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

Vyom

The Power of x480
Staff member
Admin
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.
 
OP
Vyom

Vyom

The Power of x480
Staff member
Admin
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. :p
 

Desmond

Destroy Erase Improve
Staff member
Admin
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.
 
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 :-D

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
 

Desmond

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

kg11sgbg

Indian Railways - The Vibrant and Moving INDIA
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 :-D

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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