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EDITORIAL SATURdAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2019 4 US invite to Taiwan's leader would be too risky Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam Telephone: +8802-9104683-84, Fax: 9127103 e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com Saturday, February 16, 2019 The regrettable outflow of a strategic resource The 1950's began amid optimism about the development of Asian countries including Bangladesh. It was assumed that investment, education, and modern management would be sufficient for their economic growth. But by the 1960's, disillusionment spread. The progress of developing countries was uneven, it fell short of aspirations, the developed countries grew faster, and therefore international gaps widened rather than narrowed. The "brain drain" issue moved from scholarly analysis and newspaper recriminations onto the floor of the United Nations General Assembly in late 1967. Resolutions introduced by developing countries demanded that richer members (particularly the United States) change their migration policies, encourage foreign students to learn the skills needed at home, encourage these students to return, and compensate the developing countries for losses. Human capital, as a strategic resource, is flowing out of the economy of Bangladesh where it can make the greatest contribution to human welfare, and into economies already well-supplied with trained, capable, scientific and administrative personnel. A nation is considered to be modern and advanced by surveying the extents of its technological developments in the field of science and industry. The main sources of the knowledge and know-how for these technologies are the educated and motivated individuals who include scientists, doctors, engineers, teachers, business pioneers, etc. But in a country like Bangladesh where most of the people are illiterate, advancement in development is at stake. On the other hand, the ones who are educated and capable of contributing towards the growth of the nation, prefer to live abroad. There is a significant number of highly educated Bangladeshis abroad who contribute to the welfare of foreign countries. Statistics show that 65 per cent of the newly graduated doctors in Bangladesh attempt to practice abroad. While in the country, there are millions of children suffering from malnutrition and childhood diseases. One can only imagine what improvements the newly graduates could have made in the country if they were to practice there. Moreover, every year thousands of people die due to untreated diseases. Even though there are some free treatment opportunities, the doctors that are available are usually inexperienced. The public is well aware of this fact and, therefore, whenever a complicated operation is to be performed, the patient, if he happens to be from wealthy family, is rushed to either Singapore, India or Thailand. The fate of the poor patient, on the other hand, lies in the hands of the inexperienced doctor. The generally held conception among the people of Bangladesh is that anything "foreign" is better. They would rather go and struggle to survive in a richer country than struggle in their own land. The underdeveloped countries have found themselves woefully short of technical and professional personnel in the key administrative and research positions. Today, as never before, there is a "common market" for brain power which transcends national boundaries. The improved transportation and communication available have facilitated the increased rate of brain drain that drags Bangladesh backwards into ignorance. The cream of our students is migrating for overseas institutions of higher learning-some through scholarships, others by self-finance; very few of them ever return. If this trend of brain drain continues, Bangladesh will surely face major challenges, if not facing them already, in the initial decades of this century. Neighbours such as India and Pakistan have taken several initiatives to bring back their expatriates from overseas destinations. It is high time for our government to act and take measures to address the situation of brain drain by initiating discussions with the Bangladeshi immigrants. With US President Donald Trump preparing for his second summit with Kim Jong Un and tensions between Beijing and Washington continuing to intensify, a group of five key American senators wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to invite Taiwan's unpopular president to address a joint session of Congress. Many onlookers have struggled to define exactly what that invitation will mean for the Taiwan Strait if it is extended. Is there a danger that the gesture will exacerbate tensions between the United States and China? China is one of America's' rivals and has constantly pressed Taiwan into submission, and tried to stifle it and maintain the fiction of the one-China policy. Beijing has continued to escalate rhetoric and actions that threaten Taiwan's democracy and sovereignty. The only way to preserve Taiwanese democracy, at this moment, is the status quo and measured, practical policy. It's a good thing the vast majority of Taiwanese voters understand this. Taiwan needs Washington's strong support, but the Americans should be careful not to adopt a belligerent posture. Relations between Beijing and SAUDI Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is set to arrive in Pakistan tomorrow. The visit will play an important role in strengthening the two countries' economic ties, with MBS ready to commit to a historic investment in Pakistan. Last year, Prime Minister Imran Khan travelled to Riyadh to negotiate a bailout package, which led to a $6 billion pledge from the kingdom. This significant financial support is undoubtedly a welcome relief to our economy. However, as the crown prince and our premier establish the agenda for the upcoming visit, it is important that the latter prioritise the issue of the over 3,300 Pakistanis currently languishing in Saudi prisons with the foreign delegation. Despite being a crucial geopolitical ally, the kingdom executes more Pakistanis than any other foreign nationality, with at least 20 executions in 2014, 22 in 2015, seven in 2016, 17 in 2017, and 30 in 2018 - nearly 100 in the last five years. Our governments of the past have taken no notice of these prisoners' situation, providing little in the way of legal or financial assistance, partly due to a lack of proper protocols provided to Pakistani missions and largely due to political indifference. As former chief justice of the Lahore High Court, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah remarked in 2017: "It appears that the government has adopted a policy of 'no policy' on overseas Pakistanis in Arab countries especially." On Feb 13, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi assured that the THE Warsaw meeting seems to have failed before it even started. This is due mainly to what players in the Middle East see as an unprecedented retreat by US President Donald Trump's administration in the face of an assertive Russia and Iran. The conference, as expected, did not rally consensus for a serious drive to change the behavior of the Iranian regime, since the objectives of those meeting in Warsaw were so divergent on the means to confront Tehran in the region and globally. Maybe the US and Europe should instead have called for a Euro-US meeting to counter the Russian and Iranian Trojan horses within the West, which have been interfering in elections, funding radicals, and promoting an anti- Western narrative. The US retreat from the Middle East under the Trump administration is making allies jittery, and Trump's style of erratic decisions on international affairs is pushing all those who orbit the US model of liberal democracy to scramble for containment or bilateral deals to circumvent America's chaotic foreign policy. The conference was surely a good photo opportunity but, as it drew to a close on Valentine's Day, it reflected how fractured our world has become. The US withdrawal from Syria, the inefficiency of US policies and military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the trade wars with China, the alleged collusion with Vladimir Putin's Russia, Washington have been tense in recent months, and because the US does not officially recognize Taiwan's government and there are so many global flashpoints that could quickly divert the Trump administration's attention, there is a concern is that the US might take an outspoken stance on Taiwan and then suddenly soften its tone, which could leave the island in an even more vulnerable position. Taiwan is just a part of the broader context of Sino-American relations. If Beijing is taking some hard knocks as a way of expressing displeasure with Washington's actions, it pays a price in inviting President Tsai Ing-wen. Experts on Taiwan said the senators' proposal is flawed and Taiwan would suffer, as a gesture that intended to help KENT WANg it would only hurt it. This is because Beijing would take the opportunity to squeeze Taipei even more than it is already. Washington exercises tremendous influence on the Taiwan issue. How the US Congress exercises that influence could well affect the future prosperity and safety of 23 million people. Taiwan must maintain a balanced relationship with the United States on the one hand Washington exercises tremendous influence on the Taiwan issue. how the US Congress exercises that influence could well affect the future prosperity and safety of 23 million people. Taiwan must maintain a balanced relationship with the United States on the one hand and with China on the other. Will inviting Taiwan's president to Washington mean wading into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait that could escalate into outright war? government would raise this issue, specifically regarding those who have been incarcerated for petty crimes, with the Saudi delegation. It is great that the government has begun to acknowledge the plight of citizens imprisoned overseas. Over 3,300 Pakistanis are currently languishing in Saudi prisons. However, the government has an obligation to afford the protection of the law to all Pakistanis wherever they may be, as per the Constitution, especially those who face the harshest punishments. Pakistanis imprisoned abroad have to navigate local courts without access to lawyers, impartial translators, or adequate consular assistance. They are at a significant disadvantage due to their lack of understanding of the legal process, incapability to communicate directly with the court, and inability to produce evidence from Pakistan in their defence. The recent spate of executions of Pakistanis carried out by Saudi Arabia have come at a time when our government and the kingdom are negotiating a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA), which would allow and with China on the other. Will inviting Taiwan's president to Washington mean wading into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait that could escalate into outright war? The invitation is contrary to a fundamental principle of US relations with China and for Washington, it could be a fatal strategic blunder. A more urgent PTA MUhAMMAd USMAN thousands of Pakistani prisoners to be repatriated, making it easier to investigate the circumstances of their alleged crimes and allowing them the dignity of returning home and completing their sentences. The last government seemed to have made some progress in March 2018. The federal cabinet approved prisoner transfer agreements with China and Saudi Arabia, subject to the 'respective inputs' of the foreign, The PML-N government suspended all PTAs in 2015 as prisoners repatriated from Britain were set free without completing their sentences under dubious circumstances. These PTAs were eventually reinstated by a Supreme Court order in April last year but it is unclear whether they are still in force, since the current government has announced that it is negotiating PTAs with the UAE and Britain. Trump's reservations on the EU as a whole, and his questioning of NATO's role are examples that will make many diplomats jittery around US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Warsaw. The proposed meeting of 70-plus foreign ministers in Poland was eventually watered down to 50 or 60 senior representatives, mainly ministers, deputy ministers and ambassadors: A game of numbers that makes Iran, Russia and their allies grin. The initial conference theme of containment of Iran also shifted to become a "Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East" in order to accommodate allies with economic interests with Iran, mostly Europeans. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif has dubbed the meeting in Poland the "Warsaw Circus". Many Arab countries have for long held Iran responsible for incitement and meddling in their affairs, exporting its Islamic revolution through propping up groups loyal to its cause in Iraq, Lebanon, MohAMEd ChEBARo defence and law ministries. However, no evident progress has been made on this front and 24 Pakistanis have been executed since April last year. These Pakistanis could have been repatriated and reunited with their families had the PTA been finalised. The PML-N government suspended all PTAs in 2015 as prisoners repatriated from Britain were set free without completing their sentences under dubious circumstances. These PTAs were eventually reinstated by a Supreme Court order in April last year but it is unclear whether they are still in force, since the current government has announced that it is negotiating Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Gaza to undermine the states and societies of those countries. Trump walked away from what he called a "terrible" 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama, which left Tehran free to develop its ballistic missile technology and pursue its indirect military interference in many Arab countries. But the EU has defied Trump and kept its commitment to the accord by setting up a financial tool for European firms to skirt US sanctions and keep doing business in the Middle East's second most populous country. Even Poland - always eager to please Washington as it fears a resurgent Russia - has been at pains to continue backing the agreement. Poland, as co-host, even chose to tone down the conference's aims to a vague goal of seeking peace in the Middle East, rather than mentioning Iran as the main precursor for the meeting. European officials, especially those from France and Germany, are livid The use of military force would be catastrophic for those on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and for the region. But how far does the United States intend to push this? And why would Washington conclude that this ill-considered symbolic gesture is worth the risk? The invitation would make substantive cross-Strait progress more difficult, not less. That these questions must now be considered highlights the disorderly nature of US-Taiwan-China trilateral relations. Concern over China's reaction is the main reason Congress would choose not to invite President Tsai. The Americans should ask themselves whether hosting a speech by an unpopular Taiwanese president is worth taking such a risk. If the president of Taiwan were to speak to a joint meeting of Congress, it would provoke an enormous backlash from Beijing. An act such as allowing her to address Congress might be just the excuse Beijing would use to take military action. Would the United States really commit forces to that fight, treaty or not? I hope we never get to find out. Source : Asia Times PTAs with the UAE and Britain. Regardless, it is crucial that these PTAs are finalised at once. It is equally important that our government demand that the Saudi government halt all executions until a PTA is finalised. Otherwise, prisoners that could be repatriated would remain at the mercy of judges who can overturn their sentences without any forewarning. Last year, Justice Project Pakistan came to know that several Pakistanis imprisoned in Saudi Arabia had their life sentences converted to death sentences without any forewarning. Several of these Pakistanis have already been executed. Pakistan will not be alone in its demand for the repatriation of its prisoners. India has negotiated an extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia, and the UK, US and Philippines have all signed prisoner transfer agreements with Saudi Arabia in the past. At a time when we are furthering our economic relationship with the Saudis, it is important to remember that a humanitarian obligation exists too. Finalising a PTA with Saudi Arabia and demanding that the Saudi government halt all executions of Pakistanis until a PTA is finalised would be an excellent step towards fulfilling a commitment Mr Khan made in his emphatic first speech upon taking office. It would prove that our relationship with Saudi Arabia is a mutually respectful one, one that goes beyond photo-ops, economic or military ties. Source : Dawn US-EU discord evident at troubled Warsaw summit The proposed meeting of 70-plus foreign ministers in Poland was eventually watered down to 50 or 60 senior representatives, mainly ministers, deputy ministers and ambassadors: A game of numbers that makes Iran, Russia and their allies grin. The initial conference theme of containment of Iran also shifted to become a "Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East" in order to accommodate allies with economic interests with Iran, mostly Europeans. about the conference, which they see not only as an attempt to increase pressure on Iran, but also to lead EU members into rubber-stamping the US' Middle East agenda, as championed by the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. The sole senior EU power to send its foreign minister will soon be leaving the bloc. British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt agreed to attend, if only to ratchet up support for a flagging Yemen cease-fire. The conference was surely a good photo opportunity but, as it drew to a close on Valentine's Day, it reflected how fractured our world has become and how tense the relationship between Europe and the US is. Meanwhile, the absence of Russia and China is an indication of the failure of multilateral action and diplomacy in the world today. Even amongst traditional allies, differences were prominent in Warsaw, as conflict in the Middle East intersected with other global crises like the fear of Russian assertiveness returning to Eastern Europe and the rise in tensions within the EU due to the growth of rightwing populism. If anything, Warsaw should have been a venue for Europe to clear the air with Washington, as EU officials have expressed outrage at the US' alleged efforts to widen divisions within the bloc and encourage members to leave the union or downgrade ties with Brussels. Source : Arab News
SCIENCE & TECH SATurDAY, FeBruArY 16, 2019 5 Google permeates almost every facet of online life, making it difficult but not impossible to remove. Photo: Arnd Wiegmann Is it possible to remove Google from our life? Jack Schofield Google's motto used to be "don't be evil", but in the eyes of some it has now taken on the mantle of the "evil empire" from Microsoft, which Bill Gates and crew inherited from the IBM mocked in the Mac's launch advert in 1984. The EU has fined Google €2.4bn (£2.2bn) for abusing its search monopoly by favouring its products. Most recently, Google was fined €4.34bn for "very serious illegal behaviour" in using Android "to cement its dominance as a search engine", according to the EU's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, a charge the company contests. Google started by taking over the search engine market. It now dominates smartphone operating systems (Android), browsers (Chrome), webbased email (Gmail), online video (YouTube) and maps. It is also challenging in other areas with its own cloud platform, an online office suite, Chromebooks, Waze, Nest and so on. Google is far advanced in driverless cars (Waymo) and artificial intelligence (DeepMind). Resistance is futile. You will Linda Kinstler Should one be so unlucky as to find oneself, as I did, lying awake in bed in the early hours of the morning in a hostel in La Paz, Bolivia, listening anxiously to the sound of someone trying to force their way into one's room, one could do worse than to throw a chair under the doorknob as a first line of defence. But this is not what I did. Instead, I held my breath and waited until the intruder, ever so mercifully, abandoned his project and sauntered down the hall. The next morning, when I raised the incident with the hostel employee at the front desk, he said the attempted intrusion had just been an innocent mistake, a misdirected early-morning wake-up call gone wrong, and what was the big deal, anyway? Fuming, I turned to the highest authority in the be assimilated. We can probably agree Google has won by delivering high-quality products, and more than 40 corpses in the Google Graveyard - soon to be joined by its awful social network, Google+ - prove it doesn't always win. But there are other problems. First, Google now controls web development to the point where not even Microsoft can compete, as shown by the latter's recent decision to replace its EdgeHTML browser engine with the open source Chromium on which Google's Chrome browser is based. Users were supposed to benefit from competition between rival implementations of open web standards, but today Chromium and therefore Chrome is the standard. As Firefox-developer Mozilla has pointed out, "from a social, civic and individual empowerment perspective, ceding control of fundamental online infrastructure to a single company is terrible". Second, many of us have problems with Google's business model, which the Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff has called "surveillance capitalism". Google world of international travel, the only entity to which every hotel, restaurant, museum and attraction in the world is beholden: I left the hostel a bad review on TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor is where we go to praise, criticise and purchase our way through the inhabited world. It is, at its core, a guestbook, a place where people record the highs and lows of their holiday experiences for the benefit of hotel proprietors and future guests. But this guestbook lives on the internet, where its contributors continue swapping advice, memories and complaints about their journeys long after their vacations have come to an end. Every month, 456 million people - about one in every 16 people on earth - visit some tentacle of TripAdvisor.com to plan or assess a trip. For virtually every place, there exists a corresponding page. The Rajneeshee Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune, India, has 140 reviews and a 4 out of 5 rating, Cobham Service Station on the M25 has 451 reviews and a rating of 3.5, while Wes Anderson's fictional Grand Budapest Hotel currently has 358 reviews and a rating of 4.5. Over its two decades in business, TripAdvisor has turned an initial investment of $3m into a$7bn business by figuring out how to provide a service that no other tech company has quite mastered: constantly updated information about every imaginable element of travel, courtesy of an evergrowing army of contributors who provide their services for free. Browsing through TripAdvisor's 660m reviews finances its free services by tracking users and targeting them with advertisements. In fact, it tracks you across the web even if you never visit any Google properties because other websites commonly use Google AdWords, AdMob, DoubleClick, Google Analytics, and its other tracking or advertising products. From your searches and site visits, Google probably knows more about you than your mother or your spouse, and there's no telling where that information will eventually end up. If you use an Android phone, Google can also track your physical location, and if you turn that off, you lose directions, "find my phone" and other features. The simplest way to avoid most Google products is to switch to the Microsoft or Apple equivalents, in whole or in part. Some would see this as jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. However, Satya Nadella's new Microsoft is different from the old one, and driven by other metrics (usage instead of units). It is building a broader cross-platform ecosystem than either Google (everything online) or Apple (everything on Apple). TripAdvisor: Travel in the 21st century The world's biggest travel site has turned the industry upside down. Photo: Getty is a study in extremes. As a kind of mirror of the world and all its wonders, the site can transport you to the most spectacular landmarks, the finest restaurants, the most "adrenaline-pumping" water parks, the greatest "Hop-On Hop-Off Experiences" that mankind has ever devised. Yet TripAdvisor reviews are also a ruthless audit of the earth's many flaws. For every effusive review of the Eiffel Tower ("Worth the hype at night," "Perfect Backdrop!"), there is another that suggests it is a blight on the face of the earth ("sad, ugly, don't bother"; "similar to the lobby of a big Vegas casino, but outside".) TripAdvisor is to travel as Google is to search, as Amazon is to books, as Uber is to cabs - so dominant that it is almost a monopoly. Bad reviews can be devastating for business, so proprietors tend to think of them in rather violent terms. "It is the marketing/PR equivalent of a drive-by shooting," Edward Terry, the owner of a Lebanese restaurant in Weybridge, UK, wrote in 2015. Marketers call a cascade of online one-star ratings a "review bomb". Likewise, positive reviews can transform an establishment's fortunes. Researchers studying Yelp, one of TripAdvisor's main competitors, found that a one-star increase meant a 5- 9% increase in revenue. Before TripAdvisor, the customer was only nominally king. After, he became a veritable tyrant, with the power to make or break lives. In response, the hospitality industry has lawyered up, and it is not uncommon for businesses to threaten to sue customers who post negative reviews. Why Silicon Valley can’t fix itself Ben Tarnoff Big Tech is sorry. After decades of rarely apologising for anything, Silicon Valley suddenly seems to be apologising for everything. They are sorry about the trolls. They are sorry about the bots. They are sorry about the fake news and the Russians, and the cartoons that are terrifying your kids on YouTube. But they are especially sorry about our brains. Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook - who was played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network - has publicly lamented the "unintended consequences" of the platform he helped create: "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains." Justin Rosenstein, an engineer who helped build Facebook's "like" button and Gchat, regrets having contributed to technology that he now considers psychologically damaging, too. "Everyone is distracted," Rosenstein says. "All of the time." Ever since the internet became widely used by the public in the 1990s, users have heard warnings that it is bad for us. In the early years, many commentators described cyberspace as a parallel universe that could swallow enthusiasts whole. The media fretted about kids talking to strangers and finding porn. A prominent 1998 study from Carnegie Mellon University claimed that spending time online made you lonely, depressed and antisocial. In the mid-2000s, as the internet moved on to mobile devices, physical and virtual life began to merge. Bullish pundits celebrated the "cognitive surplus" unlocked by crowdsourcing and the tech-savvy campaigns of Barack Obama, the "internet president". But, alongside these optimistic voices, darker warnings persisted. Nicholas Carr's The Shallows (2010) argued that search engines were making people stupid, while Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble (2011) claimed algorithms made us insular by showing us only what we wanted to see. In Alone, Together (2011) and Reclaiming Conversation (2015), Sherry Turkle warned that constant connectivity was making meaningful interaction impossible. Still, inside the industry, t e c h n o - u t o p i a n i s m prevailed. Silicon Valley seemed to assume that the tools they were building were always forces for good - and that anyone who questioned them was a crank or a luddite. In the face of an anti-tech backlash that has surged since the 2016 election, however, this faith appears to be faltering. Prominent people in the industry are beginning to acknowledge that their products may have harmful effects. Internet anxiety isn't new. But never before have so many notable figures within the industry seemed so anxious about the world they have made. Parker, Rosenstein and the other insiders now talking about the harms of smartphones and social media belong to an informal yet influential current of tech critics emerging within Silicon Valley. You could call them the "tech humanists". Amid rising public concern about the power of the industry, they argue that the primary problem with its products is that they threaten our health and our humanity. It is clear that these products are designed to be maximally addictive, in order to harvest as much of our attention as they can. Tech humanists say this business model is both unhealthy and inhumane - that it damages our psychological well-being and conditions us to behave in ways that diminish our humanity. The main solution that they propose is better design. By redesigning technology to be less addictive and less manipulative, they believe we can make it healthier - we can realign technology with our humanity and build products that don't "hijack" our minds. Apple founder Steve Jobs posing with a Macintosh computer. Photo: Ted Thai What to consider before buying a mobile phone Jack Schofield Phone manufacturers and others can and do test their phones, usually for certification purposes. The performance test results you want, if you can get them, are the Total Isotropic Sensitivity (TIS) value for reception and the Total Radiated Power (TRP) for transmission. These probably don't qualify as easy for an ordinary punter to understand. Also, they are derived by testing performance in ideal conditions with a simulated base station in an anechoic chamber, not with a fading signal on a wet and windy hillside. Either way, I don't think phone manufacturers are likely to use TIS in their marketing. There are too many variables for it to be a reliable guide to real-world reception. For example, studies have found significant differences between holding a phone in the left hand and holding it in the right hand, which I assume is connected with the way manufacturers position their antenna(s). The size of your hands and the angle at which you hold the phone also make a difference. The tests were created by the CTIA - originally the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association - to certify wireless devices' over-the-air performance, and a brief glance at the 591-page PDF will show how complicated it is. For example, you could measure peak performance with a directional aerial, but then users would have to orient the phone towards the unseen transmitter for the best results. Instead, the CTIA requires the "average spherical effective radiated receiver sensitivity (TIS) to be measured". This should mean a phone works equally well in all directions, but it's complicated to calculate and still a compromise. Another problem is making antennas work with different 2G, 3G and 4G phone networks that operate at different frequencies. A phone that works well with GSM 900 might be terrible with UMTS 2100. The downside of having a phone that talks to most networks is that it won't be optimised for the one you actually use. Also, because human bodies have not been standardised, TIS and TRP measurements are made with dummy heads and hands filled with liquid. Results may vary if you use real people. In the end, the only measurements that matter are the ones you get with your head and hands with the specific frequencies used by your EE network. We are left with "ask a friend" and the notvery-helpful "try it and see". Most tests assume that all models of a particular phone will perform in the same way, but Ofcom found differences. As with other products, phones that look identical can vary. In some cases, they may have been assembled in different countries, and use slightly different components. In others, the circuitry may have been revised between editions. Even if the internal components seem to be the same, there could be some sample variation, without a phone actually being faulty. This makes me wonder if your Moto 3 is below average in reception performance. In most cases, no one would ever know, but you are literally an "edge case". With a new phone, it might be worth asking the supplier for a different sample, but it may be too late for that. It would be interesting to know what would happen if you swapped phones and sims with your wife. You may have a bigger capacitance than your wife, electronically speaking, and possibly much bigger hands. Both can and do affect reception. If your Moto 3 works better in her hands, then either you or your sim are degrading the performance. It might be worth getting a new sim. As you already know, using your phone on a selfie stick can improve performance. You may also get better reception by not touching the phone and using the built-in speakerphone. You could also try using a signal booster or repeater. Why is it that some smartphones have better reception than others and is there any way to find out which ones are best before buying them? Photo: Samuel Gibbs
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Page 3: INTERNATIONAL SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16
Page 7 and 8: MISCELLANEOUS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16

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