mobile

Here is a tiny little Pocket PC phone with a 2.6″ QVGA screen from ASUS. At INR 12900 (US$ 300), the ASUS P320 is a steal. Sporting the archaic TI OMAP 850 processor, the P320 also has a SiRF star III GPS chip.  (how many billions did Texas Instruments make with this tortoise inspired OMAP 850 processor?). Software is a standard fare with Windows Mobile 6.1 goodies. ASUS also provides its own now-customary shell.

Now available at a mobile store near you.

More from ASUS website here.

This is probably the first time Apple is offering a product at a significantly lower cost than its rivals. The new iPhone, which will compete with the likes of Nokia N96 and several other 3G Windows Mobile phones which sport equally good features, applications and hardware capabilities. Compare Apple’s $199 iPhone 3G to an unlocked N95 8GB, which sells for $600 upwards. Some people may point out to the contract involved, but even if you go with another device, an unlimited data plan will still cost you almost as much as an iPhone data plan.

This will definitely make the iPhone a mass market device. As more carriers are picking it up, it will likely to become as ubiquitous as the iPod. Apple surely is on its way to achieve the target of 10 million phones this year. My guess is that they will handsomely overshoot this target.

Now, what does this mean for other mobile phone makers? Surely, just imitating iPhone is not sufficient anymore. They need to reduce prices and that too in a big way. This will definitely put pressure on the already wafer thin margins that many mobile phone vendors are operating on. The AppStore is likely to be an instant hit with tons of games and applications, which is another nice distribution model that will be difficult to emulate by others. Mobile vendors will now be banking on volumes to derive profits from Smartphone sales too. This is going to be interesting as smartphones will be available at attractive prices for the masses who had to be content with feature phones earlier.

I feel that there will be a new class of phones which could be called ‘Smarter Phones’ which will feature cutting edge technologies, staying ahead in the race. Expect such phones to come from Nokia and the Windows Mobile stable in the next few quarters.

Hmmm… Everyone has their whishlist for the most rumoured product in the world today. Here is mine.

• A GPS chip please. A smart phone without GPS in 2008 is almost passe. For those poor souls who carry the first version of iPhone, please modify the bluetooth stack to support external GPS receivers. You know, these things have become so tiny these days that you can carry them in your keychain.
• A2DP. Need this badly for a music phone.
• Access to file system. Any power user will need this. Accidental deletion of System files can be avoided by making such files protected. Exposing the file system is not a risk - we have seen this working for Win Mo and Symbian for several years now.
• Stand alone application(s) for viewing/editing office documents and pdf. Today, I have to carry all my documents as email attachments. I would prefer to have a OS X’s Preview like application on my handset to conveniently view documents. Editing capability will be a bonus, but not a necessity for most people.
• Better bluetooth stack. Today, there is no way I can transfer a file (photo, video clips etc.,) from my iPhone to my friends who carry lowly phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Can Apple fix that useless BT stack which does not do anything other than connecting to a headset? We need internet tethering support too, considering the 3G speeds we are going to get (hopefully it will have HSDPA and not just the basic 3G support).
• iChat. Yah, a sorely missing feature on the iPhone. And please please, add that front facing camera too.
• Video Recording. Its a shame that we don’t have this on the first revision. And a better camera will be a welcome change.
• General Software Improvements. Todo List, Notes Sync, Contacts search.
• Better battery life. iPhone probably has the best battery life among all other PDA phones I have ever used. But the 3G could seriously hamper the battery life on the phone. Hopefully, Apple has a solution for this.

These are what I think will improve the iPhone as a great digital companion. How does your list look like?

Recently, I got a chance to play with LG’s hot new Windows Mobile phone, the LG KS20. KS20 is a remarkably thin and lightweight phone with a QVGA screen. I was surprised by the connectivity options available on this phone. It has Triband GSM with UMTS. It is also HSDPA and Wi-Fi enabled for high speed internet browsing. Other standard connectivity options like bluetooth are available.

Though it felt plasticky when I held it in my hand, it is very lightweight - in fact, it is the lightest Windows Mobile phone I have ever come across. The screen is flush and the shiny plastic is prone to getting finger prints. LG also supplies a carrying case in the original box.

There aren’t many custom applications available. Even the today screen customizations done by LG are almost unnoticeable. This is surprising since the competitors like Samsung and HTC provide very heavily customized today screens on their new models. All you get in the KS 20 is a bunch of application launch icons on the bottom of the screen. Everything else is standard windows mobile fare. The absence of GPS based applications are noticeable. You can use an external GPS receiver though.

On the negative side, I felt that the touch screen is not very sensitive. In fact, you have to press the stylus hard to invoke any actions. This made it very uncomfortable to use. I feel that the digitzer’s life may be reduced because of the extra pressure one has to apply. Then again, this may be a problem specific to the piece that I had.

Otherwise, it is a stylish and feature packed tiny little windows mobile phone.

The improved Sony Mylo 2, which we have compared with N810 and iPod Touch earlier, is now available on Amazon.  Available for about $288, it is a nice device for making VoIP calls and browsing the internet. Some of the highlights of the device include:

• QWERTY Keyboard
• 1.3 meg camera
• 1GB on board memory expandable through memory slot
• Integrated wireless LAN
• MP3/AAC/WMA/ATRAC
• Linux based
• Skype
• Netfront browser

Amazon Page.

I think it is now becoming a habit for HTC to call for a press meet one month before the launch of iPhone and its revisions. It is a pity that they are still relying on Windows Mobile to deliver their goods. While what we saw with the diamond is no doubt impressive, under the hood HTC still has the grand old Windows Mobile running in all its glory. HTC did a clever thing this time around by making the TouchFlO UI feature rich instead of dropping back the user to Windows Mobile UI for doing even basic things. The new Opera browser is a welcome change from the Pocket Internet Explorer we are used to.

But the whole reason why people use Windows Mobile is because of its powerful PIM capabilities and wide variety of third party application availability. Unfortunately, all these applications will still be using the classic Windows Mobile interface which is generations behind that of current favorites like the iPhone or the upcoming Android. This is where the user will be spending most of the time (rather than the weather applet or the today screen).

Unless the new Windows Mobile version (7 or whatever) starts shipping, there is little to rejoice from these kind of shell enhancements which desperate mobile device vendors are making on top of Windows Mobile. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia is another one that is on the pipeline.

HTC Touch Cruise is now available for a you-need-to-loot-a-bank-to-buy-it price of INR 32000 (US$800). The Windows Mobile 6 equipped handset comes with a nice GPS navigation system (the reason behind the “cruise” moniker) and a 400 MHz Qualcomm processor. The phone is an all-rounder in that it has a 3 MP auto focus camera, 3G with Triband HSDPA and the TouchFLO interface for gesture based navigation of applications. If you are a Windows Mobile fan, this is an excellent alternative to Nokia’s N95, the current smartphone gold standard.

According to Business Standard reports, the iPhone is expected to be launched in India in the first week of September. The expected price point for the 8GB model is around INR 28,000 (Approximately $700). The worst part about the launch is that even at this relatively high price point, the iPhone will be sold locked to the Vodafone network.

Locked mobile phones are almost unheard of in India. 99% of the GSM phones sold in India are offically unlocked and there is no such thing called contract too. The iPhone will be the first major smartphone that will be sold in locked state to the user. The HTC Touch, when it was launched in India about a year back, was also sold locked to Airtel, but the current versions are all unlocked.

Given the premium price point, it is highly unlikely that people will flock Apple/Vodafone stores to buy these things. Even the much more advanced Nokia N95 8GB sells at the same price point as the iPhone. In other markets like the USA and UK, Apple gets a share of Voice and Data revenues coming out of iPhone users. If Apple follows the same business model in India, the iPhone is going to be nothing but a disaster here. Instead of contracts, people use what is called a ‘plan’ and these plans are highly flexible and customizable, when compared to contracts in the USA. Apple iPhone plans are likely to be priced high, which will drive away people from this phone. I feel that Apple needs to come out with a innovative plan for the Indian masses, so that they can still get their share of Voice and Data revenues, but at the same time provide less TCO for the end users.

The iPhone grey market will not be going away anytime soon.

Hmmm… So those were some of the rumors. The S60 browser team has posted on their blog that the browser is here to stay with enhancements currently being taken from the Leopard branch. Here is a quote from the post:

We are not backing away from Webkit no matter what you might have read on one of those new-fangled “website” things — I’ll have to get somebody to show me one sometime soon. As I understand it, one of our developers did some housekeeping on the Tiger branch of the webkit project, and some people thought it looked like we were backing away from the whole open-source project. No, no, no — it’s just that we’re focusing on the newer Leopard branch, we have a lot on our plates right now (you might have heard about Nokia’s acquisition of Trolltech, for example) and there’s only so much we can do at once.

Cool. Long live the S60 web browser.