With the iPhone 3G all set to go on sale tomorrow morning, there are still some unanswered questions about the iPhone 3G.. Apple seems to have coordinated review spree from Walt Mossberg, Edward Baig, and David Pogue, all out with major hands-on reviews.

All the three of them feel that the iPhone 3G is a good hardware device and a good upgrade over the original iPhone that we saw an year earlier. But just like the original compromises with the iPhone still exist and that make it hardly a must-have device.

But that brings us to the important question.. Will you buy the iPhone 3G when it goes for sale this friday? If you are not planning to buy one what is it that is holding you back from buying one? Is it the cost, or is it the carrier choice or is it the design cues since you are going to have to acquaint yourself to a completely new experience of mobile phones..

Or are you going to rush to the nearest Apple Store first thing tomorrow morning and get the iPhone 3G? Or are you going to stay with your first gen iPhone? We’d love to hear what your plans are…

I for one will surely be lining up to buy the iPhone when it makes an appearance in India. Here’s a chance for all you guys to be a little bit of nostradamus..

Will the iPhone 3G be a hit or miss?

As we’ve been expecting for months now, Steve Jobs finally unveiled the iPhone 3G today at WWDC. With the release of the iPhone 3G Uncle Steve managed to put an end to months of speculations of what we’ll see in iPhone 3G.

Here are the specs and my thoughts after the jump…

• Available in white/black
• No more recessed headphone jack
• All metal buttons
• 3G / GPS
• Comes in 8/16 GB models
• 5 hour talk time (3G) / 10 hours talk time (2G)
• New USB wall charger

Well I’m quite sure you might be a little shocked to see the specs. We were all expecting a little bit more from Apple for sure. Here are some of the features that I feel Apple should have improved upon.

• No improvements to the camera, its the same old 2MP. Look at your competition Apple!!
• No copy/paste. Is this all this difficult for you guys to develop?
• No MMS. Again this is dumb, considering the mobile media device Apple projects the iPhone, what’s the point without MMS?
• Note’s don’t sync! Why Apple? When everything else on the iPhone can sync why not Notes that is probably the easiest to sync

Apart from these minor gripes, I don’t really have any major complaints about the 3G iPhone. The expectations were running a bit high this time around, but Apple has more or less delivered.

Features that make my heart ache for an iPhone are GPS, and third party apps via the App Store. I can’t wait to see it in India, but I wonder we Indians aren’t used to contracts as such so how exactly are carriers like Bharti and Vodafone planning to sell the iPhone.

Well all said, I haven’t mentioned a word about the price have I? Well Apple has got the pricing right this time and the new iPhone will sell for 599$… 399$…. 199$. Yes you heard that right, the new iPhone will sell at 199$ subsidized for the 8GB model and 299$ for the 16GB model.

What are your thoughts about the new iPhone? Expect some more details about other announcements at the WWDC namely Snow Leopard, MobileME in the coming posts.

Oh yeah! You can buy the iPhone 3G on July 11th if you are in one of these countries or you got to wait a bit more longer.

Voice your opinions in the comments..

HTC officially unveiled its HTC Touch Diamond high-end handset during the “May 6 HTC Event” held in London which ended a few hours ago. As expected and as seen in several leaked images that appeared yesterday, the new device from HTC is slim and compact, and has a very nice overall aspect. The rumored diamond-like pattern on the phone’s back case is real, providing a look that is not only unique but also awesome to look at.

HTC Touch Diamond’s official dimensions are: 102 x 51 x 11,5 millimeters, and weighs about 110 grams. In this slim case, HTC managed to put together enough advanced features to attract about any user who wants to have the latest technology in a handset and I seriously believe that it is going to give the iPhone some serious run for its money.

Here are the official specs :

• Connectivity: WCDMA / HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA
• Operating system: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Display: 2.8-inch VGA touch screen
• Camera: 3.2MP, with video calling
• Internal memory: 4 GB Internal Storage, 256 MB flash, 192 MB RAM,
• Bluetooth: 2.0 with EDR
• Wireless: WiFi 802.11b/g
• GPS: GPS/AGPS
• Interface: HTC ExtUSB™ (mini-USB and audio jack in one; USB 2.0 High-Speed)
• Battery: 900 mAh
• Talk time: GSM: up to 4 hours
• Standby time: GSM: up to 300 hours/100 hours with push email
• Chipset: Qualcomm MSM® 7201A™ 528MHz

The HTC Touch Diamond is scheduled to be available to the general public sometime in June, when we are also expecting Apple 3G iPhone. The price of HTC is not yet known but the retail one will surely be pretty high in my opinion. But even otherwise, the price of a phone generally depends on country, operator and/or data plan, so the Diamond will surely have lots of price tags when launched. All we can do now is wait until June.

Here are some more pictures of the HTC Touch Diamond for you to enjoy :

The only advantage that the iPhone currently has is its simplicity and effective design. The iPhone UI is one of the best in the industry and the Windows Mobile interface just doesn’t cut it for the iPhone. Another thing is that with the impending launch of 3G iPhone things are definitely going to hotter in the smartphone market. 

Do you think the HTC Touch Diamond has the punch and prowess to put a blow on the mighty iPhone? For more information on the HTC Touch Diamond visit the official page here

When Google first unveiled Android, the mobile OS way back in November, something inside me told, “Hey, Wait this is not what Google would want, they will want to have a complete phone”. Interestingly the rumor mills are abuzz saying that Google might partner with Dell to launch a new handset that would come loaded with Android. Everyone seems to be touting the gPhone as the next iPhone and its chief competitor.

While Android is still under heavy development, and a final version is expected sometime this year. It makes complete sense for Google to make a phone to showcase all what Android can do, and going in with a partnership with Dell makes perfect sense. Dell has been in the PDA business before and it certainly has Know How on how mobile phones are built. Combine Dell’s Hardware expertise and Google’s Engineers and you have a winner at your hands.

Whether the GPhone if and when it is available can be iPhone competitor or not is a big question because so far we’ve never seen apps from Google with interfaces as friendly as Apple’s. So far Google has not shown the same kind of attention to its interfaces, that make Apple’s consumer electronics products a joy to use..

If the GPhone comes out with 3G and never before seen internet connectivity on its handset then it can be a winner, but beating Mobile Safari will be hard. And while there are reports that the Google phone would launch at next month’s 3GSM Telecom Conference in Barcelona, there has been no denial from either company that such a product is in the works.

So until then lets keep our fingers crossed. But incase Google does come out with its own handset, it surely is going to be a big stab in the back of Apple.

If you’re fed up with your current Mobile Phone’s battery, don’t fret, the future of Battery technology, just got brighter, with Nanotechnology promising upto 10 times more battery life. Which means if your battery previously lasted for 6days, it will now last for 60days. Charging your mobile phone only six times a year – imagine that!

Over at Stanford University researchers have found a revolutionary concept, that could forever change this world. They have found a way to use Silicon nanowires in rechargeable Li-ion batteries that power the current generation of batteries in Laptops, Mobile Phones, Camera’s, iPods etc, thus enhancing the storage capacity to upto 10times the existing levels.

“It’s not a small improvement. It’s a revolutionary development”, said Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, who leads the research for the new battery technology.

Well that means. you now need to recharge your Mobile Phone battery once in a couple of months. The same goes for laptops, iPods and other devices. They’ll be able to provide much more battery life between recharges.

A standard Li-ion battery has an electrical storage capacity limited by the amount of lithium that can be retained in the battery’s anode, usually made of carbon. When made of silicon, the anode can retain much more lithium, but silicon’s disadvantage is that it pulverizes during charging cycles, lowering the battery’s performance and life-cycle.

The Stanford research team found a way to avoid this problem, by leveraging on nanotechnology. To store lithium, they use silicon nanowires, each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a paper sheet. When soaking up lithium, the nanowires grow four times their size and then come back to normality, but due to their extremely small wired shape, they don’t fracture in time. Hence silicon is better than carbon after all, it only has to be used as nanowires.

When the batteries are manufactured commercially in the future, things are going to change forever in mobile electronics arena. Imagine charging up your Mobile Phones six times a year!!

Via Softpedia

I believe the spectrum that is going to be auctioned should be able to hold atleast 5 Carriers. I would expect Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance to pick up spectrum. I am not sure about the foreign players, but I believe that AT&T should be able to pick up spectrum as well.

Here are some of the rules that the Government has laid for the Auction :

• Winners will be required to pay 0.5 percent of total adjusted gross revenue to the state on an annual basis for the first three years of operation, rising to 1 percent thereafter.
• Winners will not be allowed to trade or resell the spectrum and they will not be allowed to merge in the first five years after the grant.
• About 30MHz of spectrum will be sold in total.
• India will also auction licenses for broadband wireless (WiMAX) services, with the reserve price fixed at 25 percent of the amount for 3G spectrum.

The 3G spectrum is a good opportunity for equipment manufactures Nokia and Ericsson to beef up their bottom line. My only wish is that Google should enter the Auction and buy this spectrum. If it can do that and complement the 3G service with an advertising model, then I am sure it will make 3G services pretty attractive and cheap.

Keep your fingers crossed, because the 3G revolution has just begun. Also spectrum for WiMAX is being auctioned and the Indian government sees this as a way forward to Fixed broadband and to improve last mile connectivity.

Android is a stripped down version of Linux, and it will be available under the very popular Apache Software Licence. By Being open source, I am sure Android will appeal to a large number of developers to develop applications for the Mobile OS.

The developers will have access to the SDK sometime next week, so that they can start building applications for Android. For me Android holds a lot of promise, and I feel this one of the better things Google has done in the recent past. We won’t be seeing any mobile handsets loaded with Android atleast until next year, so I can’t really tell if Android will take off. But if it does, it is a major victory for Linux and Opensource.

Did anyone notice, doesn’t the Android logo look weird. Sure Google could have come up with something better.

The Vice President of Mozilla, Mike Schroepfer has given us the roadmap on Firefox plans to conquer the mobile web browser market. The work is on and is running at full throttle, so you can expect a Mobile Firefox Web Browser anytime soon.

The core foundation for the Mobile Browser would be Mozilla 2 (think Firefox 4) which is currently in development. Starting with Mozilla 2 frameworks, mobile devices will be involved in the making of Mobile Firefox, to evaluate its performance, speed, memory footprint etc..

Christian Sejersen the former head of Openwave. a leader in mobile phone software has been hired by Mozilla to lead the Mobile Browser initiative.  Here is a small quote from the paper that Mike wrote,

We will ship a version of “Mobile Firefox” which can, among other things, run Firefox extensions on mobile devices and allow others to build rich applications via XUL.

This sums up the whole thing pretty much easily. I will be waiting for Mobile Firefox to do something very similar to what the desktop version did., simply revolutionize the Web Browsing experience.  As of now no details have been revealed as to when we can expect the Mobile version of Firefox.

Via Mozilla Links