Check out Lewis Hamilton driving the car around using Blackberry Storm app..

The application interacts with a bluechip installed in the care to steer the car around! Simply amazing!

A lot of things have changed since the Palm’s Pre was announced, both for the company and the users. Company gained its image back of being a strong contender in the Smartphone market which is quite evident in the rising share prices which were trading around $3 on Jan-7th and currently trading at around $8 (Jan-18th)

As expected there is a lot of information/rumor flying around about the launch, price, functionality, carrier’s, etc…

Here you go…

What are Palm Pre Official Sites?
Palm Pre on Palm (http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html)
Palm Pre on Sprint (http://now.sprint.com/pre/?id9=vanity:pre)

What is Palm Pre’s Launch Date?
The Smartphone is expected to launch during the second half of 2009 in US first and then in UK and other countries.

Who are the Palm Pre official carriers?
Sprint is the official carrier in United States
Vodafone is most likely to be the official carrier in UK (Source)

Where can I buy Palm Pre from?
As the official carrier Sprint will be making the phones available also BestBuy is most likely to be the official sellers of this phone when it is launched.

What is Palm Pre O/S based on?
The new built from the scratch O/S Palm Pre is based on is called WebOS which follows HTML5, CSS and JavaScript standards.
Palm also released the Palm Mojo SDK in private prerelease for now. The SDK will be made available to the developers later this year. (Source)

How much will Palm Pre cost? (Source)
Palm Pre is most likely to cost around $399 with a 2 year contract and between $500-550 for an unlocked version of the phone

What networks will Palm Pre support?
In the US Palm Pre will run on Sprit CDMA network and a most likely GSM 3G HSPA version for other countries like UK (for now)

Palm Pre resources (Official/Un-Official):

• http://precommunity.com
• http://www.facebook.com/palm
• http://www.boxxet.com/Palm_Pre/
• http://developer.palm.com/
• http://blog.palm.com
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre

Vodafone is taking an aggressive approach to the launch and they want to be the 1st to launch iPhone in India. So, if Aritel is launching iPhone on 22nd of August, iPhone will be available at Vodafone stores on 21st of Aug.

The company also wants to claim the cheapest iPhone in the country. So, iPhones coming out of Vodafone will be cheaper than its competitors, namely Airtel. Price for non-vodafone users will be around 35k’s and for existing users who have preregistered with Vodafone, it will cost them around Rs.24k.

The bottom line is and I quote "No matter what we will be cheaper than our competitors."

That’s not all, we have more!!

Initially iPhone will come only with 2G service and not 3G. 3G services on Vodafone will start from October onwards. 2G services will include GPS and Maps for 8 Indian cities including metro cities. Hyderabad is one of the 8 cities on GPS maps.

Vodafone will start calling the users who pre-registered for iPhone two days before the launch to discuss the details in terms of iPhone price and its features and once the user confirms the purchase, iPhone will be delivered at the day of launch. So, Ideally we should start receiving calls from tomorrow onwards. i.e 19th of August.

In addition to this information, Apple sent a mass e-mail to its registered users confirming the 22nd Aug as the launching date in India.

Click here to see what Apple India has in store for us. http://www.apple.co.in/iphone/buy/

All you have to do is send an SMS and register yourself for the Jesus Phone and Vodafone will let you know about the price and availability soon.

SMS ‘iPhone" to 5678, you will shortly receive a confirmation "Congratulations! You just booked your New iPhone with Vodafone. We will keep you updatedon its price, features and availability in due course. Thank you."

Or.. save a buck by pre-registering for an iPhone on Vodafone site. Click here to register online

That is the closest you can get to an iPhone as of now. This registration is available for Vodaphone users only.

At last I feel its worth being a Vodafone user.

For the ones who have decided they wont buy an iPhone because its common, join "Will not buy an iPhone" on Facebook or Orkut

I did watch the Saturday (14th June) episode of Das Ka Dum and decided to call the number which was specifically mentioned for Vodafone numbers as Vodafone is one of the show sponsors. I wouldn’t say I was surprised to hear that I was dialing an "Invalid Number" but I was furious, not because I want to be on the show but because these companies never live up to their name.

I dialed 5678 it didn’t work then later I tried 5678+option as suggested by this document http://www.setindia.com/How_to_participate4.pdf on Sony’s official site, that didn’t work either.

Called Vodafone to launch a complain but no one on the phone was aware of the show or the number but they registered a complain (reg no. 727322440) after asking totally irrevelant questions. I am told that my issue will be addressed by Monday but I am not hopeful.

The company would have paid in crores to be a sponsor and couldn’t take care of a number which is being showed to millions of viewers around the country, I just wish they played a little more responsible.

Vodafone plans to launch iPhone in India by September (around my birthday!, GO Vodafone!) but I suggest if you have waited for more then a year now then wait a little longer and get a better version of iPhone.

Apple plans to release a new version of iPhone some time around May or June with 3G capabilities and other upgrades. I think its worth waiting a little longer and get a better version.

3G compatibility for iPhone is important as they plan to launch in places like Spain and Italy where 3G intake is higher than any other European countries. 3G also brings in its share of worries for iPhone users about its price and battery life.

All said and done I am really looking forward to the next release of iPhone as I am expecting hardware and firmware upgrades and also support for 3rd party applications and plugins.

Click here to check the whois information of the domain. It was registered in 1998.

Airtel use to operate under the name TouchTel until 2004, that is when it started providing mobile services, landline and broadband services under one name which is AirTel.

Don’t you think if you don’t have a .COM for your business then there is something missing. I am sure there are thousands like me who visit Airtel.com to see AirTel and not Vodafone right?

This probably doesn’t even bother AirTel in any way, but I thought it was interesting enough to share.