One man clearly immune to Steve Jobs’ famed "reality distortion field" is Ad Scheepbouwer, straight-talking CEO of KPN, the Dutch telecoms company. He decided that his iPhone was "pretty useless" so he gave it to his 20-year-old daughter. She didn’t rate it either. "She’s given it to her boyfriend," Mr Scheepbouwer told the FT. "He’s very happy with it, but it’s been three days so we’ll see how it ends."

Given that the iPhone isn’t yet officially available in the Netherlands (or any other country besides the US, UK, France and Germany) that’s surprisingly candid. KPN would like to sell the phone on the Dutch market and Apple has so far chosen to sell the iPhone tied to just one mobile operator in each country. But it probably also reflects what some pundits have said all along: Europeans generally expect to pay less and get more from their phones. There is some evidence for that with the news last month that the iPhone missed its sales target in the UK, where 02 has responded with better value calling plans.

Bring on the iPhone 2.0?