It was fun when I was at Hanover's computer fair CeBIT this week, and saw how German Chancellor Angela Merkel stopped by the booth of Sony Ericsson. Again she proved great repartee. With few words she made the crowd crack up laughing and the suit wearers of Sony Ericsson got long faces. Axel Kettenring, General Manager of Sony Ericsson Germany, proudly introduced the new top model Xperia X1, allegedly "a seamless blend of mobile web communication and multimedia entertainment within a distinctive design". That's what at least the press release in February said. But when our Chancellor held the touchscreen mobile phone in her hand, she only said: "Ah, like the iPhone". And again Apple could be happy for free advertising.

German Chancellor sees no difference to the iPhone

Kettenring was so puzzled, he could only say that the Xperia X1 is also great for phone calls and short messages. But you don't need a $1140 smartphone for that, and our passionate SMS writer heading of the state of Germany knows that. With pleasure she asked next: "And where do you produce?", wherupon Kettenring proudly replied "everywhere". After one second to take a breath he had to add "but in Germany" which got him a grim look from Mrs Merkel. The globalized company produces its handsets only in distant countries like Malaysia, Japan, and China.

The Chancellor's round tour over CeBIT is always a media highlight of the world's biggest electronics fair. Big hordes of photographers, TV crews and reporters followed the head of state through the exhibition halls. The eleven companies where Merkel stopped over were honored to receive her. Among them were pack leaders like Deutsche Telekom, IBM and Microsoft as well as smaller companies like Funkwerk Dabendorf or Komsa.

Also network operator Vodafone had to put up with Merkel's criticism. Germany CEO Friedrich Joussen actually wanted to proudly present a new picture search engine for mobile phones. Instead of entering a search term, you shoot a picture with the camera phone and load it on a server. In response you get information about the depicted buildings or the person photographed. With images of the Berlin Cathedral it worked flawless at CeBIT. But not with a mobile photo of Angela Merkel. "Your sought after motive is not yet in the Otello database", the Chancellor read from the display. "That's a serious void, I think", she added. Although Friedrich Joussen could play down the embarrassing situation with a laugh, he later must have bawled out his employees heavily.

Labels: Apple, iPhone, Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone

                                      

Ringfree is a great service which let's you use whichever VoIP provider for callthrough from the iPhone. I explained it some days ago, but I still said:

RingFree is free in the first month, then it costs $30/year.

That barrier is going to fall now. Ringfree confirmed the VoIP Weblog that they are switching to a free model.

Labels: Callthrough, iPhone, Ringfree, VoIP

                                      

In the last weeks I was displeased with the state of VoIP on mobile handsets. Wifi coverage is spotty and callback services like Jajah require two phone calls at the same time, which makes them too expensive for penny pinchers like me. That's why I am a fan of callthrough applications which involve only one call leg. The call goes to a local number where a server converts it into a VoIP call. But unfortunately this needs numerous key strokes in addition to the destination number and makes callthrough a cumbersome activity.

Software like MobileTalk from Packet8 would help, but it is bound to just one VoIP provider and could be done much better. Unfortunately the underlying software from Mobilemax gets distributed only to companies and not to end users. So people have to wait until their VoIP provider of choice implements it.

But salvation is near, at least for iPhone users: RingFree let's you use every VoIP provider or even your own Asterisk / SIP server for outbound calls on Apple's "Invention of the year 2007" (according to Time Magazine). iPhone Atlas has the story:

Here, in a nutshell, is how the app works: A user registers with RingFree, entering his iPhone number and providing some other information. The user is then prompted to call a country-local number to confirm their information by entering a PIN. Once logged into the site, the user selects from a list of pre-defined VoIP providers (including VoicePulse, Gizmo Project, PhoneGnome and others) or defines his own by entering a proxy address, username and password.

After selecting or defining a provider, the user can access the Web app’s keypad, which looks something like the iPhone’s standard dialer, selects the preferred VoIP provider from a menu, and hits “Call.” The call sends a bit of JavaScript over EDGE to retrieve a local number from the VoIP provider, which the user is prompted to dial with the iPhone’s native phone application. When this number is dialed, the VoIP provider is triggered to dial the number entered in the Web app, and the call goes through.

RingFree is basically a website with a virtual dialer. It is linked to VoIP providers of choice and uses standard voice minutes to make VoIP calls. Therefore it doesn’t require any hacking or jailbreaking, nor does it require the presence of a WiFi network. Only a small amount of data is transferred over the EDGE network to signalize the call. The voice quality is reportedly good, and calls go through without too much delay so that a commentator at IntoMobile states:

Thank you for this. This is the most useful iPhone application yet. I set it up in less than 2 minutes and I made a call to Ireland using Gizmo Project. Sweet and simple. I am happy and would be jumping up and down with joy if it let me call Skypers.

That's exactly what I was looking for. RingFree is free in the first month, then it costs $30/year. You can also call Google Talk, Yahoo or MSN contacts from the iPhone. I wonder when someone will launch a similar service for other platforms, such as Symbian. It could be a great new feature for Voxalot, whose mobile callback I often use with my own VoIP providers. It costs €0.01 of data or less to establish the call, but still it demands two simultaneous phone calls.

Labels: Apple, Asterisk, Callthrough, EDGE, Gizmo Project, Google Talk, iPhone, Jajah, Mobile, Mobilemax, Mobiletalk, MSN messenger, Packet8, PhoneGnome, Ringfree, SIP, Skype, VoIP, Voxalot, Yahoo

                                      

Finally I could get my hands on the Apple iPhone and check it out for one day. I must say that I am not that overly impressed like others commentators. The iPhone is a real multimedia machine, a true Apple product: fancy, with sharp pictures and fat sound. But it's definitely no Jesus phone. It does some things that I am really missing on my smartphone, like seeing every Youtube film. But the iPhone also full of small bitchinesses, like a spoiled starlet.

Youtube lies behind the goggle box

To see Youtube I just tip on the icon with the old TV set and it starts directly. Unlike other smartphones the iPhone delivers the entire Youtube on the screen, not just some handpicked films, like the mobile version for Symbian does. That's great because Youtube is Television 2.0 where people decide for themselves what they wants to see. The editorial preselection on my Nokia smartphone is always wrong with it's recomendations.

On the iPhone I just enter my search word and as result I get as much films like on my desktop PC. The only problem is that the virtual keys on the touchscreen are much too small, which makes me commit many typing errors. The picture quality is great, due to the high resolution display with 160 dots per inch. To fast-forward the movie or to stop it I just have to grab on the display to make the necessary buttons appear. I did that until the fat fingers on the screen seriously inhibited my Youtube pleasure and I had to clean. The landscape format gives you a real TV feeling, especially if you like cartoons. But I don't understand why the picture stayed in landscape mode when I put the phone upright. I love the iPhone feature which makes the entire screen turn when you move the phone in this direction.



Wifi is convenient but uncomfortable

However it's indispensable to have fast Wifi internet access for Youtube. With EDGE I had to wait eternally even for websites, when I played around with the iPhone in the Berlin subway. On my 3G smartphone I am used to read the latest news there without any problems.

Of course it's great that the iPhone automatically logs into every Wifi network that it has used before. But setting up a new hotspot is horrible. The iPhone finds the network's name very fast, but then follows the input of the password which in my case consist of lower case letters, uppercase and numbers. On the damned iPhone I could only choose between uppercase an numbers. A friend of mine had the same problem when he checked the iPhone at home. The arrow key for uppercase and lower case has no effect. I just couldn't enter any lower case letters. To not go entirely nuts, I finally had to chang my Wifi password so that it consisted only of numbers. A passnumber, so to say, which I could enter easily. But that's not very safe. That's why I chose a new Wifi password directly after the iPhone test.

Cool Cover Flow

The iPhone obviously wasn't made for security savvy techno geeks, but for design fans. They will surely love such cool effects like the cover flow: Turn the iPhone into landscape format, while listening to the music, and wipe over the shown record cover. It makes the covers of all stored songs rotate until your next favourite tune appears. Looks really fancy and works better than Windows Vista, where such graphical effects often bring the entire computer to its knees. When I change from cover view to list view, the cover rotates and disappears in the backgroung. Looks quite spacy.

Fat sound, but only for expensive earphones

Also the sound of the iPhone is great with Apple's small white earphones. It's cristal clear and banged my eardrum quite hefty when I pumped up the volume too much. Too bad that these white squits always fall out off my ears and I cannot use my own earphones with the iPhone. As soon as I connect them the entire iPhone goes silent. The phone doesn't work with every earphone because Apple moved the plug more inside the device. I already have great headphones from Philips which make me look like a DJ. They have cost only 3 Euros in a department store, cover my entire ear and have a great sound too. When they get broken I will buy new ones. That happens every few months because the cables are thin, also the iPhone's. Only for the iPhone squits it's really expensive to buy new ones: at least 40 Euros at Gravis, Germany's biggest Apple dealer.

iPod and iTunes are not the same on the iPhone

To listen to the music the iPhone has two buttons which have similar names but do different things: iTunes and iPod. The first one is to buy music and the second is to listen. The iPod button hides all the functionalities we already know from the iPod MP3 player: playlist,album, genre, artist and all that stuff. Nothing has changed and that's OK since I don't have to learn anything new.

The easiest way is to use the iPhone like an iPod: organize everything beforehand in iTunes and then just synchronize it with the iPhone. But before I could to that, I had to update the iTunes software again. Nearly every week it asks me to do so.The 63 MB download and the installation took nearly half an hour this time. Again it was very important to switch off the automatic synchronization in iTunes, before plugging in the iPhone, and to use the cell phone as an external hard disk. If not, all the music had disappeared that my friends had bought and downloaded before. The laptop computer had it just overwritten.

iTunes also works wirelessly

I also could have avoided the synchronization process, because iTunes works nearly completely as a standalone application on the iPhone. But only nearly completely. I could have searched through the entire Apple music store from the iPhone and I could have bought songs over Wifi or the EDGE mobile phone network with just one click. The last used iTunes ID comes as a preset, you just have to enter the password to finish the purchase.

But why of all things the free podcasts cannot be downloaded with the mobile iTunes version? They are my favourite feature. Unlike in the PC version you just get albums and titles for sale as search results. It would be so great to download the latest TV newscast over the air to the iPhone and see it on my way. At home I never would have time anyway.

At the end I was really happy when I could download my favourite podcast to a laptop computer and synchronize it with the iPhone: Dance Department, number 112. One hour of finest electronic dance music. Every week another world famous DJ spins the turntables. This week it's Ferry Corsten who also did great remixes for Moby and U2. The download is free of course. My favourite iPhone button is located at the bottom right of iTunes. It's name is "Further". When I touch, it all the content comes in neatly ordered: albums, audio books, compilations, composers, genres and also podcasts. That way I can find my favourite programs easily.

But I had to look for this button quite a long time.

Labels: 3G, Apple, EDGE, iPhone, Mobile, Smartphone, Youtube

                                      

Now that's great news: Just two days after that Om Malik and his fellow VoIP blogger James Seng from Singapore declared that there is no excitement in VoIP anymore comes the next breakthrough. The UK company Truphone is the first to bring VoIP to Apple's iPhone. They showcased it yesterday at the startup fair DEMO. The Launchpad for Emerging Technology in San Diego. Blognation USA has a comprehensive report:

To say the application isn’t yet ready for prime time would be a pretty major understatement as it currently requires the use of terminal on the iPhone to tell the iPhone to use its on-board SIP stack to place the call over WiFi instead of via the SIM card. To use the terminal application, in turn requires that you first Jailbreak the phone using an application like iBrickr or iFuntastic. This is not an application for the inexperienced or the faint of heart.

That will all change however as the company tells me that it intends to finish development on the application which will include simplifying the activation and adding seamless switching back and forth between VoIP when open WiFi is available and the use of the SIM card when out of WiFi range. It is important to note that it is NOT NECESSARY to break the SIM lock to use TruPhone’s iPhone VoIP application.

Voip User's Dean Elwood is glad "to see that Truphone got an industry first in getting VoIP onto Apples latest device - a lot of hard work has gone into that. Good work Team Truphone". I couldn't have said it better. Kudos come also from all over the world and Andy Abramson, acknowledged VoIP blogger and Truphone PR consultant, even made a video.

Meanwhile the first impatient Truphone fans already ask where to sign up with their iPhones. Until now Truphone worked only on Nokia's E and N series. But at their stand at DEMO Truphone showed versions also working on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, the new HP Smartphone running Windows 6.0 and another Windows Mobile device that goes by various names like the DASH, reports Andy Abramson.

In fact TC40 and DEMO made VoIP fans quite happy these days with the launches of Maxrom and the Tru(i)phone. I hope that Truphone can soon make a full fledged iPhone application out of their demoed command line tinkering. And hopefully they consider to extend their free calls offer to iPhone users for a longer time, like they do to the Nokia users yet for months now. This would spice up their PR strategy and assure to be mentioned in media all over the world. One has to show off as long as one is sexy! Soon other companies will follow to bring their VoIP to the iPhone. The Apple factor is always a great tool to get some media attention.

After all the Nokia E and N series users are few because of the high price tag. But the iPhone is a mass product with very much sex appeal. (Although it isn't cheaper than the Nokias it makes people clutch stacks of twenties until after midnight in Apples 24 hour store in New York's Fifth Avenue.) Also I imagine that Truphone can soon bring VoIP to the iPod touch. It already works on Sony's Playstation Portable and the Touch seems to be a mere iPhone without GSM.

UPDATE:

The Truphone press office has more information on the iPhone, also about a new Facebook application from Truphone.

Labels: Apple, Facebook, iPhone, Maxroam, Playstation Portable, Truphone, VoIP

                                      

Now it's nearly a week since Cubic Telecom presented their new product Maxroam at TechCrunch 40 (TC40), but still they don't reveal their real prices which should be found here. Still Maxroam says "Rates published soon" while Cubic Telecom's website consists only of a place holder and former price examples have dissappeared.

Sure, they claim that GSM calls are up to 80 per cent cheaper than the roaming rates offered by existing mobile service providers. But that's a usual claim which you can also hear from competing companies such as United Mobile. I would like to compare the prices by myself.

At least Alec Saunders got some numbers from Cubic Telecom's CEO Pat Phelan when they talked one day after TC40:

Calls from one Cubic subscriber to another are free when used in a hotspot. They also come with a MaxRoam SIM with 5 euros of credit. That's the kicker, frankly. The MaxRoam LD rates will make anyone turn their head sharply… for instance, calls in Canada cost .0063 euros. In the US, .0131 euros. In the UK… .011 euros. In addition, you can get a local number wherever you're going, so that when you travel others can call you cheaply as well.

Sounds great, but for which kind of calls do these costs apply? I guess that's just the WiFI rates since the San Francisco Chronicle writes:

You just slip the MAXRoam SIM into your unlocked GSM phone when you travel and then when you make phone calls abroad, it comes out to about 15 cents per minute, thanks to global roaming agreements that Cubic has worked out with operators around the world.

15 Cent is a great price, whether in euro or in dollar, and undercuts for instance United Mobile with its funny mobile numbers from Liechtenstein or Jersey by nearly 50 per cent. Only I would like to see where this rate applies. And why does VentureBeat write that Maxroam "will provide cell phone users with a SIM card that enables global calling for rates between 20 and 30 cents a minute in more than 160 countries"? That's a price difference of up to 100 per cent in two articles from the same day.

Still it's a great idea that Maxroam works also in Wifi hotspots where you don't have to pay two digit cent prices per minutes, but probably about one cent to most countries. Also these prices are not yet published, but I guess that's what Alec Saunders wrote about. The Wifi prices are of course great, but they have to be compared to the Wifi offers from Wifimobile and Truphone. Truphone calls to 40 countries are free until the end of the year, at Wifimobile you get the same for a flat rate price of $15.99 €11.99 Ł7.99 per month. In both cases you can use your existing cell phone number as caller ID, unless you are from the US or the UK, and don't have to bear the shame of these weird Liechtenstein, Iceland, Jersey, Estonia or the Isle of Man numbers. Wifimobile's new calltrough numbers in 11 countries even let you place calls outside a Wifi area.

Which brings me to Cubic Telecom's most interesting feature to slash roaming costs: Consumers get a single phone number, but can create multiple permanent local numbers for themselves - up to 50 - anywhere around the globe. All calls are forwarded to their Cubic Mobile phone, no matter where the calls originate, at the best rates for the callers. That's a cool idea, but Cubic Telecom is not the first to offer it. Local numbers for global SIMs are the new trend, I wrote two months ago. The German company GlobalSIM started already in july to give local fixed line numbers from 43 countries to their SIM card customers.

Like Nokia, whose Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia Anssi Vanjoki recently said that they "copy with pride" from the iPhone, Cubic Telecom has taken all these available features and squashed them into one product. That's a real accomplishment. They even took an existing phone and and made media like FierceVoip or the San Francisco Chronicle call it the "Cubic Mobile Phone". Although it's the known Pirelli DualPhone DP-L10 which the German VoIP provider Sipgate already sells since january.

But now, dear Pat, I would really like to know the prices per minute.

Labels: Apple, Cubic Telecom, GlobalSIM, iPhone, Maxroam, Nokia, Pirelli, Roam4Free, Roaming, Truphone, United Mobile, Wifimobile

                                      

Do you remember my post "Google is the real telco disruptor" from july?

Well, it seems that the story could become even more interesting with another player entering the 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction that many didn't have on their list: Apple might also bid for that "bech front property" spectrum, suggests a BusinessWeek article called "Apple Eyes the Wireless Auction".

Taking into account this possible development many pieces of the puzzle would fall into their place. Why is the iPod touch such a cool device, an iPhone without phone? Why did Apple cut the price for the iPhone so soon and drastically?

In Germany the association eco, alliance of 330 big internet companies, hailed already last week the new device by saying "Wifi iPod makes mobile internet a mass market" in a press release. They are fed up with the slow acceptation of mobile internet service on Germany because the incumbent mobile operators keep 3G data prices high and accept only walled gardens on their devices.

"T Zones, Web-n-walk und Vodafone Live all try to keep away the user from the free and open internet", says eco director Harald A. Summa. "Exactly this policy of closed networks has so far prevented the breaktrough of the mobile internet to a mass market. The success of iTunes and Youtube shows that the users know much better than the operators what they really want." The new iPod touch offers direct Wifi access to iTunes and Youtube, circumventing the closed networks of the mobile operators.

So, let's just imagine that the iPhone never planned to sell millions. Maybe it's real purpose is just to create buzz for the new iPods? The iPod touch has every feature that you like from the iPhone. It only misses the annoying part of the phone: A 60 dollar per month cell phone contract. New iPods could work without that contract, using the 700 MHz spectrum, suggests the article in BusinessWeek:

Signals at the 700Mhz spectrum, for example, could provide far faster Internet access than today's cellular or even Wi-Fi networks, and the signals can easily pass through buildings and work glitch-free, even in lousy weather.

Still, even the possibility of an Apple bid is intriguing. For starters, it would mean Apple would no longer need to rely on a phone company to deliver songs, TV shows, and other digital fare purchased at its iTunes Music Store. As it is, the major complaint of iPhone shoppers isn't with the phone, but with the pokey Net access from Apple's exclusive U.S. partner, AT&T (T).

If it owned its own spectrum, Apple could provide the network service itself, possibly for far less than the $1,440 iPhone owners must now fork out over the course of the cheapest two-year contract. For example, Apple could hold down costs by letting users choose a Net telephony program such as Skype rather than develop its own voice software, say analysts.

Apple might even be able to give away network service for free, and make its money off services such as iTunes and possibly by selling subscribers advertising space.

Indeed, cutting out the carrier would probably be in sync with Steve Jobs' view of the world. Before striking the iPhone deal with AT&T, he publicly dissed phone companies as little more than "orifices"—good only for providing dumb pipes to deliver more innovative companies' more innovative services.

"Apple is the most anti-carrier company there is," says the former Apple executive. "They're probably already frustrated with AT&T. If they put a few billion behind this, they could build a kick-ass network." Indeed, on Sept. 5, Apple announced a new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store so consumers can buy songs at wireless hotspots, something they can't do on AT&T's network. And Jobs made a point of noting Wi-Fi is faster not only than the so-called 2.5G EDGE network, but also than 3G cellular networks.

A very convincing argumentation that matches perfectly with what eco said. That's also the reason why I had to copy such a long passage of the original article. (Sorry for that!) Hopefully it's not only intentionally leaked hot air to lift Apple's stock price.

Labels: Apple, Broadband, free phone calls, Google, iPhone, iPod, Mobile, Skype, T-Mobile, Vodafone, VoIP

                                      

... says the Rebtel blog and criticizes the decision to disable VOIP on the iPhone.

iPhone buyers get a beautiful machine that’s horribly crippled by the stranglehold AT&T now seems to have on Apple.

It’s also a good demonstration of how the telephony market works: handset manufacturers and operators are in the same bed, and that means that we, their customers, are being deprived of functionality that could be ours if only….

Once VOIP handsets become available, users of mobile services will be able to band together and circumvent mobile protocols altogether. It’s only a matter of time before the first VOIP enabler hacks appear for the iPhone.

I am already waiting for that inevitable development. And as I said already in April: The standardization of VoIP in SIP has opened a Pandora's box for all telecommunication companies. With SIP you can tie every phone system together. More and more bridges are being built to make free phone calls and circumvent paid networks. Voice will become "just another application" like email, as techies use to say.

Labels: iPhone, Rebtel, VoIP