There is only a moment between the past and the future
You can grieve as much as you like about the past or dream about the distant future, but in reality, only what is happening around us is important. And even though this 'now' is just a short moment, an indistinguishable fraction of a second, this is the only thing that really exists. Everything else is nothing more than an abstraction, a play of the mind. A feeble attempt to at least somehow convince yourself that the past really was, and the future really will be.
Meanwhile, both the past and the future are surprisingly fickle things. History changes and is rewritten every day, real-life events are forgotten, and their place is gradually taken by fictions and conjectures. It would seem that in the 21st century there should be no problems with this – every fact is documented by a bunch of very different people, you can always find records about any event both in the official media and in a bunch of blogs and social networks. Everything that is of any interest has been recorded on video a hundred times and photographed a thousand times from all possible angles; finding any materials of interest is a matter of a couple of clicks and a miserable ten seconds.
In practice, this led to the fact that history finally became virtual. Not only any important historical event, but also any insignificant fact will have hundreds of different interpretations, each of which will be accompanied by an abundance of photo and video evidence and eyewitness stories. You can choose any version of the story to your taste and color, freely shuffling historical events and facts and changing the past, like colored glasses.
Any past defeat can always be canceled from today, convincing others that it simply never happened. Any feat can simply be imagined, and for many people it will become much more real than the present state of affairs. Some people live in a world where they invented all mobile technology Apple, and the rest just crookedly copied other people's ideas. Others chose for themselves the option where the main technical revolution was made by Nokia and Microsoft with Windows Phone. In the world of some people, Samsung has been dying for many years, in the world of others, it is on its way Apple.
It is easy to guess that reading and discussing the same news, they perceive it in completely different ways. And everyone is sure that it is he who is right, because his interpretation of the event and his forecasts fully correspond to all historical facts. But the opponent is just inventing some kind of fables, trying to pass off his fantasies as a real state of affairs.
The company Microsoft is one of the specialists in changing the past. To cancel past failures and start from scratch or once again paint a picture of a brighter future, which for all the others has long been a past that has not happened, is a piece of cake for her. And which past is real, and which is fictitious, neither fans nor ill-wishers can understand. An outside observer finds himself in the position of a spectator, who woke up only by the middle of the race – it seems that the positions of all cars on the track are perfectly visible, but it stubbornly fails to understand who is half a lap behind and who has managed to drive a couple of extra ones.
For me, the whole story Windows Phone is groundhog day, which happens over and over again, but in slightly different variations. Each time we are promised a wonderful future, which will come literally tomorrow – but instead of tomorrow, the hateful today comes again, in which only one day remains until the bright future. And for some, the development of mobile Windows is a series of high-profile victories, in which the company with enviable consistency leaves its competitors behind year after year. Probably, it all depends on which side to look at this action.
So seemingly simple and unambiguous news (although it would be more accurate to say rumor) can be interpreted in completely different ways. According to insider information Windows Central, the Lumia 650 will be the only Microsoft Lumia smartphone this year.
Someone will consider this the beginning of the end (the next) of the mobile version Windows. After all, one phone per year, and even frankly budgetary, is a complete failure. And someone, on the contrary, will decide that the popularity Windows 10 among smartphone manufacturers is such that there will be no end to those wishing to release the device on WP, and Microsoft there is no point in releasing it gland.
In addition, we are talking specifically about smartphones from the Lumia line, and not at all about all smartphones from MS. The flagship may well be called Surface Phone and really does not belong to the Lumia series. And no one bothers the company to start a separate line of devices with an average price category.
By the way, the same resource Windows Central prepared unofficial renderings of the Lumia 650, which took into account all the leaks currently available.
Let me remind you that the characteristics of the smartphone are expected as follows:
- 5-inch HD screen
- Snapdragon 210 processor @ 1.1 GHz
- 1 GB of RAM
- Battery 2,000 mAh
Link to news
Xiaomi is another company that plays with the past. True, in a completely different way. The Chinese have adopted the long-standing principle of students – first you work for the student's record book, then the record book works for you.
For many years the company has tried to convince the whole world that its products are not just cheap, but extremely profitable. And what the best deal imaginable for that kind of money. A unique, unparalleled smartphone, which, thanks to unknown assembly technologies (a magic frying pan that appears in commercials?) Is given literally for a penny.
In practice, everything was not so simple. Yes, the offer was really good. But the company did not have any magic technologies or its own production and could not physically show any special miracles. And the price indicated on the official website was practically inaccessible even for fans of the brand in China itself – tiny batches of goods were bought up by resellers in an online store in a matter of minutes, so the smartphone reached the end buyer with a hefty mark-up.
Now, having earned a reputation as a manufacturer of almost the most profitable smartphones in terms of price / quality ratio all over the world, the company is gradually raising prices. And he clearly expects that no one will really study the products of competitors, because it is already clear that it is better Xiaomi to find nothing. And if someone sells smartphones cheaper, it is solely because the quality is very lame.
So, judging by the information from the GearBest store, the price of a smartphone Xiaomi Mi 5 in the most modest configuration will be $ 625. The older model will cost even more – $ 728.
The following characteristics of the smartphone are indicated:
- 5.2-inch screen with 2560 x 1440 resolution
- Qualcomm 820 processor
- 4 GB of RAM
- 16/64 GB internal memory
- Main camera 16 MP, front camera 8 MP
- OS Android 5.1, shell MIUI 7
Link to news
Needless to say, the characteristics are quite good, and in synthetic tests (if you believe the leaked benchmark screenshots) the smartphone behaves with dignity.
But by the standards Xiaomi, the price 'bites' and does not really correspond to the image of a 'people's manufacturer'.
Link to news
For comparison, I will give the prices and characteristics of a new smartphone from the company Lenovo, which we usually perceive as much more serious and much less 'Chinese'.
The smartphone was named Lenovo K80M and belongs to the class of budget devices. At the moment, it can be ordered from Geekbuying for $ 184 and is considered to be one of the best deals for a smartphone with 4GB of RAM.
The characteristics of the smartphone are as follows:
- 5.5-inch screen, 1920 × 1080 resolution
- Processor Intel Atom Z3560
- 4 GB of RAM
- 64 GB internal memory
- Main camera 13 MP, front camera 5 MP
- Battery 4000 mAh
- OS Android 4.4
The weak point of the device is the outdated version of the OS, otherwise the characteristics are quite decent. And the price is much lower.
Link to news
If the past can change over time, then the future can become obsolete. Often before it even happened. There is even such a term – retrofuturism, denoting how people of the last century saw their future. In particular, it is in this genre that the world of the Fallout game was created, in which the future is shown through the eyes of Americans from the 50s.
Buyers dream, companies make plans, analysts analyze the consequences of this or that event … and almost always all this turns out to be very far from the real state of affairs. Occasionally it is possible to predict the emergence of a particular technology, albeit in very general terms. And sometimes – come up with some idea, which in a few years will really be implemented. But to guess with both at the same time is almost unrealistic.
Even in ancient times, people believed that one day they could learn to fly. And they were right – we really learned to fly thanks to the technique. Here are just a very, very few at least approximately could imagine how exactly this was achieved. After all, modern helicopters or airplanes are not even close to any artificial wings made of bird feathers.
Throughout the past century, people have been fairly successful in anticipating the widespread adoption of a variety of technologies. But the world they eventually imagined was not at all like ours. Even those who admitted the existence of mobile phones could not imagine them without telephone operators. E-mail messages still had to be written by hand, and all calculations during the launch of the spacecraft were carried out manually, using endless tables in paper reference books. And it’s also good if you didn’t have to throw coal into the furnace. This future was a reflection of their familiar world, new technologies in it were used exclusively for old and familiar ideas.
Now, when technological progress flies forward at the speed of a derailed locomotive, ideas again do not keep pace with technology. Receiving more and more opportunities, equipment manufacturers are in no hurry to implement them. On the contrary, they return again and again to old and seemingly already completely forgotten ideas. Both big and small.
For example, the fashion for physical buttons in Android smartphones has reappeared. To traditional lovers of the physical 'home' key like Samsung or Apple (however, not everything is clear with this company), a number of other manufacturers will be added. In particular, such a key may be present in the new flagship Huawei – Huawei P9.
Link to news
More and more companies are returning to the idea of styluses. And again he begins to think about where and how the user should store them. And at the same time, how to charge them, because a modern stylus is far from just a piece of plastic.
Apple ignored this problem, leaving iPencil owners to deal with it themselves. Samsung left the usual slot in the Galaxy Note 5, but they just didn't think that the stylus could be inserted into it even upside down … after which it would be safely stuck there.
For a long time, the company denied the problem. It was believed that it was almost impossible to do this by accident, which means that the user himself was solely to blame for all possible problems. But, apparently, the nerves of the Korean engineers still could not stand it – in the new versions of the Galaxy Note 5, the connector was redesigned in such a way that the stylus would not get stuck in it, even being inserted backwards.
Link to news
But Microsoft the problem of placing and charging the stylus has yet to be solved. But judging from the information available at the moment, it can be assumed that the stylus dock will be built right into the body of the Surface Book and Surface Pro.
Link to news
Google's next patent is another example of how everything new is well forgotten old. Although it is about a foldable soap dish, the design of the device is painfully reminiscent of old clamshell phones from Nokia's heyday.
