Best Mobile Handset

Mobile World Congress 09 is over and as expected there were lot of product and technology launches, you can read Marin Perez's post for a quick round up of the event. 

So I am not going to talk about MWC here, but I am going to talk about something which is equally exciting and that is a new mobile phone called INQ1. INQ1 won the award for Best Mobile Handset beating likes of Nokia E71 and T-Mobile G1.

INQ1 is first phone launched by a company called INQ. INQ likes to call its phone a Social Mobile as it has Skype, Facebook, Windows Messenger and Last FM built right in. For a test drive of this wonderful phone head right here. 

I think these phones will have a mass appeal not just because they are really great, I hear the pricing is equally great as well. You should be able to lay hands on these phones by shelling out just little over $100. Now that will really help in this recession  :-)

Before ending my post I would like to mention about very interesting approach to packaging of this phone.  In their own words they chose to turn its packaging into an object to cherish, not chuck, so an artistic illustration is what you find on the box cover. For more details about their ART connection click here.

To sum up they have got the concept right, have got the pricing right and have even got the packaging right. Oh my god - I really love this company.

Gphone is here...

While I am waiting to finally lay my hands on iPhone when its launched in India in a few months, I am also very excited about what I would like to call a Gphone.

Technically there is nothing called a Gphone, instead there is a mobile OS called Android released by Google. T-Mobile USA is expected to launch first Android device this year and reportedly its manufactured by HTC which is numero uno windows mobile device manufacturer. Interesting :-)

Android Community released first live images and videos of Android demo phone last month and I was really impressed by the great user interface on that phone. In many ways its looks quite similar to iPhone's interface where you can do most of the stuff using your finger, but you expect Google to do some innovations, don't you? And that's what Google did.

I really liked the phone unlock option on the demo phone, you can just slide your finger in a preset pattern to unlock the phone. They also demonstrated how the built in compass in the phone lets you pan-around the location based images just like you are into some kind of virtual tour of that location. That's very cool I must say. Anyway to check out all the images and videos you need to click here.

So go ahead and see for yourself what Google has to offer and let me know what do you think.

Use iPhone from India or just anywhere

Update on 15th July 09: This is a very very old post and I notice that many of you are reading this because you want to use your iPhone in India. You will probably be dissatisfied after reading the rest of post as it does not talk much about iPhone, but about an interesting remote device testing/experience service called DeviceAnywhere. So to make your visit worthwhile I am updating this post so that you probably get what you were actually looking for.

To answer your questions about using your iPhone in India - Yes you can ofcourse use your iPhone in India by following ways:

1. You can roam on Indian service providers' network. Roaming charges apply.
2. If you have an unlocked iPhone, you can just buy and use any Indian SIM card and pay local call charges.
3. If you have a locked iPhone you can get it unlocked by most mobile shops in India, it takes just 10 mins and does not mean opening your iPhone or tampering with hardware in any way.
4. If you are technically inclined you can even unlock the iphone yourself. Just check out - iPhone Dev Team, Installer and Cydia.
5. I have also read that Airtel is now also selling unlocked iPhones and even unlocking the already sold iPhones for free.

------------------- End of Update, Older post follows --------------------

Well its true you can really press keys of an iPhone with a live network sitting anywhere in the world. Ofcourse you won't be really able to touch the iPhone but you will be able to do anything with the phone, except probably throwing it away ;-)

This is made possible by using subscription based services from DeviceAnywhere, which allows you to remotely access real handsets over the internet.

They support all types of handsets on multiple networks and are basically targeting mobile developers who would like to test their applications on variety of handsets without owning each one of them.

However in my opinion potential mobile handset buyers can also use the service to get a feel of the handset and test the UI before actually going and buying it.

And since iPhone has been such a craze all over the world, I am sure enthusiasts from countries where it has not been launched yet would be interested in accessing it remotely and they can do it by paying a monthly fee of $200 and $18 for per hour of usage. But hey here is the good news, they give away 3 hours for free to anybody who signs up and I think its enough time to try out a new phone or even an iPhone so I think you guys should just go ahead and give it a try :-)

Update on 7th Many 08: Vodafone bringing iPhone to India in September 2008