We have a lot of Indian users use our PWA (https://usebx.com/app), so we tried to optimise for low end phones. Generally, we found that animations still run reasonably smoothly. The trick was to be really careful not to carry out too much layout thrashing, and use GPU accelerated CSS animations wherever possible. On some of the cheapest devices, we got our animation running as smooth as a Galaxy Note or iPhone. Just goes to show that if you don't over-bloat your app, even low end phones can offer a very good experience.
Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
21–30 of 131 posts
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#22This reminds me of when Apple said they would refurbish older phone models and sell them in India and people got irate that they only sell them used stuff. So, okay, no iPhone for them at all, I guess.
They're basically stuck using older, cheaper technology. That's fine, but you can't really access the older software that was developed for that level of hardware anymore (hence the 'lite' apps mentioned in the article). It's an interesting disconnect between hardware and software in the market.
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#23iPhone User with a $900 phone switches to a $60 phone and frustrated that it doesn't perform as well a $900 phone while trying to use it like a Premium phone? I am surprised :).
Even for a low end phone, getting a "low" storage notification out of the box is not acceptable.
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#24This is the tech equivalent of slum tourism. News flash: poor people deal with crap that rich people don’t have to.
Come on.
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#25This is the tech equivalent of slum tourism. News flash: poor people deal with crap that rich people don’t have to.
I hear that, but there’s something instructive here as well for members of the HN community who write software. Namely, it’s that sometimes performance and optimization matter. Given the size of the Indian / developing world market, I wonder if there’s an opportunity to provide a good experience (apps or OS) on more meager hardware. I certainly don’t remember the first gen iPhone being painful or slow. Why can’t we m…
My company still supports Android back to KitKat. We just dropped iOS 9 and we’re planning on dropping 10 in q4 (we typically support the two most recent versions of iOS). I pointed out that dropping 10 would orphan our iPhone 5/5C and older users, the 5C which was sold in India as recently as Mar 2017. It’s sadly too small a user base to justify continued support.
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#26This is the tech equivalent of slum tourism. News flash: poor people deal with crap that rich people don’t have to.
I hear that, but there’s something instructive here as well for members of the HN community who write software. Namely, it’s that sometimes performance and optimization matter. Given the size of the Indian / developing world market, I wonder if there’s an opportunity to provide a good experience (apps or OS) on more meager hardware. I certainly don’t remember the first gen iPhone being painful or slow. Why can’t we m…
>I certainly don’t remember the first gen iPhone being painful or slow. Why can’t we make an experience today that runs on low end, but still vastly more powerful hardware than the original iPhone?
We can, but there's relatively little money in it. Which is why it doesn't get done very well.
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#27I think his expectations are just out of balance. The phone he describes sounds a lot like the phone I gave my kids. I just want them to have a phone that they can use in case of emergencies. That's basically what my baby boomer parents need as well. So he's right, phones at that price point are limited, but that doesn't mean they don't fulfill the needs of portions of the population - just different demographics than his own personal needs.
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#28iPhone User with a $900 phone switches to a $60 phone and frustrated that it doesn't perform as well a $900 phone while trying to use it like a Premium phone? I am surprised :).
I went through that process. After I stopped buy good phones subsidized by the phone company & started paying full retail phones upfront, I became less interested in having a top of the line phone. I just don't wanna fork out $900 for any phone. I bought two versions of a sub-$100 phone, they both sucked and/or were defective in some way. I bought a $240, and it was OK, but I was constantly fishing for an excuse to g…
What did you end up with? I got a great deal on an LG V20 from B&H, and everything is great apart from reception..
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#29We have a lot of Indian users use our PWA ( https://usebx.com/app ), so we tried to optimise for low end phones. Generally, we found that animations still run reasonably smoothly. The trick was to be really careful not to carry out too much layout thrashing, and use GPU accelerated CSS animations wherever possible. On some of the cheapest devices, we got our animation running as smooth as a Galaxy Note or iPhone. Jus…
I've been surprised by how performant you can get with CSS transitions and a will-change property. But good grief is it difficult.
On one hand I understand why a transition on `left` isn't hardware accelerated but a `translate3d` is, but on the other it seems crazy that we expect people to think and know this kind of stuff when they just want to do something very simple.
Re: Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went through that process. After I stopped buy good phones subsidized by the phone company & started paying full retail phones upfront, I became less interested in having a top of the line phone. I just don't wanna fork out $900 for any phone. I bought two versions of a sub-$100 phone, they both sucked and/or were defective in some way. I bought a $240, and it was OK, but I was constantly fishing for an excuse to g…
What did you end up with? I got a great deal on an LG V20 from B&H, and everything is great apart from reception..
I have an LG G5. I'm very happy with it. At one year, I replaced the battery, and only because I could.
If you are in the USA, what mobile carrier/network do you have? I use AT&T, and the network has been good enough. I tried T-mobile here in San Francisco for a week, and had too many "can you hear me now?" moments, so I went back to AT&T.