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February 18, 2015

Why it’s not cool to copy tweets

If you have been following me on Twitter for a while, you’d know I have a habit of spotting copied tweets and then promptly tweeting the link to them along with the original tweet. Finding the original tweet can be tricky sometimes, but I do it anyway because people should know what the tweet was copied from. freemake video converter

Every time I do it, I have someone chastising me for it; as if I’m the one doing something wrong. And that is the whole problem; people don’t think copying tweets is a big deal. And this isn’t just the people who copy tweets but even others, who normally wouldn’t do so but somehow still find it odd when someone else points out that a tweet was copied. And that’s because despite all the time they spend on Twitter, they don’t think tweets are important.

But here’s the thing, tweets are important. People have made their careers from tweeting. Some ended up writing books based off their tweets. That one guy had a TV show based on his dad tweets. There are comedians who got popular because of their Twitter accounts. Take Rob Delaney, for example. Sure, he’s popular out in the real world but he’s an enormous celebrity on Twitter. I’m sure his career as a standup comedian must have received quite a boost because people read his tweets on Twitter. And there are a whole bunch of other people who became popular due to their Twitter accounts alone. Read more

February 16, 2015

Samsung S24D390 Review

I recently purchased a new monitor, the Samsung S24D390, which replaced my previous Samsung 2233SW. The S24D390 is not a particularly well known monitor, but after digging around a bit I found out that it is a reasonably good monitor for the price and considering that I had a good experience with my previous Samsung monitor, I had a fair amount of faith in Samsung to consider it a second time.

The S24D390 is a 24-inch, 1920×1080 resolution 60Hz PLS monitor with an LED backlight. It is priced at ₹13,500 MRP, but I managed to get it for ₹10,800.

As you can tell from the pricing, it is a budget monitor and as such does not come with any bells and whistles. There really aren’t too many features here; Samsung is particularly stingy with them when it comes to monitors, and as such the S24D390 does not even have basic features such as tilt, swivel, or rotation adjustment, and the only thing you can adjust is the vertical angle. The connectivity is also sparse, with only an extremely outdated VGA and a single HDMI port making an appearance on the back. Thankfully, there is an audio out connection as well, for connecting headphones or speakers. There are no USB ports, speakers, or webcam on this monitor. Heck, there isn’t even a VESA mount on the back for wall mounting. Read more

January 14, 2015

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review

I have been promising a Note 4 review for a long time now so I thought I should finally sit down and publish it. This was originally supposed to be a video review but due to certain circumstances that could not happen (the circumstances being that I am an exceptionally lazy person). I may still do a video review some time in the future but don’t hold your breath for it. For now, here is a long-ass text review instead.

The Galaxy Note series has been around for three years now. The original Galaxy Note was launched back in 2011 and was nothing more than a big Galaxy S II. Pretty much everyone back then said that the phone was too big, myself included, and we were right; the original Note was an enormous device and especially so back in 2011 when phones used to actually fit in your hand. However, that didn’t stop the Note from being a monumental success and creating an entirely new category of smartphones: the catastrophically named ‘phablet’.

Since then Samsung has been launching one new Note device every year. The Note II was actually a bit narrower than the original phone, dumping the 1280×800 resolution 16:10 display for a lower resolution but narrower 1280×720 display that made it easier to hold. It also discarded the moderately attractive design of the original Note for the Galaxy S III inspired curved glossy nonsense that Samsung was so fond of back in 2011-2012.

The Note 3 thankfully went back to the original squarish design but had this weird faux-leather stitching on the back and ribbed (for your displeasure) sides meant to look like a notebook. But while the designs had their ups and downs, the rest of the specifications were consistently the best that Samsung had to offer that year. The Note 3 in particular was quite a beast, being the first smartphone ever to have 3GB RAM and 4K video recording, which we kinda take for granted in high-end phones today.

Spec-wise, the tradition continues with this year’s Note 4 (well, technically last year now). But there are also some serious improvements going on with the design that we haven’t seen before. It seems then that Samsung has done more than just turn all the dials to eleven and actually paid attention to what the device looks and feels like this year. Let’s take a closer look. Read more

December 22, 2014

Best phones of 2014

2014 was a good year for phones but it was a particularly good year for phones in India. Not only did we see a lot of good high-end phones, but for the first time there were a lot of great phones launched in the lower end of the price spectrum, which is terrific, as that is still where most of the phones sold in India come from. Then there were also a lot of good mid-range phones and as usual, some excellent high-end ones. But some of them stood out from the crowd and managed to impress me the most from everything else that came out this year. So here is my list of the best phones of 2014. Read more

December 5, 2014

Display calibration in phones, and why it matters

A few years ago I wouldn’t be having this conversation. Back then, it simply didn’t matter. I mean it did, but not in the way it does now. But we have reached a point where simply having a feature is not enough, the degree to which it is executed is also important. How many pixels does the camera have, how many speakers are there, how many bands does the LTE support, how many pixels are there on the screen, and now, how accurately does it display the colors.

Color calibration is a process of adjusting the various parameters of the display, such as the saturation, gamma, contrast, sharpness, gamut, luminance, temperature, etc., using a colorimeter to ensure the display output matches the input signal as closely as possible. A perfectly calibrated display will output the exact same color values as the input signal.

In practice, it is difficult to get a perfectly calibrated display. The color output of a display depends upon a few factors, mostly the quality and the type of the panel used. A cheaper TN panel, for example, won’t have the color accuracy and gamut of an expensive IPS panel. Within IPS panels you will find various types and quality levels.

With rising competitions, manufacturers are forced to up their game on every front, which means not only do they now have to pack in an obscene number of pixels on screen but they have to ensure that the color accuracy is good enough.

However, while some manufacturers do carefully calibrate their displays, others either don’t bother or purposefully mess it up. Read more