Innholdsfortegnelse for 2/2019 i ASIAN Geographic

SCREEN While it looks like an ordinary piece of glass, a phone screen contains some of the rarest and least-heard-of elements on Earth. At the heart of the touchscreen is a transparent film of indium tin oxide that conducts electricity and therefore enables touches on the screen to be relayed to other parts of the phone as electrical signals. Gadolinium, praseodymium, terbium and yttrium are responsible for the colours on a smartphone’s screen. Aluminosilicate used in glass screens is a mixture of alumina (Al2 O3 ) and silica (SiO2 ). They are often reinforced by the addition of potassium. CASING Magnesium alloys, aluminium alloys and plastics are all used to make phone cases. Bromine may be added as a flame retardant while the inclusion of nickel reduces electromagnetic interference. Some…

Hole-punch Displays The hole-punch or punch-hole display, depending on whom you ask, is the most distinctive – or discreet – feature you can expect to see on upcoming smartphones with an edge-to-edge display. For the longest time, smartphone makers weren’t able to extend the screen all the way to the top edge because a space was needed for the selfie camera. With the iPhone X, Apple made the module, which also takes care of face recognition, a design feature: The notch was born, and despite naysayers, the design was widely copied. But an elegant solution appeared with the launch of the Huawei Honor View 20, the first to feature an inconspicuous hole-punch cut-out in the display. It seems the idea is being rapidly adopted with the Samsung Galaxy S10e and…

1878 Thomas Doolittle reportedly created what could be the first pay phone by placing a telephone in Bridgeport and another in Black Rock, Connecticut in wooden booths and connecting them using a telegraph wire. 1883: The first phone booth known as a telephone cabinet was patented. The space that measured 1.2 by 1.5 metres had a desk inside and wheels attached to enable movement. 1889: American William Gray invented the coin-operated payphone. It was a post-pay system, so users paid after they made their calls. 1909: A mechanism to return deposited coins when calls are not made successfully was developed. Early 1900s: Outdoor phone booths were installed in the US (replaced by glass and aluminium ones when they became common in the 1950s). 1921: The first public phone kiosk, the…

1973 First Call Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first cell phone call on April 3, 1973. He called his competitor, Dr. Joel S. Engel, who was head of Bell Labs to gloat at having beat them. Cooper said, “Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone.” 1979 1 GENERATION (1G) ANALOG CELLULAR 1G refers to the first generation of wireless telephone technology. These analog telecommunications standards were first launched commercially in Japan by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) in 1979. 1983 Motorola Dyna TAC 8000X Martin Cooper made the first analogue mobile phone call using a heavy Motorola Dyna TAC 8000X prototype. Cooper is the first inventor named on ‘Radio telephone Ststm’ filed on October 17, 1973 with the…

WECHAT The app for everything App Features • Individual messages• Broadcast messages• Group chats• Friendship circles• Find nearby users• Emojis and stickers• Voice call• Video call• International call• Live video streaming• Photo filters and captions• Likes and comments• Automatic translation• Web version• Advertisements• Hospital preregistration• Visa renewal• Trading and investment• Video games• Mobile banking• Online shopping• Status updates• Customer service• Sharing of photos, videos, contacts, location and music “Ideas are not important in China – execution is”– Ma Huateng Co Founder and CEO of company Tencent , China Developer: Tencent, China Initial release: 2011 Language: 20 Monthly Active Users 1 BILLION Most Popular in China Price Free Banned in United States, Russia, India, Australia Developer Tencent Holdings Ltd from Shenzhen, China, the world’s biggest investment corporation and entertainment company…

Our thought and emotions encompass the Earth in an almost-invisible datasphere. At this very moment, these invisible thoughts pass through your body as radio waves, and relay through cables and antennae at the speed of light. Knitted together into a complex network, the evolving datasphere is a novel and continually surprising part of our lives. How did it come to be, and what is it changing into? As this datasphere improves over time, communication specialists have come to refer to the technical advances as new “generations”. We’re on the cusp of a new generation being rolled out across the world, and there’s a growing realisation that these networks will be critical drivers of cultural and economic growth in the years to come. To understand the promise and enthusiasm for the…

1 Export of cobalt from DRC artisanal mines to China for processing. More than half the world’s cobalt comes from this region. 2 Supply of processed cobalt to factories in Asia to make rechargeable batteries 3 Supply of batteries to global technology and car companies 40,000 Child Labours in the Democratic Republic of Congo According to the UN’s children agency UNICEF, about 40,000 children work in cobalt mines in the DRC. For a shift of up to 24 hours underground, most earn less than USD2 a day. Many receive half of that. Sources: This Is What We Die For: Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt, Amnesty International (January 2016) Is Your Cellphone Powered by Child Labour?, eNews Channel Africa (January…

Well-known for its pristine and colourful reefs teeming with diverse species of marine life, Raja Ampat is undeniably one of the most desirable diving destinations in the world. Situated in Indonesia’s West Papua province, the 40,000-square-kilometre diving paradise boasts over 1500 species of coral and 500 species of fish. The archipelago’s name, which means “four kings” in Indonesian, refers to the main islands of Misool, Salawati, Waigeo and Batanta, but there are actually more than 600 islands in total. Most of the resorts in the region are in the north and visitors usually access the south via liveaboards. Famous sites such as Sardine Reef, Manta Sandy, Arborek Jetty and Cape Kri are located in the Dampier Strait, which separates the mainland of West Papua and nearby Batanta from Waigeo to…

TripIt Available on Google Play and App Store When planning for trips, the amount of documentation one has to deal with can sometimes be a little overwhelming. TripIt consolidates and organises all your flight itineraries, tickets, hotel bookings and car rental reservations so you won’t have to print them out individually. Simply send them to the app and you have easy access to any travel document you need. The app also allows you to share your travel plans with anyone you need to coordinate with. GPSmyCity Available on Google Play and App Store Be your own tour guide with GPSmyCity. It features self-guided city walks and GPS-powered travel articles for more than 1,000 cities around the world. With detailed travel routes on an offline map, you can explore totally unfamiliar…

Eternal rest is a lifelong task for the indigenous people of South Sulawesi, who congregate to serve their dead relatives once every few years. Follow Claudio Sieber as he gets a first-hand look at the bizarre practices of the Toraja who believe their deceased loved ones never really die. Log on to www.asiangeo.com/environment/stirring-the-bioplastic-industry/ as ASIAN Geographic talks to one of the most promising bioplastic startups in Asia that is causing a stir in the bioplastic industry with their biodegradable straws.…

Nickel Nickel is used in electrical connections, capacitors and batteries. The metal is extracted from its ores by heating and reducing processes. Indonesia is the world’s largest nickel-producer nickel producer, followed by the Philippines. Lead This soft, heavy, malleable – and toxic – metallic element is used in the solder that joins the electrical components of our smartphones. Lead is produced from mined lead ore and from recycling. The world’s top lead producer is China. Copper Copper is used as an electrical conductor in the circuit board. Most of this malleable, reddish-brown metal is mined or extracted as copper sulphides from large, open-pit mines. Chile is the world’s top producer of copper with at least one-third share. China is a distant second. Silver A soft white precious metal, silver is…

The first phone with a fingerprint sensor is Hewlett-Packard’s iPaq PPC 5500 personal digital assistant, which was introduced back in 2003. The first phone to use an in-display fingerprint sensor is Vivo’s X20 Plus UD annouced in January 2018. The revolutionary sensor, FS9500 Clear ID, is manufactured by Synaptics, which specialises in touch, display and biometrics products. It was collaborating with Samsung on this technology in 2016 but implementation problems forced the latter to place the fingerprint sensor on the rear of its 2017 flgships.…

There used to be a time, in the quaint era of letter writing, when the acronym LOL referred to ‘lots of love’ or ‘lots of luck’. Then came the era when writing via electronic communications became ubiquitous and those phrases were swiftly dethroned. As history would have it, LOL evolved into ‘laugh out loud’. Texting, instant messaging and writing on social media platforms, all of which are mostly done using smartphones these days, have encouraged people to convey messages as succinctly as one possibly could, and led to the development of a new mobile language. Rules that the English language abided by were abandoned in this realm. Efforts were put into modifying the language instead and in the process, new norms were created. There are a variety of conventions coming…

Defined as a small digital icon used to express an idea or emotion, emojis are not to be confused with emoticons –facial representations created using keys available on the phone. The first emojis were created in 1999 by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita. Unicode Consortium, a non-profit group that maintains text standards across computers, recognised emojis in 2010, propelling its widespread adoption. In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named the face with tears of Joy emoji shown above the word of the year.…

Bits: The smallest digital signal, either on (1) or off (0). The code used for the early telegraph transmission could be thought of as bits of information. Bytes: A collection of 8 bits, which in combination can form 256 possible symbols. The approximately 12,000 letters in the text of this article can be encoded as about 12,000 bytes. Mbps, Gbps: Data transmission speed measurements of bits per second. Megabits are a million bits, and gigabits, a billion bits. Multiply by 8 to get a measurement in bytes per second. MB/s, GB/s: Data transmission speed measurements of bytes per second. Megabytes are a million bytes, and gigabytes, a billion bytes. GSM (Global System for Mobile communication): A 2G digital network common in Asia, including text messages within the signal DGE (Enhanced…

The Amsterdam-based company launched in 2013 produces smartphones that come the closest to being labelled as ethically produced. To date, two models have been released and the Fairphone 2, launched in 2015, is known to be the world’s first modular smartphone. Hoping to make a positive impact on how phones are made, used and recycled, the company builds its phones around these four principles: • Ensuring materials sourced are obtained fairly • Good working conditions for workers • Long-lasting design that allows flexibility in repairing and replacing parts • Investing in programmes to reuse and recycle their phones While Fairphone puts in as much effort as it can to ensure that the materials it uses are ethically sourced, the company acknowledges its phones are not 100 percent fair. Among the…

1. Gold Small amounts of gold are used to make the most important part of the mobile phone: the mobile phone circuit board. The world’s top exporter of gold is China, followed by South Africa. Gold is also found in • medals given out in popular world games like the Olympics • religious statues and idols used by various religions • jewellery 2. Silver A soft white precious metal, silver is also used in mobile-phone circuit boards. The metal is primarily produced as a by-product when producing copper, gold, nickel and zinc. The world’s top silver producer is Mexico. Silver is also found in • coins that we use everyday • silverware like spoons, forks, knives and plates 3. Cooper Copper is used as an electrical conductor in the mobile…

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, poet, philosopher and lecturer who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.…

7,200 miles 306, a racing pigeon, holds the record for the longest pigeon flight by flying 7,200 miles over sea, mountains and desert from Arras, France to Saigon, Vietnam in 24 days. 800 Pigeons In the eastern Indian state of Orissa, 400 police stations relied on the Police Pigeon Service to communicate daily and during natural disasters. The service that comprised some 800 pigeons was retired in March 2002. 1.75 Hours Walter Fricker, a pigeon fancier, started the world’s first airmail service – Great Barrier Pigeongram Service – in 1897 in New Zealand. The service operated between the Great Barrier Reef and New Zealand till 1908, with pigeons covering the distance in 24 1.75 hours. 776 BC At the first Olympic Games held in 776 BC, every athlete taking part…

Weirdest app ever created For sure this is not the only strange app in the market but it sure is one of the strangest. Debuting in the App Store on August 5, 2008, the I Am Rich app’s only function is to remind a user how rich he is. Priced at USD999.99, the app displays a red jewel on a user’s screen, which shows “I am rich. I deserv [sic] it. I am good, healthy & successful.” when tapped on. Eight people reportedly downloaded it, but Apple removed it from its store the day after its release and two of these users asked for it to be restored. Despite the flak it drew, German developer Armin Heinrich defended it as art and released I Am Rich LE. The newer version,…

Beginnings of Payphones Once a common feature in many cities and towns around the world, payphones served as an important means of communication in an era when the mobile phone hadn’t been invented and personal mobile devices were expensive to own. While many payphones were already installed in Western countries like America and Britain by the 1930s, Asia was slower to adopt this mode of communication. Even in countries that have efficient telecommunication systems now, like Singapore, public phones were rare in the 1950s and 1960s. In Singapore, there was only one public phone serving 6,500 residents in Sembawang Hills Estate in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, there were about 250 public phones in Singapore, which means there were 3.75 phones for every 100 people. This ratio placed…

Many can’t imagine living a day without their mobile phones. Mobile penetration rates are soaring around the world and the ubiquity of the mobile device has heralded the decline of public payphones that many relied on to stay connected. 52% of global web traffic comes from mobile phones and its use has given rise to entire industries and created jobs for many. According to Gartner intellignce data from February 2019, the global number of unique mobile subscribers in 2017 is 5.1billion and is projected to reach 5.8 billion in 2025. [1] 2.8 billion of them are in APAC alone, which is expected to have 3.16 billion mobile subscribers in 2025. (excludes countries in CIS & MENA) The mobile penetration rate in APAC stands at 67% – same as that globally.…

Generation 1G (1970-1980s) Speed 14.4 Kps Technology AMPS, NMT, TACS Key Features Voice-only services Generation 2G (1990-2000) Speed 9.6/14.4 Kps Technology TDMA, CDMA Key Features Voice and data sevices Generation 2.5G-2.75G (2001-2004) Speed 171.2 Kps 20-40 Kbps Technology GPRS Key Features Voice, data, mobile Internet, low-speed streaming services and email services Generation 3G (2004-2005) Speed 3.1 Mbps 500-700 Kbps Technology CDMA2000 (1XRTT, EVDO), UMTS, EDGE Key Features Voice, data and multimedia support for smartphone apps, faster Web browsing, video calling and TV streaming Generation 3.5G (2006-2010) Speed 14.4 Mbps 1-3 Mbps Technology HSPA Key Features All the services from 3G networks with enhanced speed and mobility Generation 4G (2010 onward) Speed 100-300 Mbps 3-5 Mbps 100 Mbps (Wi-Fi) Technology WiMax, LTE, WiFi Key Features High speed, high quality voice over…

In the mobile phone in your hand lies the fate of thousands of cobalt miners in Congo – the coveted metal is an essential component of lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones and other devices. About 110,000 metric tonnes of it was mined in 2017 and demand continues to rise with the growing appetite for smartphones and electric cars, which are mostly powered by nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries. Although cobalt is sourced from all over the world, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains the biggest supplier. It produces 60 percent of the global supply, mining the metal from the Central African Copper Belt in the DRC’s southeastern provinces. Cobalt mining constitutes 30 percent of the Congo’s GDP and about 20 million Congolese have entered the industry to eke out a living amidst…

Pager Before mobile phones made it easy to call one another, people relied heavily on pagers to stay in contact. These personal radio devices allow users to receive messages broadcast on a specific telephone number and frequency over a special network of radio base stations. Every pager is assigned a specific phone number and radio frequency. When someone calls a pager owner, his pager will beep or vibrate and its LCD screen will show the caller’s phone number. This is how people used to find out who was trying to contact them. More advanced pagers can display the number and a short message or even transmit 10-second voice messages. The Boston Police Department reportedly used the first pager-like system between 1921 to 1927. The device was later installed in patrol…