Business is almost like a war, and on the trade front it is not a sin to use any, even the most dishonest and meanest methods towards the consumer. The main thing is to sell. As a result, manufacturers, or rather their advertisers, are balancing somewhere on the edge, when a centimeter to the left means a drain in front of a competitor who submitted exactly the same product more colorful, and a centimeter to the right is already a real risk of getting stuck in litigation.
We want to talk about the varieties of noodles that manufacturers of mobile devices and other relevant hardware are trying to hang on our ears.
In the description of smartphones and tablets, memory is often displayed in the first place. This is because, in fact, this is the only strong difference within the device line. iPhones are divided into 16, 32 and 64 GB, because everything else is the same. The situation is similar with Androids. The main question is: does the user really get at his disposal exactly this amount of memory for storing his data? Of course not.
Microsoft's Surface tablets are a great example here. We carefully read the description of the model, which is proudly presented to us as a top-end "128 GB Surface Pro". 89 GB is available to the user. OK, look at the "64 GB Surface Pro" — 28GB is available. The rest goes under the system. We look at the 64 GB iPad — about 57 GB is available. We are looking at the top smartphone Samsung Galaxy S4 16 GB — about 8 GB is available.
Why not specify in the characteristics the actual amount of memory available to the user, and not the size of the drive inside the device? We are not interested in how much space your OS eats up. We are interested in how much of our content will fit on the device purchased from you.
The size of the hard drive — it never matches the description. When your humble servant bought a Windows ultrabook with 128 GB SSD, he was worried whether there would be a total shortage of space? And when turned on, he saw 104 GB, and this is without taking into account the space occupied by the system.
This is also the case with HDD. We read 500 GB, we see 465 GB. Why? It's all about the units of measurement. Drive manufacturers use "gigabyte = 10 to the power of 9", while Windows technically uses "gibibyte = 2 to the power of 30".
This is complete nonsense. Disk manufacturers have 1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes, 1 megabyte = 1000 kilobytes, and 1 gigabyte = 1000 megabytes. Windows has 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes, 1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes, and 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes. How will a 500 GB hard disk be counted in the system? 500*1000*1000*1000 / (1024*1024*1024) = 465.66 GB.
In general, the term 4G refers to the generation of mobile communications, which includes and in the future will include promising technologies that implement data transfer speeds to mobile objects equal to or exceeding 100 megabits per second.
In fact, the development of technologies gave rise to intermediate generations, and many technologies that belonged to the third generation at one time, for some reason suddenly "grew up" to the fourth, although in fact they do not meet the specifications. A good example here could be the situation with the American telecom operator AT&T: after the iOS 5.1 update, users saw how the network indicator changed from 3G to 4G. This does not mean that their iPhone 4 and 4S suddenly learned to connect to LTE networks. The operator just wanted his network to be designated as a 4G network, although 4G did not smell there.
Now the 4G label is stuffed anywhere, it has lost its meaning and significance.
Taking out the brain to the consumer with the most sophisticated (and meaningless) combination of letters and words is already the norm. We take any device with a screen: Sony has "TruBlack" and "X-Reality Picture Engine", Toshiba has "TruBrite", Nokia has "ClearBlack" and "PureMotion HD+".
What does it all mean? What difference does it make to you, the main thing is that only we have this revolutionary unique technology, and if you don't buy our product, then you will certainly die. Apple has Retina screens. Only Apple has Retina displays. Really? But technically Retina is only a certain ppi indicator, and this indicator has long been surpassed by several other manufacturers. But Retina is a registered trademark and it cannot be used by others, which is why only Apple has Retina displays. If not for this fact, then other manufacturers would have Retina-Retina, Retina-Retina-Retina, Super Retina HD +++ and similar things.
With a high probability, you have come across terms like Wi-Fi Ready. They flash on iPods and televisions. What does Wi-Fi Ready mean? No, the device does not have a Wi-Fi module, but it is ready to connect such a module and then work in a wireless network. Why is that? There are two goals at once: to put in our head the idea that the function is, as it were, in the device, and also to knock out money from us for the very module that can cost several thousand rubles.
When submitting such a product, the manufacturer can also cheat. The fact is that the diagonal of the screen and the diagonal of the area directly displaying the picture may differ. All this is aimed at our not always explicable desire to compete with gigs, cores, inches and other indicators, the meaning of which we may not understand.
There are so-called "elite" companies that produce "elite accessories". For example, you can take the Monster company, which makes terribly expensive cables for digital formats like HDMI. What is the superiority of such a cable? In fact, nothing. If we are talking about a digit, then there are ones and zeros along the wires, and the only thing required for such a cable is a conductive metal / alloy and the integrity of the structure that allows the signal to be transmitted to the receiving device. Any bells and whistles are important only in analog cables, where the requirements for the conductivity of the wire and insulation are much higher, but for numbers it's all superfluous.
We have long ceased to be surprised by the fact that in practical use of the device, the battery life of its battery differs from that specified by the manufacturer. Why is this happening? Obviously, to present your product as efficiently as possible. Internal testing of the device for the battery life takes place under very specific conditions, very different from the actual practice of using the product.
In this post, we have touched on only a few points that are worth paying attention to when communicating with sellers and advertising. There are many more useful tips related to this or that type of equipment and accessories, and we hope that you will share them in the comments. The most useful of them form the next post from this series.
And remember: you can't trust someone who wants to sell you something.
