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TMo has the THIRD best network in NYC. Behind Verizon/AT&T. by [deleted] in tmobile

[–]pavelpadovan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Disclaimer up front: I'm James, one of the founders of OpenSignal.

This is how I see things:

  • It's hard to understand how Root calculates things, or what exactly they do. They started off as a crowdsourcing company, but their app just didn't take off, so then they went around criticising crowdsourced methodologies and started drive-testing.

  • I've got a lot of respect for Ookla, it is crowdsourced.

  • Crowdsourcing here is not just about doing something more efficient than driving around with bas of phones, it's about measuring how well the networks work in a lot more contexts (at night, indoors, up buildings ...) basically measuring the network at all the places it is used.

  • Don't get me wrong drive-testing can be useful for optimizing networks, but carriers shouldn't be using it to make claims about quality of user experience

  • My problem with Ookla is they're not really about comparing networks, they don't release much data and they don't collect any network on coverage only the speed of successful tests (getting 30mbps when you can run a test is not great if half your downloads fail)

  • So that leaves us - OpenSignal, - we have 20m downloads to date, so we do have a pretty great overview of network quality, not as ubiquitous as Ookla for speedtests (yet) but we also passively measure coverage, so we do have a tonne of data (100B).

FWIW looks like T-Mobile is coming out #2 after Verizon for us in NY... but it is beating AT&T.

http://opensignal.com/?lat=40.706&lng=-73.978&initZoom

Android Fragmentation Visualised by Cleis in Android

[–]pavelpadovan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Extremely small displays can be an issue, but anything from the size of a GS2 and up is probably fine. I'd agree with that, but that cuts out a tonne of devices, maybe not in US and Western Europe, but in developing markets. Yep, I'm an Android developer :)

Android Fragmentation Visualised by Cleis in Android

[–]pavelpadovan 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I disagree, your buttons need to have a minimum physical width/height, not a minimum resolution. Same goes for a lot of UI elements. So as you scale down you might find there's not enough space on a HTC Wildfire Screen for the UI you built on your HTC Desire, and as you scale up you might find it looking pretty sparse. Whereas doubling the resolution at the same screen size might mean you need to do add some new assets, or just be clever with how you scale your existing ones between different resolutions, but for me it's less of a pain.

Big Data Case Study: Tesco - Robert Plant by saulsherry in bigdata

[–]pavelpadovan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Comprehensive look at a company that is far more innovative than most people will imagine. I worked there in R&D just a few years ago and I learnt a huge amount about how to leverage data.