The curious case of Chinese mobile phones

Chinese mobile phones have been on my radar for a  while now, and recently I got to take a closer look at them.

Some brands like Karbonn are gaining mainstream ground, but there are really lots & lots of brands on the market. Chinese phones are probably best known for being inexpensive, but are also known for making cheap knock-offs of popular mainstream models.

The case for buying cheap mobile phones is that phones, being small electronic items, are easily lost or damaged, making huge investments in them unwise. That said, I personally have a distaste for knock-offs. I can't explain it, but so it is. I don't mind a cheap, original design, but knock-offs and public-deceiving replicas I find distasteful.

Danny, being both ham-handed & forgetful, has wisely avoided the blackberry / iphone traps so far. His phone needs are basic, but his long bus rides to work make an entertainment device useful - a music player, but more importantly, a gaming device or best still, a video player on which he can watch his awful horror flicks.

A couple of months of research, and we landed on the Rocker Sure Diamond (no avoiding tacky names) - a touch phone that is turning out to be quite a delight. Its 3-page screen and reasonably good touch sensitivity make it fun & easy like any touch phone, but is longer & heavier, with a track ball for good measure. The weight might be a con for most, but we don't mind the extra grams.

A lot of the features like the gravity & shake response have been "inspired" by the iphone, but the makers have actually taken nice features from a lot of phone models to put into this one. The feature-ridden still/video camera is nice enough, the video / music players  are terrific. The dual sim feature is a blessing, there are also games, mail / FB clients and what-have-you, an antenna set up for FM radio, and a stylus for those who have trouble with the touch feature - if you've got big fingers and have tried typing on an iphone, you'll appreciate the stylus. All for under Rs. 3000.


It remains to be seen how long the phone will last - I'll be happy if it runs a year, and at that price, you don't have to worry so much about losing / breaking it. (It was hard to see someone drop an Iphone 4 from a car the other day. Rs. 45K. Ouch.)

Brands like Rocker & G-five have blackberry-type phones too - I saw one the other day that had a trackpad & full blackberry menu & functionality AND a pull-out antenna to watch TV!! (OK, public broadcast doordarshan, but still..)

Pros:
- Ridiculously feature rich - often the best features from several phones are integrated into one.
- No proprietary software / manipulative BS  
- always dual sim, allowing you to blend plans from two providers (talk on one, text on another)
- Very cheap

Fun features: I was very tickled to see that these phones have no qualms about throwing in  cheeky features like fake calls and background noises that let you lie to the caller about you location. No I don't find THAT ethically distasteful. There is a place for righteous lying. Like when the boss man calls. Or your mother.

Cons:
- the phones will most probably not have a long life.

- I hear reports that some Chinese mobiles actually exploded while in use!
- The ethical issues about Knock-off / look-alikes  (between you and your god)

Do your research!

Even if you aren't looking for a look-alike (eesh), a lot of these phones do seem to offer great value for money.

Stuff

Listen to George Carlin talk about "stuff". I can't remember, but I am convinced it was this video years ago that stirred things up for me.

Miss you Georgie, RIP.

Interesting read: "Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed"

Many thanks to Suvarna for finding this article on manufactured lifestyles. Here's an excerpt:

"The perfect customer is dissatisfied but hopeful, uninterested in serious personal development, highly habituated to the television, working full-time, earning a fair amount, indulging during their free time, and somehow just getting by.

Is this you?"

Read the entire article here.

Crystal deodorant

Here’s a cheap, safe(r?) alternative to commercially available deodorants- Potash Alum (potassium double sulfate of aluminium), known in tamil as Padigaram.

Body odor is caused by bacteria growing in the humid folds of skin like the under arms. Commercially available deodorants invariably are scented coktails of questionable chemicals that typically act to block off pores in the area, suppressing sweating and consequently, odor.

I don’t care for the idea of pores being blocked, and prefer to shower regularly and go au naturel when possible. However, most of us, myself included, cannot do entirely without a deodorant either – especially those of us who live in humid climates and need to spend several hours outdoors, inflicting our vile vapours upon the innocent public.

Then, while pottering around in a raw food website (more about that in another post), I found that “crystal deodorants” were touted as safe alternatives to regular deodorants. Some research and roping in CK’s chemistry expertise tells me that these crystals are essentially Alum – ammonium alum in this product's case, but perfectly replaceable with the more commonly available (in India) potash alum.

Older men will remember this as the barber's stone, and gentlemen patrons received a post-shave face swabbing with it in the good old days.

Alum works as a bactericide, and has been used as a deodorant for over 1000 years now. After showering, rubbing alum to the moist underarm region drops the PH value of the skin in that area, rendering it acidic and inhospitable for bacterial growth.

The theory sounded fine, so I am trial running it, this is day 2. So far, I am bloody impressed. Last morning, I used it after shower, headed out and spent the day being my sweaty Sunday self. After about 6 – 8 hours of oily sweat and grime, no discernible odor! Today was also a long, sweaty day out, and Alum held up wonderfully.

My friend is trying it out on her feet that sweat inside shoes and consequently get smelly, and she tells me that she has had a very successful day 1.

Fragrances are important to me, though I hate literally every scented deodorant I’ve tried. Alum doesn’t have any smell of its own, so you can use your favorite fragrance along with it if you wish. Now that I use alum, I've been able to break out my stash of itr (attars). I’m wearing Khus right now, and I smell summer wherever I go.

Despite some half-hearted nay-saying that I saw on the internet about the safety of alum, my logic is simply that alum has been used in our wells to purify/clarify water for ages now, and potash alum is also a common ingredient in certain kinds of pickles.

Sure, over-application on the skin could create enough acid to give you a rash, but used normally, I am convinced you will find this an all-round winner.

You will find alum in old-style herb stores priced at roughly Rs. 20 – Rs.30 for a half kilo of large crystals. Remember that the skin has to be moist, or you must moisten the crystal with a drop of water before use. Don't wet it completely, store dry. No re-application necessary - each application lasts for 10 - 12 hours at least.

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NOTE: People with severe & chronic body odor (persistent despite good hygiene) should try cleaning out their intestines. A thorough 3-day cleanse cures even the worst body odors - tested with positive results by at least two people I know, whose twice a day shower routine wasn't helping with their odor problems.

See a doctor (ayurvedic/siddha) about taking a purgative, ask your mother how to take castor oil, or do a salt water flush for three days, eating only simple, raw vegetarian food on these days. The odor will go away. Caveat: I'm not a doc.