iPhone 5 launched in India

The world’s most-anticipated smartphone, the iPhone 5, was launched in India on Friday to grand customer reception, with its prohibitive price-tag hardly deterring die hard Apple fans. The iPhone5 is available in three memory sizes — 16 GB, 32 GB and 64GB — priced in inida at rs 45,500, 52,500 and Rs. 59,500, respectively.

Prebooked  150,000 Apple iphones units over the past one month across India speaks volumes about the enthusiasm for its latest product.

The iPhone 5 has a 4-inch retina display and is around 20% lighter than the previous version.

“We had ordered 20,000 units of iPhone5 and all these will go to customers who have prebooked,” an Apple store manager said. He added that from Sunday onwards, the iPhone5 would be available off the shelf.

This time, the Apple phone is not being bundled with a telecom service offer and is available across retail stores.

iPhone 5 of Verizon boasts 650K sales

Verizon's iPhone sales are reportedly up thanks to growing iPhone 5 sales and cheaper iPhone 4S and 4 which are still able to attract decent customers.

Verizon, the second major wireless carriers to offer the iPhone in United States, is on the verge of beating AT&T’s. As reported by All Things D, sales of iPhone under the banner of Verizon is blooming with growing numbers compared to its 2011 posting.

For the third quarter of this year, Verizon reportedly sold 3.1 million iPhones and 650,000 were iPhone 5 with unlocked SIM slot out of the box. Unconfirmed reports from other sites say the Verizon iPhone 5′s unlocked SIM slot helped a lot because some customers who purchased the device are from other wireless carriers or loyal to other prepaid or postpaid carrier (T-Mobile USA customers are worth noting).

Apart from the new iPhone 5, customers of Verizon Wireless also purchased phones from older iPhone lineup. ATD estimates that the remaining 2.5 million iPhones activated by the largest LTE carrier in America were older models like dual-core processor-equipped iPhone 4S and the years-old iPhone 4.

Verizon and the two other partner carriers of Apple, Sprint and AT&T, are set to add more iPhone customers before the end of this year courtesy of the Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping rush and the growing demand for touchscreen smartphones.

The iPhone 5 is the first Apple smartphone with LTE or Long Term Evolution and also the first to include a 4-inch Retina touchscreen display. Apple’s iPhone 5 is also the thinnest and the lightest so far. The device is also equipped with an improved 8-megapixel camera, front-facing HD Facetime camera and the first to ship with iOS 6 mobile operating system out of the box.

Apple compares the iPad mini to Google’s Nexus 7(Ipad mini vs Nexus 7)

During the announcement of all new Apple iPad Mini they also took out time to take a few shots at Google’s extremely popular Nexus 7. As we already know, the iPad mini is thinner, lighter, and comes with a 7.9-inch display. Few talking points about Apple’s ipad mini vs Nexus 7 are written below.

While we can’t actually go and compare everything until we get our own hands-on them. Apple’s already quickly jumping at the heels of Google by flaunting ipad mini's larger display, smaller bezels, thinner and more durable aluminum design and more. While the resolution is only the same as the iPad 2, being 1024 x 768, we still get a display that looks gorgeous. 

As you see above, they were quick to mention the bezel. Showing the iPad mini has a much smaller bezel while still having a larger display and staying thinner. Pretty impressive right? The image above shows Google’s Nexus 7 without the on-screen keys, without the browser tabs up top, and as an end result you get a much smaller display for actually viewing and enjoying HD content. From browsing the web, enjoying movies, playing games and more the iPad mini and its 7.9-inch display just does more — according to Apple.

 Apple’s new iPad mini comes with an A5 dual-core processor, an HD display, iOS 6, and of course 4G LTE as well. For full details you’ll want to check out our iPad mini announcement post. Starting at just $329 for the 16GB WiFi model, it still costs more than Google’s Nexus 7. Stay tuned for more details and hands-on coming soon!

Google Android 4.1 Jelly Bean vs Apple iOS6

Both are great and both are loved by their fans. Here's the comparison between Apple iOS 6 and Android Jelly Bean features-

On all the tech forums everybody's boasting about their favourite Operating systems, which makes it a little bit difficult to differentiate between them. 

A phone's OS is built to use nifty things like an accelerometer, proximity sensor, touch screen, and so on which sometimes seem magical. I still remember blowing on one end of an iPhone and watching with disbelief as the image of a balloon on the screen inflate, as if I had actually pushed air into it. And that was the first generation of the iPhone. The OSes that you get today are greatly more powerful, more polished and much faster.

Here is a side by side comparison of two of the best OS available in the market - Android Jelly Bean and iOS 6.

Let’s begin with Maps, as that has been in the news already.

Jelly Bean wins this hands down. Flyover feature in iOS 6 looks cute, but is really not very useful and Google Maps Street View beats this by a big margin. The turn by turn navigation in Google Maps is much more accurate, and the Google Maps is more filled out.

Notifications
While Apple has introduced a bunch of features in iOS 6, it is still mostly catching up with Android. Jelly Bean lets you expand your notification with a two finger gesture, without having to jump into an app. You can also dismiss single notification, and then there is extended mail notification. iOS 6 has added the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter from notification itself, but that still does not beat the more useful Jelly Bean.

Mail and Browsing
iOS 6 updated the mail app. Now you can have an VIP folder, flag emails and attach photos and videos to your mails. But then Jelly Bean has it too. Both Safari and Chrome are great browsers, and it is difficult to pick a winner here.

Speed and Smoothness, Ease of Use
Prior to Jelly Bean, iOS was the smoothest OS around. iOS was fast, smooth, powerful and very easy to use. iOS 6 - it continues to be all those things, but with Jelly Bean Android caught up. Prior to Jelly Bean, Android used to be jaggy, laggy and somewhat slow. Jelly Bean introduced Project Butter as a highlight feature. The aim of Project Butter is to make the Android smoother, faster, and less jaggy which it does by fixing 60 fps as the default frame rate across the OS. And guess what? It works! Every reviewer has praised Jelly Bean for how fast and smooth it is.

When it comes to ease of use, iOS still reigns supreme. While Jelly Bean does not need a rocket scientist, it does require some getting used to. It is widely recognized as the more powerful, and more customizable OS, but this also means you have to dig into settings to enable features. It still remains a nerds wet dream, and iOS the preferred OS for those not inclined to go mucking around the settings menu.

UI and Looks
iOS has always looked great, and with each iteration Apple has changed the looks subtly – very subtly – to look better. With the introduction of Retina Display it looks even better. The same can’t be said for Android. Early versions of the OS, and we are talking about all those versions that came before Ice Cream Sandwich, Android did not look like a unified OS, and it lagged behind in sheer physical beauty. But then around came Ice Cream Sandwich and that problem was fixed (more or less). Google did not change the look in Jelly Bean, possibly because it is already quite good. What the late change with Ice Cream Sandwich means however, is that the latest version still has a fresh look, while iOS has essentially retained the same look since 2007, and therefore now looks a little boring.

Voice Integration
Siri is more fun, and in iOS 6, much more useful. Now you can get sports data, movie listings, and book restaurants by simply telling Siri to do so. She can also launch third party apps, a feature that was much requested when Siri was launched with the last iteration of the iPhone. And yes, she still tells you jokes and talks to you. Google Now on the other hand is faster, provides ambient information (by getting to know you; including your residence, search history, your calendar appointments, etc, it gives you helpful information when it thinks you may require it), a more human like voice, dictation even works offline, and is reportedly faster than Siri (though by a tiny fraction of a second). Which one to like? It depends. If you want your phone to fill up the huge void you find within you, go for Siri, but if you are practical minded, efficiency driven sort, Google Now is best for you.

In the end they are both great systems, though if you have the patience to do some tweaking, Jelly Bean would probably serve you better. After all, it has Google Now, and more importantly Google Maps.