India is gearing up for the 5th generation Apple iPhone and while rumors are all over the town of a 25th november release, we are now seeing Aircel advertising that pre-orders would begin tomorrow i.e. 18th November. Be sure, no word on pricing or availability officially yet. Our sources are hinting Rs 35000 – 40,000 range and then we already heard about the iPhone 4 refurbished version coming to India (though our source takes that with a pinch of salt).
The Apple iPhone 4S runs on 512MB RAM, a Dual-Core A5 processor and features an awesome 8MP camera. The halmark feature of the device is a voice assistant called Siri. Siri was acquired by Apple in 2010 and lately we are also hearing rumors of Siri making it to India with an upgrade supporting the desi accent 🙂 Apple is also battling a battery drain issue in iOS 5 that we expect to be resolved with an OTA update before the India launch.
The iPhone 4S launched in US just over a month back and this is the fastest Apple has got its phone offering to India. The iPhone 4 came to India after almost 9 months of international presence, India sure has graduated in Apple’s priority. Even the iPad 2 launched within 2 months of a US release.
Apple started selling the iPhone 3G back in 2008 with Vodafone and Airtel being the official carriers, since the iPhone 4 only Airtel and Aircel are selling the iPhone in India and clearly Aircel is the carrier pushing it hard. Aircel had a reverse subsidy running for the iPhone 4 and we wonder if the same would be repeated for iPhone 4S? The iPhone 4S comes at a time when Nokia is reinventing itself adopting Windows Phone in a partnership with Microsoft. The Lumia 800 has been recently announced for India and Apple sure is stealing some of Nokia’s thunder by launching the iPhone 4S before the Lumia 800 / 710 goes on sale.