staying.cool

why would apple expect the iphone 3G with its unsurpassably (crappy) features:

Surprisingly, some of the niggling features that were missing in the iPhone 1.0 continue to be overlooked. There’s still no copy-paste functionality, no MMS sending, no Flash capabilities, no A2DP (stereo Bluetooth)… Yes, at Rs.31,000 and thereabouts, the iPhone dangles a hefty price tag…if you take your eyes off its $199 pricing in the US and judge the iPhone purely on the heft of what you’re acquiring in terms of a gizmo, perhaps the picture won’t look so disappointing after all. After all, when has Apple ever sold sundar, tikaoo maal that was sasta — especially in India? Woefully however, the carrier lock-in story for the handset continues… You won’t be able to swap Vodafone to Airtel to Idea willy-nilly –– or when you are travelling abroad, to Matrix to SingTel. You will have to stick to that very Voda/Airtel SIM you’ve plugged into iPhone even in your wanderlust. That, for a 31K phone, is a mite distressing.

to be so wanted in india ? the country where the N96 is to be launched early. seriously. you might as well ship them all back to the US and keep selling them to people who have close to no idea just how convergent a device a phone can be.

i want this.

ever since i’ve landed in the USA, i’ve been on the lookout for the ubiquitous cellphone. we all know the importance of the generic gadget in my life having been the owner of the nokia n70 (and still regretting the flash of love that made me bequeth it to my sis); obviously, i was on the lookout for the next possible upgrade.

yeah. big mistake. big.

see, cellphones in the US followed a very different chronology of evolution. and this is my theory after looking at the excuses they have available.

the rest of the world went from the grandaddy of cellphones towards more features, cameras, mini-PDAs, mp3 players. colour screens, bluetooth, speaker phones, some kind of camera - these are almost taken as a given in any one of the latest models. from the bottom up. and this is true of india and europe. or rather, europe and india - given the lag in launching of phones in india.

the USA, as always, went a different path.

they too, went from the grandaddy of cellphones towards colour screens. but thats about it. the PDA had a far greater impact. and so, the kind of features you see on the PDA rival a small computer. the pure cellphone languished. people wanted small, functional peices.. if not complete palmtop solutions. function over technology. the best-selling phone here has a simple colour screen, bluetooth and speaker phone. thats it. no megapixel camera, no mp3 player, no mini-PDAs - in short none of the stuff that gadget-lovers take for granted today. i have literally to go down a step in evolution - from the n70, to a samsung d807. even the nokia 6682 is getting outmoded.

having been in the UK, where today’s phone is probably second-string in a coupla months, this is kind of gadget hell - where you are asked: “what is use of all that in a phone ?” i don’t think i’ll ever see the n80, the k800i, or any of the future super-cellphones. no, here.. i’ll have to settle for form over factor.

and as this story tells us, due to this lack of evolution - they’re over a year [via digg] away from asia generally. i like to believe that the much vaunted tech-edge america might be having is basically hype. when the consumer has no idea what feature-packed cellphones can be, he’ll never ask for it. high-end internet maybe the only advancement that people here will ever see. the cellphone becoming the all-in-one solution to all your gadget wants… will never happen here. the industry gains
which is just sad.

just a line to say that i’m back.. but i have too much to talk about. i need a little to figure how to talk about everything that has been coming to me over the last few days.

a new laptop should help matters though

though i still haven’t figured everything about my n70.

yeah, i’m showing off. indulge me.