
Indian phones are weird - twapi
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2016/07/indian_phones_a.html
======
maheart
I know that Intex will soon be shipping (currently is shipping?) phones with
SailfishOS (Jolla's OS).

I've been using SailfishOS for almost two years, and I confidently say that
underneath the GUI, it is just a regular GNU/Linux system[1].

Why do I bring this up? Jolla, and the community are developing a more
inclusive mobile OS (that has Android app compatibility, and can be ported to
Android devices relatively easily using libhyris[2]). I'm hopeful that it will
help minimise the hackery described in the article.

For example, SailfishOS ships with Gecko engine v31 at the moment (soon to be
updated...), QtWebkit, and (soon, after the port to Qt5.6 is complete),
QtWebEngine (Chromium).

I'm hopeful that more Indian (and Chinese) phone manufacturers can start
contracts with Jolla. I'm not aware of any software houses (as opposed to
internal) that customise _Android_ for your device.

[1] glibc, systemd, BlueZ, Pulseaudio, gstreamer, connman, Telepathy, Python,
gcc, Qt, etc.

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_%28software%29)

~~~
skykooler
One thing to note there - currently Android compatibility is only available on
Jolla phones, not third-party ports, due to their licensing agreement with
Myriad. Hopefully, any official releases on third-party phones will be able to
include it as well.

~~~
maheart
> Hopefully, any official releases on third-party phones will be able to
> include it as well.

Yes, while I have no official word (I'm just a fan), I think this will be the
case. As long as it's an official port done by Jolla, Myriad/Alien Dalvik
should be available.

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_Marak_
Slightly related, one of the worst things about the Indian phones and telcos
are the spam advertisements that have subscription opt-ins by default.

Essentially, you will get several sms messages a day which if you accidentally
hit one of the keys on your phone ( which is actually very easy ), you get
billed $1 every week ( think daily fortunes / love poems / etc ). It's very
easy to accidentally opt-in to several of these.

To opt-out of these advertisements you need to find a hidden number on the
telcos website, send an sms message, and wait 10-14 days until the
advertisements stop.

I have to think that the telcos are taking in millions of dollars every month
from these spam ads.

~~~
swatkat
May I know which operator was that? I've used Airtel and Vodafone in India,
and I didn't had any "services" enabled by default.

By the way, there's a centralized DND registry in India called _" Commercial
Communications Customer Preference Portal"_[0]. You just need to send an SMS
to enable/disable unsolicited commercial calls/SMS. It has been very effective
so far.

[0] [http://www.nccptrai.gov.in/](http://www.nccptrai.gov.in/)

~~~
kranner
That thing is a joke. I'm registered as 'fully blocked' and I still get spam
SMS. Last few offenders were EaseMyTrip, the Ministry of Tourism and some guy
called Hemant.

~~~
livus
Start reporting on those messages. If you are on Android, use India Against
Spam. If iphone, you'll have to report manually on the operator's website. for
example - airtel.in/dnd

It's a pain in the ass but I kept on reporting for a month after activating
DND and the calls and messages dropped. I've even received calls from people
begging me to take my complaints back or otherwise they'll loose their jobs. I
agreed twice but holy hell those exact same companies spammed me again. I
stopped being a good samaritan and just told them to sort it out with their
companies since it's the companies fault. Now spam has reduced to a message or
two a month.

From what I understand there are old mobile numbers list being passed around
from before DND was available and that's why you need to start reporting the
spam messages. Word quickly spreads between the companies to remove your
number from the lists.

~~~
kranner
I have reported them via India Against Spam but the responses from Airtel
were, roughly, 'thanks but this is not spam' so I stopped reporting.
Complaining on Twitter helped with some, but not all, spammers.

------
blackoil
Most Indian company started with no technical capabilities, they bought
complete package from Chinese OEMs and handled only marketing, distribution
and service. As the grew larger, they added technical teams and have more
control on the phone.

So possible for Intex, OEMs added Chromium browser since they don't have
Google in China, then added Google play services with Chrome, and finally has
a marketing deal with Opera to add it as only browser on main screen.

------
voltagex_
Does anyone know if the Firefox phones are still around / in use in India? I
actually had a friend import the Intex Firefox phone (don't remember the name,
it's got 128mb of RAM and a dead-end FXOS version). It's utterly painful to
use - I hope the situation has gotten better for users there.

~~~
gopalv
> It's utterly painful to use - I hope the situation has gotten better for
> users there.

I bought the bright orange ZTE Open C fxos phone to try it out.

Haven't done much more with it that travel around with it, mostly using it as
a primary phone for calls. The battery life is insane on that one - I went
about 4-5 days without charging it when I was traveling (barely any calls,
mostly standby).

The good part was the HERE maps downloaded onto its SDCARD and I could use at
least some of the GPS functionality when it is offline.

However for the same amount of money I could easily buy a Micromax or Karbonn
phone which would have 2 killer apps to use - PayTM and Ola Cabs.

~~~
madeofpalk
> I went about 4-5 days without charging it when I was traveling (barely any
> calls, mostly standby).

To be fair, most Android devices and iPhone would achieve similar battery life
if you're not actually using the phone.

Apple claims to get 10 days of standby out of an iPhone. I would imagine with
'barely any calls' or using the device you would get somewhere between 5 to 10
days. 5 days doesn't really sound that impressive.

~~~
majewsky
> Apple claims to get 10 days of standby out of an iPhone.

I have a work iPhone that I barely use (since I prefer Android personally),
and it usually lasts 4-5 days.

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sundarurfriend
Just to give people some context, Indians generally use the usual
Samsung/HTC/Moto/Xiaomi/... fare, and the ones reviewed here are _~~made~~
marketed and sold by Indian companies_ but don't have a very high market share
here. They're also lower end phones generally used by relatively poor folks -
I haven't checked, but all of these are probably <Rs.8000 (~$115) phones.

One reason I post this is because I was hoping the article was something about
changes made in international brands for Indian context, which might reveal
some aspect of Indian telco environment I wasn't aware of. No such luck, just
the usual lack of attention to detail by not-paid-enough employees at the
phone companies.

~~~
anilgulecha
Phones are not made by indian copanies. Intex and friends source and rebrand
from china.

------
ysh7
Not sure, what was the point of this post.

~~~
lucideer
It's Peter-Paul Koch. He's well known for providing painstakingly detailed
tests and compatibility tables on browser capabilities and web standards
support, particularly js.

I'm not sure what stats are like for users of the specific devices he's
looking at here, but India's a big market: I'm guessing browser compatibility
here is going to be of some interest to more than one or two folks.

