So the hype is finally over…After a gruelling wait of 22 days from the first world wide launch of the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G was finally launched in INDIA and some select countries on 23rd August (2nd Worldwide launch). I may be a bit late in informing this news, but this post is more than just a report reporting the launch of the most awaited gadget in India.

iPhone 3G is locked to the 2 of the Country’s major telecom giants viz. Airtel, Vodafone. Both have launched the phone with high speculations and *ahem* very high price ! The iPhone 3G here costs Rs.31000 – 8GB(Black) Model and Rs.36100 – 16GB(Black/White) Model, thats approximately $740 and $860.

Currently there is no software which directly unlocks the iPhone 3G, but lets hope someone soon makes a breakthrough.

Vodafone and Airtel both have some attractive schemes along with buying the iPhone 3G. Some important information on iPhone 3G’s warranty, if the iPhone 3G is unlocked or so within the first year of the contract, then Warranty is VOID.

Airtel has also tied up with Apple to bring the APPSTORE here in India, and create Operator-Specific applications. iPhone 3G running on other networks won`t be able to use apps specially designed to run only on a Airtel Connection.

For

I really don`t have the words to express. This phone is the most innovative one in its category. We have seen many touchscreen phones before. but this revolutionized the concept of a mobile phone. There are more advanced phones than this, but the launch of iphone cracked open a new era of touchscreen computing for other manufacturers as well.
So many phones have come out as ‘iPhone Killers’, that just shows the the authority of this phone in the market.

But just to name a few of the prime features

1. iPhone3G supports 3G. Currently India doesn`t have 3G support, but by mid 2009, 3G services are expected to start.
2. GPS Support.
3. 3.5″ 16M-color TFT display with a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels
4. Ipod and Video
5. Faster than 1st gen iPhone
6. TV-out port

Flaws

I`ll tell you, there are people who hate the iPhone. I couldn`t believe it. I love this device for its looks and innovation. But are only ‘looks’ of prime importance ??

1. No A2DP. I don`t know how many people use bluetooth stereo headsets, but I am one of those who use it. I bought a SE DS-220 to be used with my SE K550@W610 and it works like a charm. I love it. But with iPhone 3G, you can`t use it .
2. Cannot transfer files via bluetooth.
   I hope this can be fixed in the future firmware upgrades from Apple.
3. Cannot forward SMS messages.
   There are 3rd party apps who do this.
4. No Video Recording
   There are 3rd party apps who do this.
5. 2MegaPixel Camera. No autofocus, no settings
   Rs31K and I would expect atleast 3.2MP.
6. Cannot remove battery
7. No Java Support
8. No support for office documents
9. No copy/paste functionality
   What was apple thinking !?
10. Safari browser doesn’t support Flash,it also doesn’t have a download manager

Pricing of IPhone 3G – The Biggest Flaw in India

• Frankly speaking, the price of Iphone 3G is not justified. In the U.S the phone is heavily subsidized by the carrier giant AT&T. The 8GB model was being offered at $199. But most people don`t realize that the customer will be bound to a contract for 2 years with the minimum monthly bill ranging anywhere between $50-$75+ depending on the usage. BTW initially while buying, you also have to pay $36 as activation fee + $30 for any data plan + some minimum tariff plan.

  If your maths is good you can do the calculations for yourself. Initally itself, for a 8GB model you have to shell out minimum of $325. Then add your monthly bills to it.
  You`ll find they end up paying more than us here in INDIA.

  However, AT&T allows the subscriber to cancel his/her subscription with AT&T and retain the phone on a condition of using their services for a month(30 days) and paying an ETF(Early Termination Fee). $175 is the EFT.
  So lets do some calculations.
  Minimum amount you`ll be paying to get your IPhone3G with AT&T is $325
  + EFT i.e $175.
  + 1 month usage
  = approx $560

  So in the end you`ll be getting your unlocked IPhone3g for about $560 = Rs.23000 approx @ Rs.41/$.

• While in India you pay $740 for the IPhone3g and upon that the phone will be locked to a carrier for a 12 Months !!. I guess the high rice may also be due to the high service taxes,duties imposed by our government.

Verdict

Personally, I feel the IPhone3G is not worth the amount it is being sold here in INDIA. Its a great device and I wanted to buy one when it was released, but the price has been the main factor which made me change my decision of buying the phone.

You can ask someone abroad to get you an iPhone3G because it`ll be any day cheaper. Currently the response towards buying an iPhone 3G has not been that great with both the operators. Hopefully we can expect a price dip in about a month or so.

By the way, I saw an Ad in the newspaper where RelianceDigital claims they have iPhone 3G’s for sale. I am a bit curious. I don`t know whether that is true, but I`ll surely check it out an let you all know.

Right now, I am considering to buy a HTC Diamond, which has better specs than the iPhone 3G and retails for about Rs.27000 locked to Airtel (Rs.26000 unlocked grey version). But before buying, I`ll do some more research on the iPhone 3G’s prices and let you guys know as well.

Regards.

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Ok! I have heard a lot now ! Well, Cuil is the newest search engine on the block, From the above image, the first thing that comes to your head is “OMG ! 121,617,892,992 pages” !!
Cuil also has nice looking interface (unlike google – nice logos though), But looks are not the only factor to decide which search engine is the best.
If you look at the guys behind Cuil, you`ll notice some of them are from Google, the founder and others from IBM etc. They have a management full of big guns !

So lets see how Cuil fares against Google in narrowing down results from today’s one of the most prominent markets…The Internet.

• Test 1 : Interface
• Test 2 : Average default Loading Times for any search
• Test 3 : Search Results
• Conclusion

Test 1 : Interface

Cuil Interface v/s Google Interface

Cuil Interface v/s Google Interface – Results

Cuil

The home page is neat, clean and pretty ! Quite appealing to the eye ! The Search box is well placed. There is an autosuggest feature as well. When you search for a result, the page is displayed in 3 different coloumns (you can change the way it is displayed i.e 2 or 3 coloumns), which I found quite wierd (since I am used to google results perhaps ?!). The keyword I used was ‘hosting’ and I got a neat AJAX powered category box to help me refine my search, nice !
Thumbnails for every site in the result is displayed.
To goto the next page, there was a neat tab. It was a good feature to add

Overall, people may find it appealing. The look is a boon for newbies surely !

Google

Ok ! Now I bet everyone must have googled once in a while, anyways, the same old classic google home page. Sometimes the results page tends to get cluttered with ads all around when you are searching for a particular keyword, but in general the look is plain.
To goto the next page, I had to scroll down all the way, till I found Gooooooooogle

EDIT :
If you want to try google with the cool autosuggest feature, you can visit here http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Thanks Andycolden.

Test 2 : Loading Times

For testing the loading times, I used pingdom.com. The unique thing about the tool in this site is that it loads everything i.e HTML,CSS,RSS any Scripts if present etc. I had searched for “php mysql tutorial” in both Cuil.com and google.com. The graphs are respectively posted below.

Cuil took approx 4sec.

Google took approx 0.7sec.

Since Cuil tends to load a particular website’s logo image or so, the time taken for cuil to load a page is more compared to Google. But then hey ! you can`t have everything together right ?!

Test 3 : Search Results

Now this is the most important of all the tests ! Everyone wants the best results ! So lets put our search engines to the test ! I obviously couldn`t run a full comprehensive search. But there are some things I have noticed.

1. For one, Cuil rarely returned any wikipedia results (atleast for me). Some keywords I used to search were nouns (names of prominent people), names of different places. I guess Cuil hasn`t given much preference to wikipedia pages or so.
2. Keyword: ‘country India’ – Returned results completely irrelevant, while Keyword: ‘India country’ displayed good results. (Cuil returned 65,000 results while google returned 36,000,000 results)
   Google also displayed much relevant pages compared to Cuil with the above keywords.
3. According to Cuil’s technology, it ranks pages on the basis of its content and not on the basis of clicks. Currently it claims to have indexed 120billion pages.
4. I wanted to know more details about the latest iphone 3g. So I used, Keyword: ‘iphone 3g july 2008′. returned 257 results in cuil which were not that satisfying since none of the results were fresh, while google was able to retrieve the latest information with ease.

Cuil has recieved tremendous response despite being released with barely any publicity. Check the following graph by alexa.com

Amazing response ! After 3 days the rank was 1,090,420

Conclusion

In general, Cuil.com is a good search engine. The results were a bit monotonous. The Search Index is very impressive, the collection is large, but it needs to be constantly updated with new pages. I couldn’t get fresh results using cuil.com and sometimes the results were completely irrelevant.

As of now I am still sticking to google.com, but I`ll surely give cuil try for its neat interface and nice autosuggest feature and tabs based on your search query.

Overall : Cuil – Good Index, Results still need more polishing