Bangalore: In that classic western movie, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” a shrewd editor tells the hero, played by James Stewart, that he is going to use not the real story about him, but the myth, because in the Wild West, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Sizing up Apple’s second avatar of the iPhone — the 3G version geared to harness the superior Internet speeds of third generation cellular networks — places a similar burden on reviewers. It comes with such a baggage of fierce customer loyalty and hype that it is difficult to think of it as just another smart phone. Like that other iconic Apple device, the iPod music player, the iPhone is a canny mix of form and function — with form winning by a whisker.
List its core specifications and it sounds like other smart phones: multiband GSM cellular capability, High Speed Packet Access or 3G-plus speeds; Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; a 3.5-inch diagonal colour screen; 30 frames-per-second video in multiple formats including MPEG-4; a 2-megapixel camera; and 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz music range.
Where iPhone excels is in swinging these numbers together into an extremely user-friendly package that uses the sense of touch like few phones have done before. Your forefinger is all you need to open folders, switch controls on or off, slide volume up or down, flick open albums or pinch pictures to reduce the size — in an intuitive manner that dummy users (that is, most of us!) will love.
As an advance on the earlier model, Apple has included a GPS receiver and linked it to Google Maps for direction finding. But the tiny antenna cannot compete with stand-alone car navigators for ease or detailed instruction and Indian buyers will need to buy local map software.
Another new addition is support for Microsoft’s Exchange Server, a gateway to business applications. This is a savvy marketing trick intended to broaden appeal from status-symbol sporting yuppies to “Blackberry- class” professionals.
Some Apple idiosyncrasies remain: You can’t replace the battery; you will have to take the whole works to an Apple centre where the asking price for a new battery is nearly $ 90 equivalent. The device is an iPod built into a phone, great sound and picture included — but with the corollary that you have to embrace Apple’s proprietary iTunes format.
The competition will zero in on iPhone’s lacunae: no voice dialling; no videorecording; no phone-to-phone photo sending (at least not easily); a fairly ordinary camera with no zoom or flash; no additional memory card slot (!) ... and the rivals can be expected to offer all of these features when they roll out their challengers. One thing will hamper everyone, for now: until 3G speeds are offered in India, using the iPhone will be like buying a Formula One racer to do your daily office commute. But at the inaugural price of Rs. 31,000/Rs 36,100 for the 8GB or 16 GB versions in India potential buyers are going to flaunt their phones; not necessarily use them to full functionality. (The phone will only unlock with the service provider’s SIM card which is installed. Currently the choice is between Airtel and Vodafone.) A thing of beauty is a joy forever, did some one say? The 3G iPhone qualifies; with a look and feel that has raised the bar in converged devices — at least until the next compelling device comes along.
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