To be honest, I had every mood to buy the Apple iPhone 3G when it launched in India, but the price of Rs.31,000 for the 8GB and Rs.36,000 for the 16GB version was a definite put off. Especially when you compare it to the price of Rs.8,500 ($199) if purchased in the US. But I needed more reasons to heal my now bruised ambition of not being able to buy an iPhone. Googled it and came up with aplenty ; on an iPhone, transferring contacts from the phone to the SIM card and selecting multiple contacts isn’t possible, neither is can one forward or copy-paste text are also non-existent in the iPhone.
No longer was I nursing a bruised ambition. On the contrary, I was rather proud of myself for not having spent hard earned money on the iPhone.
But as luck would have it, the money didn’t stay with me for too long, at least not all of it. On Friday, I bartered my two-year old Nokia N70 and Rs.17,000 for the Nokia E71. While going in for the deal I had no clue what the Nokia E71 was capable off, or did it match up to the iPhone. I just took it for the its excellent looks. Once home I went online to check out its features and was pleasan6tly surprised to read that it was regarded <a href=”http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/review-nokia-e7.html”>Nokia E71 Is a Legit iPhone Killer</a> by Wired magazine. My pleasure of having made the deal of my life grew manifold when I read that the Nokia E71 was also being labeled as a competitor to the BlackBerry Bold and the HP IPAQ 900.
I’m not going to reinvent the wheel by listing out the features of Nokia E71, you might as well check them out here. My only grouse with the E71 is that it should have had a 5 megapixel camera rather than the 3.2 it currently has. But hey, if I had indeed bought the iPhone, I would have got a 2 megapixel camera, so the Nokia E71’s 3.2 megapixel camera way better than that of the iPhone or any of the Blackberry models available in India.
So here’s my advice to all prospective iPhone buyers in India. Do yourself a favor and do not buy the iPhone, get the Nokia E71 and put the balance cash into tax saving investments! Not only will you pay less tax, your wife won’t shout at you for spending Rs.31000 on a phone that has an average camera.
Hi,
your frustration for the iPhone being cheaper in the US is not correctly explained. The reason iphone is discounted in the US is that you have to sign a 2-year service contract with AT&T at $30 per month for data. Note that $30 is for data only, not voice and the cheapest voice plan with it is $40, so if you have to sign a 2-year contract for $70/month, they better discount the phone.
Thanks,
H