Showing posts with label Nokia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nokia. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Innovating The Smartphone Battery

If my smartphone battery gave me four times more juice, it might last a full day of rigorous use. But it doesn't.

Battery is hard to do, but worth trying. But maybe Samsung should plot to move to one of the next big things: rHealth.

In fast food it is not McDonald's that is number one. The Chinese restaurants collectively are bigger. The same seems to be true of smartphones. Samsung is like McDonald's. It is number two.

Samsung’s Future Is Bleak Because Phones Themselves No Longer Matter
With the possible exception of radically improved battery life, hardware differences become about subtle preferences, not clear-cut metrics of superiority.


rHEALTH And One Drop Of Blood



This is a health care assistant that Fidel Castro could only have dreamed of. Like the smartphone is the computer for the final six billion, this device is the doctor for the final three billion, or maybe six. And I am sure there will be improvements. It is awesome as is, and it will get better. Finally a health "app" that actually does something serious pretty fast.

Heck, this is not just something for the have nots. This will displace many mainstream devices currently in use. This has the ease of a good old thermometer.

This Device Diagnoses Hundreds of Diseases Using a Single Drop of Blood
a portable handheld device that can diagnose hundreds of diseases using a single drop of blood with what Chan claims is gold-standard accuracy. ..... First hatched by DMI in response to a NASA challenge to create a diagnostics device that could work even in space, rHEALTH was portable from the beginning. ..... One small drop of blood is dropped into a small receptacle, where nanostrips and reagents react to the blood’s contents. The whole cocktail then goes through a spiral micro-mixer and is streamed past lasers that use variations in light intensity and scattering to come up with a diagnosis, from flu to a more serious illness such as pneumonia—or even Ebola—within a few minutes. ..... There’s also a vitals patch that users can wear to get continuous health readings—EKG, heart rate, body temperature—delivered to their smartphone or the rHEALTH device itself via a Bluetooth link. An app called CHAS (Comprehensive Health Assessment Unit) can walk the user through the process of self-diagnosis. ....... getting all the diagnostics technologies packed together into one handheld device ..... patients will need to give 1,500 times less blood than they would for regular tests ..... the device has even been tested in simulated lunar and zero gravity. “It’s a symphony of innovations, but we’ve pushed all of them individually to create the device” ..... rHEALTH is reliable for cell counts, HIV detection, vitamin D levels, and various protein markers in the body. The next challenges .. are adding more tests, scaling up production, and going through the laborious process of getting the rHEALTH commercialized. ...... three different models: the rHEALTH One, which will be used for translational research; the rHEALTH X, meant to be used as a kind of power tool for clinicians; and the rHEALTH X1, which will be available for consumers. ...... The goal is to create a universal, Star Trek-inspired medical diagnostic tool that detects up to 16 separate health conditions




Friday, February 07, 2014

Microsoft’s New Indian Face




In case you did not notice, Microsoft now has a black Chairperson and an Indian CEO, and Bill Gates will now be reporting to Satya Nadella three days a week. Bill is back! Someday Sundar Pichai might end up CEO of Google, and Bobby Jindal might end up President Of The United States. And Nitish might wipe out poverty from India. And Jayalalita might help architect genuine federalism for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. And India is already on its way to Mars. Jupiter is not far.

Amitabh is the most recognized face on the planet. 




Bill Gates is the ultimate Maoist, if you ask me. I only got to “know” the guy after he launched his global war on poverty. Computers only became interesting to me because of the Internet, and Bill was a PC guy. My company to love is Google.

My tribute to Satya Nadella was a blog post bit.ly/1lGw3Cs An Opening For Microsoft: Supercheap Smartphones.

I think the biggest new opening for Microsoft to get back on the tech map is for it to cash on its Nokia acquisition and a CEO who grew up in India, a country that has more poor people than any other, and to offer the cheapest smartphones across the Global South. That steep price gradient is the only hope Microsoft might have to become a significant third force in the mobile space where Android is the new Windows. If it were to move fast enough I think there is a slim chance that Microsoft might end up with Apple like global market shares.

The large number of Android manufacturers are tough competition though. Android is free. And those hardware makers are doing their best to offer cheap phones. But I have a feeling Nokia knows a thing or two about cheap.




And to think Nadella is not an IIT guy. He claims pretty much everything he learned about leadership and teams he learned playing cricket. That is a true Indian! This is no lost Desi. He is true to the roots.

If India were the Al Qaeda the recent humiliation of the Indian diplomat would have ignited a call for jihad. That organization has a simplistic two dimensional cartoon idea of what America is. It is a large, complex country that can also put Nadella on the top. For every Nadella there is also a Pichai, waiting in the wings, ready to take over.

I think Bill Gates’ comeback cannot be overlooked. That is a big story in its own right. Gates will still give the majority of his time to his foundation, and I think that is awesome because I am a huge fan of his foundation. But this time away from Microsoft has been good for him. He now has new, global, non-Microsoft perspectives. This is not a Personal Computer world we live in, not anymore. But then he was thinking tablets a full half decade before Steve Jobs, only Gates’ tablet had an accompanying pen, and it never took off, not even inside Microsoft. So don’t think the guy is behind.

How would you design super cheap smartphones? I say, ask Nokia. But smartphones are no good without data. How do you bring wireless broadband to vast swaths of the Global South (that is like saying African American) also known as the Third World (that is nigger)? Google is throwing balloons up into the upper parts of the atmosphere. Microsoft might try satellites and cheap antennas on the ground. My point being, it’s got to compete in the space of taking internet to the masses, the left out billions. A smartphone with internet access is the 21st century voting right. If you don’t have it, you are disenfranchised.

So imagine a $20 Nokia smartphone that someone in Darbhanga, Bihar, buys on the roadside, that immediately connects to wireless broadband beamed down by a Microsoft satellite for free. The phone runs Windows Mobile, which is free. It has the Bing search engine by default, and Hotmail Mobile, and Office Mobile. And Skype comes preloaded. And every Skype account gets a free phone number too. As in, calls are free. Skype gives you unlimited free SMS. And of course the keyboard can be in English or Hindi.

How does Microsoft make money? $20 for the phone, and ads served on the phone through the various services. Ads that are super relevant, because your usage of the phone builds a rich profile of you at some Microsoft data center. And Microsoft ends up rich, and we all end up happy.

This part is obvious. Steve Jobs gave us the Graphical User Interface, or the mouse. He stole it from Xerox, but then Picasso was also known to steal. Jobs also gave us the touch interface. But I think Microsoft gave us the next big thing before Jobs gave us the touch. Gestures are more natural than touch. And Microsoft’s Kinect is master of the gesture universe.

There is something called the Natural User Interface. I think there is so much more Microsoft could do in that space.

Supercheap smartphones with the accompanying wireless broadband and the Natural User Interface fully scaled together can easily take Microsoft past a 500 billion valuation. And Nadella could stay busy for a decade. And that is enough time before another Indian takes over. Maybe Pichai? And Vivek Wadhwa perhaps is Mayor of Silicon Valley by then, or is it Vinod Khosla? Khosla is already Dean.




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Monday, February 03, 2014

An Opening For Microsoft: Supercheap Smartphones

Image representing Nokia as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase
I think the biggest new opening for Microsoft to get back on the tech map is for it to cash on its Nokia acquisition and a CEO who grew up in India, a country that has more poor people than any other, and to offer the cheapest smartphones across the Global South. That steep price gradient is the only hope Microsoft might have to become a significant third force in the mobile space where Android is the new Windows. If it were to move fast enough I think there is a slim chance that Microsoft might end up with Apple like global market shares.

The large number of Android manufacturers are tough competition though. Android is free. And those hardware makers are doing their best to offer cheap phones. But I have a feeling Nokia knows a thing or two about cheap.

Gates Seen Taking Bigger Products Role at Microsoft
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Sunday, September 08, 2013

Through Nokia Microsoft Should Go Down The Food Chain

Image representing Nokia as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase
With Google Loon attempting free internet access in the remotest corners, the other piece of the puzzle is the smartphone. How cheap can you make it? There Nokia has an edge.

There is argument that the Windows mobile platform does not have a million apps like the iOS and Android do. Most people I know use less than 10 apps, and all the hit apps do exist on Windows Mobile. Windows is decent in mobile. It is workable.

The only way it could become a contender is if it were to go down the food chain with ridiculously cheap smartphones in the emerging markets. That might be the top benefit Microsoft could hope for from the Nokia acquisition, I think.

How cheap is cheap? Under 50 dollars. So, a super cheap smartphone that most people can save up and buy, free internet access from the skies, a Skype phone number that works just fine over the internet, and you get 80% of the world connected. I can't imagine a better boon for democracy, gender justice, and microfinance.
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