Flavour of the month: iPhone: not just a gadget

CHENNAI, INDIA: At the onset of 2007 (January 9, 2007), Apple Inc announced the arrival of iPhone that would revolutionize the concept of the usage of phone in the users’ lives and not surprisingly was talked in Time magazine as the ‘Invention of the Year 2007’.

“iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” noted Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Inc.

Be it a visual voicemail that allows users to peep into what messages that they want to listen to, or an elegant touch screen pad, iPhone is a dream handset at your disposal.

Apple Inc chose Cingular as its carrier for its US operations. Stan Sigman, President and CEO, Cingular mentioned, “We think the iPhone is one of the most innovative devices ever created, and we look forward to letting our customers be the first in the world to experience the future of mobile phones.”

With the world working on Web 2.0 and countries such as India embracing 3G technologies, mobile medium has been revered like never before. A new wave of superior applications is beginning to enter your mobile phones and we look at some of these applications in detail.

Socially Mobile?

For starters, the social network sites such as Orkut and Facebook, which are ruling the web world, would soon adorn their iPhone, which would mean that mobile technology would touch base with the physical world.

For instance, you enter a place (a park or a mall) for the first time, the directions inside the building, various interesting places inside it can be sourced from the comments made by those who have already visited the place and you can even post yours – with just a click on your phone.

Sung Lee, vice president, Asian Operations, MySpace while speaking to CyberMedia News averred, “Social networks would increasingly be seen in the mobile domain.”

More than just getting you mobile, iPhone allows you a host of other services, which you could only dream earlier. For example, even as you immerse yourself by the beauty of the paintings in an art gallery, you can read comments of what others who visited the same art gallery before you thought of it.

A new traveling experience

Traveling to new places just became easier and definitely more pleasurable. For those of you who enjoy getting pampered by your tour operators who escort you to new places have more good news for you. Personalized travel packages that completely suit your penchants could soon be waiting to be approved by you.

Tagging got better

Tagging is a phenomenon which is not new to the netizens but iPhone promises to take this process a notch higher. The moment you take snap of a building or area of architectural marvel, add comment and tag it, your iPhone ensures that it is geo-tagged and the picture is watched by every netizens via the photo sharing phenomena.

If you thought only landmarks could be tagged, think again! Armed by an iPhone, you could be in a position to tag not just locations but people too. Tagging never was so easy before.

iPhone not just stops there but does something which was unthinkable some years back. This mobile machine gives you image-based recognition.

Imagine, you are traveling to a new country and the moment you take iPhone towards a building, immediately the information regarding the place you are in gets sent on to your mobile.

Plastic money - no more!

Credit cards would soon get transferred from your wallet to your mobile handsets. A click on your mobile handset would communicate the transaction with the cash register present in the shop and the security for the transaction would be taken care by biometrics.

iPhone looks to make your transactions in a digital format and not on paper anymore.

Soon, business card would be a thing of the past. With the LinkedIns of the world getting more prominent, the eon of digital business cards could be in thanks to iPhone.



Updated medical records

One of the applications that could hearten millions under the sun could be having your medical records available on your cell phone. This could make things simpler and easier for the doctors to comprehend and offer timely medication to the patient, especially in emergency.

While everyone in the Indian sub-continent has been reading tirelessly on this futuristic machine for the last one and half years, it would just be a few more months before India picks up its calls on iPhone and croons ‘Hello!’