> This might be a huge opportunity for Microsoft and WP
On the contrary, they've been trying to penetrate the developing market for some time. In fact, the low-end Lumias are almost uniformly better than Android devices in the same price range.
Apps are an issue, but that brings us to the chicken-egg problem of customers and apps.
> Apps are an issue, but that brings us to the chicken-egg problem of customers and apps.
Apps are not a issue. There are under 1000 must have apps. Pay each company $1M to port it and support it on the platform and you have competitive ecosystem for less than the rounding error of MS revenue.
Probably not even new old-stock iPhones, but actually used ones.
I wonder if e-cycling old high-end devices by refurbishing them and selling them to low-income markets isn't a better choice than ramping up manufacturing on necessarily crappy phones.
I've worked as customer service at one of these budget phone companies before. The batteries are decent — I've had my fair share of battery bloating for certain models, but the battery life is definitely comparable to the bigger brands.
> the battery life is definitely comparable to the bigger brands
Sure, but the budget phone also isn't pushing a quad HD screen and a beefy processor. The runtime may be similar, but that doesn't mean the capacity is.
I did a quick straw poll by looking at some budget Android phones against some flagships and it seems like the budget batteries are about 1000mAh less than the flagships. In a bigger case. So, bulky and low capacity.
> Sure, but the budget phone also isn't pushing a quad HD screen and a beefy processor. The runtime may be similar, but that doesn't mean the capacity is.
You're right.
I'm not sure how much variance LiPo technology has when it comes down to cost vs quality though. We're arguably paying for better battery QC, but I haven't read a news article about someone being injured from a battery exploding in a budget phone.
> it seems like the budget batteries are about 1000mAh less than the flagships
But the flagships I'm aware of have non-removable batteries which is not a fair comparison as swap-ability has pay offs that make up for all the plastic and more robust circuit designs.
Margins in consumer electronics are typically razor thin, particularly when the device in question is a commodity (mid-tier Android phones, for example).
1.2c is obviously unsustainable, as you mention. I wonder if they got blindsided by a price increase on some part.
Sure, but the article says "turn the music down," not "turn the music off." I think it's entirely possible for certain types of music at certain volumes to be conducive to concentration, and vice-versa.
I think your point is too blunt in its cynicism, it's not too useful this way.
Evidence is currency, and so are demagoguery, posturing, campaign money, endorsements, promises, actual political platform, public sentiments, etc. Sadly, evidence does not trump all else. Luckily, even a modest amount of evidence currency can tip the scales of the outcome.
I would like to draw your attention to a media campaign waged in recent month by forces unknown to reduce harshness of the US criminal justice system. It's pretty much every week that I get to read an article about in the New York Times, and they all refer to some sort of research being released, or a small investigation into a particular injustice. Now we get this article from the Wall Street Journal. You know it's on when both the NYT and the WSJ converge on something. The tide is turning rapidly away from "Tough On Crime" to "Measured Response", and this evidence will be a contributing factor in this sea-change.
There's not a lot of black hat activity, but there's plenty of good- to neutral-natured messing about. The "Wall of Sheep" is a great example; if you send something that looks like a username/password on the public wifi, someone will put it up on a big display (though they'll obscure some of the password field) along with the other 'sheep'. Not "black hat" but definitely not the kind of thing you want on a real account.
As for burner clothes, the only thing I've ever heard is to not wear company-branded clothes - wearing an obvious Google t-shirt is a great way to attract attention you may not want.
Speaking of which, I've long wondered how hard it would be to make the wall of sheep display ASCII art or something by letting it sniff bogus credentials....
> 1. it does have the benefit that it's cross-cultural, you can actually talk to people outside your cultural bubble
We already do that.
> 2. it's got the advantage that you're using the same measurements as all your trade partners so people don't need two production lines anymore
Two production lines? For what?
> 3. it's got the advantage that people going into science and engineering don't need to build a whole new set of unit references because they've got the one which already works
Yup, failure to use the metric system in everyday life is why the US has the worst scientists and produces the least scientific output. Oh, wait.
> 4. the "huge expense" is pretty much made out of whole cloth for the purpose of saying you can't switch, the UK's metrication cost basically nothing except for road sign replacements which is why those are still imperial
I agree with this one. It probably wouldn't be terribly expensive to implement, though I would question the priorities of anyone who is really hung up about it (like the grandparent post who started this whole discussion).
> Yup, failure to use the metric system in everyday life is why the US has the worst scientists and produces the least scientific output. Oh, wait.
Failure to use the metric system everywhere cost NASA a $125 million Mars orbiter just 16 years ago, and yet here you are, insisting that this is not a problem, and throwing in a non sequitur to justify the position.
> Failure to use the metric system everywhere cost NASA a $125 million Mars orbiter
No, bureaucratic failure to address the concerns of people who spotted the error well in advance of the launch cost NASA $125M. The investigation report makes that clear, especially when it goes on to make recommendations for avoiding future mishap; nobody recommended that the engineers needed to brush up on their units.
And yet here you are, insisting that the issue was that we didn't switch over to the metric system, and throwing in some unsupported claims to justify the position.
Using metric everywhere would have avoided this particular mistake. Although indeed, the bureaucracy would probably have let some other error slip through (like mistaking cm for mm).
> 1. it does have the benefit that it's cross-cultural, you can actually talk to people outside your cultural bubble
We already do that.
Do you really? Whenever I hear an American telling the temperature of the weather, I have no idea what they mean. I have to guess from the context if it's hot or cold, and even what units they're using because they rarely mention the "Fahrenheit" part.
Conversely, how many Americans would recognize that "35 degrees" is blisteringly hot while "15 degrees" means you'll need a jacket and "40 degrees" could kill you if you don't find shelter quickly?
