Another phase of my life (which explains the prolonged absence) and a new phase in bogging.
It’s going to be good to get back to the routine I once had.To talk about things that I am passionate about and to be able to do what I like to do best – opine.
It’s exciting to live in these times.
Expect more entries as we move ahead.
Its colorful and chaotic. It almost immerses an observer with its noise, the range of issues and opinions. It can be overwhelming, euphoric and depressingly morbid at th same time. Yet, regardless of the categorization, it is, with all its flaws, is a thriving democracy. Many a western observer is astounded at the level of electoral involvement – Indian elections very regularly have 70% of the electorate participating. As a logistical exercise, national elections in India are unmatched anywhere in the world – by last count 740 million eligible voters in a country as vast and diverse as India. Overwhelming scarcely even begins to describe it.
The flaws are out sized as well. Billions of dollars siphoned off in scams ranging from Fodder to Telecom in a country where 35% of the population lives at or below sub-Saharan subsistence levels – India now has the dubious distinction of being the top country in the world in terms of money stashed away in Swiss banks. Political parties are often run as dynastic organizations with multiple generations of the same family providing all the “leadership” it is allowed. Transparency and accountability, though vastly improved in recent years due to a strident media and activist judiciary, is still unacceptably low by standards of developed countries. Corruption is rife – not just at governmental levels but in all walks of life. A combination of abysmally low levels of enforcement and an increasingly cynical attitude towards the law makes ordinary Indians having to deal with corruption at every step of life that is grinding and demeaning and self-reinforcing.
The issues facing the nation are grave as well – Environment sustainability for a nation of 1.2 billion (and increasingly affluent) people is perhaps the most critical. There’s the issue of ensuring that India’s growth actually percolates down to its young population. Public education and healthcare is pretty much a joke and needs to be addressed urgently. Especially, elementary public education that has so shamefully been ignored by our founding fathers and the politicians of different stripes that have followed. It is an issue of immense importance primarily because India’s population is young – and without a strong framework of education, India stands the risk of losing out of the much-touted demographic dividend.
The known issues continue to be issues – though there certainly have been some improvements. Infrastructure, for the most part, (and grand projects notwithstanding) is a major hindrance to continued economic development. More basic food commodities are actually lost in storage than is distributed to the poor. It is heartbreaking to read that wheat is rotting in warehouses due to inadequate facilities in a country where the percentage of malnutritioned children equals that of Chad and Ethiopia.
Electricity and water are scarce and in the case of water, getting alarmingly scarcer. India needs a coherent energy policy focused on alternative energies to supply its increasingly voracious demand. It is difficult to convince a majority of the population to live without electricity when they see ostensible signs of (sometimes crass) prosperity and wealth. And this is just scratching the surface.
But the color of India’s democracy shows itself in the drama involving a yoga guru being evicted from a “hunger strike” to protest against corruption (after allegedly, he had struck a deal with the government to call it off in two days – the same government he was protesting against).
Its not all gloomy, however. Paradoxical as India is, the same inefficient democracy gives India its biggest strengths. A country as diverse as India – religiously,linguistically, culturally is largely peaceful because of the outlet that the democratic system provides. The national identity of a country like India is, by definition, extremely complex. Yet, it is the democracy that allows for the biggest collective human exercise on the face of the planet to decide their future – the national elections – which, according to the blogger, is a critical binder of the nation.
Development and reforms seems chaotic and often frustratingly slow – because of the consensus that needs to be built. However, that same slow pace allows for the development to be much more bottoms up (and thereby, much more sustainable). As an aside, from a macroeconomic basis, the blogger believes, the relatively slow pace has prevented India from falling into a trap of a producer focused export oriented economy with little domestic demand and services. India today, though a much smaller economy compared to China, does not suffer from the same macro-economic risks that China is increasingly encountering (which will be addressed in another post soon). It has thriving domestic demand ( as a percentage of its GDP) and an increasingly innovation based private sector. The same balanced growth (along with other factors like a history of immigration of its educated, English speaking elite) has allowed it to build a tremendous amount of soft power unmatched by any country of the emerging economies.
Democracy aside – India’s problems are not intractable. India has abundant solar, hydro and wind power to build a sustainable energy policy. A concerted national policy on water conservation can lead to water be diverted from a water surplus areas to the areas having a water deficit. There seems to be a realization that India’s growth loses at least 1%-2% annually due to inefficient infrastructure and resources – and efforts are being made in the direction.
Most of all perhaps, India has tremendous human capital and the collective unleashing of a billion dreams 50 years after independence. And that creates a national incentive for the political parties, planners and thought leaders to change.
Baba Ramdev was kicked out of the capital for many reasons, some of which were not very democratic. But this blogger believes, that Baba Ramdev or not, the national outrage about the incident is precisely the kind of collective demand that will move the policy makers and ultimately, reduce India’s corruption and lead to India solving its other looming and existing challenges.
As has been a sort of a tradition of this blog, I try and post reviews of gadgets and things I buy – but I tend to wait – till I have used the object of review for a while before I write the review. There are a lot of reviews online – most of which are posted within hours (if not before) of a gadget being released. Absolved of any pressures of ensuring readership or hits, I extensively use the gadget in question like most of my readers would before I post a review.
Anyways, today, I am going to review the recently released Sprint Nexus S. As most of my regular readers know, I am a long-time Sprint customer and admirer of the company. Nothing appeals to me more than a large organization, having gone through tough times, making a strong, concerted effort to turn it around. I have also been a long time BlackBerry user – with 2 Sprint BlackBerries – my corporate phone – the 9650 and my personal – the 9630. While I maintain that the BlackBerry is still probably the best communication device on the market – the reality is that its getting long in the tooth in terms of its User Experience and multimedia capabilities.
For a long time, I was pining for a new phone and I refused to move to AT&T or Verizon to get an iPhone. So, after deliberating for a long time, I decided to get a Sprint Nexus S – because it was 4G enabled (even though there is no Wimax coverage where I live), had reasonably updated hardware (1Ghz processor, 16GB internal memory, 4 inch 480×800 pixels Super AMOLED display etc.). For a more complete list of specifications, click here.
So let’s get started.
Look and Feel: This is obviously a subjective measure – but for me, the phone was perfect. While some may not like the glossy, all plastic body, I found the Nexus S remarkably well built. There is no play or creak in the body, the parts extremely well machined and it all fits together very snugly. Does the construction compare to the benchmark for all scores – the iPhone – the answer is no. But the phone compares extremely favorably to all other non iPhones I have seen and held. And yes, being all plastic allows the phone to be remarkably light – which, day to day is a great advantage. I have had the phone for about 3 weeks now – and I have traveled extensively with it in my pocket. While its a finger print magnet (due to the glossy plastic), there are no scratches either on the screen or the body (I keep the phone without a case).
Also, the Nexus S has a unique curved design – the phone almost contours to your face when you hold it next to your ear. I didn’t think it mattered that much when I bought it – but having used it for a while now – I just absolutely love it. I think all phones need to have this profile – it is much, much more natural to hold and use.
Hardware / Screen: In simple terms, the screen on the Nexus S is gorgeous. Coming from a BlackBerry, it makes the experience even more dramatic. The AMOLED screen has fantastic blacks, contrasting whites and brilliant colors in the middle. It doesn’t exactly wash out in direct sunlight (though the contrast definitely reduces) and the 4″ screen, to me, is the absolute perfect size. It looks great when using the inbuilt Google Navigation or any of the myriad applications available on the Android Marketplace. The hardware is unbelievably fast – even though the Nexus S doesn’t necessarily come with the latest dual core processors (or the latest Tegra processor). I am not sure whether if its the “pure Google” OS on the Nexus S – but the phone is unbelievably fast and responsive. Much more responsive than any iPhone 4 than I have played around with.
OS / Gingerbread: To be honest, I haven’t been an Android afficianado. So while I have read about Andoid’s advances though each release, I haven’t necessarily experienced them personally to comment on them. I will say though – that coming from the BlackBerry OS – Andoid seems like a mixed bag. RIM prides itself in putting out an absolute no-frills OS that does what “needs to get done”. By “needs to get done”, it refers to the unique needs of business customers of being able to read emails, access calendars and make calls with minimal fuss. And yes, the BlackBerry OS does all those things really well. Android on the other hand, does each of those things – but it takes a little getting used to. For e.g. – you cant type letters on the Android keyboard – expecting it to pick up names from your contact list (which would seem the most intuitive way to get it done.). Instead, calling a contact requires a 4 step process – a) Click the phone icon b) Click on the contacts tab c) Type name of contact d) Tap on the little green phone icon to dial. On the email side, I don’t understand the need to have separate inboxes for Gmail and “Other emails”. Why not have one Messages box with all emails from all email accounts you choose to configure. Also, BlackBerry push email is lightening fast. I invariably get emails faster on my BlackBerry than my Nexus S. However, reading emails on the Nexus S is a much better experience compared to my underpowered BlackBerry (which tends to get stuck on image intensive emails due to its puny hardware specs). On other areas, Gingerbread smokes any other mobile OS I have ever used. Apps are fluid and fast. Youtube integration is just beautiful.
Phone: We are reviewing a phone after all. Like I mentioned before, I came from the BlackBerry which for all its flaws, is stellar as a phone. The Nexus S has certainly not disappointed me in this area. One critical phone feature that I always use is the speaker phone - which, to me, is absolutely critical feature of a good phone. The only difference I see between the BlackBerry and the Nexus S phone would be the volume and clarity of the cell phone. The BlackBerry speakerphone is significantly louder and just a little bit more clear than the Nexus S speakerphone. However, the phone functionality on the Nexus S is clear and the speakerphone – while not of Blackberry pedigree – is still excellent. Probably the best I have seen in a non-Blackberry device in my experience.
Android Marketplace and Apps: This is probably the most critical area for any modern mobile operating system. I was extremely skeptical before I jumped on the Android bandwagon – especially having extensively used the Apple Apps Store on my iPod, iPad and my multiple macbooks. While I am not an avid gamer and haven’t downloaded a ton of apps – every app I use on the iOS platform is available on the Android platform – including Pandora, Evernote, Facebook, Twitter etc. I can’t really comment on the quality of the games vis-a-vis the ones available on the iOS platform – but given the maturity of other applications I have seen on the Android platform and more importantly the level of handset hardware evolution (which, in my opinion, much further ahead of the the Apple iPhone platform as of now), there doesn’t seem to be a reason why the gaming experience cannot be better than that on iOS.
Sprint coverage and 4G: Sprint’s 3G coverage has been absolutely fantastic (as expected). The sound quality during calls have been crystal clear, I have yet to have dropped call during my travels all over the east coast and the mid-west over the last 2 weeks. Sprint’s 4G Wimax network (via Clearwire) however is another story. The coverage is weak at best in Central New Jersey and the Washington DC area. While in published covered areas, there is adequate coverage in the open, in-building coverage is another story. As an example, I can have coverage in one hotel room at the Westin at Reston Heights (which is literally 5 blocks away from Sprint’s corporate offices) – I won’t have any coverage in another. 4G speeds are great when coverage does exist – but the coverage is sketchy at best.
Battery Life: Again, coming from the BlackBerry, I have high standards on battery life and with the Nexus S, I have been reasonably surprised. While not as good as my BlackBerry, the Nexus S battery life has been pleasantly surprised. My Nexus S lasts me all day (with moderate usage) which is perfectly acceptable for a high drain smartphone. No worries here, especially compared to other phones in its class.
Overall thoughts: I have had the Sprint Nexus S for about 3 weeks. There are few things I don’t have buyers’ remorse with – but let me re-iterate, this is absolutely the best overall phone I have owned as a wireless subscriber over the past 11 years. I highly recommend it. And I highly recommend Sprint’s service and plans to go with it.
We finally won the world up after a gap of 23 years. It was an amazing feeling watching Dhoni hit the last six, almost imperiously to seal the win. With it came the usual fawning over the team. And the realization that had we lost, the whole country would have been ready to kill these poor guys – whose average age is 26 – if you count out Tendulkar.
Cricket has always been a big unifier in this big and diverse country of ours. It brings together people together across the class, socio-economic, regional, cultural and religious hierarchies. And the celebration was a microcosm of that. The picture you see above says it all – a Sikh, a Muslim, a Hindu lifting the idol of India on their shoulders.
World Cup championship aside, India continues to be a mind-bafflingly complicated country. Two weeks after national celebrations after India won the world cup, Anna Hazare, that venerable Gandhian that, those of us who grew up in India, have heard about peripherally in the context of different social movements, went on a hunger strike to death to protest against the all-pervasive corruption in our country. The government (all all governments are, now a days), fearful of a fierce public backlash relented to let non-politicians lead the committee for finally institutionalizing the anti-corruption Lokpal bill.
It amazes me how India works sometimes. There are moments of pure idealism, symbolized by the nation-wide euphoric celebrations on India winning the World Cup and the extreme cynicism that predated the agrement between Anna Hazare and the government comprised of mostly corrupt career politicians.
But the diversity of reactions exemplifies the diversity of this grand country of ours. It is really a circus, like Times of India says in its latest commercial. But its beautiful in its chaos. Eventually, like it always has, it works. And its infinitely more desirable than a contrived order of a country like China.
You cant really look and judge India through the logical western prism. ( Churchill, that racist and condescending Brit – who is now looked as some kind of saint for being anti-Nazi – as if he had a choice – tried. And he was unbelievably wrong.). India, really is an idea. A beautiful idea. A billion people of all stripes, cultures and religions. Living (mostly) peacefully in the largely democratic circus the world has ever seen. (my favorite quote: The difference between the Indian and American democracies – In India, the poor actually vote). India is a beautiful idea – because its been invaded over and over again throughout its existence. Yet, it remains, a country that is hugely diverse and tolerant. It is surrounded by countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh – and yet, India remains like it always has been.
Cricket (and the celebrations) are just a manifestation. India, remains, magical.
Since I am a little bit of a geek, I always get a bunch of queries from my friends and acquaintances on a number of technology related questions. Lately, with the release of the iPad 2, I have been getting a lot of questions from people around whether to buy a great (but rather expensive) tablet or the Macbook Air.
Today, I got a call at 9 am from someone in a line for an iPad 2 at a Target (lines, even now?) and I decided enough was enough. I had to write a post about it.
So, dear reader, if you are having an iPad vs. Macbook Air conundrum, here is the lowdown:
First off, the products are inherently different. They run different operating systems and are meant for different things. But I am assuming, that’s not a concern with people who are contemplating an iPad vs. the Macbook Air. I think most people who ask this question are concerned about portability and usability for actual functionality.
Let me say it upfront – all things considered, the Macbook Air is a fully functional (and surprisingly, pretty high powered) laptop. The Macbook Air is fantastically engineered – it has a wonderful display, a great keyboard, unbelievable battery life and is so light that really, no words can do justice. You really need to make a trip to an Apple Store to test it.
The iPad is also a great product – but its a tablet. And it too, it is surprisingly functional. It will replace a vast majority of tasks that you normally use your laptop for (browsing, blogging, emails, etc.) and do it better than a laptop. Personally, I find browsing on the iPad much more visceral because of the touch functionality compared to the laptop. And absolutely fantastic apps like Zite and Flipboard are transforming the iPad experience. It has a gorgeous screen, a very usable keyboard and has some seriously productivity apps (like Pages).
However, it is not a laptop. And if you want to use the iPad for anything more than casual usage, you’ll miss a physical keyboard. And a robust operating system. (Pages, for e.g. on the iPad does not have a folder based file system to categorize your documents).
If you have a laptop and are looking for an instantly on device for casual and some light productivity usage, the iPad is a good choice. Else, get the Macbook Air. If you consider that you can get an 11 inch Macbook Air for a thousand bucks, it seems like a great deal. I would argue that the Macbook Air is just as portable with an iPad (with a cover). And it really is a fully functional laptop – perhaps better because it does have instant on/off capabilities, a significantly bigger screen and a top quality keyboard and touchpad.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is a fantastic device – if it is used as a tablet – but as things stand, it is not a laptop replacement. However, the Macbook Air, can definitely replace your primary laptop. (unless you are a graphics designer or use your laptop that needs a ton of CPU / GPU power).
Update: Isn’t it amazing that you write a blog post and then you stumble across an article on exactly the same topic. I stumbled across one here. It does seem to have some more information – but comes to the same conclusion as this blogger. Click here to read.
Back when I started blogging in 2006, I had a choice – WordPress vs. TypePad.
And I chose WordPress only because it was free. And, I have always felt that I gave up those classy templates in the bargain. Which was probably true back then – TypePad had much more evolved templates for those of us who just loved to write and not spend a lot of time customizing templates.
But back then, $14.95 a month was a lot of money to put into a part-time hobby I was just discovering. So I stayed with WordPress. In retrospect, it was the best decision I made.
WordPress has changed since then. It has added a ton of free templates, even more if you are willing to pay. There are new formatting options that didn’t exist back in 2006. And recently, just by chance, I noticed that accessing a WordPress blog on the iPad opens up an entirely new interface. Its very Flipboard like – with swipe options and all. It has great options to taking your blog to your own customized domain – much more intuitive compared to Blogspot – which is the other place I blog.
So looking back, I think it was the best decision. WordPress has evolved into a really robust platform with great blogging clients (especially the one for the iPad has improved drastically over the last few months).
Keep up the good work WordPress.
A good day today. India beat the Aussies in the World Cup, kicking them out in the process from the tournament. Good day indeed.
I am not the type that has very strong views about a sporting team – but something in the Australian Cricket team inspires venomous feelings. Years of watching them sledge rather gentle Indian cricketers, the Sydney cricket test match – which the Aussies won, but in the process lost all remnants of respect that a lot of people had for arguably the most talented Cricket team in the world (at that time). It went beyond just Cricket. Every time I think of the Aussies, I think of the Australian Tennis team which refused to play in India due to “security concerns”. Of Australian athletes breaking and stealing things from the Commonwealth games in New Delhi. ( that would sort of make sense – they probably had never seen such facilities in any previous iteration of the commonwealth games).
You get the gist. The Aussies dont elicit a warm, fuzzy feeling. And I am glad they lost today. India was a better team. And the Australians were pretty mediocre.
Away from sports and the kangaroos, back to my other topic of interest. Telecom, technology and gadgetry.
Am back to using the WordPress iPad app to see if it has improved after the two updates over the last month or so. The most basic issues around ensuring accurate wrapping of text and alignment with the keyboard seem to have been resolved.
It’s still not the most user friendly, but at least there’s an option. There doesn’t seem to be any formatting text ( like bolding or italicizing text and such). But overall, with limitations, it seems to be working better than the past.
I have always maintained that good blogging clients seem to be one area that needs some attention from app developers – there’s some mediocre ones that I use (Blogpress, WordPress etc.), but none fully take advantage of iPad’s user experience capabilities.
The last few weeks have been pretty unbelievable, even by standards of today. iPad 2 was released. It’s still not available to everyone who wants it – the demand is just too high. On a sad note, the Japanese earthquake, the Tsunami and the nuclear crisis has taken a huge toll. Latest estimates are around 17000 people killed. Plus now the nuclear reactor 3 is spewing steam. It’s just unbelievable, the extent of devastation.
Plus now there is Libya that is going insane. Obama is being criticized by both the Left and the Right. ( it’s sort of funny, any man taking a stance on anything seems to be criticized in America).
And then back to the technology front (while not as important as the issues of Libya and Japan), has important implications for gear heads like you and I. Sprint became the first carrier to give up control to Google – soon, Sprint customers will be able to use their Sprint # to access every feature of Google Voice.
And then we learnt Sunday evening – the shocker of the week – ATT is buying T-Mobile to create the biggest wireless behemoth in the US. It still needs FCC approval – but something tells mr, that ATT will be Way to get away with it with some rural spectrum compromises.
We shall find out, soon enough.
For those of us who follow the wireless industry closely and are associated with it – its sometimes amazing to see the level of disinformation that pervades in the populace about a few things wireless.
Myth Example: AT&T’s network woes are because of the huge amounts of data it carries. Reality: Its really the inadequate backhaul and 3G network buildout. AT&T is actually third in the US in the sheer volume of data carried. After Verizon Wireless and Sprint.
Myth Example 2 (and the reason for this post): GSM is a far superior technology to CDMA. Because of SIM cards, global ubiquity and per AT&T – the ability to talk and browse at the same time.
Well, I have been meaning to write an article for a long time about this topic. However, that requires just too much time and patience. Luckily I happened to stumble upon this excellent article on this topic on Android Helpers.
Reposting here for convenience. An excellent and informative read.
Just because something is more widely adopted, doesn’t mean it’s better. Asian countries use CDMA, and they are the best of the best when it comes to all things cellular/mobile. Also, want to know the real reason GSM became the world standard? In Europe, various governments decided that they (the Europeans) had designed the ultimate digital cellular system, and they passed laws making it illegal to deploy anything except GSM, whose primary supporters/suppliers were Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens and Alcatel.
Let’s expand upon this.
The original cell phones were analog, using fairly straightforward FM for voice communication. When your phone was in a call, it was granted a frequency by the cell and used it exclusively for the entire duration of the call. FM encoding is extremely inefficient in use of bandwidth, and spectrum was scarce and expensive, and it rapidly became clear that FM wasn’t able to handle the traffic which was expected and which was really needed to make cellular telephony a profitable business. One obvious approach was to use digital communications, and to take advantage of advances in microprocessor and digital IC technology to compress the voice traffic going both directions, and thus you saw deployment of the first Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) digital systems. What they do is to take a single channel and timeshare it among several phones, who digitize and compress their voice traffic and transceive it during their timeslice. With IS-136, a 30 KHz channel which had carried only one voice call with AMPS could now carry three digitized calls.
GSM went further than that, and abandoned the old channel size entirely. It allocated 200 KHz channels and divided them into 8 slices, giving each phone somewhat less than 25 KHz effective bandwidth. (There are some losses due to time guardbands and protocol overhead.)
GSM also included a very powerful set of features above that, and included some interesting features not directly associated with the RF link, such as a personality module which contained a customer’s phone number and billing information that could be moved to another phone any time the customer wished to. (That particular featured turned out to be a decidedly mixed blessing. While that ability was very convenient for legitimate customers, it was also a magnet for thieves and frauds.)
GSM was clearly superior to IS-136 or such abortions as IDEN (a Motorola design which never became an industry standard because Moto was never willing to license it, which meant that systems which adopted it could only get infrastructure and handsets from Motorola).
In the computer industry we talk about the “ISO seven layer model”, where the process of communication is modularized and each layer uses the one below it without worrying how the lower layer actually works. TCP works whether the physical layer is 802.11b or ethernet or something else entirely, and TCP itself doesn’t change based on that. TCP uses IP, and IP uses the datalink layer, and the problems of the physical layer are dealt with by the datalink layer. But if the physical layer is a 56 KBaud modem, then there are things which won’t be possible, which might be possible with 100 megabit ethernet. No amount of work at higher levels can compensate for the fundamental superiority of ethernet over a telephone modem.
Cell phone protocols do the same kind of thing. There’s an RF layer and protocols above that, some of which can be very high level and quite abstract, such as the one which controls sending of text messages. However, the change from analog to TDMA was a change at the RF layer. CDMA was yet another approach to the RF layer, which was radically different again. (IS-95 is a specification for a complete protocol stack which includes CDMA as its RF layer.)
In fact, CDMA was so revolutionary that when it was first discussed, many thought it couldn’t be made to work. Indeed, at least one European company deeply involved with GSM, Ericsson, went through the three classic stages of Not Invented Here syndrome:
1. It’s impossible.
2. It’s infeasible.
3. Actually, we thought of it first.In IS-95 CDMA, a single carrier frequency has a bandwidth of 1.2288 MHz, and up to 40 cell phones in a given sector can all be transmitting chips at that rate on the same carrier frequency, which seemed on first examination to assume that it was possible to send fifty million bits through a one-and-a-quarter MHz band, which would indeed violate Shannon. The mistake they made was that chips aren’t “information” based on Shannon’s definition, and though those phones were sending chips that fast, they were actually sending bits (real data) at no more than 14,400 bits per second each. (I’ll try not to get too bogged down in technical details here, but to some extent it’s unavoidable.)
Unfortunately, Qualcomm did a field test in New York City where several prototype phones mounted in vans were able to operate at once on the same frequency talking to multiple cells all of which also operated on the same frequency.
The next argument was that though it seemed technically possible, it would be too expensive. Everyone knew that the electronics required to make CDMA work was a lot more complicated than what TDMA used, and Ericsson’s loud voices claimed that it could never be reduced in price enough to make it competitive. And shortly thereafter Qualcomm proved that wrong, too, by beginning to produce both infrastructure and phones at very competitive prices. (Qualcomm did this to bootstrap the industry. It’s no longer in either business.)
After which Ericsson suddenly decided that it had applicable patents and took Qualcomm to court. Over the long drawn out process of litigation, every single preliminary court judgment went in favor of Qualcomm, and it became obvious that Ericsson didn’t have a case and that Qualcomm wasn’t going to be intimidated. Ultimately, the entire case was settled in a massive omnibus agreement where Ericsson became the last of the large companies in the industry to license Qualcomm’s patents (on the same royalty terms as everyone else) while taking a large money-losing division off Qualcomm’s hands and assuming all the liabilities associated with it, and granting Qualcomm a full license for GSM technology. The industry consensus was that this represented a full scale surrender by Ericsson.
Nokia wasn’t anything like as foolish and had licensed several years before. (Just in passing, the fools at Ericsson are in the front office. Their engineers are as good as anyone else’s.)
Still, in the years of apparent chaos in the US, when loud voices in Europe proclaimed the clear advantage of a single continental standard, order began to appear out of the chaos here. Small companies using the same standards set up roaming agreements, and then started merging into larger companies, which merged into yet larger ones. One company (Sprint) started from scratch to build nationwide coverage. Bell Atlantic Mobile acquired GTE Mobile (who had been a joint partner in PrimeCo), and eventually merged with Airtouch to form Verizon, all of which was based on IS-95 CDMA, mostly on 800 MHz. Sprint eventually implemented a reasonable nationwide system also based on CDMA. The last major nationwide system to form was Cingular, after the various GSM carriers in the US realized they were in big trouble competing against Verizon and Sprint and AT&T (which uses IS-136).
Once the existence and commercial feasibility of CDMA were established beyond doubt, other aspects of it began to become clear. At the RF layer, CDMA was obviously drastically superior to any kind of TDMA. For one thing, in any cellular system which had three or more cells, CDMA could carry far more traffic within a given allocation of spectrum than any form of TDMA. (Depending on the physical circumstances, it’s usually three times as much but it can be as much as five times.) For another, CDMA was designed from the very beginning to dynamically allocate spectrum.
In TDMA, a given phone in a given voice call is allocated a certain fixed amount of bandwidth whether it needs it or not. In IS-136 that’s a bit less than 10 KHz, in GSM it’s somewhat less than 25 KHz. (Going each direction; the total is twice that.) But humans don’t use bandwidth that way; when you’re talking, I’m mostly listening. So your 25 KHz channel to me is carrying your voice, and my 25 KHz channel to you is carrying the sound of me listening to you silently.
In CDMA, the amount of bandwidth that a given phone uses changes 50 times per second, and can vary over a scale of 8:1. When I’m silent, I’m only use 1/8th of the peak bandwidth I use when I’m talking. (But I don’t actually send full rate most of the time even when I’m speaking.) That’s very useful for voice but it’s essential for data which tends to be extremely bursty, and CDMA was born able to do this. It’s always had that capability. It’s also always had the ability for different phones to be given different overall allocations of bandwidth, because the initial standard included both 8K and 13K codecs (which respectively use 9600 baud and 14,400 baud). So when higher data rates were desired, it was possible to augment the cell and create new cell phones which could transmit 56 kilobits per second using the same frequency as existing handsets.
When GSM wanted to do that (send data at a rate faster than the existing voice channel supported), they ended up having to allocate an entirely new carrier just for that job, which handled nothing except data, and to deploy entirely new infrastructure for it. The resulting system is called GPRS, and in many ways it turned out to be very unsatisfactory for the operating companies because it’s really expensive to deploy and because it cuts down on the bandwidth they have available for voice. A given chunk of spectrum must be permanently assigned to one or the other; it can’t be reallocated dynamically. Data and voice in CDMA, on the other hand, both use the same carrier and bandwidth is reallocated between the two 50 times per second automatically, and you can implement high speed data without having to install new transmitters in all the cells.
With the push to greater and greater data rates, everyone recognized that a new generation of cellular equipment would be needed, the legendary 3G.
And for the reasons given above, and several others, it was equally clear that it had to use a CDMA air interface. GSM was the very best propeller-driven fighter money could buy, but CDMA was a jet engine, and ultimately TDMA could not compete. The fundamental weakness of TDMA at the RF layer could not be compensated for at any layer higher than that, no matter how well designed it was. GSM/TDMA was a dead end, and to create 3G, Europe’s electronics companies were going to have to swallow their pride and admit that Qualcomm had been right all along.
This article in the Economist (old, but relevant) says that it’s not going well. When Qualcomm and its partners designed a new 3G system with new capabilities, they were able to make it backward compatible with IS-95. The new standard is called CDMA 2000, and a CDMA2K handset can work with IS-95 infrastructure, and an IS-95 handset can work with CDMA2K infrastructure, and CDMA2K cells can sit next to IS-95 cells and use the same frequencies. Thus existing operating companies using IS-95 can upgrade incrementally replacing individual cells as budget allows and selling new handsets without having to wholesale replace all existing ones at once. Most important of all, it means that you can take an existing system using an existing spectrum license, and phase it over without acquiring any new spectrum.
None of that is true for GSM. CDMA and TDMA are fundamentally incompatible and there’s no way to create a new system (which they’re calling WCDMA) which can support existing TDMA handsets. It’s technically impossible for the new standard to be backward compatible. Worse is that there’s no easy way to phase existing spectrum over. In practice, when WCDMA appears, existing GSM systems will have to install it all, issue new handsets to all customers, and then one day throw a switch — or, what they did, is license new spectrum for WCDMA while continuing to run GSM on the existing spectrum for legacy customers.
Couple of other keynotes? Dropped calls on att? Ring a bell? Wouldn’t have happened on sprint/vzw. Want to know why? Cdma towers have about 3x the call capacity per tower vs gsm towers. That’s a lot… also, with cdma, your call is routed to two three towers that are in range, if one tower drops off, (I.e. driving or on a train) the other towers seamlessly pick it up and your good to go. With gsm, your call only gets routed to one tower at a time, thus making tower handoff much more difficult to say the least. Especially when your on the fringe of two or more towers with equal or fluctuating signal. Dropped call city!
Also the better data management with cdma allows for clearer calls, more reliability, and as mentioned, more capacity.
Those things add up to be a much better option than gsm. Gsm does have a few pro’s, but are far outwieghed by the con’s, vs it’s cdma counterpart. And what most people don’t know, is gsm now uses wcdma(a cdma varient) for their 3g networks. That is why gsm can do voice + data, because it is receiving two signals instead of one.
Someone recently asked me about my experiences with the iPad, especially now that I now have an enterprise iPad (from the firm), in addition to my personal tablet.
I have made my feelings pretty clear about my evolving relationship with the iPad – my initial apprehension about the iPad being little more than a shiny toy and then the evolution of my usage as I began to discover new apps that let me do things better than I imagined it would at the outset. I have blogged about this often and I admit, I was wrong when I opined initially that the iPad was nothing but an oversized iPhone.
What really caused the transformation in my usage and productivity gains on the iPad was the evolving landscape of apps. So the next question that was presented to me was – what was the most useful application I had downloaded. Note: the question was about the most useful, not the most fun or glitzy.
I have used a number of apps ever since I started using the iPad. It’s difficult to pick one single candidate as the “most” useful app – but a few candidates came to mind. My top applications for usefulness would be:
However, if I had to pick one app that I use everyday, am constantly amazed at the features that it has and one that makes my iPad go beyond just a flashy toy – it would be Pages.
Pages is a fantastic, beautiful, well designed and surprisingly full featured word processor. I use it everyday to compose documents, write articles, take notrs during meetings, compose blog posts and read documents that are emailed to me from work. It is the one app that started the transformation of the iPad being a device that I would keep on the coffee table and use occasionally for browsing to the device that I carry with me to work everyday (and take to meetings to scribe notes).
I don’t have the other iWork modules – Keynote and Numbers. Given my experience with Pages, it may not be long before I splurge the $20 required to get the other two modules. I would absolutely recommend Pages for anyone who owns the iPad and wants to use it as something more than an email / browsing device.
