Thursday, 31 December 2015

Happy new year and a guide!

First of all, happy new year to all the people around the globe. My best wishes for all of you around the globe. May this year bring a lot of beautiful and happy moments for us. And most of all, may this year be a step towards the improvement of the standards of our lives and the prices of our lives. May this year be a step towards humanity and a stop to all those terrorism flowing all around us and the violence.

Moving on towards the actual article, this is a guide for buying phones for people who live in Pakistan. As somebody who has spent the majority of the last year in the mobile market, I can speak for quite some people that buying and keeping phones(Now smartphones) have been a huge source of worry for most people. While it is somewhat true that buying new, sealed phones is safe but not entirely. Here, I am going to talk about some important aspects that most people tend to ignore when buying a phone.

The most important aspect, which is incidentally the most ignored too, is the support the company is supplying. The manufacturer, the giant companies, the brands. While it is true that most of the huge brands care about what their customers have to say and support the phones, there're some scams going around also, by tech giants.

The second most important aspect, which is fairly overlooked also, is the reliability and how hard it is to repair the phone, which is directly proportional to the manufacterers too. The larger the manufacterer, the more support they provide and the better the repairing abilities. While I can comfortably say that the best phone I had till date is my LG G2, but after it broke, I couldn't get it repaired for two months and it became a source of huge worry for me. As is the case with most of us, our smartphones have became more important than anybody else, so it was kind of like that for me. The phone fell from waist height and the screen broke pretty badly, although there was a glass protector on. So don't count on the glass protector for protection.

The third aspect when buying a phone is to see if a phone is fairly strong, which isn't the case for majority of today's smartphones. Most of today's phones are fragile and can't survive a waist height drop which is mostly the case i.e taking the phone out of your pockets and it accidentally falls out.

Most reliable companies to buy from in Pakistan:


Some people will find this offensive, some will find this helpful. But anyways, starting...

1. Samsung:

No surprise here, Samsung is the most trusted brand available in Pakistan now. Not only do they provide products which are standard on quality, they also provide proper warranty and the local phone repairmen can easily repair your Samsung smartphones. It is no big deal. They are repaired in fairly mediocre costs too. The updates are properly provided and their phones are fairly strong and can mostly survive waist height drops. You can go to any city anywhere in Pakistan and you'll still find people who can repair your Samsung smartphone.

2. Apple:


I am not an Apple fan, so if I am saying this, you should rather take my word for this. Yes after Samsung, Apple is the most reliable company to buy a phone from. Yes, it doesn't hold enough value for your money, but I am talking about reliability. While the iPhones are fairly fragile, they are not hard to repair at all. They are fairly easy and their support runs throughout the country. Like Samsung, you'll find Apple repairmen throughout the country. They'll make your broken iPhones new in a matter of few minutes and in mediocre costs too.

3. Huawei:


While it is true that unlike the previous two tech giants, Huawei does not have local repairmen throughout the country but they've set their own official service centers throughout the country. They are supporting their phones thoroughly and maintaining a proper strategy. Providing proper warranty and accidental coverage for phones worth more than $350, Huawei is progressing and claiming new lands.

These were my top three reliable brands. More to follow later...

Also, if you find some of the information wrong or factually wrong, you can comment and make me aware. Also, suggestions are welcome.

Stay tuned.

Wednesday, 2 December 2015

Mark Zuckerberg celebrates the birth of his daughter - Max, and something really interesting too.

As most of us know with the help of Facebook that Mark Zuckerberg recently announced the birth of his daughter Max. As you can see from the following post, the news was announced 12 hours ago. While most of us did not bother to read his full status, I am just going to state it here. First major announcement was the birth of his daughter Max by his wife Priscilla, and the second major announcement was, that he'll give away 99% of his shares in his lifetimes.


Priscilla and I are so happy to welcome our daughter Max into this world!For her birth, we wrote a letter to her about...
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, December 1, 2015
While that is indeed a huge announcement, there are still a few twists. The husband and wife have founded their own Chan Zuckerberg foundation, a charity. Mark wrote in a letter to his daughter Max and I quote

"We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others. "

That is indeed a huge sum of money from which the world will benefit, but as it turns out there are a few twists. A SEC filing released spills a lot of secrets further about the give away of the shares and here's the statement.
"For this purpose, Mr. Zuckerberg has established a new entity, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC, and he will control the voting and disposition of any shares held by such entity. He has informed us that he plans to sell or gift no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year for the next three years and that he intends to retain his majority voting position in our stock for the foreseeable future. Any sale of shares by Mr. Zuckerberg will be conducted pursuant to a trading plan established pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”)."

From the upper statement, it is almost crystal clear that Mark has created a foundation entirely under his own control, a very common thing among billionaires. Also, because of Mark not wanting to let his major stockholder position at Facebook go, he wants to maintain control of the shares which means he can sell them, not gift them.

Hope it helps! Congrats Mark!

Tuesday, 1 December 2015

CyberMonday: LG G2 going for an outrageous $89.99 price.

While I might have been a little too late to this news and to posting, there still is time to take advantage of it and buy one. It is indeed true. The LG G2 which had an original price tag of $500 is going for $89.99 which is a huge 84% discount. Considering the specification of the device, it still is eligible to give the mid rangers a run for their money. While it is true that it is going for such a price for only today, it still is the best possible deal available out there in the $250 category.

With a full HD 5.2 inch panel, a 13 MP optically stablized camera and full HD recording, a Snapdragon 800 quad core processor and 2 gigabytes of RAM, 16 gigs of storage and full LTE connectivity, the device still has it all. A processor capable of playing 4k videos and a GPU capable of playing the best of games. It is indeed a great deal.

While the LG G3(The successor to G2) is also going for a huge cut on it's price, it's price still isn't as attractive as the G2 though. It is going for $225 which is a huge cut off the original $600 price tag, which is for the Gold edition which freedom(Retailer) is selling. It has a beautiful quad HD screen and updated specifications from the G2, again a device beyond comparizon in this price range. The deals are valid till midnight.
Reminder: It works according to zip codes and it is not available in Pakistan. Mainly in US.

Here's to link to redeem the offer:

http://www.freedompop.com/offer/cmphonedeals