My first smartphone purchase

Continuing from previous post on my smartphone experiences  ...

I bought my first phone after I started working in 2003 and of course it was that ubiquitous Nokia phone. Did not need to think much, went to the store after my 2nd month's  salary came in and walked out with the phone in 10 mins. Cellphone then was a luxury and not really a necessity and it was actually status symbol signalling some sort of upward mobility. Possessing phone was good enough initially but very soon all of us started wishing to own cooler phones. So tracking the latest models of phones  was something all of us did  throughout the year to decide the next phone. Over the next 5 years I changed my phone multiple times but it was always done after lot of research, never anything flashy or top of the line. While on that nostalgia trip was big Nokia fan then and though there was Motorola and Sony Ericsson phones which looked interesting, I was looking to buy only Nokia. N-Gage was a phone that was on my wishlist as it was made for 'gamers' but finally settled on Nokia N series phone in early 2007 which was a multimedia phone with OS I think. Maybe it was a 'smartphone' but to be honest the phone was just used for calling, texting and photos so it wasn't really a smartphone for me without internet.
Fast forward another couple of years, by 2009 Blackberry phones had become common and so many folks I knew were using it and not just senior manager/Director type folks with BB phone clipped to the belt.BB Messenger was in fact very popular and a cool way to stay in touch. All around me I could see people exchanging BBM pins during meet-ups. So in late 2009 and early 2010 I thought of going for it and getting a Blackberry as that seemed to be the 'in' thing.

Somewhere that year I met my friend Abinav who was visiting India from US for vacation and he had the 'iphone' about which I had read a lot but had never seen it. It did seem to be a super cool gadget . But the price in India was extremely high and I could not imagine spending so much on a phone. My roommate Pankaj had a windows phone which he got as a gift from family in US and that looked good as well but he pointed out at that number of apps were limited. He suggested looking at Android phones instead and they were just picking up at that time and lot of people were moving to it. But a couple of friends I met during a get-together in Mumbai had Blackberry and were swearing by it as totally awesome phone. One guy suggested a shop where I could get it without bill for an attractive price and gave reference to someone he knew there so I almost made up my mind to go for a Blackberry. There was one problem though, I was working for a major Indian telecom company which had a CDMA network ( as opposed to more common GSM) and as an employee my perks included a free CDMA phone ( which I was using) and heavily subsidized phone plan which resulted in ridiculously low phone bills. So it would have made sense to go for a CDMA phone to get all these benefits but problem was the number of CDMA Smartphones in market was very limited. As I was in middle of job hunt around this time, I kept pushing my smartphone purchase for later  as I didn't want to buy a CDMA device and get stuck but getting a GSM phone would mean I cannot use it as primary device right now. So spent a while browsing tech sites for every new android phone model specs and prices. Somewhere around this time Mobile operators started rolling out 3G network and more data was available in new plans with and that in turn was pushing folks to go for smartphones

My cousin Vaidya was living is US and he was my tech-guru, any tech purchase is always done after consulting him and he said nothing beats the iphone and while chatting with my friend Vineeth who was not into iphone but had android phone so many more Android options came up. Aswin (another cousin of mine and MBA classmate) was heading to US for 6 week assignment and would be there during Thanksgiving time, so that seemed to be a good chance to snag a good android phone. Aswin is usually my partner in crime for any such ventures, and readily agreed to get something during his next US trip and was looking to get something himself as well. Then started the deal hunting time as we compared several phone models from Samsung, HTC and a few others. It was just a couple of years after I had done my MBA and I was in touch with many batch mates during those days and almost everyone I spoke were planning to  get some smartphone or already had one. So there was plenty of inputs

Around that time iphone 3GS inched ahead in my wishlist and it had a price cut in US as they already had next model iphone 4. But those days there was a difference of 1-2 years between US launch and India launch of a smartphone, so even if I got the previous version it will be the latest one in India. My friend Vineeth was not convinced with my logic and was pushing me to go for the latest one ( iphone 4) as very soon it will be common and apple would come with next version in an year or get some good android phone instead of buying a contracted iphone . So on that note  any iphone purchased from US cheaply would mean it was tied via contract and you need to 'jailbreak' it yourself. Which essentially means you are cutting the cord that binds you to Apple and you are on your own with no further software updates which was a good move for an apple product. But further research online indicated folks do that all the same and it works fine for a while. Anyways the price would be low so I thought I can change phone after 2-3 years. The appeal of actually owning an Apple product easily trumped everything else at that point

Then suddenly one day in Nov 2010 things moved quickly, Vineeth pinged me with a craigslist ad about someone wanting to sell a brand new iphone 3GS, unopened in box. The asking price was $350 which after converting in Indian Rupees was about 15k which seemed to be a really good bargain. There was no time to mull this over, if I put 350 in his bank account he was ready to go and meet the seller and get the phone next day. So it was decision time suddenly and a call was made to my chief financier for all international purchases - my sister- who kindly agreed to bankroll this deal as well. But she thought this buying phone from a  stranger on craigslist was very sketchy and offered to gift me an unlocked new phone instead when some deal comes up during year end. Meanwhile a couple of other folks also advised me to not try 'jailbreak' route as it is risky and some phones might just lock itself permanently. But I wanted to go ahead anyway despite the risks involved in such transactions and with jailbreaks. She transferred the money immediately and Vineeth went and got the phone. I got the pics in email the next day of a brand new iphone at half the price of what it was retailing in India! Yipee!!!

So phone was purchased but it was in Dallas, TX and now there was this question of getting that phone from there to India. While phone purchase discussions were going I had tapped my friends and family network and located a friend of my cousin who was from that area and travelling to Erode, Tamil Nadu in a week. That was 3 hours away from my hometown, so had gone ahead with the purchase. Then the next day I found out Aswin who was in Houston, TX I believe for his project had decided to meet up with Vineeth in Dallas the very same week and he kindly offered to pick up my phone as well and get it back to India
I got the phone by year end and my cousin Vaidya tried to help me with set-up over phone and Google Talk messenger with helpful links and videos on how to jail break and lent his assistance over phone when I got stuck or confused. Another friend of mine had tried to jailbreak the phone and it just got locked permanently so there was that fear. After about 30 mins I gave up not wanting to turn the phone into brick. I do have an Engineering degree, but techie I'm not and though I'm willing to try these things I give up quickly and the 'manager' in me takes over and I decided I will pay Rs.500 to some smart phone repair guy in Mumbai and get this fixed  much to the despair of my cousin. Shops that can do this were already there in every neighborhood and it took just 15-20 mins to get the phone set-up and just like that I had the most talked about phone in the country for less than half price.

There was a high which comes when you score an amazing bargain, but after I started using the phone it was clear that the product was very good and it had a great UX . But other similar phones were not bad either. As it was priced really high in India it was not very common and folks used to notice it when you used the iphone anywhere. I can't deny it made me very happy when people wanted to see the phone and a bit of snob and  yeah maybe an annoying show-off for some time. But within an year or so lot of people around me got newer versions of iphone. I did upgrade my iphones several times after moving to US with carrier subsidy it is pretty easy but that first phone purchase was special because of the way it was obtained.
Its more than 6 years now but I'm told that that old iphone still works and is used by my parents as back-up phone whenever they have problem with their phones! One other thing I realize after jotting down the iphone purchase experience is how much I used to interact with 'friends' before buying stuff and that I was connected with lot more people in those days without whatsapp. Now I'm not in touch with so many people, but there are always online reviews and consultation with just a couple of close friends

Evolution & cellphones

No you read it right , the title is not evolution ‘of’ cellphones , its evolution and role played by cellphones in it.

From the time life originated on earth the process of evolution has been one straight forward yet rough and tough game. Only those who have something special and extra survive , there lot of terms for these like natural selection and survival of fittest which has ensured that all the species which are currently present on earth are there coz they have something which others don’t have. It could some characteristic like the neck of a giraffe or trunk of an elephant or hump of camel or the thick fur coats of animals in colder regions and various other unique qualities in all animals, which helps it in more ways than one and helps it prevail upon on competition. This kind of unique trait ensures that out of same animal family some species which are more developed survive and they hone these traits or features to the level of perfection.

Now you might be wondering how on earth is wildlife and evolution related to mobile phones ?

Well I give you two choices , either I have too much time to spare and love taking people for a ride ! Or that Im going to make an interesting point , I will let you decide which one of these two is correct.

So only the species which have evovled and adapted very well to the evironment has managed to survive , but who rules the earth ? Well , Homo Sapiens ( thats you and me) of course.

Next question would be how ?

I know the conventional answer would be that its because of that highly developed brain of ours and our ability to think or rather out think the competion that we have become masters of the earth.

Ofcourse that is correct , but I would say that this ability to innovate as in “make tools'' and harness energy and all , has actually made us the leader of the pack.

Over the years right from stones which were converted to some forms of crude weapons to the age of metals to much more recent tools like guns gave man a control over all other forces around him. Man got so much control that those forces around him stopped mattering that much. All these tools which made our life easier or helped us survive and overcome competition can be considered to be part of our evolution. The same way an animal which has to hunt faster prey develops and perfects attributes like stealth and precision , we developed things like automobiles and gadgets of precision to make ourselves safe and comfortable .Hence I consider these gadgets as part n parcel of our evolutionary growth.

Let’s get over with gadgets which helped us evolve further and develop as a race and come straight to the gadget which rules in 21st century , which is none other the ubiquitous mobile phone/cellphone ...

The word Cell some 10-15 years would have surely meant confines of a prison , but cell today is gadget for liberation !

Cellphone has truly helped us evolve in multiple senses ... This pocket size gadget has replaced lots of heavy weight gadgets and has captured the hearts ( nay shirt pockets) of millions ranging from Compnay CEOs to peons.It comes in various sizes ,shapes and forms from plain low-end phone to ultra cool i-phones to Blackberry phones , the cellphone market has something for everyone.

Now to substantiate my theory that mobiles have truly helped us evolve or make our lives better , I choose a few real life examples where people used this gadget in their day to day lives and succeded in their business . To drive home the point I choose the common man as focal point of all my examples.

Among the first stories of business growth driven by cellphones were that of fishermen in kerala .

Once cellphone era began these fishermen no longer had to sell fish in the local beaches; they were able to find out the exact price for fish in the various markets outside their home territory and were able to sell their catch at best possible prices.. Overall they ended up making more money and also resulted in the reduction of prices for the consumers as lesser fish were wasted ... more the fish less the price , simple economics...

Basically it eliminated geographical barriers for business and 'where' you were present no longer became a constraint provided you had a cellphone , let me elaborate with a few more common-man examples.

In my hometown , we have an electrician cum plumber who used to handle both house work and do repairs in his shop . As his work was good, he began getting more and more house calls. The only way to contact him was to go to his shop and tell his assistant the nature of the problem. Then we had to wait till he got back from his previous assignment and came to our house. Since he covered a wide area , more often than not if the person was not present in the shop , people would not prefer to wait they would rather go to some other person. Now with a mobile phone, he is just a call away and he immediately tells us where he is and how quickly he can come. This results in more business for him, less effort for us(his customers) also. Same with auto-drivers in, earlier they used to wait in the auto-stand and you had to go to the auto-stand to hail an auto or if you were lucky on the way you might get an auto. Today we just give a call to an auto-driver we know, he will come to our house to pick us up or call any of his friends who might be in the same area and ask them to pick us up !

I was travelling in the local bus in Bangalore 6 months back and a few construction workers were travelling with me and to my surprise I heard cell phone ringing in the pocket of a shabby looking guy next to me and it was a call from some contractor for some work in some other part of B’lore for him and his group. He told me after they got a cell phone they are never out of work. These are just a couple of examples I could remember off hand nowadays everyone from tailors to hairdressers are just a call away and mobile phone has simply changed the way business happens.

QED : Mobiles have become a necessity if you need to stay in the race these days or you get left behind and others march ahead of you.

( this is the first in a series of posts im planning on cellphones and their role in our life ... to be continued )