Martin Gumucio

We are testing out the iPhone in an enterprise enviroment here at work. Taking a well-deserved break from the abysmal standards of HTC and Windows Mobile. The feature we are most amazed at, you can actually place a call with this phone without it running out of memory!

So now I am hunting for wi-fi spots in Uppsala. We have a deal with the Telia Homerun, supposedly the largest commercial provider for hotspots in Sweden?  I really hope not, check out their coverage in Uppsala:

Visa större karta

Awesome job Telia!  Looks like their idea of wiring up a city is to put 7 base-stations around the same block downtown. Brace yourself people its the mobile revolution..  My first impressions of the iPhone are very good, its a lot more useable than i thought. But with some madenning limitations.  Who could ever have dreamed that “the most advanced cell phone on earth” would be unable to:

• Use bluetooth properly.. only the headset profile is implemented. Come on!  Where is the DUN profile, the OBEX profile? People take that stuff for granted now. The biggest letdown is that it doesn’t do A2DP, this profile allows units to stream music via bluetooth. (For example to my new Jabra BT3030).  The bigwigs at Apple must have some reason to let the 16Gb monster music machine, with bluetooth capabilities.. NOT be able to play music over bluetooth. 
• Sync podcasts over the wire – yes thats right. You just bought a cellphone that has 3G, Edge, GSM, Bluetooth. And the only way you can get music into it is to connect it to your computer, with a cable. Even more interesting is that apple recently blocked an application that provided this very functionality from their app store.
• Visual Voicemail – Someone calls you and you can’t answer. So what happens next? This is what you are used to:  Your phone stops ringing, and tells you that you have missed a call, if the person calling you leaves a voicemail you get a text message maybe with the text “You have message waiting for you” (This is an actual message I get from Tele2, their shoddy programming only makes the message look ok when you have two or more messages). You then have to call a number to listen to your messages, and grapple with an archaic touch-tone system to repeat/delete messages. It all reeks to high heaven. One of the coolest features of the iPhone is that it finally fixes the biggest glaring error in the normal cellphone usage. Visual Voicemail!  No what you are seeing here is not from a futuristic movie maybe starring Tom Cruise. It is the reason why the iPhone was only released on a single carrier in the US. AT&T had to make changes in their infrastructure to make this system a reality. And a beauty it is.  So why is it on my list of things to hate for the iPhone?  Because we here in Sweden have to live without it. Telia, one of our biggest telcos actually got away with the same exclusive contract that AT&T got, but without having to provide any extra services.  Good for them, bad for their customers.