Former Apple CEO John Sculley to launch smartphone brand in India
Naturally, everyone wants a piece of one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world. India has seen a number of new brands make an entry in the smartphone market last year alone. From Chinese companies such as Gionee and Oppo, to American PC giants HP to brands such as Japan’s Panasonic, which has given up on the smartphone game back home, but has a big budget for India. Motorola made a comeback with the ultra-popular Moto G.
So it’s no surprise that former Apple CEO John Sculley is planning on adding to the number, according to a report in BGR India. Former Micromax and HTC top exec Ajay Sharma will be leading the business in India. The company will launch a series of smartphone, with the first device said to be coming in April. The supposed price range is between Rs 5,000 and Rs 15,000, which makes us a bit sceptical about the brand’s chances.
In the report, talking about the new company, Sharma is said to have insisted that their “forthcoming devices will have a different positioning and USP.” But in the same price range as most well-known Indian brands, there’s very little head room for playing the brand positioning game. Once again, it could be about the price and specs proposition and as we have said in the past, it takes more than just that.
So it’s no surprise that former Apple CEO John Sculley is planning on adding to the number, according to a report in BGR India. Former Micromax and HTC top exec Ajay Sharma will be leading the business in India. The company will launch a series of smartphone, with the first device said to be coming in April. The supposed price range is between Rs 5,000 and Rs 15,000, which makes us a bit sceptical about the brand’s chances.
In the report, talking about the new company, Sharma is said to have insisted that their “forthcoming devices will have a different positioning and USP.” But in the same price range as most well-known Indian brands, there’s very little head room for playing the brand positioning game. Once again, it could be about the price and specs proposition and as we have said in the past, it takes more than just that.
Mantle Methane
The Extreme Methane Emission Zone at the junction of the Laptev Sea and the Eurasian Basin is marked by a particular type of methane hydrate associated with hydrothermal emanations from the slow-spreading Gakkel Ridge (Figure 5; Max and Lowrie 1993). Another belt of these Gakkel Ridge hydrothermal methane hydrates also occurs along the plate boundary zone north and west of Svalbard (Figure 5; Max and Lowrie, 1993). This suggests a much deeper source zone for the methane in these hydrothermal methane hydrate regions than found elsewher in the Arctic.
The location of the Enrico Pv (sound pressure wave velocity) Anomaly at the junction of the Eurasian Basin and Laptev Sea is shown in Figure 6 at 100 km and 220 km depth within the asthenosphere part of the Earth's mantle (from Yakovlev et al. 2012). The Enrico Pv Anomaly occurs beneath the region (Figure 2) where there are deep hydrothermal methane hydrates (Figure 5; Max and Lowrie 1993) and the Extreme Methane Emission Zone occurs (Figure3b Light 2012; Carana 2013, 2014). The centre of the Enrico Pv Anomaly is marked by a pressure sound wave velocity anomaly (dv/V)% of about -1.6 (Yakovlev et al. 2012).
The Extreme Methane Emission Zone at the junction of the Laptev Sea and the Eurasian Basin is marked by a particular type of methane hydrate associated with hydrothermal emanations from the slow-spreading Gakkel Ridge (Figure 5; Max and Lowrie 1993). Another belt of these Gakkel Ridge hydrothermal methane hydrates also occurs along the plate boundary zone north and west of Svalbard (Figure 5; Max and Lowrie, 1993). This suggests a much deeper source zone for the methane in these hydrothermal methane hydrate regions than found elsewher in the Arctic.
The location of the Enrico Pv (sound pressure wave velocity) Anomaly at the junction of the Eurasian Basin and Laptev Sea is shown in Figure 6 at 100 km and 220 km depth within the asthenosphere part of the Earth's mantle (from Yakovlev et al. 2012). The Enrico Pv Anomaly occurs beneath the region (Figure 2) where there are deep hydrothermal methane hydrates (Figure 5; Max and Lowrie 1993) and the Extreme Methane Emission Zone occurs (Figure3b Light 2012; Carana 2013, 2014). The centre of the Enrico Pv Anomaly is marked by a pressure sound wave velocity anomaly (dv/V)% of about -1.6 (Yakovlev et al. 2012).
Nexus 5 battery drain giving you a headache
Google has acknowledged the battery drain issue in the Nexus 5 (our review) and is about to release a fix for it soon. The company claims the drain is due to high CPU usage of the ‘mm-qcamera-daemon’ process, which allows other apps to access the camera of the phone.
Once started, the process remains in the background, even if the app has been closed, thus consuming more power than it would otherwise. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code discussion is buzzing with complaints about the issue. “Issue 60058: mm-qcamera-daemon cpu usage” has quite a lot of posts from developers and users who have faced the battery drain and there are quite a few solutions too, though we cannot vouch for how well they will work on all devices.
Explaining the issue, AOSP member Eino-Ville Talvala said, “We believe we have fixes for the current high CPU reports on N5 (Nexus 5) due to mm-qcamera-daemon, and they will be included in the next maintenance update.”
While there’s no estimate for when the fix will arrive, Talvala said that until it arrives “rebooting the phone is the only way to stop the high CPU usage/lack of camera function once it starts.” He also touched upon the latest update for the Skype app, which seems to have exacerbated the issue. While Talvala says that Skype itself has no bug, the app seems to “access the camera regularly from its background service in some way that triggers this bug”
“Other camera-using applications may trigger this bug as well, but that’s been relatively rare. Most applications also do not access the camera when not in the foreground, so they will only trigger issues when actively used,” he added.
Some users were complaining of this issue even when using other phones that have Qualcomm processors. For this Talvala said, “Instances of high CPU use of mm-qcamera-daemon on other devices besides the N5 (Nexus 5) need to be reported to their manufacturers. While those devices also use a Qualcomm chip for their camera processing (and thus have a mm-qcamera-daemon process), each has differences in their software and issues with them do not necessarily mean the N5 has the same problem, and vice versa.”
Google has acknowledged the battery drain issue in the Nexus 5 (our review) and is about to release a fix for it soon. The company claims the drain is due to high CPU usage of the ‘mm-qcamera-daemon’ process, which allows other apps to access the camera of the phone.
Once started, the process remains in the background, even if the app has been closed, thus consuming more power than it would otherwise. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code discussion is buzzing with complaints about the issue. “Issue 60058: mm-qcamera-daemon cpu usage” has quite a lot of posts from developers and users who have faced the battery drain and there are quite a few solutions too, though we cannot vouch for how well they will work on all devices.
Explaining the issue, AOSP member Eino-Ville Talvala said, “We believe we have fixes for the current high CPU reports on N5 (Nexus 5) due to mm-qcamera-daemon, and they will be included in the next maintenance update.”
While there’s no estimate for when the fix will arrive, Talvala said that until it arrives “rebooting the phone is the only way to stop the high CPU usage/lack of camera function once it starts.” He also touched upon the latest update for the Skype app, which seems to have exacerbated the issue. While Talvala says that Skype itself has no bug, the app seems to “access the camera regularly from its background service in some way that triggers this bug”
“Other camera-using applications may trigger this bug as well, but that’s been relatively rare. Most applications also do not access the camera when not in the foreground, so they will only trigger issues when actively used,” he added.
Some users were complaining of this issue even when using other phones that have Qualcomm processors. For this Talvala said, “Instances of high CPU use of mm-qcamera-daemon on other devices besides the N5 (Nexus 5) need to be reported to their manufacturers. While those devices also use a Qualcomm chip for their camera processing (and thus have a mm-qcamera-daemon process), each has differences in their software and issues with them do not necessarily mean the N5 has the same problem, and vice versa.”