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No matter what kind of phone they have, Indonesians in general want two things from their phones (aside from being able to make calls and send sms): Yahoo Messenger and forwarding SMS*. Yahoo's messaging network is so prevalent in this country it's almost unthinkable that anyone would drop their YM account**.

 I also just discovered tonight at id-iPhone's gathering that many business people still have partners and clients that don't do email but they know sms. Forwarded SMS usually means a joke, spam, or some other type of junk, just like with email, but it struck me tonight that there might just be a significant portion of the market that actually use sms as business tools. Not just forwarding contacts but sending payment details, account numbers, product lists, and plenty of other commerce activities.

 I suppose I should have realized this earlier seeing that smart phones, while prevalent, are used mostly by people who don't even know how to use emails. Many are close to being tech illiterates. The lack of proper support for messaging system in the iPhone highlights one of the reasons why people jailbreak their iPhones here. They want to be able to chat continuously just like with Blackberries, receiving updates as they arrive, not when they open the application, and being able to forward text messages. I can tell you that the majority, perhaps 95% of id-iPhone members, jailbreak their iPhones and will talk others into jailbreaking them.

 Many of the members also said cut, copy, and paste wold be nice too but not as crucial as messaging. Not too many people complain about lack of physical keyboards though.

 In other words, iPhone OS 3.0 should solve most of their problems.

  
*) I don't do SMS much. I tend to ignore SMS that come in unless it is an urgent matter
**) I don't do chat either. GTalk and Skype occasionally but that's it.

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The battle between the number two and the number three smartphone makers in the world has spilled over to our shores.

A short while ago, Research in Motion and Indosat launched the new Blackberry Curve, the 8900, also known as the Javelin. It is the lightest, sleekest Blackberry model yet. Not too long before that, they launched Blackberry Bold, RIM's first 3G device. In the meantime, Apple and Telkomsel have announced that they are bringing the iPhone 3G to Indonesia.

Read more at Jakarta Globe

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For those of you on this planet who use an iPhone of some sort, or an iPod touch, how often do you use it for email? Do you find yourself using the built in email app just to read emails, or do you have a separate, dedicated device for email like a Blackberry? How many of you actually use it as your full time mobile email solution?

 I've recently discovered that the majority members of the iPhone user group in Indonesia are also avid Blackberry users.

 User groups in Indonesia are still primarily based on mailing lists thanks to the proliferation of slow and unreliable Internet connection until just recently. The influx and growth of gray market Blackberries lend further support and lifeline to the use of mailing lists whereas in more developed parts of the world mailing lists are on the way out being replaced by message boards or forums.

 Blackberries, coupled with affordable unlimited data plan make the perfect email and chat devices, so much so that they are not primarily considered as business tools in this part of the world. They have become core communications tool among the haves and the upper range of the middle class.

 I find this trend of dual smartphone ownership rather intriguing I ended up doing an entire podcast episode on this very topic but that is not what this piece is about.

 This is about the capability of Apple's mobile Mail program.

 iPhones and iPod touches have a workable email program. It's far from perfect but it does the job.

 Mail app in the iPhone OS lets you set up accounts from various providers such as Apple's own MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, a Microsoft exchange account, or from your own domain or ISP. With certain email providers, it lets you get your emails via the push method like in a Blackberry. With others, you can set Mail to fetch your emails every time you load that account.

 Now to cut to the chase, here are reasons why I think Apple's mobile Mail app is not ready for prime time yet.

 1. No mark as flagged
Often you get emails with instructions, alerts or notices or just the ones you need to reread more carefully later. These are the kinds you'd want to keep and make sure you read again in the near future. Without a flag, it's easy to miss them.

 2. No mark as read
Mobile Mail, just like its desktop sibling, shows you how many unread messages you have via a red badge on its application icon. Having this displayed would often ring a bell in your head as if saying "C'mon read me, go ahead, I dare ya."

 3. No search
Perhaps for a good reason. Mobile mail can only display a limited number of messages at any one time. Newer messages will push oldest ones out of the list. The maximum number of emails shown is 200. A search that goes back only 200 messages may be not so effective although it will still be useful up to a point.

 4. No attachment
Well this point is not entirely true. Mail does support receiving and previewing the most common types of attachments such as microsoft office documents, images, sounds, and PDF files. However to this point Mail does not allow sending an attachment of any kind except pictures stored in the photo library. If you have a PDF of any kind or documents stored using a third party file storage application, you can't attach them to emails. Apple currently doesn't allow this feature to be implemented. Even text files made using a writing app are sent as the body text of the email, not as attachments.

 5. Limited storage
Mail only allows displaying up to 200 emails as the older ones are removed from the phone's database. This sort of forces people to use IMAP service to keep their emails up to date although this is actually a good thing. What's not good is if you're the type of person who rely a lot on emails, being limited to 200 emails at a time may just restrict your communications.

 These are some of the reasons why I've switched my emailing activities on my iPhone from Mail to Gmail mobile. It solves all but one of the five issues above while giving me Gmail's threaded view which is in my opinion the best way to keep things in context.

 Until Apple solves or provides a workaround for those problems, the Mail app does not present itself as a compelling email application. Usable but not enough for a full time email client.

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It's practically a foregone conclusion that Telkomsel, Indonesia's largest mobile telecommunications provider will carry iPhone 3G for the Indonesian market. Some of its other sister telcos already are selling iPhones in their respective countries; SingTel in Singapore, Bharti AirTel in India, Optus in Australia and Globe in the Philippines. Early rumors pegged the Indonesian release period for September 2008 but the month came and went with no peep out of anyone and no sign of the hottest phone in the market being released officially. Private imports and non-official iPhone 3G's and even older iPhones are selling like hot cakes regardless.

The latest news to hit the web is that Telkomsel, after several apparent delays, will launch iPhone 3G in January or February, in other words, Q1 2009. Now make note that Gadnix, the source of this news have not been around for very long but the site is staffed by veteran bloggers in the mobile phone world who used to write for 3G Week.  

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