The ‘K’olumn – The Much Hyped iPhone

Hi, this is V.S. Karthick, best friend of The Tech Nut A.K.A Vivek Nair, and this is my first post on this blog. I might as well inform that I am a very rare contributor so don’t expect too many posts from me (I don’t get to sit on the PC a lot).

Okay, now moving on to the topic of the post – The iPhone. All said and done, I know this post is a little late as the iPhone was released a a few weeks ago but as there are no other articles I could think of, I decided that I will use this as an opportunity to give my first post.

So, to start with, the biggest disappointment is that it is coming to India only in 2008 according to Techtree .com, so I cant give a first hand experience report on the iPhone and have to depend on reports of other people who have bought it elsewhere as well as reviews. Anywhere you go, the first that you get to hear is that the iPhone combines three products: the iPod, a mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, Web browsing, searching, and maps; into one small and lightweight handheld device. So this makes it close to a miniature laptop that has a lot of features that you will find on a few rare phones.

So now we come to question that was the iPhone really up to the hype it received. Some would say ‘No ‘ considering the high cost despite all its features (Techtree says that iSuppli which dismantled the 8GB iPhone puts the construction costs at about 266$ approximately excluding royalties and logistics saying that Apple was earning about 333$) while some would say ‘Yes’ seeing all that it combines in such a small package (even after a few of its disadvantages like the 2-year AT&T contract which I will cover later).
After spending a lot of time over which article from PCWorld was good and how it could be condensed, I come across a collection of finds (most of them are taken from PCWorld with very little stuff from me I would like to present it the order in which I found each article.

1) The first article I saw was based on how strong the iPhone was which said that after shelling out nearly 600$ if it turned to be weak it would be a major disappointment. Fortunately Apple had taken care of that because even after many tests to scratch the iPhone with keys the screen came out unscathed. The second test was how much impact it could resist as it was dropped from waist height and then from head height on hard concrete.The phone survived even that, working perfectly all right (though with a few dents on its beautiful body).

2) Now the second one involved what you could go ga-ga over in the iPhone and what its major flaws were. The revolutionary multi-touch navigation system really is intuitive and fun. The endless expanse of display alone is nothing short of mesmerizing, with beautiful bright colors and crisp resolution. It’s a great handheld video player, a decent music player and camera; its browser, while not as versatile as the one on your notebook, is still impressive. Plus, it works just fine as a cell phone. But it has its own cons which include lack of support for AT&T’s fastest (HSDPA) data network and the absence of instant messaging and office suite applications. Others are only apparent once you start using the handset (it can get warm with constant use, and you’ll need to wipe off smudges frequently with the bundled cloth).

3) This one was particularly against the iPhone with the editor saying that never in the world was he going to buy it and give out 150$ to exit from his Sprint Nextel contract and switch to a not so good (actually pretty useless according to him) AT&T contract. He also gave some alternatives to the iPhone which he beleived to be worthy contenders eg. Samsung UpStage(M620), HTC Touch, BlackBerry Curve 8300, Nokia N95 etc. (Personally I pretty much liked the iPhone but yes even I am hoping for a few improvements in the little yet major faults present iin the iPhone).

4) The fourth article was about a senior editor who took his technical opinion from a very smart friend of his. Well according to his friend why the iPhone can be liked because of three things i.e. the iPhone’s 3.5-inch widescreen 160 dpi, its internet functionality and its design elements which he called “100% more logical” than his current phone.

5) This one pleased me as it would done to many others (I was particularly pissed off against the iPhone for its high prices) as it mentioned Apple selling refurbished iPhone on the online store for 100$ less than the list price that is 8GB costing at about 499$ and the 4GB at about 399$.

6) This was particularly interesting as it mentioned that two people and a third still to come were claiming that they had managed to unlock the iPhone.One blogger, George Hotz, on Friday posted a step-by-step tutorial for unlocking the iPhone that involves both hardware and software modifications. His blog also includes photos of an iPhone he said is unlocked and shows T-Mobile USA as the service provider. At another site, iPhoneSimFree.com, a company claims it can unlock iPhones through software only. A screen image with an item about the company on Engadget.com also shows an iPhone displaying the T-Mobile name.In addition, John McLaughlin, founder of Uniquephones, said his Belfast, U.K., company will be posting software on Saturday that iPhone users can download to unlock their handsets to work with any SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card on any network they choose. The software should hit the Web at www.iphoneunlocking.com between noon and 2 p.m. Eastern Time, he said. Continuing McLaughlin plans to charge between US$25 and $50 for the software, but users who had already signed up will have access to the code at either a 25 percent or 50 percent discount. McLaughlin declined to go into great detail but said one of the most difficult locks to break was contained in the handset’s electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM). There also was a lock in the handset’s permanent phone memory (PPM) as well as other places in the iPhone’s software. In the end, it was an engineer in Russia who came up with the software for unlocking the phone, McLaughlin said. Although almost 100 percent of the iPhone’s features work even when the handset is unlocked and using another carrier’s SIM card, the Visual Voicemail feature will only work on AT&T’s network because of the way the feature is designed, McLaughlin said. Visual Voicemail lets users easily view the messages that have been left for them.

I coudn’t condense the last article so much as I wasn’t ready to give out on those details which I found people would like to read. This post might be continued depending on what I mange to find. Till now it seems despite flaws Apple has done quite a good job and we can just hope that a better version of the iPhone is released and it comes soon to India.

For reading the complete detailed articles please refer to PCWorld and Techtree (next time possibly I will also try to get something from ZDNet).

My next post might be either a continuation of this one or maybe it will be something about the early Intel processors.