Anyone for a Rs. 31000 ($750) iPhone?

I use Vodafone India as my mobile service provider and I have pre-registered for iPhone on their website a while back. Airtel and Vodafone start selling iPhone in India on 22nd August which is just 2 days from now.

I today got a sms and an email from Vodafone that my wait is over and I can deposit advance to get iPhone within a few days. However I almost dropped my existing phone (Treo 680) after reading the price for the iPhone. They want to make me poorer by Rs. 31000 for 8GB model and want a whopping Rs. 36100 for 16GB model. Is this some kind of joke???

Well I think they have managed to do an unthinkable here. A lot of rumours were doing round till today about the would be price for iPhone in India. Some guessed it to be around Rs. 8000, as that's how much an iPhone with contract costs in US. Some guessed it to be around Rs. 25000, but nobody thought that they will be beating all the expectations and sell the iPhone at such high prices. Well good luck to Apple, Vodafone and Airtel, but I am not going to buy iPhone for that price.

I also doubt that Airtel and Vodafone are going to sell unlocked iPhone in India, if they are then its defeats the purpose of selling iPhones via an operator. And if its a locked model then why don't they just bundle the phone with some service contract and subcidise the phone? I think a bundled but cheaper iPhone will be a win-win situation for everybody inclusing consumers, operators and manufacturer.

May be they are just trying to cash in on the hype and once the dust settles down, they are either going to lower the prices substantially or start offering cheaper iPhone bundled with a data/service plan.

I have been on Vodafone for 6 yrs. now and intend to stay on for a few more years to come, but I guess Vodafone is not much interested in keeping its loyal customer base intact by offering them yearly service contracts bundled with a cheaper iPhone. All said and done my wait for iPhone is still not over :-(

India Strikes Gold in Beijing

Abhinav Bindra created history today by becoming first Indian to win Olympic Gold Medal for any individual event. He won the Gold in Men's 10m Air Rifle Shooting event. Also this is India's first Olympic Gold since 1980.

Bindra has done his country proud and had instantly become a hero in India. He has recently started blogging at - http://abhinavbindra.blogspot.com/

Check out news about his Gold Medal win at the Official Olymics website here.

While this single Gold Medal may not take us anywhere in this Olympic but I would like to believe that this is the sign of things to come. It sure is.

Amitabh Bacchan writes on his blog - "We are so proud of you and so delighted to have made every Indian walk a little taller ! Thank you Abhinav, and more glory and success to you. As a dear friend from Mumbai put it - ‘after almost a century and 2 billion births an Indian wins his first individual gold at the Olympics’."

So please join me in congratulating Abhinav on his great feet and lets start celebrations :-)

Book iPhone in India

Update on 8th August: Airtel starts selling iPhone from 22nd August 08.

iPhone's official launch is getting near and to fuel the excitement both Vodafone and Airtel have started booking for iPhone.

To book iPhone on Vodafone click here or sms IPHONE to 56789.

To book iPhone on Airtel click here.

For those who still don't know much about iPhone, click here to have a 360 view of it.

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.

Blogs by Indian Celebrities

Blogging scene in India is suddenly hotting up with many celebrities joining in the bandwagon. Some recent posts from Amitabh Bacchan and Aamir Khan on their respective blogs have been in news for all the wrong reasons. Anyway I welcome these celebrities to blogosphere and wish that more and more people take up blogging and connect with each other on one to one basis.

Here is a list of some Celebrity Bloggers from India:

1. Amitabh Bacchan - The biggest movie star
http://blogs.bigadda.com/ab/

2. Aamir Khan - Another great actor who is also called Mr. Perfectionist
http://www.aamirkhan.com/

3. Salman Khan - Another great actor
http://duskadum.blogspot.com/

4. Rahul Bose - The sensible and subtle movie star
http://blogs.ibibo.com/RahulBose

5. Ram Gopal Verma - Film Director, Powerful and hard-hitting drama
http://rgvarma.spaces.live.com/blog/

Then there is:

6. Very popular politician and current Railway Minister Laloo Yadav and

7. Famous movie director Vikram Bhatt

8. Bubbly Movie Actress Preity Zinta

9.  The Gorgeous Actress Shilpa Shetty

If anybody knows about any other Indian Celebrity's blog, please let me know so that I can update the list here.