane or acting dumb or childish. They are simply trying to figure out a reason not to do anything else when you can mindlessly watch a play of words and characters that makes no impact whatsoever. There might be thousands of other explanations and reasons for people watching sitcoms but I prefer to believe that each one even though may provide a personalized rationality for these occurrences, they all are just making a effort to create a space and time block for their brains and/or minds to not work. So I realized this is mere an argumental discussion for the text book based definition for relaxation which eventually may lead to entertainment. Now the ‘relaxation-eventually-leads-to-entertainment’ expression might be too much for many. But over a course of time when your mind feels free of all the clutches that couple it with an over active brain it’s a basic form of relief. This relief is cost effective and refreshing like superior cup of brewing coffee. That leads us to feeling of being entertained rather than being only tranquilized or relaxed. Importantly so, people do not merely prefer their judgment on taste of high quality edutainment but just …do nothing and be peaceful. Another rational explanation I found to be realistically believable is that people tend to watch whatever the idiot box has to offer between their individually independent free time. By that I mean distinguishing the spectators with age, sex and other such differentiating analogies. Housewives and a lot of family men prefer the only free time to saas-bahu sitcoms i.e. 9 to 11 pm slot or the primetime. In fact the husbands fancy watching a decent or indecent English movie for that matter over the crappy sitcoms but they choose not to argue over worse or worst. However, with time, little do family men realize that they’ve been already addicted themselves to saas-bahu sitcoms. Kids are on the bull’s eye for Saturday and Sunday mornings with kiddie stuff which seemingly has changed and transformed to more religious – spiritual stuff. Grandmothers and local dialect fanatics have a mid-afternoon to evening slot that most of the time is a rerun of late primetimes that tend to be sing lullabies to the old ones. Now some channels do not provide preference; these are for the die-hards. The real geeky stuff is on all day, all time. National geographic, the animal planet, the history channel, the discovery channel or CNBC TV18, etc. constitute such demographic. No matter what the reason is, I realized its all with a specific rational argument on the watcher’s part. Steal of the deal is, sitcoms no matter which ones have found a way into our daily lives and are fixated such that they look no different that our routines.

Duel - the movie

Duel – The movie (1971)

Director: Steven Spielberg

My Rating:

Please note: Some parts of the article may ruin the climax /thrill point/ suspense of the movie.

ADVISABLE NOT TO READ FOR WOULD BE SPECTATORS OF THE MOTION PICTURE!

What do you think makes a good movie? I know, hard to predict. But then this is why we believe beyond doubt that ‘movie business is speculative and insecure’. Should you fail, there may not be a second chance imposing a far more complex and vulnerable situation at your disposal. Movie making is one thing that is judged by not one but many evaluators with different tastes and different definitions of entertainment.

However one name emerges in unison with appraisal for his work and its details that he engrosses himself into. He is crafted to be a dream merchant. Magnanimously recognized the world over as ‘Spielberg’! Friday night comes and goes but this name never fades its charm. No doubt we, the generation today, know him through ‘A.I.’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Minority Report’, ‘Catch me if you can’, ‘The Terminal’, ‘The lost world’, etc.

A Plymouth Valiant, a Peterbilt tanker truck, California deserted back roads and anxiety-ridden David Mann (Dennis Weaver) were the only props that bolstered this psychological thriller. A feat no director could/would ever try to pull on their spectators- just one character, almost no dialogues and nothing but two vehicles in a ‘duel’. Unrealistically heart- crunching, nail biting and mysteriously angst are all just words that I can use to describe my experience with the movie. However they’ll mean ‘nada’ unless one retrospects the experience. Maybe I’m incorrigible to my bad taste with movies but this one surely is an exception.

‘Duel’ - a weapon-ed fight between two non-synergetic entities to rule out the possibility of weaker surviving the conclusion. Dennis Weaver has been true to his part. He successfully portrayed an anxiety ridden business person traveling for a meeting. The internal voices of David Mann make sure you aren’t left out the loop in the mystery. A clear idea of David’s mental condition and the reclining grip over his emotions. A Peterbilt tanker truck makes for a perfect villain, with its honking air-horn and unchallenged power. Much more interesting to note during the movie is that the Peterbilt has multiple license plates on its front bumper as if each represented a mark for each of its prey. Such personification gave the movie-goers something to hate, a villain, a tanker truck; Completing the missing part of showing the actual face of the truck driver.

Spielberg admits that he owes his big career to Duel. He has used the tanker truck’s honking air-horn in Jaws. He explains that this is the way he had to thank Duel for being his spring board.