iPhone 3G

 

The iPhone you’ve been waiting for.

Finally, the much awaited phone is out. A lot of people were holding back for this one.  iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking to give you the fastest mobile internet speeds you can get. It’s built-in GPS is amazing for expanded location based mobile services. iPhone 3G finds your location via GPS or by triangulating your position using Wi-Fi and cellular towers. It also finds nearby businesses with a keyword search. And GPS tracking can follow you wherever you go. Ooh… loads of phones are going to get extinct pretty soon.  iPhone 2.0 software includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK. There is no charge to developers to host apps that are free downloads. Sounds GREAT!

iPhone 3G gives users ever faster access to the Internet and email over their cellular network with quad-band GSM and tri-band HSDPA for voice and data connectivity around the world. iPhone 3G supports Wi-Fi, 3G and EDGE networks and automatically switches between them to ensure the fastest possible download speeds. The new iPhone 3G also makes it easier to multi-task with simultaneous voice and data communications, so with iPhone 3G you can browse the web, get map directions, or check your email while you are on a call.

I liked the feature that if lost, the phone can be remotely wiped. This was mentioned as an enterprise feature (you have to register your phone to your enterprise). Not sure if this is available for a standard consumer. The SDK demo was neat. I am not familiar with Android’s SDK but I especially noted the performance analysis tools including framerate. They looked good and very well polished UI. Actually, I thought the whole sdk looked really slick. The contacts now boast of a search feature. Brilliant!

The launch is on July 11 at a price of $199 (Jobs said no more than $199 in any country) for 8GB in sleek black and metal or $299 for 16GB which also comes in white (stop the presses!)

The big part was the launch of me.com ; the $99/yr 25GB storage including iDisk. They’ve been working with Microsoft on the built-in MS Exchange functionality for Email, Calendar, Contacts push updates and auto discovery of exchange servers and global lookup. Their web based email is strikingly similar to both Outlook and Yahoo’s new UI. Seems like a gTalk and gMail clients should be in the works to leverage the push proxy for notification updates. Maybe an orkut client as well for friend updates? This tight coupling with paid webapps was really interesting. I did not notice any ads on it.

A total winner and my next phone ( I have a Sony P1i .)

GBrowser … a myth!

Rumor: A WebKit-based GBrowser?

In the post The Google Browser from earlier this year, someone going
by the name “the Lizard” says that Google is developing its own,
WebKit-based browser. Lizard argues that it is strategically dangerous
to bet too much on just Firefox, which sends a lot of paid search
traffic to Google, and that this made Google start an internal project
in mid-2006 titled “GBrowser.”

According to the Lizard, GBrowser is built on top of the open source
WebKit browser framework, which was also used by Apple to create
Safari, and is also used for the browser of Google-initiated mobile
platform Android. “More than that,” the Lizard writes, GBrowser “will
offer integration with many Google services, such as Gmail, Google
Calendar, Blogger, and likely Google Talk.” Lizard continues:

“Rumblings of a Google browser have been carpeting the web for years,
but it wasn’t until 2006 that an entire team was actually committed to
working on what will become GBrowser.

Google, always known for iterating slowly on most of its projects, has
taken its time on GBrowser for a very good reason: it only has one
chance to get it right. Failing to succeed in its browser move means
rocky negotiations with a core partner, Mozilla, and could negatively
impact its financials in a significant manner. A move into the browser
market requires perfection, and GBrowser has undergone at least one
substantial rewrite and many major user-interface iterations.”

Lizard adds, “Mozilla knows GBrowser is coming and discusses it at
length internally.” And then, I heard another rumor that Google will
be creating a standard which allows the toolbar of GBrowser to change
when visiting certain sites – say, when you visit Google Docs you get
a special Docs toolbar. Now, I don’t know if there’s indeed such a
browser in the works, and have to file all of this under rumor until
further details are known… but thought it’s an interesting rumor
nevertheless. Once in May 2006, when Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked
in a Q&A whether Google would consider building their own browser, he
replied “We would only do so…if we thought there was a real user
benefit.”

The original article can be found here: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-06-10-n87.html