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Vertu: The Costliest Mobile Brand. What’s So Special? How I came to know about Vertu:One day I was watching the movie ‘Goutham Nanda’ where the hero’s family is so insanely rich that his father is featured as one in Top 50 Richest People in the World. For me, all was clear except one – Why was the man still using a Feature phone (of an unknown company Vertu). He could have bought an iPhone made of gold right? (Have a look at the screenshot above)

So I googled the name ‘Vertu’ to know what the mysterious Mobile phone exactly is. Here’s what I have found, which cleared all my doubts.

Firstly, Who founded it?

Vertu was founded by Nokia in 1998, with the intention of giving big shots a shot of luxury in their mobiles. According to The Economist, the concept was to market phones explicitly as fashion accessories, with the idea —

“If you can spend $20,000 on a watch, why not on a mobile phone?”

By the end of 2013, the company had around 350,000 customers, and phones were on sale in 500 retail outlets. But now Vertu is in bankruptcy. Many of its factories are getting demolished. Yet, it would be remembered as the torchbearer in the history of Luxury mobiles.

Thanks to Wikipedia

What’s so special about these mobiles:

1. The screen doesn’t break:

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Intel Free Press, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The screen is entirely made of 130-carat Sapphire crystal, which the the second hardest material on Earth, after Diamond. They boast, “It would resist a 200g steel ball dropped down from a height of 1 metre”. The only thing that could at least scratch it is a Diamond.

All this is because there shouldn’t be the dreaded bugbear of screen crack after paying a fortune.

2. Back case made of finest leather:

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Tinh Te Photos, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The back case is made of finest quality Animal leather, carefully selected and picked from Europe’s tanneries. It looks royal and feels awesome when touched. It smells good too. You don’t want to put on a back cover on it.

3. Great Handfeel:

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Tinh Te Photos, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The mobile bezels and body is made of high-quality durable Titanium and Aluminium metals. The Ear-piece has a ceramic pillow around it, which amplifies the audio coming out. You’ll have a great feel when you hold a Vertu mobile in your hand. The phone feels heavy, being 2 times heavier than a regular smartphone.

4. Up-to-date Software:

It uses the Android OS, with latest updates as soon as they arrive. Their phones have a light Vertu customised skin over Android where he provides you with the latest security features and other exclusive avails of Vertu.

5. Incredible Dolby Audio:

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Tinh Te Photos, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

They placed the two Stereo speakers front-facing – at the top and bottom of the phone. The latest Dolby Digital Plus sound from their speakers feels like it’s some real thing’s happening before you. The Microphone provides excellent noise cancellation. Their quality ringtones are exclusively composed by the London Orchestra. So you don’t find your unique ringtone matching with any others’.

6. Great Camera:

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Alexcaban, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Vertu has embedded the Hasselblad-certified cameras onto its phones. Hasselblad is the world’s most renowned Professional photography brand. You couldn’t spot a blemish on their Photography Masterpieces.

7. World SIM support:

“What’s so special about SIM? Every mobile supports it.” No! There’s something special about SIM support in Vertu.

Unlike regular phones, Vertu supports almost all the GSM bands in the world. So, you can travel to any country and use their particular providers’ SIM cards. This makes it a Traveller’s phone.

8. Incredible Display:

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Tinh Te Photos, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

It has a WQHD AMOLED display. With an impressive 530+ PPI, you would be able to see letters, pictures with perfect accuracy. The display has a Scratch-resistant glass shielding it.

9. Fastest Wireless Connectivity:

Vertu embeds the latest versions of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and NFC. This provides fastest speeds of data transfer and downloads. NFC enables the user to make Secure transactions and authorise entry into private places with a tap of his phone.

10. Strongest Encryption:

When it comes to privacy, you can be sure of Vertu. The company provides high End-to-End Encryption on all your calls, messages, and mails powered by ‘Silent Circle’. Unless you share your data, none would know what’s in your phone.

11. 24/7 Concierge: (The most exciting feature)

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Jacob Jensen Holding, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

You could find a Red Ruby on the side of the mobile. When you press it, you’ll be connected to Vertu’s exclusive concierge service. It is like your real-life personal assistant, unlike Siri and Alexa. You’ll still be having Google Assistant, as it’s Android. There are dedicated staff waiting for your call. You could get your things done by them. The first year of concierge is absolutely free, but later, you’ll need to pay them $3000 i.e. 3 iPhones a year!

You could ask them to Reserve a restaurant table for you, Order food items, goods and services to your home, Get information, Book tickets for travel, movies, concerts, Plan events, and many more! You are given VIP access to various clubs if you own a Vertu. You’re treated with utmost respect by Vertu Concierge customer care executives. Their words would be very polite and professional.

You ask them for a time-machine, and they’ll feel very sorry for being unable to provide you.

There was a case when a man asked them to book a restaurant table at 11:00 AM. But the restaurant usually opens at 12:00 in the noon. The Concierge executives somehow convinced them to open it at 11:00 AM exclusively for the man!

Conclusion:

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Intel Free Press, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Vertu, being one of the costliest mobile phone makers, I feel it needs to have its own OS, like iOS, Windows or the latest Harmony OS. However, the features it provides to its customers are fantastic and unsurpassable. The concierge is a killer-feature which no other manufacturer has ever provided, or maybe, could even provide! Vertu is definitely a Billionaire’s best friend. It’s lineaments come up trumps over every regular mobile over there.

Q. Is all that worth a $6,000–20,000 Mobile?

A. Maybe yes. Maybe no. It depends on your verdict and usage.

2. Google’s Popular Free Service Ceases Now. Here’s Why.

After five years of offering a high-traction service of Unlimited High-Quality photos storage, Google modifies its policy. Starting from June 1, 2021, the photos uploaded in High quality (Slightly reduced quality than original) will count towards the 15 GB of free storage.

Over the years, we all have been relying on Google Photos as the Home of our Life’s memories. And Google has made our experience better by providing AI face recognition, OCR text recognition, and Memories. And hence, it’s a slightly disappointing new policy for us.

Why has Google taken this step?

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Data Center

Google has always been a customer-centric company (in most of the cases), with all its services being provided with the intention of customer satisfaction and solutions. While this is happening, Google Photos attracted a large crowd towards itself. All of them are uploading enormous number of photos everyday.

According to Google, as of now, there are 4 Trillion Photos in its servers, with 28 Billion Photos being added each week i.e. about 45,000 Photos every second!

Just like roaring water needs huge reservoirs to store them, Rushing data needs huge, well-maintained data centers working relentlessly 24x7, 365 days to process and store it. Constructing it, buying power and cooling equipment, paying salaries for engineers, providing security requires Millions of bucks every year for a company. And Google is finding it difficult to offer storage service for free.

Applicability of the Policy — Isn’t limited to Photos:

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Google Photos App intro in iOS

The policy also comes with the changes to the Google Drive Policy like capping the storage of Workspace Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms or Jamboard files. All those combined come under the 15 GB free storage by Google. If you want more storage, you could purchase your favourite plan of Google One.

Exploiting Unlimited Storage by Github Geeks:

This too might be a reason for Google to end its free unlimited storage.

Geeks have found out a way to encode their files into images and upload them to Google Photos. The photos could then be retrieved back and processed into files again.

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Their idea:

Their program takes each byte of the file data and encodes it to the red, green, and blue channels of each pixel, as each pixel stores 3 bytes of data. Although this could be increased to 4 bytes using the alpha channel. After encoding, they upload it to Google photos.

This increases lots of unwanted stuff in Google’s servers, and makes ‘Photos’ get away from its purpose. Google has taken a right decision, this proves.

Happy news for Pixel users: You’re exempted!

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Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash

Along with the policy changes, Google has also mentioned that if you own a Pixel device of series 1 to 5, you’re exempted from this policy of limited High-Quality uploads. You’ll still be able to upload your photos like before, even after June, 2021. This is an incentive to buy or to stick to a Google’s own Pixel device.

New Storage management tools by Google:

Google has built tools to help its users manage their photos and use their limited storage most effectively. It has built a tool to weed out dark, blurry photos and large videos, so the limited storage could be used wisely. It also built a tool that estimates time until a user reaches his/her storage quota, based on how often the content is backed up.

It is estimated that over 80% of users should take three years to reach their 15 GB quota.

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Click here to know yours — Google’s tool

Automatic Data deletion in inactive accounts:

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Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

If you’re inactive in one or more of Google’s services like Gmail, Drive, and Photos for Two years as on June 1, 2021, Google deletes the content in the products in which you’re inactive. Similarly, if you’re over your storage limit for the same time, Google deletes your content across that particular service.

Google is concerned for your memories and it will notify you multiple times it takes an attempt to remove any content so you’ll have ample time to take action. The simplest way to stay active is to log in to their apps once in a while.

We still have time — Let’s think of alternatives:

There are already popular Storage Services like Dropbox, Onedrive, Mega, iCloud which you can make use of. But in my opinion, the best service right now (keeping Google aside) is Amazon Photos.

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In this pandemic period, OTT platforms have become the major source of entertainment and Amazon Prime Video one of the most popular ones. Most of us already have subscribed for it. Amazon now provides with a new exciting offering. It’s providing Unlimited free High-resolution Photo storage and 5 Gb video storage for Prime members. So now, you could rely on this Service for your Photos, and find some other way for your Videos. No collywobbles!

3. Apple’s M1: Yet Another Trademark Apple Disruption.

Past few months have been among Apple’s most turbulent times in its half a century history. With each passing day, news on Apple oscillates from one extreme to another — exciting and crushing at the same time. At one side it seems to be crushing any fair competition or so Epic claims while on the other side, it seemingly drives competition through its videography, privacy and security model. Frankly, the free publicity both, good and bad that Apple received this year has kept them afloat even through a disastrous pandemic. Who would have guessed that a company will break through $2 Trillion market evaluation in contemporary times while the global economy is ravaged unlike any other in the past few decades?

Apple’s Nov 10th event launched a torrent of well-deserved, primarily optimistic, and enthusiastic coverage especially from longtime industry veterans, influencers, journalists, and upstart online tech enthusiasts. Apple’s M1 heralds a new age of power-efficiency and portability while making impressive strides in performance. Rapid advancements in any industry are facilitated through intense competition. And, for the first time in nearly 15 years, Apple is truly offering a unique value proposition for all products of its portfolio.

When Apple adopted Intel in 2006, its Mac line of portable and desktop computers’ USP (Unique Selling Proposition) was limited to its OS and industrial design. Of course, reducing Macs to a two-trick pony is unjust and unrealistic. There were and continue to be significant differences between the two operating systems to warrant a credible choice. Though, competing Windows machines always had the upper hand by compromising on certain aspects that were considered fairly irrelevant by the mass market and seemingly offered better value proposition for their products.

With M1, Apple kills five birds with one stone.

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Modified from : tayteh.blogspot.com

Firstly, it offers an affordable and highly competitive alternative to the traditional platforms that exist while resoundingly defeating competitors at performance and power efficiency.

Secondly, it unifies its product portfolio under one architecture, making its ecosystem far more cohesive and tougher to leave at the same time. This is phenomenally important as development for Apple products will become incredibly lucrative, (more than they already are right now) and easier to develop for than competing, disjoint platforms (Windows, Linux, and Android).

Thirdly, its R&D spending is validated as it does innovate usefully instead of fancy one-time gimmicks that provide no real value to general customers (looking at you, Iris Scanner, Project Soli and, Dolby Vison HDR (seriously, Apple? Who can edit that on their computers??)). It also silences all skeptics and doom-prophets with their claims of “Apple’s twilight is here” or “Apple’s decline is nigh”, and reconfigures the scope of their scrutenizers- shifting it from iPhone-centric to Apple-centric with a renewed focus on iPads, Macs and Apple Services.

Fourthly, it gains complete control over third-party software development on all its platforms irrespective of it aimed for an open-platform (as Mac was initially considered) or closed-platform (iDevices). This will grate at every developer who wants Apple’s control diminished for a more open market. The Mac can no longer be considered as a different than iOS platforms in many key areas, with Apple’s claws sinking deep into the underlying system code through its rather controversial Big Sur “security features” or its chipsets replacing Intel as the beating heart of all its products.

Lastly, it holds complete control over all its products (software and hardware) — everything from chip release and manufacturing to sales and positioning giving it a vertical integration never known to any company besides IBM in the 70s and 80s. This gives astounding benefits of design-specificity and platform-specific optimization. Another plus — updates to its Mac line of products will no longer be sporadic or irregular. A better idea would be to envision its release cycles like that of the iPhone — same time, every year. (Again, this is what is expected. It may vary significantly).

A true upending of the consumer computing industry.

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Source: Anandtech.com

The performance and power-efficiency of M1 are incredible achievements not only for a first-gen processor or SOC, but also for any processor in that thermal envelope (A fanless design!!! Are you kidding me with that level of performance?). If it wasn’t so, we would have likely witnessed some credible source of significant variance from the norm.

Yet, in this mix of entirely positive connotations attached with M1, it is necessary that one draw a well-informed conclusion by also looking into innumerable key factors like IPC, fabrication node size, ISA, decoders, pipelining, threading, memory bandwidth, memory architecture, etc. That would make this a categorically technical article and I redirect you to anandtech.com as I am unqualified to attempt any satisfactory explanation.

Intel vs Apple : Clash of architectures.

While M1 is remarkable, the main assumption people have floated and even proposed, is to completely dismiss Intel as a formidable opponent or even a choice. That simply isn’t the case.

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Source : wccftech.com

Apple is the first company with 5nm, ARM laptop chips (or computer chips for that matter) giving it an edge over its competitors with noticeable increase in performance and battery life that is to be expected for such a small transistor size and huge transistor density.

All the x86 processors are either on 7nm (AMD), or 10 nm and 14nm (Intel) processes. It is also of particular interest that by design, x86 is more power hungry than ARM. So, the power efficiency of x86 processors will not match Apple’s offerings anytime soon. Famously, the first ARM chip was confoundingly power-efficient. It ran of a residual current flowing in the circuits when the power source was not connected to the system!

It is a well-known fact that Intel has been struggling to get its act together. Since being the first to the market with its 14nm fabrication for processors, Intel has all but plateaued or perhaps progressed on with a slow incline upwards offering at best 25% performance improvements over their previous generations. Their famously (read formerly) consistent and reliable, tic-toc cycle in processor gains, has lost any weight it might have held. Yet, it took AMD a much more efficient processor fabrication technology (a 7 nm metric), three years of intense optimization of memory and processor interactions, pipelining and IPC improvements, and 15 years since it was at its best to dethrone Intel’s lead completely. Intel did all this with a stretched out beyond its prime, 14nm (a few +’s there as well) architecture — eking out every last bit of performance from a heavily dated fabrication technology.

Apple’s chip, while remarkably superior (technically superior too) in its performance and efficiency figures, is on a 5nm processor architecture. TO much surprise and dismay, according to GeekBench and Cinebench scores, it is still just a stone’s throw away of Intel’s latest 10nm, U-series low powered processors. To put it in perspective, Intel is at least 5 generations behind (assuming 1 increment, 1 optimization year each for 7nm and 5nm, and 1 more 10 nm generation) in processor fabrication technology, but still within Apple’s reach. Admittedly, they run using higher wattage, clearly better thermal envelopes, and efficient cooling methods.

Tech Reviewers and online buzz has hyped Apple’s M1 as “the inflection point in computers”, “the game-changer”, “upended the PC market’ and yada, yada, yada. And it makes sense from a consumer standpoint with extraordinary battery-life and performance. In other angles however, if I were to look from node fabrication technology, Apple has barely pulled ahead of Intel which I believe can be better matched when Intel achieves its transition to 5nm. Then again, subject to a 25W TDP it may perform incredible feats Intel may only dream of. That is pure speculation and the current data suggests that single core performance will remain within 5% to 10% of the scores of the M1 (for processors with more cores based off M1).

Intel : No longer relevant elder or a slumbering Goliath?

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Intel over the last 2 decades | Source : nasdaq.com

Intel is also chock full of world-class, brilliant engineers, who have been working tirelessly to rebound after their 14nm fiasco. Apple’s M1 is only fuel to the fire that had been ignited by Zen 3 series AMD desktop processors, to win back their crown and show the world why Intel won in the first place.

Personally, i think the M1 chip is probably the last nail in the lethargic response of Intel and seeing the effusive reception it has been receiving, Intel is bound to be galvanized into action. Besides, Intel is not only adopting critical ARM specific (atleast until now) features like the big. LITTLE setups with their ‘EVO’ platform, more hybrid micro-architecture and certain other advantages with legacy platforms. Not to miss, Intel has finally shipped its 10 nm chips in laptops and its 10nm fabrication is quite similar to TSMC’s and Samsung’s 10 nm fabs, making it far more attuned to compete with 5nm chips. Intel is currently slumbering, healing itself from the critical blows from Ryzen in the past four years and now the knockout punch from Apple’s M1, but make no mistake, it is gearing up for a rematch and the battle is going to be legendary.

M1: The upstart victors.

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Source: Techcrunch.com

In the current market, M1 has presented Intel and AMD with a unique opportunity. In the last decade, performance comparisons were always restricted between competitors of the same platform — Intel vs AMD and Qualcomm vs Apple vs Samsung. Prior to Intel transition, PowerPC vs Intel showed that Power architecture was far behind x86 in performance and power efficiency. Today, the case is reversed with Apple’s ISA far ahead of x86. This time, it will be Intel who needs to redesign their ISA significantly while still supporting legacy software or the dust they bite will be eons old in the computer world.

The M1 MacBooks have truly revitalized the PC industry and they are undoubtedly impressive. To achieve high performance and high-power efficiency is a feat that not many companies can claim on their first attempt at a platform transition. That isn’t the most impressive part as it is to be expected from the 5nm architecture. What is impressive though, is to achieve the level of performance at absurdly low levels of power consumption.

The battery advantage M1 MacBooks have brought with this generation is similar to the iPhone vs Android conversation where, Droids need 5000 mAh batteries to give same battery performance as iPhones with 3700 mAh. Macs will reign supreme over the battery kingdom for the foreseeable future.

2020 hasn’t been a great year by any metric, except if that metric were to be computer technology and medicinal biology (even insinuating the development of a vaccine to a highly contagious and rapidly mutating virus in a short time frame is nothing short of miraculous), and the M1 chip is the perfect jolt to awaken the slumbering giants. Now, we must wait and see if the giant continues to slip into irrelevance or awakens to a fight. The processor industry should (in theory) be full of fireworks if the competition that has (possibly) been ignited was to come to fruition. Till then, Apple’s M1 has incredible thermal and computational performance, but is entirely unsurprising yet magnificently first in several key areas while greatly improving quality of life for the end consumer. Till the next serious contender, Apple has re-established itself as a disruptive innovator the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the introduction of the original MacBook Air.

PS:

*5nm is a metric of transistor fabrication technology and transistor size which implies smaller size achieves greater power efficiency and more performance.

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['Cz Man G Mitun']
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