Importance of Battery Life on Phones

http://gizmodo.com/5992917/battery-life-is-the-only-spec-that-matters

The article above talks about the importance of battery life in phones, saying that many phones nowadays make the mistake of sacrificing battery life for thinness and lightness.

I actually don't think battery life is important. So long as the device lasts for one day, there is no need to worry. Most people charge overnight as a daily habit and don't think about it.

The iPad 3, with 11,000 mAh battery capacity, will last a long time, but it is too big. Your arms will get sore carrying it around for too long. The Nexus 7, however, is thin, small, and light, and it lasts long enough.

Travelling with Google Glass

Google Glass is likely to be released for the mass market for only $300. If that is the price, I will definitely buy one.

Where I think Google Glass will be useful is taking pictures, for example while you are on holidays. There is something so vain and fake about taking out a camera or smartphone to take a picture. When you take out the phone or camera, you announce to the world that you believe this moment is a special moment and everyone starts to pose or act in a way to live up to that moment, and every photo you see on Facebook has that cliche and artificiality to it.

When I travel, I don't want to have to take out a camera or a phone. I want Google Glass to have some app that will take automatic photos or at least allow me to take photos quickly and discreetly.

I am not a big traveller. I think travel is something I will do later in my life when I am more financially secure. But I cannot wait for it!

Julius Marlow 02 Motion

After damage done to my heels from my old pair of shoes, I decided yesterday to head to Myer and buy comfortable shoes, eventually buying the Julius Marlow 02 Motion shoes. I tried these on in the shops and they felt instantly comfortable. I am a little wary of purchasing online because I might get the wrong size or the shoe might end up uncomfortable. I am a size 10.

People are like fire. When you are distant, you want to get closer for warmth, but at the same time you're afraid of being burnt, so you keep your distance, and if you've been burnt really bad in the past, you stay completely away because you don't want to risk it.

Bored of the Monotony of Life

The typical day for me involves waking up, snoozing the alarm a few times to steal a few more minutes of sleep, having a shower, getting dressed, eating breakfast, driving to the train station, squashing into the train with hundreds of other commuters, and getting to work where I go through my to do list, ticking off one piece of work after another. I drink plenty of coffee to have an excuse to get fresh air. The coffee warms my body and compensates for coldness. I always eat out for lunch. It costs a lot but I cannot stand smelly food rotting in my bag. I don't even have a bag because I like to travel light. In the afternoon I'm usually tired and I eagerly wait for the day to end. I yawn a lot. I get the feeling I might get fired soon. I am normally paranoid. In a way, I don't really mind if I get fired. I have saved enough money to live off my investments in a developing country like Thailand or Cambodia. I'm just going through the motions, doing what I can do to make it through each day. Even though I am a bit tired of my job, I feel like my options are limited. I've lost ambition, but I try to maintain it because my manager and coworkers often criticize me for my lack of enthusiasm and passion.

When work is over, I catch the train back home, have a shower, eat dinner, and then sit in bed to work and/or play on my tablet before sleeping and repeating the whole routine every weekday. On some weekdays I have dinner with friends, but hanging out with friends is a bit of a chore for me. It's not that I don't value companionship it's that I just get tired of being around people and sometimes I want to hide in a hole.

US$240,000 to retire in Asia

I've been trying to calculate how much money I'd need to retire in Asia. According to Retire Cheap Asia, you can live a frugal life in Asia with US$500 per month. A comfortable life would require US$1000 per month.

Now let us assume that you can get 5 per cent return on an investment. This means that you will need US$240,000 invested to give you $1,000 per month in passive income.

About half of this money should be invested in investments that provide stable passive income, as you will need this to give you the base $500 per month necessary for a frugal lifestyle. The rest can be invested in shares to protect against inflation.

Cheap iPhone will turn Apple into Samsung

Apple creates the iPhone 5 for $200 and sells it for $700. Google, on the other hand, makes zero or little profit on its Nexus devices (Nexus 4, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10).

Some people do not understand Google's philosophy, citing the fact that Google ads are found on Apple phones as well. The best way to understand Google's plan is to imagine what the world would look like if Googlr never invented Android and Apple controlled the entire smartphone market. Apple would make its iPhones for $200 and because they can they will charge $2000 for it to maximise profits. Because the price is so high, they will not sell much phones but because there profit margin on each phone will be so high, Apple is happy. Google makes money off advertising. If smartphones were all $2000 thanks to lack of competition as a result of monopoly, hardly anyone will use smartphones and therefore not many people would look at Google's ads and Google would not make much money. By creating Android, giving it away for free, and producing high-quality and cheap Nexus and Chromebook devices, Google is able to put pressure on Apple to bring its prices down and get the iPhone into more people's hands. Apple is content with selling fewer phones buy making high profit margins on each, explaining why Apple takes in 80% of smart phones profits even though 80% of smartphones run on Android.

The plan is working, and Apple is giving in. Apple will soon release a cheap plastic iPhone in an attempt to compete with Android at the lower end. Regardless of whether the cheap iPhone increases sales of Apple devices and steals market share from Android, it does not matter since Google ads are on Apple devices. A cheap iPhone will only dilute the Apple brand and transition Apple from a boutique low-volume high-margin company into a commodity mass-manufacturing, high-volume low-margin company. In other words, Apple will become Samsung.