iPhone - an idea whose time has come?

I stumbled upon a interesting article from BBC news website about a taiwanese company, HTC. It launched its touch screen phone a month before iPhone was launched with surprisingly similar features (please do play the video in the BBC page). It is only natural to wonder if some of the features were copied from the iPhone or if the iPhone's features were copied from the HTC. Readers might remember my previous post about apple's touch phone prototypes that go back as early as 1984. So, I feel that we should assume that both these developments happened independently.

Whatever be the case, it does seem that touchscreen smart phones and intelligent user interfaces is the direction in which future phones will move in. As Victor hugo put it, "No army on the face of the world can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come".

iPhone Batteries - Join the countdown.

I had written previously about the concerns around the iPhone batteries. This is obviously one of the hottest debated topics in the Mac circles. Taking this debate to a streatch, contributors of the PC magazine (For lack of better things to do) have made a calculator to estimate accurately (?!) when your iphone batteries are likely to die out. Here it is:
http://www.pcmagutils.com/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi

iPhone batteries - to change or not to change?

On of the raging controversies surrounding the iphone's hardware design decisions is the iPhone's battery. As you are aware, iphone's batteries are soldered onto the main PCB and are not meant to be changed. Customers are going to be concerned because of this fact. For one, heavy phone users are not going to like this as they would not like to get stranded if the onboard batterry dies down and they cannot get back on to their phones by swapping a charged stand by battery. Second, this is possibly going to cause maintenance problems as well. If the battery needs replacement, chances are, you might need to replace the entire iphone as there is no way to seperate out the battery. We all know what a pain that would be - considering that we need to do backups from the iphone onto our PCs and from our PCs back to the new iphones.

Ofcourse, we need not be concerned about the problems as the phone itself is quite new and in all possibility, the battery should work fine for a year or so. After that? don't look at me. Apple has to provide an asnwer. It better be a good one since it has one whole year to think of one.

iPhone unlocked ! (?)

Has iPhone been unlocked? "Yes", this company claims. Taking this claim one step further, this company has posted the unlocked iPhone for sale in its website. The price, however, is unlisted and the site only has options for preordering it and is also willing to give price breaks for five orders or more. I wonder how many preorders it has recieved up to now. I am guessing thousands.

I cannot help but think that the whole thing is a marketing ploy to attract more visitors to its website. Whatever the case, the fact is that the listing is causing quite a few ripples across the world.

iPhone 2.0?

When do you think the next version of iphone will be released? I am sure you will be surprised to know that it is going to be in September, hardly three months away from its first release. Though the news is still unsubstantiated, people from different sources are agreeing that iPhone 2.0 release is probably scheduled in september. The source of much of the speculation seems to come from a news article from Taiwan's Chinese-language Commercial Times magazine. It carried an article which said that Taiwan's Wintek had obtained the touch-screen panel orders for the second-gen iPhone. It is speculated that the second generation iphone will be priced between 249$ and 299$ and is probably meant for Non US markets.

The news item leaves several questions unanswered. Firstly, Will the next generation iphone be defeatured because of its substantially lower price? In case of a defeatured model, will it still be attractive enough to command a premium to make customers switch? Will it also be locked so that it can be used with only few networks? In case it is not locked and can be used as a normal GSM phone, does it not pose an oppurtunity for arbitrage in domestic market?

Unlocking the apple iphone- who will suceed?

The iPhone AT&T tie up has upset quite a few people. For one, domestic users want it unlocked so that they can use it with other network carriers in the united states as they don't want to pay hefty fees for cancelling their existing contracts (It is estimated that users on average spend about 167$ to cancel their existing contracts to switch over to iPhone) Secondly, Other network operators are crying foul because they feel that the 5-year lock in period is unfair and they are initiating legal action to get the courts to rule on this issue. (Not surprising, considering that 50% of the iPhone buyers are switching over from other networks ). Adding to the heat are people from around the world who are irritated by the fact that they cannot get the iPhone (iPhone has only been released in US until now. Roll out plan around the globe is still very unclear.)

On one end, there is pressure on apple itself to make iPhone open to other networks. However, given the nature of deal with AT&T, apple is unlikely to do this. Besides, it makes make more economic sense for apple and AT&T to have it this way in order to extract maximum value from the customer.

Knowing that apple is not going to relent to any amount of pressure, Free press has initiated an online petition campaign addressed to the congress and FCC requesting to "free" the iPhone. My guess is that, this not going to go anywhere.

There is also a growing number of individual programmers and communities who are pooling in efforts to unlock the apple iPhone. Elizabeth Montalbano of IDG News Service, Singapore, reports on a UK based firm who is at the verge of unlocking the iPhone. If the company is successful in doing this, it would be interesting what the legal ramifications would be. As some readers may be aware, since November 27th 2006, the U.S. patent office has made it clear that cellphone unlocking is legal in US. However, restrictions remain in EU. Since the firm is a UK firm, it is unclear how the courts will rule, should a dispute arise.

Unlocking of the iPhone is also important from a totally totally viewpoint. For years, apple has been proclaiming superiority over windows and its many versions in security and robustness against virus attacks. If somebody doe succeed in successful in unlocking the iPhone, it would expose the vulnerability of the OSX.