Geek Factor

While every other touchscreen mobile phone that comes to market today is tagged with the ‘iPhone Killer’ moniker, there is only one phone which I believe can truly live up to the higher expectations set by Apple’s iconic smartphone. That comes from the world’s largest smartphone maker Nokia, in the form of the 5800 XpressMusic phone. While the introduction of this phone did not set the internet on fire, the sales figures of 5800 after 6 months is going to surprise everyone.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Why is it so? First of all, the pricing of this phone. The phone is all set to launch in India and a handful of other countries in a couple of weeks from now. At a price tag of only Rs 20000 (About 400 US dollars), the XpressMusic 5800 is a steal. This pricing is a sweet spot considering that other popular phones like Sony Ericsson’s K series and Nokia’s own entry level N series handsets start at this range. For most people who were disappointed with the high pricing of the iPhone in India, the 5800 is a relief, and is a better alternative in every sense. A friend in the mobile phone retail business reveals that there are already huge number of enquiries for this phone everyday. This phone will also be much more practical because of the availability of many local services, unlike the Apple iPhone. For example, Nokia Maps 2.0 will provide turn by turn directions with a highly detailed map for many cities in India, instead of the Google Maps on the iPhone whose use is pretty limited.

If pricing is clever, the positioning of this handset is an even a smarter move by Nokia. Even though feature by feature it matches everything on the iPhone and bettering it in many cases, Nokia still calls it a ‘mid range’ phone. This implies that there will be N series phone running the S60 touch, which will have much more features and functionalities, a better camera for example. Such handsets will pose real challenge to other mobile phone manufacturers. 2009 will be as interesting and exciting as 2008 in the mobile handset arena.

It is a bit unfortunate that everytime I write something about Windows Mobile in this blog, it is mostly about some bad news. The latest one comes in the form of the delay in the launch of the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 iteration. This is especially bad considering the flurry of new platforms and handsets that are coming from competitors.

The delay of WinMo 7 reminds us of the bad phase that Palm is going through. After hiving off the software division, Palm hasn’t been able to release a new operating system in almost 5 years now. To stay current, Palm started shipping Windows Mobile handsets. This strategy is not going to help any longer as the Windows Mobile operating system is also not seeing any upgrades in the near future, even evolutionary. With an antique browser and its poor internet capabilities, the current version of Windows Mobile can no way match the feature set, not to mention the fit, finesse and polish the competitors like the Android or the Mobile Mac OS X are offering.
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The Apple iPhone has set an unprecedented sales record seen in no other country where the phone has been launched till now. According to one report, the jesus phone has been bought by more than 1500 people in this country since it was launched 17 days ago. This is one amazing record which Apple could never replicate in any other country.

What does this mean for Apple? Well, Apple is 1500 closer to the 10 million mark that it is planning to achieve by this year end. Also, less purchasers means less people to piss off when they announce an inevitable price cut. Go Apple, Go!

After causing a major heartbreak for consumers who were eagerly awaiting for the iPhone, Apple India and its carrier allies are now out to screw the 47 customers who already bought the iPhone 3G. (Yah, don’t believe the “we sold a few thousands of them” crap thrown by one of the Airtel spokesman. A friend in mobile phone retail business has confirmed that there is very little interest to buy the iPhone, though many people want to see a demo).

Airtel and Vodafone are mulling a Rupees 2000 price drop, which brings the 8GB iPhone below the psychological 30,000 barrier. This price drop may come anytime in the next few days, which will surely disappoint the people who bought it after standing in a non-existing queue for less than 5 minutes. If this price drop is materialized, please do not expect a letter from Steve Jobs and a discount voucher for Rupees 1000 which you can use only in the AppStore. My dear Indian Apple fan, you will continue to be screwed in this country.

When I plugged in my iPhone today, this message came up:

I innocently clicked on “Update Settings” and my data connection stopped working. Seems like Airtel is using a different APN setting so that only authorised iPhones can be used with it. Since the APN settings are hidden in iPhone firmware 2.0 onwards, the only way you could modify that is by using the iPhone configuration utility. I took the easier route of restoring the firmware.

Related: Reducing the iPhone 2.0 backup time.

Set to launch in 2 days, Vodafone India has announced the pricing of Apple iPhone 3G. The pricing is almost similar to what many of us including yours truly was expecting. The 8GB model will be priced at around Rs 31000 and the 16GB will cost not less than  Rupees 36000. I think this is a fair pricing considering the cost of unlocked iPhones in the world market. With no history of contract or subsidized pricing in this country, this is the best one can hope for.

This high pricing will make the iPhone a niche product in this country. The obvious targets could be the high earning youth among the IT sector. The iPhone 3G will go head to head with the Nokia N96 which is priced under the same range. What one should note is that Nokia phone prices keep falling once they are launched in the market, which is not true in the case of Apple products. This means that by the end of November 2008, you will be able to purchase a Nokia N96 24GB (16Gb internal + a bundled 8GB micro SD) for less than 30,000. With the right marketing, Nokia will be able to make a dent in the iPhone 3G sales.

Update: Vodafone India has done a Rogers by announcing some outrageous data plans. Stay tuned, I have a post on this later today.

Related: iPhone 3G Alternatives

Nokia N96 launched in India

Vodafone and Bharati Airtel have officially announced that they will be launching the iPhone in India on 18th and 22nd of August respectively!

Interestingly, both the companies have not announced the pricing or the plan details for the iPhone 3G. Because of the one week lead of Vodafone, it is very unlikely that Airtel will announce its pricing plans before that.

Historically, contract plans are not so popular in India and whenever they were introduced, they failed invariably. Who will forget the INR 500 phones from Reliance which were plagued by the huge monthly expenses, called “club charges”. Nevertheless, in order to reduce the huge entry costs, Airtel and Vodafone may subsidise the handsets and may decide to charge higher monthly rentals,  which may not come as a surprise.

Since both the companies are tightlipped on the pricing, it gives me a feeling that the handsets are bound to come with higher initial price tags.

To read other iPhone articles published on Digital Rover, click here.

The infamous iPhone 2.0 backup time can be reduced dramatically with the help of this tip published by the geardiary. Essentially, it involves the disabling of an option which sends crash and debug information to Apple. Following these simple steps could reduce the backup time:

• Plugin your iPhone or iPod touch and right click on the device on iTunes
• Click on Reset Warnings
• Next time when you connect your iPhone/Touch you’ll be asked whether you want to send diagnostics messages to Apple. Disable  the “automatically send” checkbox and say Don’t Send.
• Plugin your iPhone again and you will notice some reduction in the backup time.

After following the above steps, I was able to speedup my backup time from 25 minutes (Yah, 25 minutes) to a very acceptable one minute.

[via BGR]

After using the iPhone 2.0 firmware for about a week, I am impressed by what Apple has achieved.

• Applications now launch slower
• The transition effects stutter on the screen
• Applications just lockup for several seconds not responding to any of the user inputs
• SMS application is now even worser, takes minutes to switch views
• And syncing with iTunes takes ages. (It takes not less than 15 minutes. I have about 25 applications installed. Not any big ones like monkey ball or crash bandicoot, but still the backup process takes ages)

Does all this sound familiar? Yes, the Jesus phone now behaves exactly like that Windows Mobile phone, sans the start menu! Kudos to Apple for this remarkable achievement.

Two of India’s leading GSM mobile operators, Vodafone and Bharati Airtel have started pre-booking of Apple iPhone without announcing the price or launch dates. Interestingly, there are speculations which project the phone’s pricing to be anywhere between 8000 and 16000 bucks (INR).

Many people in India do not know how the contract system in USA and many other countries work, which makes them assume that the Jesus phone will be sold in India for the same price at which AT&T sells it in the USA. This indeed is a flawed assumption.

If O2 UK pricing of non-contract 3G iPhone is any indicator, the 8GB iPhone 3G in India will cost a whopping INR 28000, which is roughly close to US$700 based on current foreign exchange rates. But I personally believe that the pricing will be even more higher, as generally Apple products in India are sold at a premium. The current pricing of most Apple products are at a special exchange rate of about INR 60 per US$. That means, the iPhone 3G could have a starting price of close to INR 40000. It may sound ridiculous, but that is how Apple prices the products in this country owing to the entry taxes and customs duties. While INR 40000 may sound higher on paper, note that when the Nokia N95 was introduced in this country more than an year back – it was priced at a hefty INR 35000, in spite of which it was a reasonable success in this country. Yours truly still owns one.

Whatever may be the pricing, the iPhone has created enough interest in this country already. If the number of people who WOW at my phone everyday is any indicator, then the Jesus phone is destined to become a major hit in India.

Related: Buying an Apple iPhone in India