# Avoiding the bull**** that companies tries to feed us: A good artice from digit



## Vyom (Nov 15, 2013)

*Beyond the bull*****​ 
As a technology journalist, keeping up with this ever changing world  can be quite a task. A new product is revealed, a software is updated, a  startup is bought over, there’s something new every day, or every hour –  it’s just mind boggling! Most of what I write about as state-of-the-art  today has the shelf life of fresh cream. But that’s what makes it all  the more exciting.

Take for instance my recent quest to get myself a new phone. I had so  many new technologies, specifications, models and brands to choose  from. Finally, I settled on one that had a TriPhoton sensor, ColdForge  housing, and a Petamicron processor. What sealed the deal was the all  new Anirobular display! This would be exciting news, except none of the  technologies I mentioned actually exist. The first three are just random  rubbish, and Anirobular is in fact just an amalgamation of Anirudh and Robert – both of whom are always cribbing about every display they use.
 Yes I pulled the 3 Idiots gag on you and my apologies for drawing you  in, but I’m trying to highlight the growing trend of inventing  marketing monikers and just renaming run-of-the-mill technologies to  something fancy to make them sound groundbreaking.

Now when I hear words such as UltraPixel,  I cringe and ask myself, “Is this a marketing buzzword created by  ponytailed yuppies in a boardroom, or actually something born out of a  bonafide research laboratory?” As a Digit reader, you’re already aware  that Apple’s Retina Display is in fact just a high-resolution LCD screen  with a ppi rating of 300+ at close range, or that ClearBlack is just a  regular AMOLED with a polarized layer packed in – much like anti glare  sunglasses.

Why can’t companies just call things what they are? Why hide behind  invented terms? It’s because they want you to buy, and you will if you  are dazzled by their little gimmicks.

Companies also want to obfuscate the underlying technology to add a  sense of mystery and leave things open to interpretation. Sony, for  example, has been talking a lot recently about its Triluminos displays.  If you go by marketing material, they use these mystical things called  Quantum Dots to produce “true, natural shades of colours”. How? That’s  left to your imagination.

Google Quantum Dots (QDs) and you find that researchers at MIT and QD Vision  have been working for a decade to use these QDs as actual pixels  without filters, since they output a much purer colour than other  lighting sources. However, it’s hard to achieve for large screens still.  So has Sony finally cracked the technique?

No. Sony’s Triluminos displays are simply modified LED LCDs, which  use pure blue LEDs (instead of white), and a couple of quantum dots per  LED to get purer forms of colours going into the regular RGB filters.  This isn’t technically a true QD display, more like a QD-supported LCD,  just as LED panels are actually LED LCD panels, but most people won’t  know that.

It’s not always the case though, because some monikers actually help  describe a technology that is too technical to explain otherwise.  Sticking with display technology, take the example of the Kindle  Paperwhite. The Paperwhite’s e-ink display has a front light that’s  diffused onto the screen evenly using optical fibre that’s been  flattened out into a sheet. This forms what Amazon calls a Light Guide,  which really is something innovative, and all of this information is easily available.

*www.thinkdigit.com/FCKeditor/uploads/sdidfeature.png
​ At other times, there really is a completely new underlying  technology for which a name just evolves. Electrowetting, for example,  is currently being pioneered by a company called Liquavista. Displays  based on the principle of Electrowetting use an oil that responds to  electrical charge. Such displays are reflective (like e-ink), but with  much greater refresh rates. When this technology becomes commercially  viable (in all probability, combined with the Light Guide) you will have  a new name to remember – something like OilectroD, OLit Display or  OiLED – but that will certainly be more justifiable than calling  something that already exists a new name.

_Points finger at Apple’s Retina display again *_

It’s what we’ve always aimed to do at Digit: prevent you from falling  into traps and getting swayed with jargon like the rest of the sheeple  out there. While these new “technologies” may certainly be improvements  over existing ones, you will always have the quiet satisfaction of  knowing that while your friends sound amazed with the recently  resurrected Hyperloop concept of 2012, you will be able to calmly point  out that it’s merely a reinterpretation of the VacTrain (evacuated tube  trains) from the 1970s! Here’s looking forward to many more years of  cutting through the bull**** together on this exciting journey through  technology.

Source: Beyond the bull**** - Mobile Phone | ThinkDigit News

Kudos to  Siddharth for such article. We need more of these.


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## root.king (Nov 18, 2013)

nice article


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## arnabbiswasalsodeep (Nov 18, 2013)

Well this is a digit article published on an issue
They can catch for you to publish their © material


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## Kl@w-24 (Nov 18, 2013)

^ The link is from Digit's own website. Good article, BTW.


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## flyingcow (Nov 18, 2013)

the one about buyers mentality ewas good too


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## Vyom (Nov 18, 2013)

arnabbiswasalsodeep said:


> Well this is a digit article published on an issue
> They can catch for you to publish their © material



This is a kind of article that should be a topic of discussions right from schools. 
I wish I can reach this article to masses. Specially to the "FB" audience.

Oh wait.. I can share it on my FB page.


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## ramkumarvcbe (Nov 25, 2013)

well written.


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## harshilsharma63 (Nov 25, 2013)

Really nice article.


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## Desmond (Nov 25, 2013)

Creating new buzzwords works because the general non-techy types do not know **** about what is actually going on in technology and refuse any chances to be educated for the same (Burden of knowledge and what not). That is the purpose of tech magazines such as digit, however, none of my peers know about Digit. If all companies used the same terminology, these non-techy type would be confused as they would not be able to understand what sets one product apart from another (Most of the time, there indeed is not much to differentiate). 

For example in case of the so called "3D LED" displays, the bare fact is that these are "LED backlit" LCD displays and they provide 3D goggles for achieving the 3D factor. But from the average person's point of view, this is something out of this world (the reason why many of my peers bought that LG laptop).

PS: If I had my way, I would make this punishable by law.


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## omega44-xt (Nov 25, 2013)

People are going behind marketing gimmicks like iPhone & its Retina display...... One of my friend was planning to buy iPhone 5C from US(he didn't know about the contract thing). He was saying that it was a much better phone than my Nexus 4 boasting of its display...... Then i gave him some tech tips about ppi, also when I told him about no Bluetooth file transfer & dependency on iTunes, he was shocked..... Now he's planning to get Xperia SP in India 

Terms like blinkfeed, zoe, smart....  (Samsung's software goodies, some are nice though), HP laptop's beats audio 2.1 system (my laptop's speakers are much better), Sony's exmor........ There are many more


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## Desmond (Nov 25, 2013)

I personally don't like Beats audio. The music sounds like ****, so I prefer turning it off and manually set the eq instead.


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## kg11sgbg (Nov 25, 2013)

anupam_pb said:


> People are going behind marketing gimmicks like iPhone & its Retina display...... One of my friend was planning to buy iPhone 5C from US(he didn't know about the contract thing). He was saying that it was a much better phone than my Nexus 4 boasting of its display...... Then i gave him some tech tips about ppi, also when I told him about no Bluetooth file transfer & dependency on iTunes, he was shocked..... Now he's planning to get Xperia SP in India
> 
> Terms like blinkfeed, zoe, smart....  (Samsung's software goodies, some are nice though), HP laptop's beats audio 2.1 system (my laptop's speakers are much better), Sony's exmor........ There are many more


You are a true and remarkable Friend of yours Friend. This knowledge,judgement,decision is not an instinct of everyone.Mostly of us are driven by passion.
In this aspect I must point out that the so called crappy products(according to many but not all) by crappy manufacturers(Mic***ax,Simm*r*nics,Karb***,etc.) are faring much better.At least these Indian companies are fighting the true competition in the Market ,without any extraordinary claims made by the so called branded companies, legitimately.


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