0		iPhone, What, does, stand, for?

The fastest most powerful iPhone yet.

It is a yearly ritual for Apple. It will launch a product every year which creates a lot of hype. This year it is the time of iPhone 3G S. The fastest and the longest running iPhone ever.

S in the iPhone 3G S stands for Speed. The new beast is twice faster than its predecessor. There are lot of other goodies in the store for the iPhone fans. Unlike its previous launch last year this year is faced with a very stiff competition.

Palm which was the first to produce PDA’s has come out of its shell after a long time. It has launched its Palm Pre. Though Palm did a good job, people think that Palm Pre is no iPhone. Such is the cult status of iPhone.

Then there was Nokia N97. It is a touch screen and QWERTY keyboard phone with 32GB internal memory. It costs around 36000 rupees in India. There is a lot of hype around N97 too with its contest.

But, there can be only one winner and all fingers are pointing to iPhone 3G S. Would it be a hit in India?

I don’t think so. India is a cost sensitive market. Nokia which is the biggest brand in India has priced its N97 at 36K. That itself is a big no-no. If the news reports are anything to be believed there is no reduction in price for the new iPhone. Which means it costs more than 30000 rupees.

Cost was one of the biggest reason for iPhone’s failure in India. Along with that is the bundling with the operator. It tied up with Airtel and Vodafone and Indians don’t like being married to an operator just for the sake of the phone.

Besides Airtel and Vodafone don’t yet  have a 3G spectrum to justify the 3G phone. Only BSNL and MTNL has 3G spectrum and they are not doing very will with their offerings either.

Unless something radical happens, like maybe the auctioning of spectrum in the next 2 months and the operators launching their 3G services, iPhone will not click. Schedule release is in August. Good amount of time to sort them through.

What’s under the hood?

Inside are re-worked innards to deliver a 2.1x speed increase in launching apps. Viewing attachments is almost 4x as quick, and even graphically intense apps benefit from an almost 3x performance boost.

Using Wi-Fi with an iPhone 3G S you’ll get 9 hours of web use, 10 hours of video, 30 hours of audio, 12 hours of 2G talktime or 5 hours of 3G talktime.

The iPhone 3Gs has 7.2Mbps HSDPA for ultra-quick downloads. There’s also a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus crammed inside, which lets owners tap the screen to choose a focal point, or let the iPhone 3G S figure everything out itself in auto mode. (Mirror)

There is a 16 GB version and a 32 GB version.

Aah! Its voice control feature is just incredible. It can be used for both making calls and playing music. You might even avoid the cell phone elbow.

There is a cut/copy feature how do you undo a change? Just shake it.

There is a spotlight search which searches through contacts, iPod, notes and email.

I can go on but what good is that? Watch it for yourself.

Watch the guided tour for iPhone 3G S. A little long and runs for 14 minutes. It might be time well spent if you are buying it or not yet decided.

Could this be the next best thing?

PS : How about selling it for 20000 rupees in India?