Is the snapdragon 810 going to be a real headache for the flagship devices?

When samsung told the public that they decided to change the processor in their latest flagship from snapdragon 810 to an exynos chip due to overheating issues most people thought that samsung was just finding a reason to use their own chip in their flagship devices because it gives them more profit. And then I think executives from LG publicly reported that the chip performance is satisfactory and that there isn’t any overheating issue with the snapdragon. and this strengthened the argument against samsung.

But all that time I was thinking whether samsung would really do that. I mean samsung is in a really desperate situation now, their sales has been going down and the profits have come down by almost 60% in 1 year. Samsung was so desperate that they were ready to give up the removable battery and micro sd card features in their latest device to release a device with a better design. Something which many people considered as an awesome feature in the galaxy series phones. Also Qualcomm’s previous snapdragon SoCs were really good that the consumers expected every flagship to come out with a snapdragon chip. So I don’t think samsung was in a position to drop the snapdragon chip just to use their own chip in their flagship device.

The issues of the 810 became very clear when the LG G Flex 2 was released. Most people who reviewed the device said it was a really slow device. Pocketnow even said the system was really slow because when ever it did something the thermal kicked in and brought the performance down. Also recent reports shows that the new htc flagship, the htc one m9 heats up to 55 degree Celsius when it runs GFXBench. That’s really crazy. We wont be able to hold the phone comfortably at that temperature.

This is a really big problem because if the overheating is due to some hardware issues rather than software then I don’t think there is anything that can be done. Because all they can do now is release a new revision of chip which doesn’t have these issues. But I am not sure wether Qualcomm will be able to come out with a new version in such a short period of time. Also I really don’t think it’s a software issue because android lollipop has been out for more than half a year now and companies like samsung, htc, LG and even google had more than enough time to correct the issues if it was related to the software. So I strongly believe that this is a hardware issue which all these companies tried to control but they all failed.

So to conclude all the devices which use this snapdragon chip will have the overheating issue which means that they are all going to perform poorly because of the thermal kicking in. Also now its not possible for companies like htc and LG to drop the 810 chip and switch to a different one. So now it feels that for the first time we are going to have a number of flagships devices with poor performance and this will hurt the sales of these devices. And I think Samsung kind of avoided such a really bad situation by making a really bold decision which many people didn’t like. I really feel that a company like Qualcomm should have been more responsible and careful while designing such a chip or they should have at-least made sure that the final version of the chip was released only after all these issues were solved.

Why i think tizen will never be a major operating system

Tizen is a mobile operating system from Samsung which they believe will be the replacement to the android operating system that they are using right now. Samsung is doing this to reduce their dependence on Google and to differentiate themselves from other OEMs.

Differentiating themselves from other OEMs is very important in the android field because of every single manufacturer is using the same vanilla android then the only thing that can compel people to buy a device from Samsung will be just their hardware and we all know that Samsung doesn’t make the best hardware. This is the reason why every company producing an android phone had some form of custom version of Android installed in their devices even though  it irritates android lovers like me to the core. In addition to this Samsung had to work under a lot of restrictions since google has control over android and they want the users to have a more unified experience across devices. Also I believe that  Samsung had to pay some licensing free to google.

So to solve these issues Samsung came up with the idea of developing their own os. With tizen they can design the system the way they want and include all their stupid features that nobody usually uses and at the sane time they can optimize the os for their hardware  so that it will run smoother in low-end devices and will perform better in high-end devices as well. Also it solves the issue of Android fragmentation which means Samsung can push updates to the consumers much faster.

So all these seems good for Samsung but the real question is “will Samsung be able to bring developers on board so that consumers will have all their applications available to them”. And unless that happens nobody will be willing to buy tizen phones no matter how better it performs compared to android. Well in my opinion i don’t think this is going to happen, at-least not in the near future. IOS and android are the 2 major operating systems that dominate the market right now and because of that developers prefer developing apps only for these 2 platforms. Even windows which you can say is kind of popular faces the issue of lack of applications. Sometime these platforms may have applications but they may not get update very often and they certainly wont be as good as the IOS or android apps. So now samsung is trying to bring a new os into this already saturated market. And i strongly believe that there is no place for a fourth OS in this area. Samsung maybe able to get major apps like Facebook, whatsapp etc on their platform but i don’t think they will be able to get a variety of other applications which comes from other small developers just because they really can’t afford to support a 4th platform just for a small percentage of people.

And without the presence of good application an OS cannot be successful in the current scenario. Maybe Samsung will be able to satisfy the consumers of low-end devices by provide them with a

small set of core application but i don’t think the people who are looking for high-end flagship devices will ever be satisfied with such a platform. Also right now Samsung is using tizen only in their low-end devices and usually only a small portion of the total revenue of the developers come from these low-end devices and hence these developers don’t have a good reason to support tizen at least as of now. Samsung can start supporting these developers by giving them some incentives at least in the initial phase of tizen development but im not sure how helpful that strategy is going to be.

I think even Samsung has realised this issue with tizen and that is why they still depend on android for most of their devices. Samsung may still try to bring out new devices which run tizen but I strongly believe that these devices are either going to be restricted to low-end market or gradually Samsung is going to drop the idea of tizen.

Why i think the apple watch is going to be a failure

Apple announced this week that apple watch, the latest addition to their gadget family will be available for purchase from April 24. Many people have already predicted that it is not going to be a huge success because apple wasn’t able to come up with a really good use case for the watch and because its battery life sucks. These are in-fact really that can prevent people from buying the apple watch. And most people have been saying that the prize of the apple watch edition is crazy high and that nobody is gonna buy it. But i feel that the biggest issue of the apple watch is high price of the stainless steel edition.

I know everyone is going to say “you do realise that the apple watch edition costs at-least 10 times more than the stainless steel variant”.  Well i do realise but the thing is the apple watch edition is not targeted at usual users like us. It is targeted at the 1% of the society who can actually afford to upgrade something like that every year. Apple made that clear even during its presentation by saying that the apple watch edition will be made available in select apple stores (not all apple stores). They want the apple watch edition to be something that people considers as a symbol of their status, something that only a few people can get their hands on.

But the other 2 versions : the aluminium and the stainless steel is targeted at the normal iPhone users or atleast thats what i think. And you can’t expect someone to buy an accessory that is worth $1100 when their phone costs just $700-$800. I do realise that the stainless steel variant starts from $550 most people would have to spend something in the range of 700 -800 dollars (the straps look much better than the ones that you get for 550 or 600 dollars). And the watch is just an accessory. Its not a stand alone device, it can only work when paired with an iPhone.  Also its not an accessory that does what the iPhone can’t. It just makes it easier to check our notifications. So now we have a situation where a simple accessory that shows your mobile notification costs more or at least as much as your iPhone. THATS CRAZY!!!.

I understand that apple always wanted to be a premium brand and thats how they always priced their iPhones (if you don’t consider the $200 contract pricing). But there were other high end phones which costs almost as much as the iPhone like samsung S6, note 4, htc one m9 etc. So if you are looking for a flagship phone then the iPhones are just 50 – 100 dollars more costlier than other devices. And that difference is ok for most people. But most high end android wear watches cost only $300 or $400. So now we are talking about a 400 to a 600 dollar difference in price. That is too much for a normal iPhone user even if he really wants an apple watch.

The smart-watch industry is not such a big profit making industry even now because people find it unreasonable to spend $300 on a gadget that just makes it easier for them to check their notifications. I think the entire industry sold only less a couple million devices last year. And into that market apple is trying push a product that does the same things as the existing devices at double the price. Well that is going to drive away customers who are even looking for a smart watch (that small portion of people who are willing to spend 300 – 400 dollars on smart watch). Otherwise these people will have to be go for the 350$ apple watch sport, which i don’t think is going to be appealing for everyone. Apple’s situation is going to be worse when google comes out iOS support for android wear.

So to conclude what I feel is that apple totally failed to interest new people into their new gadget or to smart watches in general and they priced the device so high that even people who are interested in smart watches are not going to buy this product. There maybe people who love apple products that are going to buy this watch just because apple made it. But i don’t think anyone who asks themselves the question “is this device really worth it” at-least once before they make a decision, is going to buy this product.