I-PHONE : Unwarranted Hype.

Who hasn't heard of the iPhone? Ask around and you'll see that the hype around this little gizmo is phenomenal to the level of becoming downright scary.

At the launch of the iPhone, consumers were promised that it was a 'revolutionary and magical product that is 5 years ahead of any mobile phone'. But this is far from reality. The much awaited Apple iPhone has its share of quirks.

Here are some of them:

1. Availability: The i-phone will be available in India through Vodafone or Airtel i.e they'll be SIM locked to these carriers. So for owning an i-phone you might have to change your number as well. If you want to use it with any other carrier like BSNL, Spice, idea etc, then it would work only as a Glorified i-pod. As per the Scene now, you have to order it. You just can't walk in any showroom to buy one.

2. Price :The price of i-phone in India is Rs 31,000 that too on a 2-year contract with vodafone. You won't be able to use it with any other Service Provider (Spice, BSNL, Idea etc). If you get it unlocked it will void its warranty.

3. iTunes and Fairplay: You still have to use iTunes to transfer music to the phone. This is unlike most phones, which allow direct drag-and-drop. Also, there's no Wi-Fi sync available with iTunes to transfer music. The songs bought from iTunes can only be played on the iPhone or on iPods due to the Fairplay digital rights management software created by Apple.

4. Useless 3G: In India 3G services are still not available and will not be available anytime soon. Even if they are introduced they'll be beyond the reach of majority of people.

5. Camera: The iPhone is equipped with a 2 MP camera. Sadly, camera is non auto-focus and does not have flash of any kind. Moreover, it flatly refuses to record video, even in any sort of reduced resolution and frame rate.

6. Battery: The battery life of a phone depends on its usage which differs from person to person. Since the iPhone is touted as a video iPod, phone and an Internet device (all in one), its usage will be much greater than just a simple phone. Add to this the battery usage of powering a huge touch screen and Wi–Fi; this means that the claimed five hours talk time may be far from accurate and the phone may have to be charged multiple times in a day. Also, the iPhone features a non-removable battery. So if a user faces any battery issues, the phone would have to be sent back to Apple for repair or replacement (not clear where and how, or how long it'll take).

7. No physical keypad or stylus: The iPhone doesn't have a traditional keypad that most people are used to type on. Instead, it has everything onscreen, including a QWERTY keyboard on which you type with your fingers! No stylus! But in case you are a heavy SMS/email user, would you really like to type out messages on the screen? Even if your answer to this question is yes, think of the mess the screen would be with fingerprints all over it. As the screen of the iPhone reacts only to human skin touch, don't even consider using a make-shift styllus or fingernails.

8. No Voice Dial/Voice Memos: For a phone without a traditional dial pad, the absence of voice dialing certainly seems to be a big let down. The phone does not support voice memos either, so they would have to be typed in using the onscreen keyboard every time.

9. Lack of some Basic Features : It doesn't include A2DP stereo streaming over Bluetooth. The recessed 3.5 mm port doesn't work with many commercially available earphone jacks. You can't set your own ringtones (you may be able to store 1000 songs on the iPhone, but the damn thing won't allow you to use one of those songs as your ringtone).You can't send an SMS to multiple recipients. The built-in 4, 8 or 16 GB memory can’t be used as mass storage.

10. Charging problem: The iPhone doesn't use a standard universal wall charger that usually comes with phones. Instead, it comes with a docking station similar to the ones available for iPods. It gets charged while it is docked. And seeing and you may need to charge it several times a day, according to your usage, carrying around a huge docking station would definitely be cumbersome. The good news is that the 3G version being sold in USA comes with a small wall charger. But same can't be said for the phone in India.

11. No add-on software support : the iPhone is a closed system. No one except Apple is allowed to write applications for the device. Apple has even blocked out the huge user community that develops applications for MAC OSX. If I was one of them, this reason alone would be enough for me to boycott the iPhone. In comparison, any phone that uses Symbian Series 60, Symbian UIQ, Windows or Linux is open to new functionality with freely available add-on software.