See the bottom of the image, or click the image to view it on Flickr. I’m the guy fiddling with Sathya’s lappy.

Thanks to Mixdev.

According to the Financial Express, SK Chakravarty BSNL will be launching the iPhone along with the 3G network in December. “On September 30, we will have a meeting of the circle heads where we may take a decision on making iPhones available to our consumers,” said Chakravarty.

Back in June, we all saw the Vodafone iPhone advertisement on the front page of the TOI, and Airtel announce pre-booking the very next day. The BSNL launch is something we never expected. Lets hope they can at least have the price lower than their competitors. Edit: Hope?! Why am I even bothered about buying a phone that I _know_ lacks features and will be overpriced?

The leak was identified to a store in France, where the album was released nearly two weeks ahead of the scheduled release. [link]

Check out a photo posted by one of those fans lucky enough to have gotten their hands on the new album.

Death Magnetic CD Image

Death Magnetic track listing:

1. That Was Just Your Life
2. The End Of The Line
3. Broken, Beat & Scarred
4. The Day That Never Comes
5. All Nightmare Long
6. Cyanide
7. The Unforgiven III
8. The Judas Kiss
9. Suicide & Redemption
10. My Apocalypse

Cyanide has been available on Metallica.com for listening from some time now, but of course, the leaked album is already available on BitTorrent, and I must add, ALL of the songs are good!

Def Leppard Concert in Bangalore

WooHoo!!

Thanks to Bangalore Metblogs.

So who’s attending? Sathya and Subbu are. Are you? Say so here.

UPDATE: The concert has been cancelled. Diwakar has pointed to the official Def Leppard  news item.

According to Vodafone:

The iPhone 3G is available in 8GB and 16GB at Rs 31,000 and Rs 36,100 respectively. And as you have already pre-registered with us, you can get it before others do. All you need to do is drop in at a select Vodafone Store between August 14 and 19 and confirm your booking by paying Rs 10000 through cash or credit card.

So we were right about the price. Vodafone subscribers who pre-booked the “oh-I’m-friggin-costly” phone by SMS can collect their phone on early 22nd August.

So that puts an end to the pricing rumours of the Apple iPhone 3G in India, at least Vodafone’s price. I don’t see how Airtel could possibly keep a considerably lower price. Ridiculous? Hell yeah! From rumours on Twitter, I’ve heard that the Nokia N96 is going to be released today.

N96 is the first ever mobile device to offer a memory size of 16GB expandable to 24 GB. The 24GB (16+8) memory of the N96 can store up to 18000 songs, up to 20000 images at 5 mega pixel, up to 60 hours of video or 20 full length movies. With multifunctional media keys and a 2.8” screen, music, movies, games and more are available at the touch of a button. To make playing, watching, listening or experiencing the content even more enjoyable, the Nokia N96 features a ‘kickstand’ on the back cover that allows for hands-free viewing.

Hah! Apple, you just kicked yourself in the posterior.

Update: Apparently, the Vodafone page I linked to has been taken down.

The 8 GB version of the iPhone 3G will cost Rs. 31,000, while the 16 GB version will cost between Rs. 36,000 and Rs. 37,000.

It would be interesting to see how many would buy the much awaited (and rather highly hyped) Apple iPhone 3G. Would you buy it?

Thanks Aalaap!

A company spokesperson said Airtel subscribers can purchase the iPhone at Airtel’s Relationship Centres from August 22.

The announcement comes days after Vodafone announced that they would make the iPhone available to its subscribers from August 18th.

Sanjay Kapoor, President, Bharti Airtel mobile services, said -  “iPhone has been an iconic technological revelation of this year and Airtel has been at the forefront of innovation and customer delight in the Indian telecom sector.”

Officials however did not give details about the pricing.

Related posts:

This blog post is a summary of the trip. It is kind of lenghty, so I’m cutting it off from here for feed readers (aka “I’m only interested in the iPhone news yaar” subscribers. Absolutely no offense to you folks. I cherish you all. Really!).

The trip was sort of planned from a long time, much before my birthday, but the place we decided on was Ooty and we planned to go there by bike! After a few thoughts and some “I’ll-keel-you-if-you-go-by-bike” threats by friends and family, we decided to go to Mangalore by bus. It came down to just three of us though - Pranav, Shanks, and myself. The best part of the trip - we did it under Rs.2000 for each person. That includes traveling to and fro in the luxurious KSRTC Airavath Volvo, staying in a decent hotel, and travelling to all the below mentioned places in rickshaws, besides buying gifts worth ~Rs.300! Beat that!

Departure: 08.00 PM, 28th July; left home for Majestic. We sat in the last seat of the bus and made a HUGE ruckus. Well what did you expect? Just a bunch of excited 18yr olds after all.

Cya soon Bangalore!: 09.30 PM; Self-explanatory.

Three Noisy Little Monkeys on a bus, 12.30 AM, 29th July; The three of us were wide awake, talking (well just me, with the GF on the phone), laughing, giggling, and squirming around in our seats while every-frikkin-body in the bus were fast asleep. Heh!

Ghost Town, Hassan: 1 AM; I swear, this town did not even have a dog on the street. There was absolutely NO living soul on the roads of this small city. (And yes, I was still on the phone.)

The ghat section kept me awake through the night. Pranav was busy “gaming” on his cell phone. Only Shanks was able to catch up on some sleep.

Mangalore, 05.30 AM; Got off the bus and we were greeted by heavy rain that just came out of nowhere. I’m serious. One minute there was not a single drop, we get down, and it POURS down on our heads. We make a run for the hotel but realise it’s too far off. (There we were, 3 jack arses running around the city with huge bags on our shoulders). After some sense kicked into our heads, we stopped an auto. The auto wallah says - “Banni, Aiidhu nuuru rupaayi” (Come, 500 rupees). I SWEAR!! We’re standing there laughing our asses off at this guy who’s [supposedly] trying to rip us off. Only a couple of minutes later did we understand that he actually meant “Banni, Hadhi-muuru rupaayi” (Come, 13 rupees). Mangalore just gave us a taste of its Tulu-laced Kannada accent which we “big-city kids” had no clue about! :\

Breakfast, 9.15 AM; We had absolutely no clue where to eat, so just went to the small hotel behind our lodge. The total bill - Rs.72. That was the total amount for the THREE of us (all of us ate a LOT btw). Mangalore is frikkin cheap.

St.Aloysius Chapel, 10.15 AM; We visited the beautiful St.Aloysious Chapel.

Mangala Devi Temple, 12 Noon; Left the Chapel to visit Mangala Devi Temple (suggested by our “Oh I’m so religious” Pranav). Reached there, and it started to pour again. Mangalore is friggin weird. No warning of rain at all. And the temple was a utter waste of time. The main idol was closed off for visitors. So while our “religious head” went around the temple once, Shanks and myself were outside “guarding” our footwear from theives!

Bharath Mall, Lunch, 1 PM; Not really a great place to go for lunch, but we had to book our return tickets and since this mall was right opposite the KSRTC bus terminal, we gave it a shit shot. Nothing great, but again, Mangalore is frikkin cheap.

Pabba’s Ice Cream Parlour, 1.30 PM; Sathya had provided me with a few places to eat. Pabba was this huge ice-cream parlour (which you will NEVER find in Bangalore mind you) that was, again, priced dirt cheap compared to Bangalore (DBC anyone?). We had some of the best ice-cream YEVER! And hey, we had a stalker too!!

Somanath Beach, 3 PM; Without taking any rest we headed down to Summer Sands, a private beach. The auto-wallah forced us to go to Somanath Beach, stating that it has a better view (and it’s free, unlike Summer Sands). Hell, he was right alright. The view was simply superb! Standing on the edge of a hill 50 feet above the water and watching the sun in the distant horizon is stunning. Sadly, we left our cell phones behind (for absolutely no good reason), so no snaps of the Somanath Beach . We got wet, I cut my foot, but still had some fun while we got drenched in the rain.

A wet evening in Mangalore, 5.30 PM; Again, no rest, just a dress change and off we were to the streets of downtown Mangalore to savour some local chaat. Car Street was where we went to (thanks to Sathya again) for some Charamburi, a little Aangli Pachodi (refresh my memory Sathya), and another peanut-filled chaat (the name of which I find hard to remember). All of them had a little coconut oil in them (or as Shanks would say, an entire bottle of oil). We also had some bhajji filled with Maggi noodles! I know, WTH? (sorry, forgot the snap. Finished it off before we could take a snap. )

(PS. Bhajji is also known as Mirchi. It kinda looks like this. Now imagine that stuffed with Maggi Noodles.)

Next tweet from me comes only in the following morning. You can wonder why.

Taj Mahal, Breakfast, 10.30 AM; Had an amazing breakfast that consisted of a huge paper dosa, and the best ‘Bannana Halwa’ I’ve had.

Next tweet from me comes only in the night due to the damn network going down. But that didn’t stop us from having some fun! Read on (if you still haven’t closed the page).

Off to Kaup, 11 AM; Kaup is a small town which has a Light House, ~80 Km from Mangalore. We went ZOOMED by private bus. I can tell you that it was fun, and scary at the same time. Going on a private bus having no hydraulics, no air-conditioning, and a driver with absolutely no brains is kinda insane. The bus travelled at nothing less than 80kmph, with the speed peaking at >100 kmph most of the time. The bumpy road made for a good ass whooping. A bump, and we were literally STANDING in our seats. No kidding.

Kaup Beach & Light House, 1 PM; The town was bathed in fish stink as we left for the beach. But really, that did NOT stop us from having oodles of fun. Let the pictures speak for themselves.

That was it, we came back at around 5 PM and headed straight for the hotel. Checked out at around 8 PM, did a little gift buying for our girls, and headed to Chicken Tikka Hallal at around 8.30 PM. And our Mangalore trip came to a close.

Well, almost. We just had to have a final laugh now. The bus was scheduled to leave at 10.30 PM, and we were still having dinner at 10.25 PM. By the time we went down to the bus stand, it was 10.40 PM. Yes, we had made the *last* KSRTC Volvo to Bangalore wait *exclusively* for us!

Don’t forget to check out:

• All the pictures of the Mangalore trip on my Flickr set.
• Did I mention Nerd Boi? You have GOT to check out his pictures. He’s the new super-hero in town. Really.
• And follow me on Twitter! @9_6

3G connectivity in India?
Note the little icon on the top-left.

A screenshot of my N70’s desktop while descending the Western Ghats en route to Mangalore. Service provider is Airtel.

Update: Vaishak Suresh tells me that “if the network is set to Dual mode on your phone when there is no network, the icon defaults to 3G”.

To clarify, yes, my phone was set to Dual Mode, and there was no network. Only question is, why does it not happen while I’m in the city? Why a remote place such as the Western Ghats highway?

AirTel and Vodafone are expected to be the big players during this auction, which might also see international players like AT&T.

Five operators will initially be allowed for each circle. State-run BSNL and MTNL will get one allocation each out of the 22 telecommunications circles in the country. However, the New Delhi and Mumbai circles will only see two to three operators being allowed, Raja said.

“The number of operators can go up to 10 in the circles… when more spectrum becomes available,” Raja said, in a move boosting competition.

What 3G essentially will essentially mean for the 280 million mobile users in India is better data speeds, enhanced voice quality, video conferencing, video streaming, among other services that need high-speed data connectivity. It would also decongest the networks allowing for lesser call-drops.

What it means for the Apple iPhone users? You can now make complete usage of those apps that are bundled with the iPhone 3G. Imagine streaming videos off YouTube without lag on your iPhones. Sounds good? Let the wait begin.

[Thanks Abhishek]