Gadget Gossip: The iPhone is here!!

Hi- I know, I know looooong delay but still, (I have college you know),

We will be taking a ride through the iPhone 3G now. First of all the iphone has released all over the world in 22 countries today (July 11th) and the rest of the 48 countries in the waiting list including India will have to wait- not for very long. Apple director, Tim Cook, says that the iPhone will be "there and about"in the rest of the 48 countries as promised by the end of Fall and Winter 2008. When asked about India he said that he was "happy to bring Apple's iPhone to more and more hands around the globe". Apple signed a partnership with world's largest telecom giant Vodafone India and Bharti Airtel, a branch of Singtel (Singapore), earlier this month. Vodafone and Airtel have started pre-registering for the smart phone. One can send an SMS 'IPHONE' to 56789 for Vodafone and 54321 for Airtel. Although both companies are tight-lipped about the event, sources say that Vodafone will go ahead and launch it first by August end. We could expect it anywhere by August 20-25th. If not, latest by September, said the source. Unfortunately, the buzz around the price seems to be going on the down side- iPhone will not be subsidised in India owing to the already low call rates. The 8GB version of the phone should cost around 11000-16000 INR and the 16GB version around 19000-22000 INR. There are a lot of Pro's when compared to Iphone 1.0 like, 3G has A-GPS, App Store, a black metallic finish plastic body with white option, greatly improved stereo sound, common head phone jack, and many more software tweaks although the Cons do hurt the ears- there is no Message Forwarding, Battery Life is max 5 hours and gets juiced out by 7-8 hours at 3G otherwise, 13-15 hours, Bluetooth syncing is not user-friendly, camera has no flash, no auto focus etc. But it still makes it worth the wait for this wonderful beauty- It has got multi-touch, accelerometer, proximity sensors, light sensor, brilliant 3.5" gorgious hi-res display, geo-tagging, and oh! forgot the most important point when 3G networks operate in India it will be 2.5x faster than Edge- 3G will enter India by January 2009- until then use Edge. So, great phone, great looks- go buy it!!!!

The Elite Window rating: 9.8/10

Aditya CR

The Elite Window

P.S. For those who want some other news, look at my blog tomorrow at 3:00 pm IST.