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Many reviews have been written on the iPhone 3GS and now even the iPhone 4G with its impending launch sooner than later. However it was only in the last one month did Apple launch the iPhone 3GS officially in India, almost a year later than other countries and with good reason. With the country seeing a surge in 3G connection options from BSNL and the impending followup by other mobile operators shortly by September post the 3G auctions, the iPhone 3GS has enetered at the appropriate time into the country.

While some people may scoff at the fact that many mobile providers offer the service pretty late to developing countries, they must also realize that its not only about being a late entrant, but the limitation in technology makes in infeasible for higher grade devices to be launched at the same time. What would someone in India do with a 4G apple iPhone without an actual 4G service? Besides, red tapism and bureaucratic hurdles in our country only more definitely point to the fact that every new launch will be delayed if its linked to the spectrum. Having said this, still the iPhone 3GS launch in India deserves some coverage with respect to the aspect of having a great device to work with and this review makes these opinions rather precisely and to the point.

So what is the USP for going in for an iPhone? Well after my tryst with many other phones, including the Nokia 5800, Blackberry 8520, Blackberry Storm 2 9550, and Nokia N900 – I decided to sell off all these phones (except the last which I didn’t own) to finally decide to buy an iPhone 3GS. While all the above mentioned devices were no doubt great at their functionalities, the touch sensitivity and eye-catchiness of the user interface was rather sub standard and resistive touchscreens only made it worse for instance on the 5800 by Nokia. After ten years of being with Nokia the time had come to bid a rather eventless goodbye to the once upon a time king of mobile world. While their devices still continue to support multitude formats and be technologically advanced even now, unfortunately the company has not concentrated on the user interface and intuitiveness of use which has led to a steady downfall for Nokia. This is also the time companies like RIM and Apple have got very aggressive in their marketing pitch with their phones. While I wish to talk about the Storm flagship model from Blackberry later on, its now time to give standing ovation to a phone well made by Apple – the iPhone 3GS.

This is a phone people die to own. This is a phone people cannot afford to own. This is a phone that people will not sell once they own. This is a phone that defines your lifestyle from the moment you own it. This is a phone which is truly capable of making your life more meaningful and productive. And finally this is a phone for all ages right from the child in you upto the old man in you

There is nothing to not like on an iPhone. The capacitive touchscreen and the user interface deployed to work with it by Apple, is by far the best strategy by Apple which has seen nothing short of its market share and stock price increasing from day one of launching its iPod and iPhone series of devices which are now in their fifth generations. It will take a long time for other companies to perfect the touchscreen input recognition and these companies will merely be second fiddling Apple for sometime to come. If there is anything you would want to pay money for to own an Apple, its the ridiculous simplicity of usage and nothing else! So does the iPhone stack up as worthwhile for the 35,000 odd bucks you would want to spend on it in India ? Read more to find out !

I do not in this review wish to dwell deep into each and every feature (known or hidden gems) that the iPhone provides, but I will try and make it as detailed as possible on things that I know after being with it for a month.

Design

When you design a phone whose usage will be across generations, you better keep things simple. While I may know the hardware to a greater extent than my dad, my kid may only know how to touch the screen to get things going at a little over two years old. So the point is Apple has really paid attention to this fact and kept the design of the instrument simple. The only buttons around the device are the On/Off button, Mute button, Volume button and well the Home key. Other than this are the two neatly placed speakers around the charging port, and on top you find the rather uncomfortable-to-take-out sim card tray and a 3.5mm standard headset jack. Period. Nothing else nowhere around the phone. No removable battery, no removable memory card and an almost no removable sim. This is where the Indian safety pin comes in handy. That or the paper clip are the only way to remove the iPhone SIM. Besides why would you keep removing your SIM card every now and then ? You wouldn’t and this is what exactly Apple wants from you as well.

I must not forget to add rather hastily that the phone is ultra slippery. One mistake could send such a costly device plummeting to the ground and break it before you can wink your eyes. While its a shame that Apple did not think of a hand grip (like a recess somewhere on the phone body), this is where companies have made a living making cases for the iPhone, besides a gazillion other things.

Ecosystem around the phone

If a phone has to survive for a long time as an icon which is desired, then it not only needs to look good, be simple to use and function well, but it has to have or create an ecosystem around it which makes it extensible for a good amount of time to come. This ecosystem must not only help this model, but also be readily available to be used by other models which are due. This is what AppStore is about and iTunes is about. Apple has slowly but steadily built the much famed AppStore which sports thousands of applications which are available either free or for a fee which is as cheap as eating out at a local fast food joint. Not only has this proved a life saver for Apple, but has also enabled thousands of developers to test their popularity on the AppStore. The result is that there are some wonderful applications which are highly usable yet simple and keep you productive and entertained for as long as you have the phone.

It will take a long long time before any other mobile phone provider can reach this level of the number of apps with Apple, and the release of iPAD has only increased the heat even among tablet developers to be on their toes for apps. Its not just the apps which are available, its their quality that makes their usage on a device such as the iPhone more outstanding.

Performance

This is one area which is a sure shot opportunity to produce a winner of a phone. While speed is not the only thing that matters all the time, it sure is one quality of the phone which makes people buy it. Comparing my early Nokia 6600 which was great during its launch, phones have come a long way in what they can achieve for you. Much to the extent that a PC’s processor now sits within a phone. If you had asked me an opinion about the 3G version of iPhone, I’d have passed it off as yet another normal phone. The speed took a hit due to the amount of graphical manipulations happening on the user interface and to the extent of causing annoyance among users after having spent a little over 30 grand. However Apple quickly worked on it, and with the 3GS speed is no more a concern. But if you want some serious improvement for speed wait for the 4G which will sport a 1Ghz processor.

Back to the discussion, the speed on 3GS is sufficient to make applications open rather instantaenously and perhaps the OS 4.0 would be only better in handling these. I have about 4-5GB of songs on the 16GB memory, and with these many, the unitasking system does well in terms of speed and data access. The browsing speed is also decent and Safari does well in rendering many pages properly. The scrolling, touch input are almost at a perfection level which many other manufacturers will never be able to achieve and these are the reasons Apple is sought after for their devices. With no stylus, the only way to input on the phone is your finger and Apple has done a good job to ensure your touches are interpreted correctly most of the time.

Battery life

For any Smartphone which does a lot of work from the morning to the evening and a large screen  as its offering, the only area of suffering would be the drain on battery. And drain it does, each single day and requires a charge each day more or less. The best I have got is one and half day (36 hours) and nothing more than that. If you ask me a question whether Apple has thought of plonking in a better battery, I am sure they would have, except that the reason they did not include it would be because of the design constraints which would have otherwise made this device as heavy as a brick. One has to also look at heat dissipation and other parameters like this with decisions on powering the device.

So yes, the battery is not the best, but a charger for the home, office, and the car must keep the phone going as the battery charges up pretty quickly way beyond the 50% mark. Some tips to conserve the battery power is to keep the brightness low to the extent you can read the screen, to switch off the wifi, bluetooth and 3g radios while not in use, and perhaps even keeping the volume low on the phone to the extent you can hear it. If you dont browse too often, or hear music too often, and dont use speaker or talk on bluetooth too often, then you get a bonus of a few more hours.

Price and conclusion

There is always a debate why Apple has priced this beyond 30 grand in India and the fact that the phone costs much more than a laptop. While I believe for other phones that manufacturers always make a killing in profits up to the tune of about 4-5 grand extra, with Apple I think even if it is the same case, you get a device that keeps you happy for a lot of time to come. And yes, the smaller and technologically advanced the device gets, the more costlier it is, so its not very surprising that a laptop should cost much lesser.

The best part of the phone is its great capacitive touch screen, stunning user interface, and outstanding simplicity of usage. The points that drag it down in terms of popularity would be its low battery life, its limited memory, non removable battery and also a non exposed file system which causes options like jailbreaking to be available for hackers.

On a more mediocre front, the ringtones could have been better, the camera could have sported atleast a flash and optical or digital zoom and the grip could have been better.

What will keep you happy though is its capability with respect to download and install (on a free or chargeable basis), good applications which will keep you amused and productive for many more happy days to come.

The Apple iPhone is not a phone, its not a music player, its not a video player, its not a photography device, its not for business alone, its not about data – but to sum it up – its a LIFESTYLE device which will appeal to all age groups alike and is extremely simplistic to use by people of these age groups.

Once upon a time touch screen phones were considered luxury. If they had 2MP cameras, they were worshipped, and if they possessed Wi-Fi, it was not meant for the middle class. All that is now passe. With the entry of the BIG 3 super hit phones, the Indian market just heated up to get exciting. So who are these three and what’s on offer? Find out more below.

Image source: www.gsmarena.com

Image sources: www.boygeniusreport.com  , http://img.xataka.com

The last one month has seen some hot launches in the smartphone market from none other than Research in Motion (RIM – Blackberry), Motorola, and Apple. Each has unleashed a turf war with their best selling products – the Storm 2 Blackberry touch, the Milestone, and the 3GS iPhone. A brief comparison of the specs are as below:

If we compare the Moto Milestone, and apple iPhone 3gs briefly with Blackberry Storm 2 9520, these are the features available:

Features	Milestone	Storm 2	iPhone 3GS
Price	28,500	31,000	35,500
3g Networks	2	1	3
Capacitive touchscreen	Yes	Yes	Yes
Resolution	480×854 !!	360×480	320×480
Sensors	Yes	No proximity sensor	Yes
Internal memory	256MB	2GB !!	256 MB
3g Speed	Upto 10.2 Mbps !!	7.2 Mbps	7.2 Mbps
Camera	5 MP !!	3.2 MP	3.2 MP
Video	24 fps	24 fps	30 fps !!
Flash	Dual LED !!	LED	None
Processor	600 Mhz, lesser graphics	528 Mhz	600 Mhz, better graphics !!
GPS with maps	Yes	Yes	Yes
Battery	1400 mAh	1400 mAh	1200 mAh

From this comparison you can see that for the price point under question the best value for money phone would  most naturally be the Moto Milestone. However, more of everything does not mean a better phone.

• For example if you look at the table, graphics is much better in iPhone which means their user interface will needless to say be the best among the three.
• Also if you look at video recording, the iPhone surpasses its competition by a good 5fps more.
• So also with the bands supported for 3G. In this department the blackberry is the worst.
• Again if you see the camera, the Moto beats competition hands down with 5 mega pixels with dual LED flash and the apple is not even worth talking about

So which one must you consider? Well frankly, for me, these are my opinions considering I have or will be using atleast two among the three titans of smartphones, the storm and the 3GS.

• When it comes to price the Milestone from  Motorola kicks everyone else out
• When it comes to navigation and usability for all people of the house, the apple iPhone wins by a big margin. One should also not forget the 1,50,000 applications that the appStore has for users compared to Google and Blackberry
• For pure business applications, the Motorola milestone has the potential to keep people happy for a long time, perhaps until Google itself releases its 1GHz Nexus One (which it does not intend to in India)
• One another important thing is that while Apple iPhone 3GS in India is locked to Airtel or Vodafone, the Motorola Milestone and Blackberry Storm 2 will be available unlocked for any operator in the country which is a huge plus point at that price.
• With good 3g data services support from BSNL and the impending 3G spectrum auctions, all other private operators will shortly follow with their 3G services, all these phones are set to harness the power of 3G from various operators to provide video calling and other such facilities. These phones support 3G quite well as expected and this is a good feature in all phones in comparison
• All these phones have 3.5mm standard headset jack making them all multimedia ready by nature of design
• All these phones are GPS enabled with the Moto supporting free turn by turn navigation which is a big boon to finding your way in a lost place.
• If you are the person who likes physical qwerty keypad, Moto is for you, if you like both touch and press (surepress) keypad, the storm is for you and if you like the touch only keypad, iPhone is for you. I am used to touch typing, so both Storm and iPhone 3gs appeal to me more than the physical QWERTY of Moto.
• Google has only 30000 applications, compared to Apple’s 1,50,000 which is a huge marketing plus for Apple. Blackberry apps are not worth mentioning at all frankly

For any comparison there have to be negatives, so here they are:

• Though the Moto Milestone sports 5MP camera, there is no 30fps video recording which is a shame
• The RAM in both Moto and Apple is only 256 as compared to 2GB in Blackberry. This is a vast difference
• None of the handsets support dual camera (front and back facing) which are most necessary for video calls, and this is a shame for the price paid.
• Limited support for each of these handsets in terms of warranty repairs and the limited reach to the customers is slightly disheartening.
• Blackberry and Apple have no clear maps usage policy which makes it difficult for a normal user
• Locking to operator is going to hurt Apple’s fortunes compared to the other two competitors
• Non removable battery is bad for Apple whereas not for the other two since they also sport more powerful batteries

In SUMMARY, if you love core technology, want huge features for low price, with Google’s famed Android 2.1 OS, look no further than the Motorola Milestone. If you are the business conscious user who have been a fan of RIM and their products and appreciate their push email technology and still need other commonly found features, then the Storm 2 is a refreshing change from RIM with their touch based screen and surepress typing technology. The large memory, and slick business features will appeal the business community for sure. If you want ease of use, large amount of apps to chose from, and don’t mind the extra cost, for what you get in return – the famed apple popularity, at the cost of some missing features, then the iPhone 3GS is for you.

Take your pick, for now mine is the iPhone 3GS since I feel Google has some catching up to do with Apple. As for blackberry, I enjoyed it as long as I had it, and would recommend it even though I don’t own it now.

Its was winter of 1999. JTM was one of Karnataka's best networks. Outgoing call rates were Rs.10/- per minute and incoming about Rs.3 a minute if I am not wrong. I was one of JTM's customers at that time. Slowly JTM was taken over by Bharti Teleservices. That was the birth of AirTel, a company which would grow to be one of India's most admired telcos over a period of a decade. They were the best when it came to customer services, while the nearest telcos Spice and Hutch (what is Vodafone now) were by no standards near airtel be it in infrastructure or in customer treatment. Airtel pioneered many a revolution down the line and its venture into landline services made it even more popular.

Spice's mismanagement and Hutch's troubled history of having bad networks and bad customer services only made it better and better for Airtel quite inorganically. Over the period of the last couple of years though, India and in particular Karnataka has seen a flurry of entries from many a new telco who are all vying to take a share of Airtel's pie. Airtel's troubles have started very recently, and they are compounding it by not brainstorming on the potential failures that are waiting to happen. Some of the key things about Airtel that are beginning to go wrong include and is not limited to the following:

• Peak hour call jams rendering the service useless
• Call drops that occur very often leading to frustration amongst users
• Caller tunes and the amount of agony it has been able to cause for people not really interested in them
• Ineffective blocking of Telemarketing calls and SMSes that disturb thousands of people day in and out

Of late some more laurels can rest with Airtel:

• Airtel's mismanaged and inexperienced customer service centers
• Don't care attitude that has set in among the franchisees managing these centers
• Low level executives making a mess out of technical situations which they are unable to understand or explain
• Higher level managers who do not follow up on these technical problems that people have
• Erosion of brand value due to the way these executives perform
• Airtel's arrogance in maintaining the same call rates even when competition is eating into its flesh day by day

So then why are people still putting up with Airtel or for that matter any other operator? The answer is very simple to say the least. Its because they want to retain their mobile number without changing it.

For a moment lets then dwell into the case with other operators. Spice has gone one level up in capturing the youth market with a flurry of dual sim based phones and real low calling values. They are also busy fighting with their nearest and best rival Virgin mobile.  Airtel's arch rival Vodafone is now one level ahead with its famed ZooZoo advertisements addressing the core values of branding in an effective way drawing huge crowds towards the service. Not to forget to mention their Pug ads were also so adorable. Vodafone's prepaid plans now give you full talktime without any rentals or taxes even sometimes. Their low call quality and tower quality are now replenished to cover most of karnataka state.

Most of Vodafone's calls don't drop like before and their connectivity is at an all time high. Vodafone's takeover of Hutch has only fuelled their appetite for competing with anyone coming their way to maintain their customer base.

With Aircel, MTS and Uninor into the picture now along with Tata Docomo, Airtel's chances are only slimmer and slimmer day by day. Already Tata's aggressive pricing plan has forced Airtel to realize its diminishing customer base though very late, and they have also launched the same per second billing plan to save their skin. With MTS being even more aggressive at 1/2 paise per second along with Uninor, Airtel has some serious competition breathing down its neck.

On the CDMA front, Reliance and Tata are ruling the roost and will continue to do so. The only thing then comes back to how to save your mobile number. With number portability in the offing at the year end, from TRAI, at a mere 19 bucks for a switch, its now very easy to retain your number and give your old operator a boot. This only spells more bad news for Airtel who are likely to lose their coveted tag of 10 million customers on India's no more preferred network. Is it time then for Airtel, who were once FairTel, now unFairTel to go into history as a finishedTel ?

Only time will tell. And it will tell well enough.

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I finally own a blackberry 8520 Curve. Its a nice mix of technology and looks. And there is no reason why BB will not make inroads into the low cost high feature mobile market sooner than later.

There is already lot of information on the internet on this new phone and I will cover more details about this in a seperate video review later on. However what is important is the fact that there is finally an affordable blackberry at our reach.

Before I end this small post I will leave you with some pros and cons of this device so that you can make your decisions!

The good points of bb 8520 :

- great screen with very good resolution
- new menu system which is very slick and quick
- all expected business features are nicely packaged in the phone
- sweet pricing this will attract lots of hitherto missed out customers
- very nice trackpad does what it says on the tin
- nicely packaged keys all around the phone
- very loud audio, clear and nice

And now the cons:

- typing not the best experience
- slightly hard keypad nowhere near N97 from nokia
- some options are hidden and only professional users can locate such features.
- wifi and bluetooth connectivity configuration not so straightforward
- camera is nothing to talk much and while its not pathetic its not great either

I hope you liked this small review on the blackberry 8520. If you did, watch out for the more detailed review on video soon.

With the BIAL being situated very far away for most people, traveling to nearby cities increasingly is using train as the mode of transport. Compared to yesteryears, these days Railways has done some serious upgradation to the type of services that are provided on the trains. I found out about this when I had a chance to travel to Chennai city by the First AC coach.

Erstwhile the only real perceiveable difference, other than the fact that there was AC, was that the seats seemed to have a leather covering in First AC which was not present in Second AC. From outside, the compartments look pretty much the same:

Inside too, one could not tell the difference between these two classes of travel

(Second AC) (First AC)

But after sometime, Railways upgraded the FIRST AC to be more cushiony and more decent in looks, the cabin itself looking more airy as well. The roof moulds were also done up from the inside and more neater upholstery was put into place which gave that well shaven look.

But my journey this time, was extremely comfortable due to better seating arrangements on the coach. The seats themselves were much wider than before, enabling most of us to sleep very comfortably. Not only that for people with kids, like me, one could easily put another small kid next to us on these coaches, which we could not easily do in other classes of travel. The cabin itself was done up with the rather old and dated "Incredible India" slogan with a lone tiger peeping out of the poster. Contrast this with the actual situation in Sariska National Park and Sunderbans, where the tiger numbers are dwindling day by day and you would know how incredible India really is.

Back to the topic, the general look and feel of the First AC had vastly improved by now.

Curtains were looking rather dull in colour, but solved the purpose more than necessary. Also there were wardrobes in two passenger coupes (now that sounds like a hotel room). Also there was a large mirror with its own lighting, 12V sockets for using laptops and other tech gizmos of today. All switches were of very good quality and there was nifty little luggage racks all over the place to stash away your luggage. The berth itself was extra large, with two rounds of bedding/bedsheets with one high quality rug to keep you warm in the AC if required. There were also reading lamps towards the headrest which was a good feature. Yeah, they were always there, but this time they worked!

There was also a netted pouch to keep important things like the mobile, purse etc away while sleeping tight. Also the bottle holders were present at necessary places to stack bottles of water for use at night.

The only technical advancement I really found (other than the 12v power socket) was a panel that indicated which of the four toilets were occupied or full. This is a very good feature in my opinion, and one would not want to waste time waiting at the toilet unnecessarily. The toilets themselves had tissue paper rolls and plenty of water (I am kind of ashamed to say that in other classes of travel the paper rolls arent there!, but that is the irony of this country).

Also there is a morning wake up call in once train reaches the destination in case you have overslept in the comfort This is again a welcome feature. Perhaps a newspaper and some snacks would complete the story well. The Railways is contemplating providing either wired or Wifi net access and I should think to believe that its perhaps already there in some trains by now. This in my opinion is a giant step ahead for our country. The simple reason is that due to sheer necessity, this feature is NOT available in other countries, which is pathetic. The economies of scale permit India to implement such a thing with ease.

Finally the total ticket value was around Rs.700 (about 16$) which is much lesser than any airfare and the time wasted going to the airport is more than covered by this train journey. Kudos to the railways for constant improvements and I wish them good luck to improve facilities at a much faster rate from now and not take 50 more years to bring in advancements. One grouse though that I had was that I had to carry umpteen bags from platform 4 to platform 1 in Bangalore city station, via an overbridge without any trolley or escalators. Thanks to Porter – Raj (the illegal reign of porters) we always end up paying 150 to 200 bucks to the porter for something that we might ourselves do when we are in the pink of our health. Shame on you Railways for not upgrading platforms and station facilities. The only commendable part is that I did notice an Airtel Buggy (an electric vehicle provided by a local mobile operator) to ferry around handicapped people. And since the definition of handicapped does not include people who have small kids, this lot of people cant use the buggy even on paying a nominal charge. Common Airtel you cant be so mean!

The next time you travel by train, dont forget to check out the First AC, you would have a pleasant sleep I promise!

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