It seems like Apple is releasing an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the iPhone early next year. The third party applications developed with this most likely need a digital signature, similar to the one Nokia requires from third party developers. This way problematic software can be easily tracked down to the root of the problem if there is one.

Greg Joswiak the President of Hardware Product Marketing at Apple pointed out that they “tend to put the cross hairs on where we are now, and by the time they come up with a product that tries to match where we are now, we’re beyond them. We’re one or two generations beyond, moving faster than they are.”

We heard some news from tech.co.uk that users of the iPhone have reception problem with the iPhone on the O² network in the UK where other O² users don’t have any trouble at all.

They claim that this mostly due to battery problems with the iPhone. When the battery is fully charged the signal strength goes up.

One users says: “My Apple iPhone can barely pick up even the slightest signal, although on occasion can pick up three bars, only for it to drop out again. I have two other 02 phones, a Sony Ericsson and a Nokia N95 with no reception problems at all. Is anyone experiencing same problem with their Apple iPhone, I would like to hear from you,”.

One sollution to this problem can be a full restore of the iPhone: “After reading this thread and others, I did a restore of the Apple iPhone back to factory (1.1.2) and voila - success. On my desk no service to one bar again (best I can hope for) but in the bay window I now get three bars which is great,” wrote ‘Cottycam’.

Due to the law situation in France Orange (the partner for selling the iPhone in France) has to offer the iPhone in France without any contract that is bound to it. They sell it for €749 which sums up to $1,112. An awesome price for an iPhone without contract.

In Germany the situation is even worse. Vodafone sued T-mobile (the partner network in Germany) to make the iPhone available without a contract. In fear of up to €250,000 in fees for every iPhone sold T-mobile is offering the iPhone for a hefty sum of €999 without a contract, that is $1,484.

To make this price at least acceptable for customer the German service provider Debitel is offering a deal that customers that present them an iPhone they have bought for €999 and sign a two year contract get a€600 discount. Thats a smart move from Debitel to gain some market share with iPhone users!

According to a GfK NOP survey 75% of the Britains think the iPhone is too expensive.

4&% of those questioned claimed they would never buy the iPhone at the current price, 26% like the iPhone a lot but also believe it’s too expensive. Only 2% of them said they want to get the iPhone for Christmas.

8% of the British people don’t like the iPhone at all and 12% have even never heard of it.

Judging from this survey the iPhone doesn’t have a lot of success in Great Britain where it is exclusively sold through O² with the corresponding long term contract.

I heard it before, but according to Macrumors forums users are reporting a “dead strip” on the iPhones touch sensitive display. This “dead strip” is an area on the display that does not allow any gesture input. I seems to only occur be only at the bottom or top part of the display.

One forum user reports: ”First the very bottom of the screen went out so I could not hit the space-bar on the keyboard, or change to the number/character screen. Then it got worse a few days later, now I cannot hit any of the main function buttons.”

Nothing like restarts or reboots seems to dissolve this problem. Firsr rumors say it is a hardware problem of the iPhone that the display is not responding to finger input. It also seems like that Apple is aware of the situation and exchanges displays that are broken and don’t respond any more in the “dead strip” area.

I always wondered why the iPhone has no clipboard at all?

Copy and paste between applications? Not on the iPhone!
Found an interesting address to check out in Google Maps? Better remember it or use plain old paper!

This really make no sense at all, but maybe that’s just one of the advanced features of the iPhone?! Who knows.

Yeah true the iPhone has Bluetooth, but can we really use it? No!

With all, i repeat all, other phone we can do nice things with Bluetooth like:

• Transfer files to the Mac/PC or to other Bluetooth devices
• Synch your phone with the Mac/PC. No need for a cable!
• Connect to external GPS in your car. The iPhone has all the nice Google Maps, why can’t we not use them in a proper way!?
• Internet access from your laptop

The only thing that you can do on the iPhone with your Bluetooth is connect a headset, this is makes the iPhone a somewhat crippled device when it comes to Bluetooth!

Ok it is official.

Here are the prices for the German T-Mobile iPhone, from what you get they are quite similar to other service providers, but the price is really steep:

Complete M:

• €49 per month
• 100 minutes
• 40 SMS
• data flatrate for EDGE (speed drop to 64 kBit/s after 200 MB of usage)
• use the T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspot network for free

Complete L:

• €69 per month
• 200 minutes
• 150 SMS
• data flatrate for EDGE (speed drop to 64 kBit/s after 2 GB of usage)
• use the T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspot network for free

Complete XL:

• €89 per month
• 1000 minutes
• 300 SMS
• data flatrate for EDGE (speed drop to 64 kBit/s after 5 GB of usage)
• use the T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspot network for free

Although they are named “complete” they are totally not! There is some very expensive pricing going on at T-Mobile. All other minutes exceeding the included minutes are billed at € 0,39 which is also a lot considering the fact that there are prepaid services in Germany that offer the minute at €0,09. When you don’t use all of your free minutes these are dropped at the end of the month.

I have also added these to the international iPhone price comparison chart.