3G

The iPhone 3G is the most high-profile touchscreen phone yet in India. Priced at around Rs 35000, the iPhone is capable of working in 3G wireless environment. The 3G touchscreen phone has support for GPS tracking, and supports Microsoft Exchange and the new App Store. And unlike any other touchscreen phone in India, it combines the features of an iPod, a mobile touch screen phone and an internet device.

The iPhone’s touchscreen is remarkably intuitive compared to any of its competitors. The phone address book appears as a list, and you can scroll through the entries by flicking your finger over it. The iPhone 3G maps, loaded separately, can be zoomed in and zoomed out by a pinching motion of your fingers. This too is a feature unique to the iPhone touchscreen phone. The iPhone has a 3.5-inch widescreen display touch screen. Phone calls can be instantly made by tapping any contact on the phone list.

The iPhone touchscreen phone has a ‘virtual’ keypad, with predictive text. Like the BlackBerrys, the iPhone keypad too has a QWERTY format. However, many users have complained that the SMS functions in an Apple iPhone 3G touchphone are seriously handicapped. Update: New story on Nokia touchscreen mobile phones in India

The iPhone has a full-functional iPod beneath its skin. The iPhone 3G touchscreen phone is available in 8 G and 16 GB formats. Take your pick. The music videos and TV shows are easier to watch on the iPhone, thanks to the wide screen. The video controls come alive by just a flick of the finger. It’s a breeze to scroll through the iPhone playlists, albums and iTunes controls.

To me, the most advanced feature of the iPhone is its Safari browser. The internet can be accessed through GPRS EDGE, 3G or even faster WiFi. It’s easy to zoom in and out with a pinching finger motion. The iPhone touchscreen phone also has Google and Yahoo search built into it. However, it has to be remembered in India, still, 3G is in its infancy and WiFi is hard to find, besides being expensive.

The iPhone email works just like email on a PC. It has support for email servers and providers — including MobileMe, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo! Mail, Google Gmail and AOL — and most industry-standard IMAP or POP mail systems. However, the email is not as user-friendly as the BlackBerry, which is practically a dedicated email device. However HTML-rich email appears as it is meant to be, not separated into text and images as in most other browsers, including the BlackBerry. Push mail for enterprise functions is also built into the iPhone 3G touchscreen phone. The iPhone also has GPS functionality built in, though map usage features still leave much to be desired. However, GPS maps too are picking up in India, and once more map data providers start offering their services cheaper, this should not be a hassle.

A major disadvantage of the iPhone is that the touchscreen phone is still available only as a locked model. This means that the iPhone you bought from an Airtel dealer cannot be used with Vodafone, Idea or MTNL. The same is true of iPhone bought from Vodafone. Currently Apple sells iPhones in India only through Airtel and Vodafone-Essar outlets.