I used to have a Dual-SIM phone (Lenovo S60) with the 1st slot holding a CHILI SIM and the secondary one holding a MyT (ex Orange) SIM. You need to know that the 2 SIM card slots are not created equal on dual-sim phones. The first slot usually has higher bandwidth than the secondary one. Most of the time, the secondary SIM is 2G/2.5G only meaning you can only do phone calls and very slow internet.

For Rs 86.24 (Rs 75 + VAT), you get 750MB of mobile data. This is a lot of data for a mobile phone. The only thing which you would not be able to do is stream videos. But come on. You do have the options of making YouTube videos offline. You can thus watch your videos on the move on the YouTube app.

The best part of it is that the data balance get forwarded to the next month if you buy another package within 30 days.

As if the data package wasn’t good enough, CHILI also give huge amount of free SMS and all calls to other operators occur at a fixed rate.

I was still putting money on my MyT (Orange) SIM just to keep the number. But then I got an iPhone which has only 1 SIM card slot. I had to make a choice. Is mobile data more important or having a phone number which has been yours for almost 5 years?

The Future of Telephony

There are multiple ways to contact a person: WhatsApp, Facebook’s messenger, Twitter App, Gmail, LinkedIn and so on.  When you have mobile data, you have all these methods which are not tied to a single operator.

It’s simply not worth paying MyT loyalty fees. I highly recommend anyone to try the CHILI Zeness Pack.

Desktop Linux has matured considerably ever since I started using it 8 years ago. But I feel there are things which we take for granted on Windows and even Android phones which are kinda annoying. First world problems you might call it.

1st complaint: Bluetooth headset support

We’re all used to turning on our Bluetooth headsets and our mobile phone or car stereo automatically plays whatever media we have on our phone. On KDE Neon, it’s not that refined.

Connecting a Bluetooth device does not automatically switch to the new device. Sometimes you have to disconnect the headset from the GUI and press reconnect. Then it works.

Sometimes the chrome would continue playing audio on the loudspeaker so I have to manually set it to Bluetooth.

It seems like the issue has been fixed for me somehow.

2nd Complaint: GPU support

OK. Good news is that the open source drivers for AMD Radeon and Nvidia GeForce works immediately after fresh OS install. I mean no black screen on boot. But when you want to do something more serious such as gaming and Machine Learning on Cuda, you’ll need proprietary drivers from AMD or Nvidia. Problem is that the latter is often less capable than their windows counterparts.

Subcomplaint 1: No GPU usage monitoring

Windows’ Task Manager does this tasks beautifully. You know exactly which process is using which GPU.

Without forgetting the graphs.

On Linux you have to install glances with GPU support. Yet, it will not show the Intel HD graphics usage.

Subcomplaint 2: Cannot switch between Nvidia GeForce GPU and Intel HD GPU without logging off.

This is a big one. On Windows, you just turn on your laptop and you can do any activity you want. e.g. you can choose to game in high performance or you can write some text in power-saving mode. You can manually launch programs using either the Intel HD graphics or Nvidia one.

But on Linux, if you want to save energy, you have to do:

# prime-select intel

# reboot

Afterwards, if you decide to do some Tensorflow or gaming, you’ll have to enable the GPU and reboot.

# prime-select nvidia

# reboot

Windows really shines in this seamless switching.

3rd Complaint: Nvidia Drivers crash on resume

When you have Nvidia Drivers activated and you close your laptop. On resume, you’re greeted with a blank screen. I have to reset me laptop and reboot. Sucks.

4th Complaint: No transparency themes

Linux themes need to have atleast some transparency settings built-in to look a bit modern. I know KDE people have custom themes which needs to be compiled and it looks awesome but come on. No one needs to learn how to compile applications just to have a modern look DE.

5th Complaint: No ambient light sensing

I’m really used to my mobile phone adapting it’s display brightness according to its environment be it indoor, outdoor, day or night. My Asus ZenBook came with an ambient light sensor but on Linux, my display brightness doesn’t adapt to the environment automatically.

Conclusion

Linux is really stable for the end-user now. Most of the *real* complaints are mostly geared towards proprietary drivers for GPU.   What the things which bothers you most about Linux Desktop Environments in 2018?

 

Screen Size and 2 Day Battery

The first things we notice when we use a mobile phone is the screen. The screen is huge and very crisp. It’s a full 6.5 inch 1080p display which is the same resolution of my 40 inch TV. Do mobile phones really needs such pixels density? All i know is that the display is awesome. I love it!

PUBG #nature #mauritius pic.twitter.com/z0SQfwq6tC

— Nayar (@NayarJoolfoo) May 19, 2019

A huge display on a mobile phone comes with both advantages and disadvantages. One pro would be a bigger battery could also be fit since the body size is larger. I can easily use the phone extensively for like 2 days: hours of YouTube and PUBG Mobile gaming. On the other hand, we’ll have a larger brick to carry around us everywhere we go be it be going for walk, travelling in the bus, driving in the car or hiking in nature. Larger phones are just more inconvenient to carry around. I seem to have gotten used to it though. Good for me.

Performance and Gaming

The phone comes with 4 GB of RAM. I mean that not little. Even laptops are still sold with 2GB of RAM in Mauritius in 2019. I can open like 20 tabs in Chrome browser, watch YouTube in split screen mode without any problems. I cannot be happier with a performance like this and also considering it’s price, it’s really good. I played like hundreds of PUBG Mobile matches without any lag. It’s such a joy to play on this phone. Maybe pro-gamers might find a way to say it’s not fast enough. I’m just a common man 😉

Camera and Storage

The phone is equipped with 4 cameras in total. The secondary cameras are actually depth sensors which are used to create the bokeh effect in photos. It sports an AI feature which does some post-processing to photos which makes them look really great. Such a pity that AI Mode only works in 4:3 format. Don’t you think we need to make 16:10 the default camera aspect ratio? Our TVs are no longer 4:3.

#JIOI2019 #mauritius pic.twitter.com/xHlyxn5kon

— Nayar (@NayarJoolfoo) July 24, 2019

Waterfalls. Guess where? #mauritius pic.twitter.com/ps60TaE4xH

— Nayar (@NayarJoolfoo) February 21, 2019

However the front cameras do not have bokeh effect in videos which would be awesome to have for Video Bloggings (VLOGGING). Can this be implemented via a software update or can we access the raw sensor data to be able to add the bokeh effect in post-video processing? I’m not aware of such things.

Accessories

The phone comes which a silicon protector case which I do not use as it makes the big phone even bigger to fit the pockets.

The earphones are of rather mediocre quality. Not suitable for metal and rap genre.

Summary and Google Controversy

The phone is very much value for money. However Google’s relationship with Huawei is not as stable now. But I’d still recommend this phone for it’s features.

The default editor in KDE Neon is KWrite. After having used Kate in Kubuntu for more than 5 years, KWrite simply seems primitive. Kwrite uses like 12MB of RAM.

Let’s uninstall it KWrite and install Kate on my KDE Neon

# apt purge kwrite

# apt install kate

Opening the same document in Kate now uses 16.7 MB of RAM. 

Comparing these 2 editors side-by-side, i think KWrite is somewhat cleaner to look at. But I miss the terminal plugin of Kate too much.

 

After loading that plugin, the memory usage of Kate jumped to 80MB. But I don’t think I’m much concerned about RAM on my ASUS ZenBook right now.

I think Kate should be the default text editor for KDE Neon to showcase the power of the KDE Desktop to people who want to try the bleeding edge technologies. On the other hand, Kate’s GUI can be further fine-tuned to be more minimal.

The Looks

It’s a really beautiful laptop; prettier than a MacBook Air and Pro IMO. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

My sister says it has a pinkish tint. I say it’s a purple tint. Unfortunately this tint was not visible in the shop while I was purchasing it. But it’s the inner  beauty that counts the most right?

The Inner Beauty

The specs-to-weight ratio of the ZenBook is unbeatable. ASUS managed to include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GEFORCE 940MX graphics card, 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD into something slightly heavier than a MacBook Air.

It’s only a dual core CPU though. The laptop has no problem with me working on 2D graphics applications such as GIMP and 3D applications such Blender and Home Sweet3D. The UIs are really fast and responsive. However it would be best to do the final rendering for 3D applications a real 8 core desktop CPU if you have access to one. I think such renderings are done on render farms by professionals.

Windows Bloatware

Unfortunately the laptop wasn’t available without Windows pre-installed. There are not many bloatware on the pre-installed Windows 10 but some more cleaning is required.

I have no idea what this process is doing but it’s using my precious power from my battery.

Linux Support

Dual booting KDE Neon was very straightforward. Got it right the first time. I split the 128GB SSD drive into 2 partitions of 64GB giving Linux and Windows 10 equal space. Both Windows and Linux boot under 10 seconds. I feel that Windows boots significantly faster though like under 6 seconds.

The battery life on windows is quite satisfactory for such a power house; it averaged 5 to 6 hours of normal web browsing. I don’t know whether the LG Gram actually delivers 15 hours of usage. On Linux, the battery life is around 3.5 – 5 hours on average. Yep, Windows is going to be slightly more efficient due to having official NVIDIA and other drivers installed. Linux drivers do not benefit from the same manufacturer tuning. Linux efficiency is improving day by day.

Things I don’t like about the laptop

Call is Rich People Problems (first world problems) but these are some annoying things about it:

1. Screen opening angle a bit limited. A little inconvenient when using on the bed or on a standing desk
2. The speakers’ sound is really poor especially as compared to a MacBook Air. I’d be embarrassed to put my brand Harman/Kardon if I were the owner of that brand on this particular laptop. You need external headsets to enjoy your musics.
3. The fn key cannot be made default. To change the brightness of the keyboard or screen backlight or change the volume, you have to press the fn + F[0-12] buttons. e.g. To change the volume, I have to use both my hands to press fn and f11. Life can be hard.
4. No Play/Next Music button on the keyboard. Sucks right?
5. I don’t think it has an Ambient Light Sensor to automatically adjust my display brightness. I miss how my MacBook Air did it perfectly.

Conclusion

Excellent performance. Excellent portability. Ok battery. BFF <3