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Unofficial iPhone 5 in China Costs as Much as $1,700

One scalper standing outside the entrance quoted a steep price of RMB 10,800 ($1,714) for a 16GB iPhone 5 brought in from Hong Kong over the weekend. When asked if he’d sold many devices at that rate, he said customers had bought two on Sunday and one on Monday morning.

$1700 still seems like a good deal when you consider the case of these 4 customers from Gujarat, India who “pre-ordered” the phone at whopping $2265 (Rs. 1,21,000).

BGR: iPhone 5 will be sold exclusively by Apple in India

Starting with the iPhone 3G, Apple’s iPhone has always been sold by the carriers in India. Since there’s no subsidized phones in India, the carriers have always sold the phone at full price and have clubbed special plans to go along. This is going to change when the iPhone 5 goes on sale in India, says BGR India’s Rajat Agrawal:

Apple’s Indian carrier partners Aircel and Airtel won’t sell the iPhone 5 in India this year. Instead, Apple will take over the distribution process for the iPhone 5 as well as the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, multiple sources have confirmed to BGR India. Apple India has appointed Ingram Micro and Redington for distributing iPhones and has already ramped up its sales team to prepare for the iPhone 5 launch.

While I’d known for a few weeks now that Apple would be selling the new iPhone directly in India, I did not have any info that this was going to be exclusive. I don’t think this’ll have a major impact on the price, considering the Rupee is already very weak against the US Dollar. However, this at least means a much better retail experience when buying the iPhone 5.

On the Nano SIMs that the carriers will be offering, Rajat says:

The Nano SIM card package will also include adapters to convert it to a Micro SIM or a regular SIM to ensure the user is able to use it with other phones too.

This is good news too. I often have to swap the SIM when I get phones for review, so this means I won’t have to grab some adapters off eBay.

Now if only Apple also introduced the online Apple Store here.

Pogo Connect — Pressure Sensitive Bluetooth Stylus

A new stylus from Ten One Design that features over a hundred pressure levels and works via Bluetooth 4.0. You need special compatible apps to use all the pressure sensitive levels it boasts, and is said to come with normal AAA battery that “lasts for months”.

I bought Ten One Design’s Pogo Sketch stylus and unfortunately it turned out to be a flimsy, low quality product. The Pogo Connect seems interesting, but I’ll wait for the reviews before ordering one. It opens up for Pre-orders on October 1st, 2012 at $80.

Apple’s Yerba Buena Banner Shows Stretched iOS Icons

I don’t know if this was really meant to hint at a taller iPhone, but wow! Someone sure has a lot of time on his hands to have found this.

Stills from ‘The Hobbit’

Reddit user Carninator has put together this album of some stills from Peter Jackson’s upcoming epic production ‘The Hobbit’.

Bilbo looks perfect in these and to say that I’m very excited would still be understating it.