Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

You have to have Love for Geeks, partly because they love Apple and hence love the iPhone. Bill Liao from Xing is one of those people and now he posted about having his iPhone here in Europe. Having made some money down the line, surely helps to cover the cost of constant roaming, but hey, I still have to thank him.

For some time, one of the main features I wanted from Xing was an export of all my contacts as a vCard to import into the Apple Address Book. Now Bill got his iPhone and wanted his contacts on there, hence, diverted a few development resources and now in your Address list on Xing you have a small little button that says “mobile export (iPhone) …”. What that thing does is export a vCard of all your contacts, which again, easily imports to my address book. 312 Contacts imported, 149 duplicates will be updates. Kick ass! Thanks Bill for getting an iPhone

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.

This is really what the New York Times has done. As a short disclosure, I do own Apple stock, and I do want an iPhone, and I do know that it makes no sense whatsoever (and hence will likely not buy one) because there are many key things that the thing is missing. Here are a few more things after having posted two previous items.

Here we go, and I only include those that I think are real problems, above and beyond my last point.

1. the iPhones 25 ring tones are your only choice. It’s a full MP3 player and you can’t use the MP3s as ring tone. Ehhh… oook.
2. You cannot use standard headphone as a small plastic modling prevents headphone plugs from seating correct. Thank god there will be adapters to spend your money on.
3. the bluetooth only works with hands-free devices like Bluetooth Headsets or freespeak stuff for your car. No keyboard, no computer. WHAT? Yes, the phone cannot act as wireless modem for your laptop. But we already know that EDGE is too slow anyway.
4. Songs, Files, Calendar, Contacts, Software Updates … all go through the USB charging cradle. Thank god your can use the phone while in the cradle, not as a modem it seems, not at your head (as the speaker is at the bottom) and not with your favorite headset as it doesn’t fit.
5. You cannot make a phone call when using the EDGE network … I hope it rings at least.
   
6. ToDo items do not show up on the iPhone, Notes from the Phone not on your PC.
7. They are still tapping with one index finger after 2 weeks and not with two thumbs. 

I admit, this might still be a success, but somehow, it’s not that great a product than the previous ones. I mean the iPod was not only designed very well but it was also a wonderful package better than anything else out there in terms of hard disk players. The iPhone is well designed, has a few good features, but some things that are just need good. Looking forward to seeing where this moves. The first adopters will buy it anyway, possibly even use it, and the real question comes how many they sell until end Q3 and Q4 and what the next update looks like. And Apple, sometimes you need to let the user decide. Yes 3G drains the battery some more but that’s my choice.

If you really want to know what the iPhone does, I suggest taking a look at the Guided Tour. There is only one tiny bit missing from the tour. They talk about it but they don’t mention the result. The thing is that both microphone and speaker are at the bottom of the phone! I already mentioned it in my previous post some time ago. To illustrate the point further, I took my Nokia N700 to show you how to hold the iPhone when doing calls.

Seems a tiny bit dorky. Just search for Nokia NGage side talking on Google Images to get more of an idea.

Update: I stand corrected. There seems to be another speaker at the top of the phone.

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.