What is the best non-Chinese budget smartphone?

Samsung Galaxy M21 6 GB RAM\128 GB storage memory is the best non-chinese budget smart phone right now (July 2020). Read on for further detailed answer and justifications!

I have been searching for best budget mobile phone to buy since couple of month (all brands) , the top contenders which came were Samsung Galaxy M31 , Poco X2, Redmi Note 8 Pro. All of these come around Rs. 15000 to 18000. On doing extensive research and comparison of various Youtube videos I realized it is best to go for Samsung M31.

However there was a new launch as well from Samsung with Samsung M21. M21 offers 3 rear cameras against 4 offered by M31. The primary lens is 48 mega pixel in M21 against 64 megapixels in M31. The price gets cheaper by 2k for M21. It's a bargain and the difference in specs do not account to much unless you are a professional photographer (who will have a DSLR anyways).

Both Samsung Galaxy M31 and Samsung Galaxy M21 are successors for Samsung Galaxy M30s, which was immensely popular and huge hit due to it's monster 6000mAH battery. Samsung stuck with the big battery theme and continued to provide big battery in subsequent budget phones as well (M31,M21).

Samsung has identified the success formulae for Indian mass consumers by providing a big battery, descent camera and a very competitive price. Samsung has roared back in the mobile phone market in last 2 years. Remember there was complete Chinese dominance 2 years back, with Vivo and Oppo and Redmi taking more and more market share.

Another best thing about Samsung is, Samsung creates displays and camera lens in-house, so what it means is, a Samsung mobile will have display and camera lens of Samsung brand (most of the time). This makes a lot of difference against chinese brands where they use different brands display and cameras. Example a Redmi phone may use display of Brand A, and camera lens of Brand B, and Redmi is brand C. It makes a big difference in look & feel, hardware compatibility as well as usage & durability if the mobile phone has maximum same brand components.

Finally, we all know the reputation and brand name of Samsung. The history of Samsung in mobile phone industry right from the days of 2G networks around 10 years back. All this adds up to go for Samsung more and more!

P.S. There is a common notion & perception that a big battery makes a phone heavy & not easy to use. Well I have actually played with Samsung galaxy M30s, and it does NOT actually feel bulky, as Samsung has done a great job to balance weight distribution & has a great form factor.

Difference between Amazon and Flipkart.

It was Oct 11,2014 when I had done a comparison of Amazon,Flipkart, Snapdeal in this same blog. It was more than 2 years ago, the observation and analysis which I had done, were absolutely correct and still hold true. The reason I am writing this blog post is I had very contrasting experience on both Amazon and Flipkart in last 10 days, read on…

I wanted to buy Adidas shoes, it was a specific shoe, of specific color and size. Unfortunately it was only available on flipkart. Amazon did not have the required size in stock. I was monitoring the price on flipkart for close to a week or so, and then waiting for the big brand sale.  I was awake on the night before specifically to make sure I get the shoe at good price, at stroke of midnight I placed order with successful payment, I was happy..

I even got a successful order email, however after 10 mins I got another email. I was in shock on reading that email. Flipkart cancelled my order at its own discretion, the reason it gave was utter rubbish. I was also one of the customer, I had done nothing wrong, it is illogical and sick.The reason they gave was "Due to high demand for this order and in order to provide all customers equal opportunity, the seller had to cancel the item"

The product is still available, so the high demand thing is bull shit, and the second part is just nonsense. It sounds insane. I spoiled my sleep that night, and was disgusted with this order cancellation. I sent 3 mails to flipkart, all to no avail....I had a talk with a friend, who said he also faced an issue on a return of a mobile and stopped using flipkart ever since, I have too now...

Below is the snapshot from my email for proof...

Compare this to Amazon, they have top class after sales services and wonderful customer service, for them it is customer first, and for flipkart it is still money first, the thing I had noticed more than 2 years back is still existing, and if it continues, flipkart won't be able to continue for long, they badly need to improve and focus on customers, this is basic common and business sense... 

My 6th Hackathon Experience & the Great Surgical Strike

This week I took part in another Hackathon, it was my 6^th one!! Last hackathon which I participated in, we were not able to complete the solution as we were working on really niche next generation technologies, and we did not get the required technical support on time. Out of the 6 Hackathons, I have taken part in, I have been able to complete 5,the one we did not complete, we did do the presentation and completed the participation.

 I remember my first Hackathon in 2014, it was a great experience and it encouraged me to keep going forward. I learnt new things with each participation, and also evolved technically, I also kept getting better. Every hackathon was different, with different themes and different technologies, some of them I did not even know the name of the tool\platform, and ended up using it.

This time around the focus was on domain and not so much on the technology. The Hackathon was hosted by the client I work for, which is an MNC in banking domain. We decided on the theme which was closest to our strength, we choose the user experience theme. We built a web site with sleek user interface to display the status of all our batches. ROI is, it saves minimum 3 hours daily and also has a huge user base as well who could use it.

I attended the demo call and got a chance to look over other team’s solutions. Couple of them looked extra ordinary and unfeasible in the allotted hackathon time (this happens in all hackathons).Some were really good and the effort was shown, some were good attempts, there were few no shows as well. Compared to others I had a very simple, yet very effective interface which suited my requirement. There was nothing to refer to for our solution, and we did brainstorming on pen and paper to choose the best design of the layout.  Time was invested to get the right placement of the components, and the color combination, in line with the assigned theme.

End of the day I was happy with what we had made. Even the next day, I was playing around the website, it is very user friendly and the color combinations are really good, we had invested time on it and glad it came out good.

Another thing I wanted to write about since long time is India’s surgical strike in terrorist hideouts in PoK. It was a bold move, it was a correct move and it was definitely a memorable day in the history of modern India. Hats off to the Indian army and also to the Prime Minister for this. The next few days were tense as well as exciting, but definitely the whole of India is proud and thankful to the army and the Prime Minister…Jai Hind!!!

India & The Olympics

 It was a busy Monday, although I had a day off at work, there was some renovation work happening at home all day which kept me engaged. Feeling a bit tired, but still nevertheless have some juice to pump out this post.

 Post after a while, have been busy in office. But yes enjoying as I am still learning new things everyday. Major thing this month was the Olympics in Rio, Brazil. Had great time watching it, Indian athletes did a splendid job. There were a lot of firsts for India this time, and surely the medal counts will increase next time in Tokyo 2020.

 India ended with just a couple medals and no gold, but still I am happy and proud with the performance. There is a lot of politics still present in sports, and lot of funds not utilized as expected. There was a big useless administrative contingent along with the athletes, even the chief of medical staff was not a proper doctor but son of some politician enjoying a free trip abroad.There are very few sports facilities of international standards in India and not much financial assistance to athletes, Indians were counted 70 years behind world's best athletes at Olympics, despite all this the athletes did a splendid job.

Things are improving in India, and I am sure they will continue to improve. We are fortunate to have a wonderful prime minister. There are some good cabinet ministers as well, but still many corrupt greedy worthless politicians present. However, a lot of good things happened to me in last one month, which portrays that things are indeed getting better in India, government servants and government work is getting professional and efficient.

To start with I had to renew my passport, which is considered an international document. I did all pre-formalities myself and online. I even got an appointment to ensure there is not much waiting time. The complete process at passport office was very streamlined, the staff for the most of it was co-operative and helpful. Complete procedure took 90 mins for me at passport office. I believe Pune office processes at least 1000 passport applications everyday, and everything is online. When I was on my return journey home, I got a notification saying passport printing started, and I got it home in 3 days, kudos!

 Another good experience regards to my electricity bill. I got an unexpected high bill, I called up the customer care and registered a compliant. I got a local office contact number and was told will need to go to office and sort it out. I was thinking it will cost me a leave and transport cost additional. However, the person of local office who attended my complaint on the number was helpful and was I was able to resolve my query on phone.

 Finally currently I am watching 'Discover India- Mumbai Railways' on Discovery channel. They are showing a documentary on long distance journeys from CST. The logistics and procedures of long distance trains. They even showed the command center at CST which is simply awesome. We do not realize the number of people and amount of effort goes into preparation of a long distance train. Also we have a wonderful rail minister currently. Glad to be alive during this period of time in this great nation!!!

Cricket, Kabaddi & Technathon!

To start with cricket, India tour to West Indies is going on. The ODIs and T20s are over and its now time for the test series. Test series is said to be the toughest form of cricket, I have heard cricket commentators and experts say the same since childhood. Only recently when I was paying 'World Cricket Championship 2' game on my mobile, I realized why it is called the toughest form of cricket. It takes lot of patience while batting, and you really need to work hard and play with batmen psyche to get their price wicket!

 Coming back to India - West-indies Test series. India won the first test comprehensively. It was definitely a pleasure to watch too on my big screen TV in HD. India won by an innings and 92 runs, Virat Kohli the skipper continuing his wonderful form to lead with the bat with a double century! All the Indian bowlers did a good job in dismissing the host 2 times with a consistent disciplined performance. The second test match started today, West-indies are batting first after winning toss, 3 wickets out pretty soon!

  Moving on to Kabaddi, the 2 semi-finals were played yesterday in Hyderabad. This is the 4th season of the Pro Kabaddi league.The first semifinal match was between Pune and Patna.  Patna are the defending champions from last season, Pune had never reached the PKL finals. It was a very tight match, Pune were giving Patna a tough fight, especially their skipper Manjit Chiller was in great form tackling Patna raiders. Patna team won 4 super tackles, which eventually made the difference in their 37 - 33 win.

 The second semifinal was between Hyderabad and Jaipur, it was north vs south.Being in their own den, I thought Telugu titans would have the advantage. However, Jaipur team showed their class, dismantling the titans to storm into the finals, 34 -24 the eventually score in favor of Jaipur. The final should be a cracker between 2 champion teams. Jaipur had won the first edition of PKL, Patna are the defending champions winning the 3rd edition which happened last year.

 Finally lets talk Technathon. I took part in this Hackathon at my office. We had to select next gen technologies, We had taken up IoT. This was my second IoT hackathon and fourth hackathon overall. We also attended prep training on IBM Bluemix, there was also Microsoft Cognitive services training.We decided to use Bluemix, we also used a raspberry pi 3, a light detector. Team worked really hard, we were able to install raspberry OS, and connect light sensor and test it. However we faced problem registering the device on ibm internet of cloud things website. There was not much technical support and it was an unknown area for us.

 On the second day we got an ibm contact to help out, but it was too late by then. We were already tired and sleepy. We decided to go ahead with the demo with whatever was done. Not many teams had taken IoT theme, and none we know of were able to complete the solution.The demo went alright, not great nor as bad as we were fearing. There was not much weight to completion anyways in the score-sheet. Lets hope for best, we will get results next week. Like any hackathon, me and team got to learn a lot. It was a fun filled experience and we did enjoyed a lot.

I am Teacher...are you?

 So what do you do on a typical Saturday? Go for a movie, hang out with friends? Well there is nothing wrong in that, but it is important to do some social work as well. Some monetary support to the needy helps bridge the economic gap in society, and some social work where you denote your time for a cause is actually better than monetary support.

 As far as I am concerned, I am enrolled with payroll program in my company since last few years, where some amount of salary is automatically deducted for social cause. I also try to go for social work, whenever I can. I have to work on lot of Saturday's, so I get few chances, but when I get a chance, I definitely go.

 Every MNC company has a CSR branch, so you may want to check out your office mails or with HR for details. Last time when I was in Balewadi, I had gone for a CSR activity. I was on a lookout for some activity in my area again. There was a BAT(Be a teacher)program today at a school which is only 2kms away from my home, so I registered for same.

The timing was 11:30 to 13:30, I reached there. There was another person present who was the POC, he was in the Class 6th, teaching English. Every student was introducing themselves, I stood for a while and then gave a suggestion, POC told me that they want tips and help to speak in English, I said ok, he gave me the charge of the class, and I was there for around couple hours.

After every student finished their introduction, I gave my feedback on what I though about their English, and how they can improve their spoken English. Then, I asked if someone can talk on India, no one volunteered. I understood the level of class was not that great, and needed help. I asked them to remove their textbooks, and we started reading. I asked them who wants to read, students would raise their hand and I would make them read few lines.

Then we did an exercise, where I taught them about interruptions and responses to them when someone is reading. Some students liked English and had also mentioned it in their favorite subject during introduction. Some were not very interested, I made sure each and everyone got a chance to read. I told them if they are not confident\comfortable, they should still try. They will be confident once they try. I also asked the class, that if their friend is reading and not doing well, not to laugh at him, but to help him.

I gave other tips as well to students, on how to improve spoken English. It comes with practice and more reading. One should think in English in order to speak fluently. I also told them, that not everyone would be good in the same thing, and have same interest. However, you need to study to clear exams, and in future you may study what your interest is.

It was a very good experience for me, I like taking class, and this in a way is giving back to society. Helping out the young kids to go towards the correct path, and motivate them to work hard for a bright future. It was a wonderful day out in PMC School, Bavdhan indeed..

A memorable Pune – Mumbai trip!

There are a lot of people like me who do frequent too and fro from Mumbai to Pune and vice versa. Thanks to technology there are even more options now to travel, mainly the blah blah cars service. You get a chance to meet a lot of interesting people. Well last weekend was an experience worth mentioning about, met and learnt from interesting people indeed.

I have had a few blah blah cars journey which were really good; however this was not blah blah car this time. I was waiting at wakad looking for a transport to go to Mumbai. I normally get down near airport, so ask drivers if they go till there, there was another person who also wanted to go there, and so we started hunting for ride in pair!

After around 20mins, finally we got a ride. Our journey started, it was a pretty silent ride till Vashi. There was a couple sitting at the back (it was a SUV), they wanted to get down at Vashi and did not inform in advance, we took the Vashi flyover, the girl started shouting. Clearly it was her fault, driver did not argue back doing the sensible thing, and apologized, and the couple got down after VAshi flyover.

After she got down we all started talking, with the 'it was her fault' thing. Then we were continuously having talks till I got down. I normally talk to drivers about how important it is to drive safely, etc. I always make a point to keep an eye on driver, make sure he is driving properly. Then it came to drunken driving, at that time he started to tell his story..

The driver was actually a constable on duty. He had a glorious past, he lost all thanks to his drinking addiction. When he was in second year of engineering, he appeared for police constable test and came first. He got sanctioned at a very good place; he was at the best possible place, having a boss who had lot of power politically. I will not go in to details for confidentiality purpose. He actually said: it was like he was flying in his career, everything was working great for him!!

Then he started drinking, slowly he got addicted to it, he lost his glorious post, he lost a lot of money, he lost his health. He went in to rehab, he got better and came out, then he became over-confident, and got addicted again, in all he went into rehab 4 times. Finally he was able to get rid of his drinking habits, but by that time, he had lost a lot in life, and his family also suffered, but his brothers were always there to show him the correct path.

Due to good work in his glorious career, he had earned 3 flats, he had sold one of it for want of money to drink, still he has 2 flats. He is also the owner of the car we were riding in, he did not need to do so much driving, but he said he had lost a lot and he wanted to cover up in his life. He wanted to work hard and buy more cars, and earn more. He has 2 daughters, both are studying, and he works hard for his and his family's bright future.

There was another guy sitting behind, listening to all this, he asked him what happens in rehab. The driver said, the person who is addicted to drinking forgets everything, in rehab they teach him everything right from brushing your teeth, cutting your nails, etc. They bring the person to his teen position, where a person has to choose between 2 paths. It is an opportunity to choose the right path and live a good life. Normally in teens we are confused and easily get tempted to do the wrong things by seeing others. Peer pressure is also there, it is important to take the right decision when you are at that age, and you need your parents for guidance, and you need to listen to them. Well he didn’t say all of above, some of it is added by me here! Anyways, he did raise this point, and it encouraged me to write about him, and about this trip.

The guy sitting at the back also had a small apparent issue. He had ordered a cake from a site the day before, hoping it will be delivered by midnight, but it was still not delivered the next day till 6pm.He called a lot of times to the site, still no progress and he finally got pissed off. He contacted his lawyer, and is going to file a case against the cake company. I was pretty surprised seeing the last part, as such thing I had only seen in the movies, and read in newspapers happening abroad. He told me consumer laws are pretty strict now, and consumer had a lot of power. He was someone who knew a lot about laws, as he was an entrepreneur related to field of manpower onshoring, and was affiliated to government of India. He told a lot of interesting things, some of it I did not know. Learnt a lot from him too!!

So that was the wonderful journey I had, this is one of the many reasons I like travelling, you meet interesting people and hear interesting stories!!

A Murder, an Exit, Monsoon and Kabbadi!

  This has been kinda drought year for me with regards to posts count in this blog, I have been really busy with work and home. This is just the second post this year, and hopefully I will get back in the tune to write more.

 My last post was about cricket, the government and my work. With regards to the World T20, West Indies won it, and they were playing some really good fearless cricket, a team filled with hitters and all rounders, an ideal combination for T20 cricket, every player played their part, and despite their differences with their board, they managed to shine at the apex level.

 Back to my subject of the post, there is a lot to write today, and I am sure this is going to be one hell of a long post. To start with, this week an Infosys female employee was murdered in broad daylight at a Chennai railway station. Being from same profession, it is really saddening to see such a news, and even sad is, it happened in broad day light, at a public place, and no one did anything. There would have been some shares in social network after, but if someone or a bunch of people would have saved her, it would have been a much happier social network share. In general, there is fear among people not to get involved in such things, because of the bad image the police and the judiciary system has set, people avoid helping others with fear of getting strangled in police and court cases, even though their intentions are good. I believe in one thing, if you have not done anything wrong, then you should have nothing to fear, and you should be able to be a responsible citizen. Hopefully things will change with time.

Another reason why the people don't involve in such issues is because of corruption. Like the police and the judiciary, even the politicians are supposed to be public servants and should be obliged to help people. Many politicians are corrupt and greedy, uneducated and irresponsible, this leads to similar police and judiciary system. To correct this, I think education is important, and any politician in order to get a political ticket should have a graduate degree, by law.

Second thing which hogged a lot of social media lime-light was Britain exit from EU. Indians have very less impact of this at individual level currently, still every one is riding this bus on social media. Well not that I ignored it, I did enjoy some of the creative tweets which people wrote. I do not want to comment much on this except, I hope they stabilize and prosper, I wish the same for everyone in this world. A world filled with happiness, health and devoid of corruption, poverty and crime, would be hard to realize but a wonderful thing to wish and pray for!

Thirdly monsoon, I am living in Pune since past 4 years now, and this year there has been a lot of problem with regards to water, not only in Pune, but in Maharashtra. People dying due to heat and everyone relying on water tankers is a very sad state to witness. After long and anxious wait, monsoon is here, and experts have predicted a normal monsoon, which is a respite indeed. Hope is that the water would be used effectively. If not now, hopefully in less then a decade Maharashtra and whole of India would be drought free!!

Finally Kabaddi, today the fourth season of Pro Kabaddi league has started, something I enjoy watching. it is a very fast game which involves physical fitness and mental alertness. Thanks to this league, it has gained a lot of popularity now. It is a sport invented by us, and although it is not our national game, even as a nation we are very good at it.

Finally here's wishing everyone good health, happiness and success! 

Post after long time

It has been six months almost since I last posted an entry in this blog. Lot of things happened, and lot of wonderful things actually. I got married and life has been great, really having wonderful time! Also it would be one year complete in Cognizant next week, so much happens so fast in life.

Lot of T20 cricket happening these days, first it was the first T20 edition of Asia Cup which India won, now the T20 World Cup is underway in India. India lost yesterday to New Zealand in the first match, but I am sure Dhoni and team will come back strong and should reach last 4, based on the team and the form we have. After this there would be the IPL.

Lot of good things happening in India currently. The Modi government is doing a lot of good work and making our wonderful country better and better. The union budget was announced couple weeks back, lot of emphasis has been given to farmers, also coupled with a good monsoon forecast, consider this to be a very good year for India. Hopefully farmer suicides will come down. Also noticeable thing is China economy is not good, and India has overtaken China now.

This is another one of the blogs in the middle of the night. I have blogged a lot in night, mostly it was about crazy jugaads and philosophical thoughts, this is a normal blog and I am sure I will be back with those creative writings and doings as well.

Well nothing else for now, I hope India really does well in the world cup as well as in growth and development, Jai Hind!

Waterfall Rappelling at Bhivpuri

It all started with the wish to go to Dudhsagar waterfall. That is the famous waterfall shown in Chennai express. There is a page on facebook called Places Around Pune, they had an event in July, I thought of registering as one of my friend of Amdocs was also going. I went to enroll, and to my surprise the event was sold out. I checked other upcoming events, there was this event of waterfall rappelling coming on August 9^th.

I go to few places every year in monsoon, I love travelling, have been to trekking several times and enjoy that too. I love being in the midst of mountains and greenery, I savor nature. To make sure this event does not go sold out, I registered for it right away. It was on a Sunday when I always have an off, and it was a one day event so it fit my bill with regards to office. Cost was around 1200 bucks for one day which included food, travel, and rappelling. Place of rapelling was Dikshal Waterfall in Bhivpuri.

I have never done rappelling before. However, I have done parasailing, sky-diving, jet skiing, so in short I had done adventure sports and I registered for this one. I was thinking will see if I would be able to do this, else will enjoy the trek. Finally the day came, I had hectic office days before, so din’t get much time to think about that, went to Magarpatta at friend’s place as pickup was from there. We started on Sunday morning around 6AM and reached at base village around 10’o clock. We had breakfast in the bus, wonderful thepla with lal marchu powder, frooti, muffin. I had also taken a couple of my gym protein bars.

We had good fun while going, there were close to 50 of us in the bus, and all IT employees like me. Same age group, same profession, same interests, it was fun.Event was managed by IT employees as well, it was very well planned and executed with everything being taken care of. They are doing this since 2.5 years, and their motto is to take people to unexplored places, and they are definetly succedding, who would have thought one could do waterfall rappelling around Pune.

Anyways, we did some warm-up before starting the trek, which was fun too. We did trekking for around 45mins and reached to the waterfall. This was a kinda jungle trek, different from the fort treks I have done before. When we reached top, we were given instructions on how to do rappelling. They were professionals, and even the equipment they provided were top quality. Imported with tensile strength to bear 2500 kg weight, both the hooks as well as the ropes.

Waterfall rappelling may seem tough if you see it, but if you have proper guidance and equipments it is not that difficult. You have to careful though. Tips given to us were to put all our weight on the harness around our waist, and to rappel down in a L shape with the waterfall. There are 2 ropes tied to us, and there is good safety with regards to holding on to the rope. However, there are some dangers, and there were few injuries, you need to be careful and remember the instructions.

 

The starting part of the rappelling is important, especially if it is slippery like it was for us, even in the waterfall there are various crevices and gaps, you need to make sure you have good grip and if you slip take control back soon. One of our colleague got stuck midway and the instructor had to go rappel down to help her out. Remember the basics of being in L shape, having gap between your feet and keep your knees straight. When my turn came I did do all that, and was going well till midway, I even moved sideways when I encountered gaps in the mountain. You need to be focused if it’s you first time. Thankfully I was able to rappel down safely; it was around 90 feet waterfall. I slipped twice, but enjoyed it as it was getting a bit boring going perfectly. Feeling of water hitting your face is wonderful!

We even had lunch near the waterfall. After everyone finished, we trekked back to the base village. Changed our clothes and came back. Return journey was also fun, we had a friend who had good music and we hit the floor shaking our legs, and partying all the way back home! Wonderful enjoyable and adventurous trips, will surely go to more trips with this group, great fun!!