Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

The rumors are going wild, and I can understand. The latest is coming from Cult of Mac and I’d like to add a few points.

The iPhone sells here in Germany for 99 EURs. Yes. 99 EURs. It’s the small version and only with the big contract (89 EURs a month, 2 years fixed) but that’s the price. The new phone will surely have 3G, which means UMTS and as it is a new phone it will have HSDPA, which is like improved UMTS. There are already rumors of speeds of 40 mbits/s and this is actually nothing tooo special either. It’s called HSDP+ and the standard just gets to that speed. Of course there are not many if any phone out yet with that chip, but more importantly, there is no single network I know of that supports those speeds yet. I seriously doubt that AT&T will have a full HSDP+ upgrade, but we will see what happens there.

GPS is probably just something you put in there because you can, batteries always get better so that should have better performance too. With memory becoming cheaper that will increase too. Ok, understood.

Now to the price. I doubt the price will change but a large problem is that in the US you can just buy the iPhone and then still “need” a contract with AT&T. Giving a big subsidy here is something that will most likely get AT&T a lot bigger of a share of the full iPhones out there because not so many will be jail-braked. Here in Germany we already have subsidies and it might be that they are pushing those higher, meaning that also the big iPhone will get some subsidies. Currently only the small one has them, probably because it doesn’t sell so well. With the new one coming out, and contracts being around 90 EURs a month, I see no problem with T-Mobile giving a 300-500 EUR extra. Might be that the 200 pounds/eurs/dollars is for a small version though. The networks know the value of an iPhone user now, so they will do their best to get them.

So all the rumors seem likely I have to say. I just wish they fully open it up and let you use the phone in any network.

I ranted about the iphone a litte bit in the last few days. While I have to stand corrected about the speaker problem, which is not a problem, there are still some things that just do not make the phone the perfect phone for me. I still want one obviously, but … I … can … keep … myself from buying one. Especially as the roaming charges would be huge living in Germany There are rumors that a 3G version will come out for Europe and if they add a bluetooth modem capability, then I am starting to be sold.

The biggest new that came in now is that has a cost of $265 per 8GB iPhone. The 8GB version sells for $599. As Bloomberg is reporting they are also sold out in most Apple stores and almost all AT&T stores. The phone sold higher numbers in the first 3 days than the Motorola Razr (of course that only took of later) in the first month. Not bad ey? Now add one simple thing. You get a 2 year contract with the phone because it is subsidized by AT&T. I do not know how much but would presume $150-300, maybe even more. With the contract prices being high, I can even see them adding $400 to the deal. Add a few royalties Apple needs to pay to have the phone at $350 and they still make well over 50% margin. Bloomberg actually says over 55%. If they don’t need too much royalties it might even be a 70/30 split.

The thing is that the first adopters will buy it no matter what. It will be interesting to see if the run on the phone keeps up. The first few days/weeks are always good for Apple. Let’s see how it goes. I for one am happy about my Apple stock

Update:  Paul has a great link to a very short review:

 Looking at the iPhone as an alpha, it’s a heck of a feat. Gorgeous. Groundbreaking. Full of promise and a lot of delivery. Unfortunately, we’re paying for a full-release version.

I have to admit, the iPhone from Apple is an amazing system. But when listening to the Hype Master it is sure to just make you drool. Obviously this is his goal but you will have to try to look through the fog to find out what this phone really does for you. By now, I found some problems with it that are important to keep in mind.

1. No UMTS: Ok people, this is no revolution. I now have a smaller Nokia E70 in my pocket, with UMTS, WiFi, fold-out Keyboard, full eMail client, the works. Doesn’t possibly look so cool but full featured and fully syncing (also over the air and not only with the Mac) and with a memory card slot that currently holds 2GB. I have a mobile podcast client on there that gets me the newest TWiT whenever it is available. The power in this is UMTS! I have a UMTS flatrate and hence am always online. When I am no the train, or in a pub, or at a conference, UMTS is very good to have and it is way faster than EDGE. EDGE never was really 3G, it’s just at the edge of being 3G. UMTS is 3G.
2. No VoIP: The Nokia has a VoIP client and there at least seems to be a Skype client in development. I didn’t hear anything about VoIP in this system. Especially as they are working together with Cingular so closely, with Cingular possibly paying a large part of the fee, I doubt that we will see VoIP anytime soon.

3. OS X: Sure, nice, but as Scot said, where is the SDK? I surely can’t just move my app over. So make sure to understand this correctly. It is _based_ on OS X. Update: No 3rd Party apps will be possible.
4. Visual Keypad: Amazing, this is exactly what the PC did. This is why we all have touchscreen keyboards and PCs. Because tactile feedback sucks big time. NOT! They needed this because they didn’t have place for a keyboard. Smartphones have configurable buttons.
5. Visual Voice Mail: This only works with Cingular. The voice mails are on the network, and are navigated via pressing the right keys. They needed to work together with Cingular to make this work and it will not work with any other carrier. So really, this is great, but it is to be seen whether they will make it work at any carrier or if it will always be locked in on the carrier. I for one will not switch from Base at the moment.
6. Safari: Safari is not the best web browser in the world and I do have a pretty decent browser on my Nokia, ok, also based on the Safari engine. And I do have a special Google Maps app and I do have a special GMail client.

7. IMAP eMail: I have IMAP. IMAP is not push like Blackberry!!! Blackberry means you are not always online and for IMAP push you will have to be always online. I will have to take a closer look at what else Yahoo! does but I do doubt it is Blackberry level.

8. 2 Mega Pixel Camera: A well, good, but I do have 3 Mega Pixels and a new Nokia has 5 Mega Pixels. I also didn’t see video recording or Shozu to automatically Moblog

9. Kill app phone calls: Did you watch closely? Did you see where the microphone is? At the bottom. Good. Did you see where the speaker is? At the bottom. WHAT? Do I listen with my chin? So this is a phone you will have to use with headphones.

All in all, still a great device but I am not sure it’s a phone, which might not be bad.

Update: See comments for the fact that there is another speaker at the top of the phone it seems.