Kosta Koufas is from Canton, Ohio.

Having Greek parents and a Greek name doesn't make you Greek (aside from having dual citizenship - handy if you end up playing pro ball there or want to be an Olympian).

I'm not sure that this would avoid legal problems for UniquePhones or IPhoneSIMfree; how is releasing something to open source for a financial reward different from selling the product?

I'm sure you could make $100k pretty quickly by selling fully unlocked iPhones in Europe and Asia.

I've wanted one of these since the m600 first came out. I can't understand why you would go to the expense of developing a phone like these and not make them capable of (really) working in the US.

When the m600 came out, there was nothing else this small with these capabilities in the US. Now, Blackberry/Rim, Samsung and HTC have brought out phones with a similar form factor (and done very well with them). It seems like they missed a major opportunity.

The way the Moto Rokr E6 can be changed in the settings to handle the 850 band and EDGE makes me think it should be the easiest thing in the world for a manufacturer.

Is UMTS/HSDPA that different from that? Does the hardware have to be different to work with different bands? Does the difference between how the Europeans and ATT handle upload/download band usage mean different hardware is required?

This would do just fine.

Throwing my hat in the mix.

heroes

There has been software to make Palms (including Treos) do this for years. I would think that a huge amount of prior art that would make defending this impossible.

Or is the entire patent around a system in which devices provide the control set for devices to download and control them. If Sony started to build that into all of their devices, it could be interesting.

Looks like you can just buy a sim for $59 right now.
http://www.cellularabroad.com/cellAbroadppsc.php

Free incoming calls anywhere in Europe (and China) is a pretty good deal - too bad the outgoing rates are so high ($.97 within "zone 1").

I've never heard of a package with free incoming calls for roaming before.

I used to regularly rack up $1,000+ mobile bills when I traveled through Europe for work (my company footed the bill). This is a brilliant move and could win them a huge amount of corporate business.

I'd like to see T-Mobile follow suit between the US and Europe. That would certainly stop my from switching to Cingular. (Of course, so would getting their 3G service up).

Some thoughts the day after-

Defending the iPhone:
1. If Microsoft or Apple doesn't bring out something to allow users to work with MS Office docs, Google's tools should fill in the gaps.

2. The lack of push e-mail will put off some BB users, but push was built to make a pager and ultra-low bandwidth pager network work for e-mail. With Edge and WiFi (and 3g relatively soon), you have many options for receiving and checking your e-mail.

3. Apple sells more ipods than anyone else does smartphones, and for outrageously high prices/margins. Version 1.0 only needs to appeal to ipod upgraders to be a big success. Smartphone use is just gravy to them. But, if it proves to be a popular niche, they will have a good platform to build on.

4. Who says this won't be a platform that 3rd party apps can't be developed for? I'm sure standard Mac apps won't run, but it shouldn't be hard to port. Have I missed something saying it would be locked down?

Criticisms:
1. No 3G is very lame, especially since it won't be coming out for 6 months. You would think that constant access to the iTunes store would have driven this.

2. I love touch screens, but with a stylus for writing. We'll have to wait and see whether it is possible to actually use this for writing anything. I think they were more concerned with browsing song catalogs and selecting from bookmarked web sites than with using it as a PDA.

3. 6 months until release!!??! There will be a lot of cool smart phones out by then.

4. Proprietary lock-ins. It is supposedly an internet device, but the net and net devices have only really taken off when they have been open. Right now, I'd rather have a small cool phone and the Nokia 770.