Stuff Made Easy

 A neobank (also known as an online bank, internet-only bank, virtual bank, or digital bank) is a type of direct bank that operates exclusively online without traditional physical branch networks. This is the description you would find on Wikipedia. To make things simple, a neobank is one that only has an online presence and makes getting usual bank things done a whole lot easier. All the usual banking with the power of one app. The counter-question to this would be that conventional banks have apps too. This is where they take it up by a notch and help the customer with different ways to save their money and then spend it mindfully. Neobanks are also employing AI (Artificial Intelligence) to offer different types of personalized experiences for customers. The USP of neobank is the time it takes to create an account on one. Unlike most traditional banks where the process is a long and arduous one, it takes a few minutes to open your account with your Aadhar and a couple more to get...

 Oneplus has long been the dominant force in the premium smartphone segment in India. Apple was losing out market share big time with Oneplus and Samsung taking a huge piece of the pie. This trend seems to be changing in the recent past with the increase in the prices of the Android flagship devices. Apple's handsets have a long life be it durability or software support. Devices are generally supported for 5 years in software updates and hold up pretty well. Android flagships are quickly catching up but are not up to the level of the iPhone. So why choose an iPhone over Oneplus? The elephant in the room is price. The latest flagship from Oneplus, the 9 Pro costs Rs.64,999 for its base variant while the iPhone 12 Pro costs 1,19,999 and 12 Pro Max costs 1,29,999. It may sound comical when I suggest that the iPhone is worth its price, but it is for a vast majority of people. iPhones have a sense of continuity to their approach which makes it easier for people of any age to just pick u...

  Music accompanies people everywhere in life albeit in different forms. Music is an integral part of life, helping people tackle their lows and celebrate their highs. Usually listening to music meant it had to be played on a gramophone, then CDs came along and finally MP3 players arrived wherein people could store their music digitally and listen without the bulk of the previous devices. iPod revolutionized the entire music industry (1000 songs in your pocket). With all this innovation there was another trendsetter gaining momentum with serious pace, "Piracy”. Websites started ripping digital versions from CDs and other web sources and posted them on the Internet for free in MP3 or M4A formats.  This led to serious losses for production houses and a solution was sought after. Many years went by and many music stores, production companies, and giants of the music CD and Vinyl businesses closed shop due to bankruptcy. While all this was happening, Apple had launched its iTunes ...

Introduced by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) in 2014, USB-C, a 24 pin connector which is distinguished by its symmetrical shape. It did not gain popularity until smartphone and laptop brands started using them by late 2015 and early 2016. Though it's been almost 6 years since USB-C was launched, certain manufacturers still use old connector pins for charging and data transfer. Most affordable phones (<10,000) still use Micro USB ports. Furthermore certain phones in a category above the Rs.10,000 do still use Micro USB. It is not an expensive part to switch to, but manufacturers have been holding back for a long time from using it and depriving customers of  the advantages of USB-C. Apple is another brand which uses its own proprietary connector, The Lightning port. No other brand in the world can use this type of connector due to Apple's exclusive patent rights. The connector situation in laptops is also utterly confusing. The essential ports like HDMI, USB-A, Headphone...

My first article was on privacy, which is in short supply these days. There are increasing reports of data breaches and leaked info of users from various applications and websites. The most recent privacy problem is with Zoom, the app which has suddenly skyrocketed to the top. "Zoombombing" is a common issue people are facing and also the bad encryption had in general. The stand of different companies are contrasting and no one seems to arrive at a good enough policy which might earn back the confidence from people. With the current lockdown situation the usage of internet is at a all time high. The most common thing people use to browse the internet is an web browser. There are many reports claiming privacy issues in many browsers and lack of features or basic functionalities in many others. People may argue that whichever browser they use might not be secure. My counter statement would be to at least use ones that have better privacy features than others. In this regard...

P.C: Deccan Chronicle The changes in smartphones came with the change in smartphone brands ruling the market in India. The giants of the past Nokia, Blackberry and Motorola were completely knocked out of the market. The rise of the Chinese brands began in the industry. The market leader consistently for many years was Samsung. The Chinese brand with the highest market share was Xiaomi, followed by Oppo, Vivo and Oneplus. The Chinese brands were slowly increasing sales and reducing Samsung's share in the budget segment. People were attracted towards the marketing of the Chinese brands and their give it every feature available strategy. This led to the decrease in sales of major players like Samsung and Apple. When we fast forward to 2019, we can observe the market is filled with majority of Chinese phones. Brands like Nokia and Motorola have caught up to the competition. Motorola's rise can be attributed to acquisition by Lenovo. The premium segment has been taken up by Onepl...

The rise in the rate at which technology is evolving is a good and a bad thing at the same time. The availability of various new tech and features make it eye catching for the consumers, but are those features really necessary is the big question. Consumers are generally influenced by the advertisements of various brands which showcase many features that are not quite essential.This in turn influences the choices made by consumers while buying their devices. In most cases the advertisements are misleading and can result in a bad buying decision. All these factors result in people opting for frequent upgrades even when they aren't necessary. The best example for the tech that people upgrade very frequently are smartphones. Smartphones have evolved from being just communication devices to a pocket computer which can do almost anything that an conventional computer can do. This has drastically reduced the increased dependency on computers for simple day to day tasks. Smartphones h...

The soul of a smart phone is it's software. Smart phone manufacturers constantly try to improve the software experience of their devices by changing the user interfaces or altering various features. All the improvements and addition of features are added through Over-the -Air (OTA) software updates. Google releases Android Upgrades annually as is the case with Apple's iOS updates. These software updates bring about fixes for errors/bugs. Bug fixes may generally be small in sizes. Google sends out software updates every month ( Eg; January patch, February patch) while Apple sends updates whenever bugs are to be fixed and features are to be added. The large updates may be the OS upgrade to the next version which may add many features and change the looks of the User Interface(UI). Google promises 3 years of software updates for it's Pixel devices. Apple generally supports it's devices for 4-5 years. Other Android manufacturers are improving their software update ...

People often vary the choice of the smartphones they buy mostly based on hardware and the features advertised by the manufacturers. Most of these people generally do not pay attention to the software. The Software functions like the heart to the hardware and generally keeps the mobile device up and running for a longer time. Oneplus owes it's success majorly to the software on their devices. Apple has a greater control over the software on it's mobile devices as they are the only manufacturers of iOS devices. This control over software helps in increasing the longevity of the devices. In Android, Google being it's proprietor releases newest and latest software for Android devices. This mostly comes first to the Pixel devices produced by Google. Being an pretty expensive device, it is not affordable by all people. Google then released an program called Android One to cater to users of all budgets in the smartphone world. This program resulted in providing an good software ...