HeroTurko.Net

Many of my fellow bloggers from India are impatiently waiting for the official launch of iPhone by AirTel and Vodafone on August 22 but some of them have already lost hope looking at the high price tags.

Nirmal has posted some details about the official prices of the iPhone 3G by Vodafone and I can definitely say that this will make a lot of people change their mind about buying the iPhone 3G.

According to the price details unveiled by Vodafone, the iPhone 3G will be available at a price of 31,000 INR for 8GB and 36,100 INR for 16GB (Thats $700 for 8GB and $820 for 16GB). These prices are extremely high as compared to the iPhone 3G price in US i.e. $199 for 8GB and $299 for 16 GB.

The ironic part is that though iPhone 3G is being launched in India, no major region of the country operates on 3G networks and most of it still survives on 2G Edge connections.

For more details about how to place an order for an iPhone 3G through Vodafone in India, please visit the Official iPhone 3G Website

So is anyone still planning to buy an iPhone 3G in India?

We iphone users know exactly how difficult it is for us to survive without having copy and paste functionality. Apple does have this under consideration but according to them its not a priority.

Perhaps with the new open-source community project called OpenClip, it will be possible for users to use copy and paste functionality among some iPhone apps without begging Apple to add this feature to the firmware.

This is how it works, when a developer adds the OpenClip framework to an iPhone app, that app gains copy and paste functionality. So basically it all comes down to how willing and supportive the iPhone app developers are. GeekBrief has also made a video demo of the copy/paste functionality being used within some native iPhone apps.

The OpenClip framework does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement in any way so developers don’t need to worry about getting busted by Apple. The best of all is that the OpenClip framework is non-profit and open source.Here you can see a list of all upcoming apps for iPhone that support copy and paste functionality.

We have already seen a lot of modding options for the iPhone such as extendable speakers, modded GPS, Zoom camera etc but this new mod for the iPhone by gPda is worth above all other mods in terms of style and design.

The gPda team is working on a new hardware aluminium skin for the iPhone that will make the Apple logo glow just as it does on a Macbook.

Read the rest of this entry »

The iPhone App Store has some of the best and the most amazing apps ever made for the iPhone but the only problem is that 70% of all of these are paid apps and to find good free apps you need to search a lot.

I have done the homework for all of the iPhone app junkies out there by compiling a list of the 10 most useful free iPhone utility apps. All these apps belong to the Utilities category and are handpicked by me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mobilink, one of Pakistan’s oldest GSM network services provider, has recently showcased the iPhone in one of their new TV ad commercials.

While the short ad film is not exclusively about the iPhone, the way the camera focuses around it multiple times is just way beyond usual. Some of the iPhone shots from the ad film can be seen below.

Full motion ad film can be viewed on YouTube.

Right now its hard to believe if Apple would ever officially plan to release the iPhone in Pakistan as the target market is not too fond of touchscreen devices and some hardly even know what is 3G.

Probably, Mobilink planned to use a Jailbroken iPhone just to make their ad film more interesting and controversial however I will be confirming this through inner sources soon.

The part where Apple iPhone fails to prove itself as a user-friendly device is when you have to copy music or contacts back from iPhone to PC. Symbian devices on the other hand can be used in mass storage mode to transfer data back from the device to the PC.

iPhoneBrowser is a software for Windows which will simulate and allow you to use iPhone in mass storage mode thus giving you access to all its files and folders.

The iPhoneBrowser provides a Windows based GUI for manipulating files on the iPhone.

It will not only let you browse through your iPhone files and folders but will also let you copy them back to your PC. Plus you can even preview media files such as images, videos in real-time.

The only downside is that you need to have a Jailbroken iPhone to use this application.

While Apple has rightly been lauded for going very much their own way with the iPhone, with very little thought to convention, Steve Jobs has needed to engage in a number of embarrassing climb downs over the last 12 months.

1. Selling a phone at $600 on contract

The first, like many of Apple’s mistakes, were born out of hubris.  Apple firmly believed their device was revolutionary, and worth every premium they demanded.  The cost of $600 with contract was near unprecedented, and after Apple ran out of rabid iPhone fans willing to pay the price and sales started flagging, Apple were forced to lower the price to a more manageable $400 and issue a $100 credit to furious early adopters a mere two months later. Of course Apple paid this in their fait currency, iTunes credit, so all Apple really lost was face.

2. Activation at home

Another mistake driven by hubris, Apple sold the iPhone without any contract, feeling confident that Apple engineers preventing the unlocking of the phone were smarter than the thousands of unpaid hackers rearing to undo their work. This was clearly not the case, and less than 6 weeks later the iPhone was freely unlockable, fuelling a gigantic unlocking and smuggling trade. Apple initially lashed out in anger, using one of the many bug fix updates to brick many unlocked iPhones. After an extremely negative reaction however they became more circumspect in their cat and mouse game with hackers, and eventually came to realise that selling iPhones to the world market did extremely well to bolster flagging sales on the AT&T network.

3. Web apps

Read the rest of this entry »

When I first got my hands-on Apple iPhone, it seemed to be a quite user-friendly smartphone but it was until when I tried the SMS Text feature for the first time that I realized typing on iPhone is not that easy after all.

Especially with all those Urdu/Hindi and other native language slangs, I wondered whether I will have to sacrifice SMS or the iPhone. Well luckily I practiced enough with the virtual keyboard that I can now type blindly but for other new iPhone users there is a service called TypingWeb which can help you Improve iPhone typing speed.

Read the rest of this entry »

See it? No, not the reflective surface or the bastardization of the Intel Inside logo on the back… the other modification to this stock iPhone. Right, that Apple logo is burning white a la your off-the-shelf MacBook. Amazingly, the trick is accomplished without any appreciable increase to the iPhone’s waistline. You can take a chance with the Dutch machine-translation beyond the read link below or wait for the English text to be posted by iPhoneclub.nl later today. Regardless, be sure to check the video after the break. It’s not like you’ll be busting out the dremel to attempt this yourself anyway.
Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been avoiding the 3G iPhone rumor mongering as much as possible recently. After all, we know it’s coming as both AT&T and Apple have confirmed. Now this: one of Italy’s most respected newspapers, La Repubblica (like the WSJ with red sauce), is claiming in no uncertain terms that the 3G UMTS iPhone is coming shortly to Telecom Italia without a revenue sharing deal and without long-term exclusivity. If true, this change in strategy opens the doors for a true, global, 3G iPhone launch on GSM networks around the world come summer time.

We contacted Telecom Italia who refuse to comment on the matter.
Read the rest of this entry »