Book Review: Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I like this book for its comprehensive historical coverage and convincing explanation on how the United States has become what it is today (writing this in December 2018).

In the 20th century, the USA had been a beacon (or as Mike Pence puts it, a "lodestar") for humankind. It led in industry, science, arts (particularly books and movies), freedom of speech etc. It was generous to others, helping war-torn countries rebuild themselves, helping lift up the poor from poverty, helping the weak to stand up against bullies.

So it was really strange that with all the things going for it, the country started becoming more and more "stupider". It was simply bewildering that the USA voted in a huckster such as Donald Trump, who together with his Republican supporters, start dismantling all that is good about the USA, and install in its stead all that is bad as the law of the land.

It is very possible that it is the constitution of the USA that allows these shenanigans to propagate and perpetuate, leading into developments such as Fox News (the true definition of fake news), NRA, climate deniers, science deniers (particularly evolution deniers), hypocritical religiosity, the 1%, political correctness gone berserk, an apathetic public that don't vote, irrationality, racist bigotry, etc.

In a democracy, voters must choose between alternatives. We expect voters to use rationality to base their decisions. However, there must be an agreed common ground of facts to determine the truth of a matter. In Fantasyland, this common ground does not exist. While the Democrats can use reality to determine the facts, the Republicans are using lies and claiming them as facts. And the population is complicit with allowing the Republicans, and supporting them, to run the entire country on this bodyhood of lies.

Actions have consequences, but if the populace do not punish evil doers for their actions, then no improvements can be made. When society prioritises an individual's rights over that of the society's, we get weird situations where gun-owners have more rights than gun-victims, unborn fetuses have more rights than mothers, the ultra-rich minority get a disproportionate share of the country's wealth than the majority non-rich, fairy tales are taught as science while real-science (evolution) is stricken off the syllabus.

Obviously, many tomes have already been said and written about the demise of American civil society, particularly after Trump was elected by the voters (okay, the electoral college) system. Kurt Andersen's book is just another one on that list. Unfortunately, in today's America, the book will only appeal to the Democrats and the left, and not to the Republicans and the right as they have their own "truths" based on a foundation of fairy tales and lies.


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The Xiaomi Amazfit BIP

I was showing my friend my Amazfit BIP tracker watch which I had received back in March this year (2018). My friend commented that I did not write about it on my blog. I told him that I had not been blogging about my stuff for the past 2 years because it just isn't necessary. Performing a simple Google search on the Amazfit BIP will lead to hundreds of posts and YouTube videos about the Amazfit BIP covering the device in more detail than I possibly can.

However, I have decided that I will do a post about this in case someone find my experience with it useful.

Why the Amazfit BIP?

I had been wearing the Mi Band 2 tracker since October 2016. Prior to that, I used an Omron pedometer that I bought back in 2008:

The Mi Band 2 tracker was cheap (I bought it for S$40 from Lazada Singapore), and was so much better than the Omron pedometer. The Omron pedometer measured only the steps taken. The Mi Band 2 measured that and also the pulse rate, which was used to provide a simple sleep monitor. What's more, the Mi Band 2 can be paired via Bluetooth to my Xiaomi Note 4 smartphone, and will vibrate on my wrist when I received SMS messages or incoming calls. This vibration alert was very useful because the Xiaomi Note 4 vibration is very weak. I sometimes cannot feel the phone vibrating even though the phone is in my front pants pocket (the phone is too big to be put in the rear pants pocket), and have missed calls because of this. With the Mi Band 2 paired to my phone, I can always feel the Mi Band 2 vibrating on my wrist, and I did not have missed calls problems after that.

Of course, I could have bought a more expensive smartwatch (there was a lot of Android smartwatches introduce in 2016) that offers the same tracker features and smartphone pairing as the Mi Band 2. However, almost all the other products in the market required charging on a daily (or every 2 or 3 days) basis. The Mi Band 2 had an astounding battery life of 20 days between charges! I feel that smartwatches should not need to be charged as frequently as smartphones, so the 20 day battery charge life was a winning factor. Although Android smartwatches have really gorgeous displays and superior features (you can run apps on smartwatches - the Mi Band 2 cannot), those were secondary to the main step tracker feature that I was buying the device for. So that was how I ended up with the Mi Band 2 that effectively replaced my Omron pedometer and my Casio digital watch once it arrived.

However, one year after I started wearing it, I started encountering charging problems with the Mi Band 2. Despite the fact that the tracker is securely fitted into its proprietary charging cable that is connected in to a power supply, the tracker would sometimes refuse to charge. I would have to  unplug/re-plug the tracker into its charging cable multiple times until something clicks and the tracker starts charging, and then pray that the charging session will not end abruptly short of the 2 hours required to fully charge the tracker to 100%. If the tracker stops charging before 100%, I will have to repeat the unplugging/re-plugging exercise all over again. This was extremely frustrating. 

The Mi Band 2 charging cable contains 2 pogo pins that touches 2 electrical contact pads on the Mi Band 2 device. I read from the internet that our body sweat damages the Mi Band 2 contact pads, making them unable to conduct the charge from the pogo pins. I am not sure if that is the reason, but it does sound plausible. Anyway, there are many complaints on the internet about charging problems on the Mi Band 2. 

Because of the perennial charging problems that I am always having with my Mi Band 2, in February of this year (2018), I decided to get a new tracker device to replace it. I was worried that the "contact pads corroded by sweat" rumours about the charging problem of the Mi Band 2 is true, and is a design/manufacturing flaw of the Mi Band series in general, so getting another Mi Band product was out of the question. Fortunately, I read about the Amazfit BIP that had been launched by Xiaomi in August 2017. 

The Amazfit BIP had all the step tracking, pulse rate and sleep monitoring, SMS/incoming call alert features as the Mi Band 2. And then it had this other amazing features:

1. 45 day battery charge life - this was widely touted in all the advertisements for the Amazfit BIP. This was almost double the 20 day battery charge life that I was getting from my Mi Band 2. And I can vouch that this is absolutely true. If I do not activate GPS features, but just use the basic step tracking, pulse rate and sleep assistant monitor, I can easily get 45 days between charges.

(If I activate any GPS feature on the Amazfit BIP, each hour of GPS use results in a 10% drop in battery charge).

2. Always on display - the BIP uses a transflective LCD display that consumes very little power. This allows the BIP to always display the time on the screen, and not require the display to be turned off to conserve power.  With an always-on display, the BIP feels more like a watch as compared to the Mi Band 2 whose OLED display is always off (to conserve power) until you press the button (or lift your wrist)  to display the time on the screen for a few seconds before the screen shuts off again.

One interesting thing about the transflective LCD screen is that the display is actually easier to read under the bright sun. On my Xiaomi Note 4 phone, I have to max out the backlight brightness level whenever I am under the sun or I will never to be able to read the display. It's the other way round on the BIP where the brighter the sun, the easier it is to read its display. 

  

It is easier to view the Amazfit BIP under direct sunlight (top) than in the shade (bottom). In the shade, the backlight can be activated temporarily if the display is not vivid enough.

3. GPS - the BIP has a built in GPS sensor, and this is activated when a Workout is initiated from the BIP. This allows the workout to map my walk path which can then be displayed against a Google Maps map in the Mi Fit app.

   

4. Watchfaces  - the BIP offers a multitude of watch faces unlike the Mi Band 2 which has just ONE  watch face. 

 Although the Amazfit BIP was S$80 on Lazada Singapore, which was double the price I paid for the Mi Band 2,  I was already won over by these other features that are not on the Mi Band 2. Lazada delivered my BIP in March.

3rd Party Apps

The same Mi Fit app that I had already installed for synchronizing to my Mi Band 2 is also used for the Amazfit BIP. Interestingly, the Mi Fit app cannot be used to sync to both my Mi Band 2 and Amazfit BIP concurrently on my Xiaomi Note 4 phone. The app only integrates with one tracker at a time.

However, there are some limitations with the Mi Fit app that can luckily be overcome with 3rd party apps.

Watchfaces

When I paired the Mi Fit app to the Amazfit BIP, the app provided 10 additional watch faces that can be downloaded to the BIP (the BIP comes with 10 built in watch faces). However, I discovered that the BIP has only 1 free memory slot for the downloaded watchface from the Mi Fit app. When I activated another watchface from the Mi Fit app, the new watchface overwrites the previous watchface that I downloaded earlier. When I scrolled through the list of watchfaces on the BIP, I can only see the built-in watchfaces and the newly downloaded watchface. The watchface that I downloaded earlier can no longer be selected.

Luckily, there are apps from the Google Play Store that provides hundreds of watchfaces for the Amazfit BIP.  The one that I am using is called:

Amazfit Bip & Cor WatchFaces

I am currently using this particular watchface:

I like this particular watchface because it shows all the important attributes I care about in large and clear fonts: 

24 hour time ("16:48"), 

steps ("9000"), 

kilometres ("6.30"), 

% battery level remaining ("20"), 

day/month/date ("SUN 09/23"),

current weather (not accurate - sun is shown at night to represent clear skies)

current Celsius temperature ("38°"),

max/min Celsius temperature ("1/8°"), 

pulse rate ("78"). 

Sleep Monitor

There is a problem with the Mi Fit sleep monitoring app that I had noticed when I first obtained the Mi Band 2 back in 2016.

1. If I take an afternoon nap, the nap is never registered by the Mi Fit app.

2. I sometimes work through the night, and then go to bed only after 6 am. When I wake up in the afternoon, I realise the Mi Fit app does not register the 8 hours of sleep I had taken between 6 am and 2 pm.  After a while, I realise that if I fall asleep after 6 am, the Mi Fit app will never register the sleep period.  However, if I fall asleep before 5:59 am, the Mi Fit app will show the sleep period.

This 2nd point is very critical because if I am working a permanent 3rd shift (11 pm to 7 am), the Mi Fit app will never be able to show any sleep data for me. I find this very funny because it seems like the programmers for the Mi Fit app  do not cater for measuring the sleep for 3rd shift workers.

Sleep data was never important to me, so I never bothered to look into this when I was still using the Mi Band 2. However, after I bought the Amazfit BIP and had to download an app for  watchfaces,  I found that there were 3rd party apps that can supplement, and even replace, the Mi Fit app.

One of these app is the:

Amazfit Master

which I use as a supplement to the Mi Fit app. The Amazfit Master app is able to show sleep data for the 2 situations that I indicated above, and is therefore a more accurate sleep monitor than the one in the Mi Fit app.

However, the Amazfit Master app does not show the Workouts, and particularly the walk path on a Google Maps map that I find very useful.  As such, I have to use the Amazfit Master app together with the Mi Fit app, and cannot just solely use the Amazfit Master app (there is an impact to the battery on my Xiaomi Note 4 phone as I need to keep these 2 apps running in the background).

SMS/Incoming Call Notification Problem

I did not have this problem with the Amazfit BIP when I first obtained it back in March. SMS and incoming calls on my Xiaomi Note 4 phone are automatically sent to my Amazfit BIP watch, causing it to vibrate and thus alert me about the SMS or incoming call.

However, in November, I received a firmware update for my Xiaomi Note 4 phone, which upgraded my phone firmware from MIUI 9 to MIUI 10. 

After my phone was upgraded to MIUI 10,  the BIP can no longer alert me on incoming SMS/calls that are received on the phone. 

I tried a lot of configuration changes, but none of them work. The SMS/incoming call notification alert feature is now completely kaput.  I am not sure if this is because MIUI 10 requires Android 8.0 and higher to work properly with the BIP notification alert.  Unfortunately, although Xiaomi is very diligent with providing firmware updates,  the updates are always for MIUI, but never for the underlying Android OS.  Hence, my Xiaomi Note 4 is still on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) despite the fact that Xiaomi has updated the launcher from MIUI 8 (when I got the phone back in August 2016) to MIUI 9 (last year 2017) and to MIUI 10 in November 2018. 

Conclusion

Despite the problem with the SMS/incoming call alert that I now have with the BIP, I believe that is related to software conflicts in the latest MIUI 10 with Android 6.0,  and not specific to the BIP itself. 

To me, the BIP is still a fantastic tracker watch simply because of its "45 day" battery life and its always-on display. At just S$80, it is great value for money , as compared to smartwatches that are usually double or triple the S$80 price.  It is also better than simpler trackers like the Mi Band 2 because aesthetically, it looks more like a watch. 

And so far, there are no charging problems similar to the ones that had plagued my Mi Band 2. 

Book Review: The Innovators

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the first book by Walter Isaacson that I am reading. I did not read Isaacson's more famous biography of Steve Jobs because I am not really a fan of Steve Jobs. I won't invest my time to read book length biographies of arrogant bullies, no matter how brilliant they may be.

The book title is a bit misleading. Innovation can come from many fields of expertise. For example, Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the movable type in printing is an innovation. Henry Ford's idea of the assembly line is an innovation on how to produce things. The invention of the sea container for transporting goods is an innovation in the area of logistics. But this book isn't about these innovators from all fields of industry. Instead, it is laser focused on only innovators in the digital computing industry.

Despite my gripe with the title, this book is still an excellent history book on important personalities in the field of computing. In fact, it is the only book that I have read that fleshes out the story of Ada Lovelace in great detail. I would highly recommend this book on just the story of Ada Lovelace alone.

Also, this is the first book that I have read that describes and emphasize about the significant contributions and importance of women in the field of software programming. Many other history books cover the history of computing machines like ENIAC or Turing's ENGIMA. Also, these other books emphasized on the hardware creators, which tends to be guys. But the machines need to be programmed, and the creators of the programming languages were usually given short shrift. Isaacson's book fills the narrative gap created by these male-bias omissions, and showed how critical women were to the development of software.

Isaacson's book also covers controversial areas such as the stories of people who lost in the courts of law. History is filled with such examples, such as Thomas Edison being credited as the guy who gave the world electricity, when more credit should have been given to Nikola Tesla. There were many people who independently came up with ideas for making the computer or the integrated circuit, but history will always assign credit to a sole person. Isaacson's book also tells the stories of the other inventors who helped contribute to the field, but are forgotten today as they are not credited at all in the current history books.

A big problem with a history book about computing is that new things are happening every day in the world of Information Technology. Thanks to the rapid pace of innovation in IT, we are living and breathing history, and new advances cannot be covered adequately in books such as this one. Every day, new products that were practically the stuff of science fiction years ago are now becoming reality. Cashless payments, driverless vehicles, personal robots with powerful artificial intelligence; these will likely transform human society in years to come. And then, this book will need to be updated to include the pioneers of these nascent technologies today that may become commonplace products in the next few years.


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Book Review: The Atheist Muslim

The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason by Ali A. Rizvi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is always interesting to read the narratives of ex-Muslims because of the dangers they put themselves in by openly declaring their leaving Islam. In a religion where the punishment for apostasy is death, people who no longer believe must remain silent to stay alive.

Ali Rizvi book shares the light that despite the danger, enlightenment philosophy is also pervasive in Islamic countries. As in "Christian" countries where the number of non-believers are growing, the same too is happening in Islamic ones.

The extremely violent and barbaric practices of ISIS and al-Qaeda should have turn the stomach of good moral people everywhere. However, Islamic apologists and masters of sophistry have somehow made moderate Muslims accept the "less" extreme forms of Islamic beliefs, which includes:

- women are inferior to men
- non-heterosexuals are inferior to heterosexuals
- non-Muslims are inferior to Muslims
- all other religions are inferior to Islam

Unfortunately, when these "less" extreme ideas are bought in by the moderates, it takes only a tiny push for these moderates to take one more step to extremism, which basically is:

- Islam require "true" Muslims to enforce their beliefs on everyone else for the sake of Islam

Atheism books written by ex-Muslims can better counter the pro-Islam arguments offered by the imams, the clerics, and the apologists. When Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens writes about Islam, the clerics can often use the excuse that outsiders do not understand Islam and are in no position to debate them. The clerics cannot offer the same flimsy excuse when debating ex-Muslims. Ali Rizvi's book provides the critical counter-points from one who is well versed with the core texts of the Islamic tradition.

It is very important that more moderate Muslims be encouraged to "tame" the bigotry and violent teachings of Islam. In Western societies, governments no longer follow the extreme teachings of the Old Testament, thanks to the Age of Enlightenment. Islam sorely needs a similar awakening in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, Ali Rizvi's book can probably be only published and sold in non-Islamic societies. His book will probably be banned in Muslim countries, and can only be distributed clandestinely.

Recently, even the governments of moderate countries like Malaysia and Indonesia appear to be swaying dangerously towards Islamic extremism. Because the Muslim voters are taught to believe in the superiority of Islam over everything, politicians need to bolster their Islamic credentials to win the Muslim voter ("whoever is more Islamic is the superior person"). This is very bad state of affairs because many Islamic practices are more harsh, more brutal, and more barbaric, and cannot be in any sense superior to non-Islamic practices. However, without the appropriate counter points, many of these moderate Muslims are not learning to be more critical of the dubious arguments offered by the clerics. Hopefully, more alternative voices will come out and make a stand, and slow and halt the perpetuation of bad ideas under the name of Islam.


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Book Review: The Fairchild Singapore Plant

The Fairchild Singapore Plant by Liu Fook Thim
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very well written narrative of the Fairchild Singapore story. It is a unique Singaporean book, as there are almost zero books published in Singapore that goes into such amazing detail about the company's history, the factory, the products, and the people of this multinational corporation in the electronics industry.

The original raison d'etre for the book was to compile a collection of stories and anecdotes told to Liu by past Fairchild Singapore employees. However, over the 4 years that the book has been in gestation, Liu shaped and sharpened the text of the book to evolve it into an engrossing work that covers overlapping categories such as a history book, a management book, a coming-of-age biography, and most importantly, a Singapore book. In this last category, there is absolutely no other Singapore book like Liu's work at the moment.

Liu's writing style is extremely readable, and he has structured the book in a very elegant way to allow him to ingeniously weave the employee's stories into the various chapters of the book. One criticism I would levy is that the book lacks a timeline chart that puts all the key historical events in an easy to read visual. Although Liu is an engineer by training, the presentation in this book is very text based, and lacks almost any tables or charts that are practically the metier of engineering writing. But despite their absence (or perhaps because of their absence), this book makes for a very engaging read.

At first, I thought that the book would only be of interest to ex-Fairchild Singapore employees. However, after completing it, I can state emphatically that this is absolutely not so. The story that is told will be intriguing to anyone who is interested about the electronics industry, or working in a large corporation, or human stories about Singaporeans, or Singapore-history buffs. Ex-Fairchild employees will obviously get more of a bump, seeing that it is their story that is being told. But if you are a reader who falls into any of the 4 categories I mentioned, you will not be disappointed by this book. It is interesting, informational, and surprisingly, touching.

(Disclaimer: I am an ex-Fairchild Singapore employee).


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Pretty Island - A Singapore song by Mary Tan

While reminiscing about my old primary school song (see previous post), I suddenly thought about another song from my childhood that seems to have been lost in the internet age.

For this year's special SG50 National Day celebrations, a slew of previous NDP songs were played. A compendium of these "Singapore" songs can be found in this Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Singaporean_patriotic_songs

However, missing from this list is a song called "Pretty Island" by a Mary Tan. Back in the 1970s, there was a time when RTS (Radio Television Singapore) played the music video of this song (which was also sung by its composer) so frequently on TV that the song was burnt into my brain cells. But that is okay because I really like this song. It is short. It is sweet.  It is simple to sing-along. It is in every way the quintessential "Singapore" song.

But yet, this old music video cannot be found on Youtube. Doing a Google search for the music video or its lyrics returns nothing, although Google led to me to some interesting old newspaper articles from the National Library archives which mention that Mary Tan won
the first prize of $2000 back in 1975 for "Pretty Island" in a national song writing competition).

Is there a reason why a beautiful song like "Pretty Island" did not make it to the nostalgic list of Singapore songs by the NDP organisers? Was there a copyright issue? Or has the song been deemed too cheesy or outdated and has thus lost favour with the "powers that be"?

Hopefully, some one will put up the old "Pretty Island" music video on the internet in future. That would be a truly nostalgic treat. In the meantime, I have jot down from memory what I think are the lyrics of this beautiful song so that it can be indexed by Google in case some one else wants to search for them too:


Pretty Island (composed by Mary Tan)

I know of a pretty island named Singapore

I know of the people who live on her shore
They work together with unity
They live together in harmony
To bring progress and prosperity here

I love this pretty island called Singapore
I'm one of the people who live on her shore
We work together with unity
We live together in harmony
To bring progress and prosperity here

I love my pretty island called Singapore
I'm one of the people who live on her shore
As we live side by side
Each other help and guide
And with renewed confidence
We love you moreWe can each other depend upon.


The words above are probably wrong. Please feedback if you know where the correct lyrics can be found. 

Balestier Hill West Primary School - School Song

On Thursday evening (Hari Raya Haji), I suddenly developed a nostalgic itch to find the lyrics of the school song of my primary school - Balestier Hill West Primary School - which I attended from 1970 to 1975. Like many other old Singapore primary schools, Balestier Hill West Primary no longer exists. Over the past 20 to 30 years, many of these schools have been closed or merged with/into others because of the lack of students (due to Singapore's declining population / birth rate). Unfortunately, my Google searches were in vain. I simply could not find any internet article or post containing the lyrics of the school song. In fact, searches for general articles about Balestier Hill West Primary were just as fruitless, although there is this very nice photo from the National Archives of Singapore:

http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/photographs/record-details/29f1f046-1162-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad


I have decided to jot down what I think were the lyrics of my old school song so that it can be indexed by Google. In case any alumni of Balestier Hill West Primary were to suddenly develop the same itch to find the lyrics of the old school song in future, they can use this post as a start:

Come, let us let's all gather here today,
Ready to study, work and play,
Faithful, true, giving of our best
To Balestier Hill School West.


Our school so dear,
Ever faithful loyal to you , I'll we'll remain.
Our alma mater Her motto we'll revere,
To persevere and progress,
We'll try, try, again.


Unfortunately, as all these words were drawn from my memory, I cannot attest to the correctness of the lyrics. Please correct me if you spot any mistakes.

Xiaomi Redmi Note - Part 2

Despite my fondness of my new Xiaomi Redmi Note phone, there are still some deficiencies which I will highlight in this second post.

Slow Order Processing

I made my order for the phone on 2014-08-05 (Tuesday). The phone was delivered on 2014-08-14 (Thursday), a whopping 9 days later! This is just too slow!

In most of my internet purchases, goods that are shipped via air are typically delivered within 1 week. As Xiaomi does not have brick and mortar stores, they really need to invest more in their logistics operation. They should take a leaf from Amazon operations, which can typically ship goods much faster than Xiaomi, despite the fact that Amazon ships from USA, while Xiaomi is shipping from Hong Kong.

Flip Case Was Not What I Expected

When I made my order for the Redmi Note, I also ordered both a soft case as well as a flip case. While the soft case meets my expectation, I was extremely disappointed with the flip case.

The main problem with the flip case is that unlike other flip cases that I have bought for my first Samsung Galaxy S and my Shanzhai phone, the Redmi Note flip case uses ADHESIVE to adhere the phone to the case!

The problem is that if you want to change the battery, or insert a different microSD card, you must then peel the phone from the flip case adhesive! According to the pamphlet that came with the flip case packaging, the ADHESIVE can be re-used 300 times. But I don't buy this bullshit. Almost every kind of glue hardens and lose their stickiness after a while, particularly in the hot and humid weather we have in Singapore. Also, the main idea with having interchangeable cases is to change them. Suppose I want to switch from my flip case back to my soft case. Once I peel my phone from the flip case, the flip case adhesive will be unprotected and exposed to the air. Exposure to air will cause the adhesive to lose its stickiness even faster. This adhesive design makes the flip case unsuitable for interchangeable use.

Unfortunately, because all the flip cases I have used previously do not use adhesive, I was under the impression that the Redmi Note flip case would be the same. So I was very disappointed on receiving the package to learn that Xiaomi has decided to cut corners and use this kind of sub-standard design for their flip case.

I subsequently went to the Xiaomi web site, and saw that although they made no mention that the Redmi Note flip case uses this cheap and lousy adhesive bonding, the flip case for the Mi 3 uses the same cheap and lousy adhesive bonding, and which is documented in the Xiaomi web site.

http://store.mi.com/sg/item/3141000008

If you are considering buying the Redmi Note, take my advice and just buy the soft case. Don't waste your money on the flip case. It is a very disappointing piece of accessory from Xiaomi.

Non-Standard Micro USB Connector

I wasn't aware of it at first, because my existing micro USB cables which I was using for charging my Samsung Galaxy S phone, Samsung Galaxy Note tablet, and the Shanzhai phone, could also be used to charge the Redmi Note. Until one day when I realised that although the cable was "connected", it was not charging the Redmi Note. Apparently, I had touched the cable just a smidgen, and that effectively dislodge the seating of the micro USB connector.

I then became aware that the micro-USB connector always appear to be "loose" when plugged into the Redmi Note, unlike the very snug fit with all my other Android devices. When I examined the Redmi Note phone, I realised that the socket is actually a rectangle instead of trapezium shape as on all my other smart phones.

It turns out that whereas almost every Android phone uses the Micro B USB connector, the Redmi Note actually houses a USB socket that supports both the Micro B USB as well as the Micro A USB connector.

The Micro B USB connector used by almost every Android phone manufacturer.

The Micro A USB connector, which can also used for the Redmi Note.

Because the Redmi Note socket has to accommodate both types of connectors, the side effect is that it actually makes using the Micro B USB cable a looser fit! Unfortunately, the cable that Xiaomi provides is also an industry standard Micro B USB cable. This makes me wonder why in the world did Xiaomi decide to use a Micro A+B USB socket on the phone in the first place?

Bug

Although the MIUI is at version 5 (the phone is currently running version MIUI-JHDMIBF29.0), I have encountered a bug that require the phone to be shutdown and restarted.

I have a 2G SIM card which I used for making voice calls, and a 3G SIM card which I use for mobile data. The 3G SIM card is provided with a monthly allotment of 1 GB of free mobile data, so I only wish to use it for internet surfing. However, the 3G card can also make voice calls and send SMS, but these are not free. Unfortunately, if I leave the 3G card in standby mode, I keep receiving spam SMSes, and also spam voice calls, which are chargeable. Thus, to avoid paying for these spam voice calls on the 3G SIM card, I always disable the 3G SIM card if I do not need to use the 3G card to access the internet.

Thus, if I need to use the 3G  SIM card to access the internet, I will first enable the 3G SIM card, then enable mobile data. When I have finished surfing the internet, I will disable mobile data, and then disable the 3G SIM card.

However, many a time, when I disable the 3G SIM card, I will also effectively cut out the 2G signal, as if I had also disabled the 2G SIM card. The phone will then not be able to receive SMSes and voice calls on the 2G SIM card. I tried to "re-enable" the 2G SIM card, but the phone will show that the 2G SIM card has not been disabled. But there is nothing I can do to re-enable the 2G network through the Settings app. The only way to restore the 2G signal is to reboot the phone.

Because I normally use wi-fi to access the internet, this is not so problematic. But the 3 times I had to enable the 3G SIM card to access the internet using mobile data, I ended up having to reboot the phone so that I can restore the 2G voice service after I disabled just the 3G SIM card.

I don't have this problem with the Shanzhai phone, where I can always disable the 3G SIM card without affecting the voice network on the 2G SIM card. This problem only occurs with the Redmi Note.

Perhaps the new MIUI version 6 will resolve this problem. However, I don't know whether the Redmi Note will be getting MIUI 6, although by all indications, it will be available. This is one good thing about Xiaomi. Customers are constantly receiving new versions of the MIUI software. This is unlike Asus or Samsung, who do not provide firmware updates even to relatively new devices.

Xiaomi Redmi Note

I recently bought the Xiaomi Redmi Note smartphone from the Xiaomi Singapore site (http://www.mi.com/sg/note/). Although at S$199, the phone is considered a "budget" (read cheap) phone, I don't have many complaints with it. I mean, it's S$199, man! What premium features do you want! Anyone who harbours deep-seated grievances about missing features or features they consider inferior to those on competing phones should just go and buy the competitors' phone and be done with it. My personal opinion is that despite some minor issues, the Redmi Note is absolute value for money. If you are not too picky, you won't regret it. At S$199, the Redmi Note is very good! Period.

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Super difficult to buy the phone from Xiaomi's website

Of course, nothing in this world is perfect. Although the pictures of Xiaomi's phones usually display the caption "Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen", it is terribly ironic that you will not get this feeling while trying to buy the phone from their website.

At incredible bargain prices, Xiaomi's phones are always sold out within minutes when they are put up for sale at the Xiaomi's website. When the Redmi Note was introduced to Singapore 6 weeks ago (8 July 2014), they sold out a batch of 5000 Redmi Notes within 42 seconds when sales were opened at 12 noon (link). This was to be repeated over the next few weeks, as Xiaomi appeared to be bringing in 5000 Redmi Notes every Tuesday. I know because I was trying to get one, and failed the first 4 times. I was lucky that on my 5th try on 5 August 2014, I finally beat the internet hordes and managed to ensnare a Redmi Note.

For the moment, this is a great marketing tactic for the company. There is a huge demand for cheap and good smartphones. By restricting supply to 5000 units every week, the 5000 units are guaranteed to be sold out each and every time. Supposing that Xiaomi continue doing this for 52 weeks, Xiaomi will be able to sell 52 x 5000 = 260,000 units in 1 year. Is this level of demand realistic? Perhaps. I don't know. It may be much higher. 

However, I do know that if users keep failing to buy the phone from Xiaomi's website, the users may feel jaded, and finally give up on acquiring a Xiaomi phone, and simply buy a competitor's phone instead. I think this is bound to happen. Already, phone makers like Asus and ZTE are starting to sell budget phones in the same market segment that the Redmi Note currently occupies. At the moment, Asus and ZTE budget phones cannot match the price/value ratio of Xiaomi's phones. But a new competitor might be able to do so. When that happens, this will be an interesting area to watch. 

Xiaomi can sell phones at incredibly low prices because they have very low overheads. You seldom see them advertise their phone in the newspapers or traditional media. They get their advertising for free because editorial blogs/websites and news organisations are giving them free publicity by telling the world how affordable their phones are for the hardware specs they are providing. And Xiaomi have earned very good word of mouth from their customers. With low prices and high end specs, the phones generate a very good feeling among the extremely satisfied customers, who then go on to spread the gospel to the rest of the public. It is really the Apple iPhone phenomenon all over again.

However, this playbook can be copied by a new player. And I hope someone does. Personally, I think phones selling at S$998 (Samsung Galaxy S5) is ridiculous. That is just too expensive. I think S$500 to S$600 is about right for a high-end phone. For S$1000, a premium phone ought to be made of diamond or some rare element.

However, when a single company have tremendous success selling a budget phone like the Redmi Note, the competitors get skewed into thinking that the hardware features on the Redmi Note is the standard, and their own budget phones ought to match the exact same standards. This is flawed, but because of the incredible market success of Xiaomi, the competitors become blindsided into doing exactly the same thing that Xiaomi is doing, instead of offering even more competitive budget phones!

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Hardware

Let's Talk Specs

If you are making/selling a smartphone, what areas should you focus on?

• Should you concentrate on fast CPU processing? Which is more important: a higher GHz but lesser CPU cores, or slower GHz but more CPU cores?

• Should you concentrate on long battery life? Is a 2000 mAH battery sufficient, or a 3100 mAH battery?

• Is the display important? What constitutes a good display? A large screen? A high resolution?

• How much focus should you spent on camera technology? Is 8 mega-pixel adequate? Or should you go the whole hog for 13 mega-pixel shooters?

• How much storage should the phone provide?

• How much RAM should the phone have?

• What other components should make up the phone?

CPU

The Redmi Note comes with a 1.7 GHz Eight-Core Mediatek MT6592 CPU. 

If you are making a budget phone, I think this is a good enough CPU. I think that buyers of budget phones primarily needs a device that is more phone than computer. Thus, high GHz speed or high number of CPU cores might be overkill. However, the CPU must provide a good UI response when doing swiping motions - a bugbear of Android which still "stutters" despite the Project Butter enhancements made to Android 4.1. A slower CPU mars the UI experience.

I have found the Redmi Note to be quite responsive using Google Now voice search, Google Maps, internet browsing, and general swiping. But I notice the phone tends to get warm when using Google Maps with GPS and Navigation. My Shanzhai phone with a single core 1.2 GHz CPU doesn't generate as much warmness, but it isn't as responsive the the Redmi Note.

Competitors of budget phones should offer similar performance as the Redmi Note. But I don't think most users can discern slight differences in CPU performance. In real life, most Android apps require internet access, so internet speed is actually more critical than a minor speed improvement in the CPU.  

Battery Life

The 3100 mAH battery in the Redmi Note is awesome. In standby mode with just one SIM card activated (for 2G voice calls) and wifi enabled, I notice a 1% drop in battery level after every 2 hours. This is quite good.

I love removable batteries. I like the fact that users can self replace a dead battery with a new one, without having to send the phone to a servicing centre to have the dead battery replaced. 

However, I wish that all manufacturers making phones with user replaceable batteries would standardise on the battery form factor. It is already the year 2014. Why can't manufacturers just standardise on the smartphone battery form factor, just like the standards we have in AA and AAA batteries? Then, a battery pack can be interchangeable between Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, and the myriad of Android shanzhai brands out in the market. Proprietary battery packs are bad simply because they are proprietary.

Many years ago, phone chargers came in all shapes and sizes. The EU got together, and force the different phone manufacturers to standardise on the micro-USB interface for charging the phone. Now, you can use the same micro-USB cable to charge almost every modern Android smartphone, which is a boon to everyone, as well as the environment.

Likewise, someone should do something about standardising smartphone batteries. If Google and the major phone manufacturers can do something about it, they could agree to a common standard on the form factors of batteries. For example, there will be fix form factors for batteries for phones, tablets, notebooks. Batteries will be interchangeable between different manufacturers phones, tablets, and notebooks. Innovation is allowed where the same phone battery form factor can be used to pack different mAH capacities. Thus, the same phone battery form factor may come in capacities of 1000 mAH, 2000 mAH, or 3100 mAH (the capacity of the Redmi Note battery). 

LCD Display

If you are making a budget phone, I think a high-resolution LCD display is superfluous. I think a cheap display with 160 dpi resolution density is adequate. If you think 160 dpi is too low resolution, go up to 300 dpi. Anything higher is really overkill for budget phones.

Screens with higher resolutions are more expensive to make. If a display has more pixels, it draws more power, runs hotter, and also reduces battery life. Besides, can the human eye really discern images at 300 dpi? 

Competitors should not compete on pixel resolution, but on display attributes like large viewing angles, good brightness control to allow easy readability under direct sunlight, good colour reproduction. 

The Redmi Note's 1280 x 720 resolution, 5.5" IPS screen (267 dpi), is a good compromise. My Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) tablet with its ridiculously high 2560 x 1600 resolution, 10.1" screen (299 dpi) is drawing too much battery, making the tablet runs shorter per battery charge than it need to. It can only run about 8 hours per full charge. For comparison, the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 with its 1900 x 1200 resolution, 10.1" screen (224 dpi) can last an astounding 18 hours. Just simply because the Lenovo Yoga doesn't need to waste so much battery on the power draining LCD screen.

Camera

One of the things that drew me to the Redmi Note is its 13 mega-pixel rear camera. 

However, the few photos that I have taken with this camera is not impressive. Even photos taken under good sunlight looks grainy. I have photos taken with a 4.5 mega-pixel Fuji digital camera that looks better than the 13 mega-pixel shooter of the Redmi Note.

Just because the camera has 13 million pixels doesn't mean pictures taken will be good. In actual fact, the size of each of this pixels might be more important than the total number of pixels. If the pixels are larger, then more light can be collected by the pixel, which may result in a better photo overall. If the pixels are smaller, less light falls on the pixel, which results in poorer photographs.

I am not impressed by the photos taken by the 13 mega-pixel rear camera, or the 5 mega-pixel front camera. Perhaps this deficiency in the Redmi Note can be addressed by a software update of the camera app. I understand that Google Nexus phones/tablets also suffer from poor photos initially, which were subsequently fixed by a software update. I am not sure if Xiaomi has the capability to improve on the graininess through a firmware update. I doubt it.

Unfortunately, there is a flaw in the default Camera app that comes with the Redmi Note. Photos are saved in the Phone Storage area, which is ridiculous. After installing many of the Android apps, I only have about 2 GB free in the internal Phone Storage area. However, I have large swathes of free storage on my 32GB SD card. But the Camera app cannot be configured to change the default save location from the Phone Storage to the SD Card!

Luckily, I have previously purchased the Camera Zoom FX Premium app from the Google Play Store, and this 3rd party camera app allows me to configure the default save location.

My friend owns a Redmi 1 phone (the first version, not the Redmi 1S). I checked her Redmi 1 contents, and was surprised to see that on her Redmi 1, the Camera app saves the photos on her SD Card! 

I don't know why the default Camera app doesn't allow users to change the default save location to the more sensible 32 GB SD card. I suspect that Xiaomi is just using the default stock Android Camera app written by Google, and we all know that Google just doesn't like users to access cheap SD cards storage (all Google's Nexus devices do not provide external SD card slots). I hope that in future, Xiaomi would provide their own camera app that users can configure the default save location. But if they don't, it is still possible to overcome this problem through 3rd party apps like Camera Zoom FX or special MIUI patches (link).

Storage

The Redmi Note comes with 8 GB of internal storage. 

Personally, I think that even for budget phones, 8 GB is insufficient. I think that 32 GB should be the minimum storage.

I do not understand why in this day and age, phones still come with so little internal storage. Is there a gouging exercise going on? 

The cost of a Class-10 32 GB SD card is a mere S$20. Class-10 cards presumes a write-speed of 10 MBps (megabytes per second). The same capacity 32GB card with a faster write speed of 90 MBps sells for S$70, while a 32GB card with a write speed of 280 MBps sells for S$160. I presume that for internal storage, manufacturers must be using flash memory at the highest speeds, and may be using the type with 280 MBps write speed. Since this is very expensive, they resort to giving the minimal internal storage, which is why only 8 GB internal storage is provided.

I would think that with the volume of smartphones being sold, the price of such fast flash memory should have dropped significantly by now. But it didn't. So phones and tablets still come with low internal storage space.

This is why the microSD card slot is a godsend, and a requisite for every budget phone. 

Unfortunately, to keep the price down, the microSD card slot in the Redmi Note can only support SD cards up to 32 GB capacity. It would be nice if the slot supported SD cards up to 64 GB or even 128 GB capacities.

Despite Google's insistence on not having SD card slots, and they always recommend users to save their data in the cloud, the reality is that mobile internet charges is extremely expensive. In Singapore, a phone plan with 2 GB of mobile data costs S$40 per month. Excess data is charged at S$10 per GB, making it very expensive to use cloud storage. If a phone has only 8 GB of internal storage and no SD card slot, just retrieving 2 GB of files from the cloud via mobile internet will bust the bundled mobile data capacity for the month. With an SD card slot, you can always buy a cheap Class-4 SD card and carry around all the files you will need in the SD card. Since budget phones are typically targeted at consumers who are not as well off, cheap SD cards make absolute sense as compared to paying for expensive mobile data.

Besides, many new Android apps are very storage hungry. Some games have asset files as large as 2 GB. Most videos - especially movie length films in high-definition - are about 1 to 2 GB. Thus, the hunger for more storage space is never satiated. Buyers of budget phones are often taking public transport, and during long commutes to and from work, they will use the commuting time to watch videos. The SD card slot allows the phone owner to store more videos on the phone itself, and not have to juggle with the limited internal storage space on most phones by deleting old files to make room for new ones constantly.

All budget phones must come with SD card slots because of the above reasons. The Redmi Note only supports 32 GB SD cards. Competitors should come up with budget phones that support higher SD card capacities.

RAM

I am very surprised that the Redmi Note came with 2 GB of RAM. I am not complaining of course. More RAM allows more apps to stay resident, and makes the Android OS run more fluidly.

Thus, budget phones from competitors that only come with 1 GB of RAM will be threatened by the new standard that Xiaomi has set. 

I think it is not necessary to increase the RAM to 3GB or even 4 GB for phones, particularly budget phones which probably could have run pretty decently even with 1 GB RAM. But I have no issues with Xiaomi delighting it users with such a generous amount of RAM on this budget phone. There is really no downside to having 2GB of RAM on the Redmi Note.

Miscellaneous Hardware

I think miscellaneous stuff like GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, compass, proximity sensors, bluetooth, wifi hotspot tethering, USB slot with USB On-The-Go, should be standard on all phones, whether budget or premium. These should be pre-requisites.

However, I was pleasantly surprised that the Redmi Note came with FM Radio. But for a budget phone targeted at less well off consumers, FM radio makes sense. Although I seldom listen to radio nowadays, I am still happy that the choice is available should I need to.

Now, one of the reasons I bought a Redmi Note instead of the more premium Mi3 phone is because the Redmi Note comes with dual SIM slots, whereas the Mi3 has just a single SIM slot. I wanted a dual SIM phone because when I subscribed to my fibre-broadband plan, I was given a free mobile broadband SIM card with 1 GB of mobile data. By using this free mobile broadband SIM card for my mobile internet access, I can subscribe to a cheaper voice-only 2G mobile plan.

Thus, on my Redmi Note, I put my 2G voice-only SIM card in the SIM2 slot, and the 3G data-only SIM card in the SIM1 slot. As my voice plan costs me S$20 per month, with the free 1 GB of mobile broadband, I can lower my monthly telecommunication costs significantly as I don't need to subscribe to a voice+data plan - where the lowest such plans starts at S$40 per month. 

Should budget phones always be dual-SIM ones? I don't think so. But I am glad the Redmi Note has dual slots. 

Recently, Asus introduced their budget phones - the ZenPhone 4, ZenPhone 5 and the ZenPhone 6. They too are dual-SIM phones, which seem to reinstate the market sentiment that budget phones should be dual-SIM phones. 

Interestingly, the Asus ZenPhone uses micro-SIM slots, whereas the Xiaomi phones (the Redmi 1, Redmi 1S, and the Redmi Note) uses mini-SIM slots. 

I think Xiaomi is correct and Asus is wrong. If you are making a budget phone, then your target market is primarily the ones in lesser-developed economies such as India, Africa, Asia, where most people are still using the old feature phones with SIM cards that are primarily of mini-SIM form factor. 

A budget smartphone with a mini-SIM slot can thus accommodate the mini-SIM cards from the feature phones without any problems. If the customer has a micro-SIM card, the micro-SIM card can be easily fitted into a mini-SIM adapter which is then inserted into the mini-SIM slot.

For the Asus ZenPhone budget phones, because they are using mini-SIM slots, customers migrating from feature phones to the Asus phones will need to either CUT their existing mini-SIM cards to micro-SIM dimensions, or have their telco transfer their existing mini-SIM card to a micro-SIM module.

Also, in less developed countries, most mobile customers are on prepaid cards (as opposed to postpaid plans). However, most prepaid cards uses mini-SIM cards, which are again more suited to Xiaomi's budget phones than Asus's.

Personally, both my 2G voice-only SIM card and my 3G data-only SIM card are of the mini-SIM form factor. If I were to buy the Asus budget phones, I will have to either cut my existing SIM cards to the smaller dimension (a task that I do not relish), or pay S$35 per card to migrate them to micro-SIM modules. With Xiaomi's budget phones, I do not have to make any such anguishing decisions. This is one of the reasons why I did not consider getting the Asus phones at all.

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Software

MIUI Interface

The similarity of Xiaomi MIUI interface with the iPhone iOS is uncanny. I am sure if Apple had their way, they will sue Xiaomi for the look and feel. So many icons look iOS-rish.

Another thing that I do not like about MIUI is its lack of the Android App Drawer. There are several disadvantages without the App Drawer:

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Disadvantage 1

I cannot see a complete listing of all the apps and widgets that I have downloaded, and then open the app from that list.

It can be argued that if you run the Play Store app, the app will show a list of all the apps you have downloaded, and there is an [Open] button to execute the app from there. However, I discovered that the Play Store app doesn't work without an internet connection!

I then thought of the Settings > Apps option, which also list all the apps on the phone. However, Settings > Apps  doesn't allow the execution of a selected app. You can only terminate/stop its execution, or uninstall it.

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Disadvantage 2

Without the App Drawer, every application that you install will have its icon thrown in the Home Screen automatically. The problem is that only 1 icon is allowed per app. This was problematic for me because of the way I have been using Android phones.

In all my other Android devices, I need to create multiple shortcuts for the same app in many different folders.

For example, I have an app called SG Buses that provides me information about public bus routes and services.

I created a shortcut to this app in a folder called "Transport",  which also groups other shortcuts like Google Maps , Singapore Map (previously called Singapore Street Directory), and MyTransport Singapore .

However, I also created a second shortcut to the SG Buses app in a folder called "Singapore", which also groups shortcuts to all apps that are Singapore related (e.g. AsiaOne News, Channel News Asia etc). With most Android launchers that uses an App Drawer, multiple shortcuts to the same app can be created, and this suits me to a tee.

Also, some auxiliary apps that is very seldom used can be left out of the home screen completely. Should I need to execute these apps, I can just open the App Drawer and then execute it from there. I can thus maintain a very organised and clean Home Screen.

Without an App Drawer, the MIUI causes a problem because I can only put the icon in one folder. Then the categorisation problem starts. Should I put the Google Maps icon in the "Google" folder, or should I put it in the "Transport" folder? I can't have both like I use to.

I find this very irritating and am not used to it.

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Luckily, Android allows you to use different launchers if you are not satisfy with the default launcher. I am currently still using the MIUI launcher with the Redmi Note. However, I may switch to an alternate launcher that includes a proper App Drawer in the future.

Someone published an AppDrawer app for MIUI. Although this app displays a list of all installed apps which can then be executed, AppDrawer is unable to create multiple shortcuts. Thus, it is still not a panacea for the missing App Drawer in MIUI.

Lock Widget / Power Off Widget

The power button on my old Shanzhai phone became flaky, and it sometimes became very tricky to turn on or turn off the phone (you must depress the power button in the right way...). It was also difficult to turn off the screen by quickly depressing the power button.

I found a Lock Screen widget that allows me to click on a widget icon to turn off the screen. However, I couldn't find a Power Off widget or app that allows me to click on a icon to shutdown the phone. There were some in the Google Play Store, but every single one of them requires rooting the Shanzhai phone. And one of the problems that I had with the Shanzhai phone is that I cannot find any information about rooting that no-name Android phone, so all these apps or widgets that require root access are out.

Interestingly, the  Redmi Note has built-in Lock and Power Off toggles that can be activated either from the Toggle Notification Shade, or placed as shortcuts on the Home Screens. 

Thus, MIUI allows me to simply tap on an icon to quickly lock the phone, or to shut it down completely, all without requiring rooting the phone, or downloading a 3rd party app from the Play Store. And something that I just couldn't do (power off via an icon) on all my other Android devices is a built-in function on my Xiaomi phone.

Alarm will ring even if phone is shut down

I read about this from the internet, and verified this to be true. If the Redmi Note is shutdown, it will automatically power on and then play the alarm sound at the preset time.

Neat!

Amusing/Amazing Tools

The "Tools" folder contains a number of useful apps. The interesting thing about many of the tools is the skeuomorphic designs of some of them that make them look like iPhone apps. 

The "FM Radio" app looks like a white iPod.

The "Recorder" app has this very nifty animation of a cassette tape being wound when recording or playback takes places.

However, all the tools are useful. 

The "Explorer" app has a built-in [FTP] button. If you click this [FTP] button, an FTP URL address will be displayed on the phone. You can copy this address into an FTP program running on your PC to allow you to use a PC FTP client program to copy files to or from the PC to the phone. 

The "Torch" app can actually be invoked from the lock screen by simply holding the Home button.

The "Calculator" app looks like an iPhone calculator. It has a "Basic" mode, which is adequate. However, you can switch it to this weird "Scientific" mode, that is not quite there. For example:

• there is [sin], [cos] and [tan] buttons, but no [arcsin], [arccos] and [arctan] buttons
• the [sin], [cos] and [tan] buttons only allow you to specify radians. You cannot specify angles in degrees/minutes/seconds
• there are no [hyp] buttons
• there are [ln] and [log] buttons, but only [e] and no [10^x] buttons.
• there is no [M], [MR] or [MC] buttons. You can't save any intermediate results into "memory".
• there is no [+/-] button to change the sign of a number. If you try to key in a negative number like -123, the screen always show "0-123".

I really don't know why they bother with a deficient "Scientific" mode when there are plenty of good calculator apps in the Google Play Store (for example, Real Calc). Perhaps this is a stopgap for their China market, because in China, users are blocked by the government from accessing the Google Play Store. However, the "Scientific" mode is really useless with the lack of memory functions to store intermediate results. Most people who need to use a scientific calculator will simply not find this useful at all. I don't understand why the scientific calculator has not been improved.

Software Support

However, the MIUI launcher is actually a very nice piece of work. And I think Xiaomi is learning the Apple lesson extremely well, and is thus becoming just as successful as Apple.

One of the major problems with vendors like Asus and Samsung is their lack of software support. For Asus, I was very disappointed when they stopped providing updates for the Asus TF300 tablet. Hence, although Asus is a company that worked hand in hand with Google to make the Nexus 7 tablet, they simply stopped updating their older Asus lines at Android 4.2. There is no news about the important Android 4.3 update, which fixes a fundamental flaw in Android 4.2 and earlier (the missing TRIM support for SD cards. Because Android 4.2 and earlier does not implement TRIM, data that is supposedly erased from an SD card is actually still extant in the SD card, and will continue to occupy space despite reporting to the system that the so called "erased" space is freed. Ultimately, the operating system will crash because the SD card cannot be physically written to, even though the OS sees the SD card space as available. Only reformatting the SD card will actually perform a true "erase" and reclaim the storage.

Samsung is just as bad in terms of software support. I have a pretty high end Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) Edition tablet, but it only runs Android 4.3 instead of the much faster and more optimised Android 4.4 (KitKat). There is practically no news about a firmware update for the tablet to update it to Android 4.4, so I guess there won't be any, just like for Asus. 

In both cases, new devices from Asus and Samsung comes with Android 4.4. Asus and Samsung will just not update their older devices from Android 4.2 to the latest version of Android. I guess they want their customers to buy a new device with the latest Android version. Well, I guess the customers will have to buy new devices then. But for me, I will not be buying products from Asus or Samsung anymore seeing that they do not provide any software upgrades for their hardware.

I am cautiously optimistic that Xiaomi is not as bad as Asus and Samsung in software support. Firstly, I like many of the facilities provided by Xiaomi on their Redmi Note phone. Things like FTP support in the "Explorer" app, Lock and Power Off widgets, a highly customisable launcher, alarms that work even when the phone has been shut down. These really appeal to geeky users like me. 

The MIUI launcher is now at version 6 (currently under beta testing for official release in September), and can  be installed on many older Xiaomi devices. Xiaomi really takes care of their early customers with their first generation devices - ensuring that new firmware updates can still be applied to such old devices. This is completely unlike Asus or Samsung which have basically abandon providing firmware updates to devices that are merely 1 or 2 years old, even when the 1 or 2 year old devices have the hardware resources to support a firmware update. 

Both Asus and Samsung makes lots and lots of device variants, and therefore cannot dedicate much time to a single variant. Xiaomi, like Apple, makes only a few device variants, and therefore can spend more time testing their firmware for the few devices they make. Apple do this because they sell their iPhones at very high mark ups and profits, and people who pay top dollar for the iPhone will want a top dollar experience. Xiaomi makes much lower profit as they don't make ridiculously high mark ups like Apple, but still aim to deliver good experiences for their customers despite their customers buying lower end (non-premium) phones like the Redmi Note. And software support such as frequent firmware updates is a great marketing tools for ensuring customer loyalty and repeat sales.

Galaxy Note Tablet - Update

After using my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) tablet for 2 months, I've put together a list of issues with this tablet that mars its otherwise outstanding design.

1. Takes too long to charge

It takes slightly more than 8 hours to charge the device. 

When the battery level reaches 15%, the device will typically shutdown to prevent damage to the lithium-ion battery (li-on batteries can be permanently damaged if their battery level is allow to drop to 0%).  I have charged the battery from 15% to 100% many times, and in almost all cases, it takes slightly more than 8 hours to reach 100%. 

Now, this is ridiculous because the tablet itself typically offers about 8 hours of usage. In other words, it takes just as long to charge it as it takes to discharge it. This is absolutely not okay for a tablet.

With my previous Asus tablet, it only takes 1 hour to charge from 15% to 100%. I can then use my tablet on wi-fi for close to 9 hours. Unfortunately, the Asus tablet uses a proprietary power charger connector, and Asus sells the charger for $69 (price gouging - as typical of Asus).  

With the Galaxy Note, Samsung uses a micro-USB connector for charging, which is better than the proprietary connector. Unfortunately, Samsung provided a USB 2.0 interface instead of a USB 3.0 interface, and this is the problem.

Because of the outstanding hardware on the Galaxy Note (3 GB RAM, outrageous 2560x1440 screen, Exynos 8-core CPU etc), the Galaxy Note comes with a massive 8200 mAH battery to satisfy all this power draining components. Unfortunately, the USB 2.0 interface restricts the current to just 1A, or 1000mA. If the charger can only at charge 1000mA, it will take slightly more than 8 hours to fully charge a 8200 mAH battery. 

If Samsung has adopted a USB 3.0 interface, the interface will allow the charging current to be increased to 1.5A (ie. 1500 mA). Theoretically, this should reduce the charging time to 5 hours, which is admittedly not a lot in terms of time saved, but which is still better than the 8 hours to fully charge the tablet, which is the case now. 

Unfortunately, there is no company in the world right now that offers a design that incorporates USB charging connectors (versus proprietary connector) with fast charging. Just imagine - if the charging current can be increased to 5A (or 5000mA) - then the 8200mAH battery can be fully charged in just 1.5 hours. Unfortunately, despite the massive hardware engineering department that Samsung possesses, it is not able to provide this kind of engineering. Instead, Samsung focuses their hardware engineering on things like more pixels on LCDs, more pixels on camera lenses, bendable LCD screens, more cores on their Exynos CPUs etc. It is a crying shame they have not improve on the battery power technology.

In the future, when consumer electronics become even more commoditised, I think the differentiating marker between different manufacturers of such commodity stuff like tablets or phones will be the battery technology. If you can perform a full charge from 15% to 100% in one hour, and then use the tablet for up to 20 hours, that would be amazing. 

Charging cable is too short

On a side note, the included charging cable is only 1 metre long. Trust me, 1 metre is too short.

Ideally, the charging cable should be at least 2 metres. Samsung used to offer chargers with 2 metre long cables (I have such a charger which came with my Samsung Galaxy S-LCD phone). However, the Galaxy Note tablet comes with a truncated 1 metre cable, probably in the name of costs savings. It is unfortunate because I ended up paying $10 to buy a 2-metre micro-USB cable so that I can charge the tablet in a more convenient environment.

2. Unresponsive User Interface

Although the Samsung tablet comes with a massive 3 GB of RAM, a fast Exynos octa-core CPU, and Android 4.3, the user interface still "stutters" and lags.

Obviously, this is down to the customisations in Samsung's Touchwiz interface that has been much derided in the IT world. Samsung wants to hide the Android interface completely (there is no other explanation for why they offer exact duplicates of what Android is already offering - what with extraneous functions like S-Voice, S-Finder that replicates Google Now, a Samsung App Hub that replicates Google Play etc), and Touchwiz was their solution. Unfortunately, Touchwiz is not well written, and slows down the performance of the tablet itself. If Touchwiz is not such a resource hog, and does not impact performance on such a high-spec machine, people would not complain. But it isn't, and hence the derision.

Actually, there are many interesting stuff in Touchwiz. I especially like the multi-tasking view which allows running 2 apps side by side. It is most unfortunate that all this features cannot be optimised to provide a "fast and fluid" interface that the Android Jelly Bean update was all about.

3. Lousy Clock Chip

I discovered that the Samsung tablet has a very lousy clock chip. I have only been using the tablet for just 2 months, and already, the internal clock has slowed down by a massive 5 minutes. On my Asus tablet, the clock was off by only 1 minute after years of use.

Some people claim that if the internal clock is wrong, it affects the reading of the GPS. Not sure if this is true, but I seldom use GPS on the tablet, so GPS is not a concern. However, in this day and age, I do not expect clocks to keep such lousy time. Samsung prides itself on things like smartphones and smartwatches. Yet the clock on this tablet loses 5 minutes after just 2 months?

On my Windows notebook, Microsoft has a function that automatically sets the computer time to that from an atomic clock on the internet. This is very useful on many older PCs/notebooks whose internal clock battery have been completely depleted. Although the computer will start up with the clock set to 1 January 1980, I only need to configure the PC to run an atomic clock synchronisation command during startup to automatically synchronise the PC's internal clock, and everything will be right as rain. 

When I look at the Android settings on the Samsung tablet, there is no function to synchronise the internal clock with an atomic clock over the internet. The only way to change the clock is to do so manually.

I decided to download an app to synchronise the internal clock with an "NTP server" (Network Time Protocol server). I installed one called Smart Time Sync from Masterco. However, when I tried to run the app's function to synchronise the internal clock, an error message popped up saying that because "root access" is not available, I need to change the internal clock's time manually.

This is rather stupid, don't you think? Even with Windows, I will be able to synchronise the internal clock with the NTP server using an app despite not running as Administrator. Yet with Android, I need "root" to allow a clock app to synchronise the time.

Unfortunately, because Samsung does not provide the capability to synchronise the clock with an external time server, this has become another minus. 

But why "root" access?

But why should installing "root" access void the warranty? This isn't the case with Windows PC, where owners have the right to run as "Administrator" to install any software they like on the PC. Why should a tablet be any different?

Indeed, I think power users should be allowed to install "root" access to make the tablet more like a PC. Having "root" shouldn't void any hardware warranties on the tablet. Although this is not the case with Samsung, perhaps in the future, other manufacturers may make this a "feature" and selling point on their tablets. Why buy a "restricted" tablet from Samsung when a competitor is selling a less restrictive one?

Repairing my Asus Transformer TF300 Tablet

I went to the Asus Service Centre at Burn Road on 7 March 2014 (a Friday) to send my TF300 tablet for servicing. The problem with the power switch button had worsened tremendously, and no matter what technique I tried to depress the button, I just could not get the tablet to power on. I had called the service centre earlier, and was told that because the warranty had already expired, there will be a $60 diagnostic/labour charge. Replacement parts will be charged separately, should I decide to have the unit repaired after their initial investigation. I decided to risk a $60 gamble to send the tablet for repair. If it can be repaired, then I will regain a working tablet for only $60. If the replacement parts were too costly and I decide to not proceed with the repair, then I will only be out by $60.

Trivex Building at Burn Road is just 200 metres from the new Tai Seng MRT station (Circle Line), so getting to the service centre by public transport was relatively easy. The service centre was relatively quiet. There were only 2 customers ahead of me, so I was attended to within 5 minutes.

I showed the service officer the problem with the power switch, and told him that I had been able to, occasionally, power on the tablet. I also told him that if the tablet screen turns off due to sleep mode, it will be very difficult to turn it on because of the power switch problem. The service officer took the tablet, and told me that I will get a call within 5 working days with a quote for the repair.

On the evening (around 4 pm) of 14 March (the next Friday), I got a call from the Asus Service Centre. The service officer told me that there was some problem with the circuit board on the tablet, and a replacement board will cost $848!

Of course, this makes repairing the tablet pointless. At recent electronics fairs held at the Singapore Expo, the TF300 tablet was being sold for just $399. And that is with both the tablet and the keyboard dock. If you exclude the cost of the keyboard dock (which has its own battery), then the tablet itself is probably worth $299. It is a mockery to charge $848 for a replacement motherboard, when buying a brand new device will cost just one-third the amount.

I told the service officer that it does not make sense to repair the tablet. I also told him that I can give the faulty tablet to him so that he can salvage it for spare parts to repair other faulty TF300 tablets. But he said rules and regulations does not allow for this. He then said he will reassemble the tablet, and send me an email later to collect my unit.

Of course, I was pretty disappointed that it was so costly to repair something that appeared so trivial. To me, it is just a problem with the on/off switch, and the fact that I could occasionally get the tablet to turn on doesn't strike me as a cataclysmic fault on the motherboard that required its wholesale replacement.

In my mind, the replacement motherboard should at most cost $120. Together with the labour charge of $60, I estimated a maximum repair cost of $180 (I was willing to pay up to $200). But now, the total cost would be a ridiculous $848 + $60 = $908 to repair an already outdated device! Even Asus itself is selling their latest TF701 table for just $700 (brand new and with one year warranty).

But what hankered me most was the fact that I now have to pay the $60 labour charge to get back my non-working tablet. Although I knew this was a possibility before I sent my tablet to the service centre, the outcome still stung when it came true.

On Tuesday (18 March), Asus sent me the email to collect my tablet from the service centre. I went down the next day (19 March), resigned to the fact that I will have to pay $60 for nothing. However, I have already decided that the best way to make of this situation is to trade in the faulty tablet at the next computer show for a new gadget. Although Asus does not have a trade-in program, HP does, and during the last computer show, HP was offering a $50 trade-in for non-working tablets. If the trade-in promotion is still on, I will trade in the faulty TF300 tablet for one of HP new slates.

After the service officer handed my tablet over to me, I asked him wasn't I suppose to pay the $60 diagnostic fee first? I have seen the other customers ahead of me making payment for the repair charges at a separate cashier counter before they could collect their unit. He smiled and said there is no charge, since no repairs were done.

Immediately, the $60 cloud that had been hanging over my head disappeared, and my spirits were lifted. I thanked him for waiving the $60 charge. It is amazing just how happy a company can make their customers feel by simply doing the right thing, and not charging for something as nebulous as a "diagnostic fee". Sure, Asus have to spend money to run the service centre and to hire the staff to run it, and charging a "diagnostic" fee is not an unscrupulous thing to do to maintain the service centre. But surely this (the cost of maintaining a service centre) is peanuts compared to the advertising cost that they expend  routinely to promote their products? By waiving the $60 fee, Asus goodwill has created a happy customer in me, and I will be more likely to promote Asus products in the future because of this.

And the service centre itself is also a facet of the public relations department for Asus. Unfortunately, Asus service centre is still not top notch. Every one knows that it is ridiculous to charge a customer more for repairing a unit than buying a new one. If Asus is smart, then they should also have their service centre advising the customer to buy a new device, say with a discounted price (e.g. trade-in discount for the faulty device), and allowing the new device to be purchased on the spot. But the Asus service centre does not have a section for conducting such sales, so the opportunity is lost.

If a customer determines that it is ridiculous to pay more to repair than to buy a brand new device, the customer may decide to buy a COMPETITOR's device for the replacement instead of another Asus device. Asus then loses in 2 areas:

1. The customer will be dis-enchanted with Asus for "gouging" on repair charges. Good will/feeling with the Asus brand is lost.
2. Asus will lose the sale of a new device to its competitors.

Happy Postscript

Back home that evening, just as I was about to box the tablet and shelf it into the cupboard, I decided to depress the tablet's power on switch one more time just to confirm that the tablet is truly dead.

And a strange thing happened.

The tablet powered on immediately, displaying the usual lock screen with all my contact information.

I couldn't believe it. Didn't the service centre say that the tablet had a faulty motherboard, and that it was not repaired?

But there it is. The tablet is working, right as rain. And has been doing so for the past 4 days since it came back from the service centre. Some how, when the service centre reassembled the tablet to return it back to me, they must have inadvertently fix the on/off switch problem.

So, Asus had some how "repaired" my tablet despite everything. And thanks to the goodwill from Asus of waiving the diagnostic fee, I did not have to cough out $60 to get it repaired!

I am very happy now that the TF300 tablet is again in good working condition. But since I have now endeared myself to my new Samsung Galaxy Note tablet, I probably won't be using the Asus tablet on a daily basis any time soon.