Qype, the European reviews and ratings network in the UK, France and Germany, has launched an iPhone version unoriginally called “iQype”. If you’re reading this on a iPhone or iPod Touch it’s here.

Now, iPhone users can browse the 6,000 cities Qype has listed and the 200,000 user-generated reviews of bars, restaurants, cafes etc. That’s nice. But this is a startup with significant inventment from VC houses Advent Venture Partners and Partech International. Little old Trusted Paces in the UK, launched their iPhone version in November last year.

What would be more interesting would be to leverage Qype’s social network on the iPhone. They tell me messaging internally between Qype users will be added at some point and also the ability to send places to your friends via email, and possibly sms. There is limited profile support now. But why they didn’t go for broke on this now I don’t know because last time I looked there were few social networks spread across Europe in quite the same way. This is a great opportunity for Qype but the functionality is not there yet. Admittedly, TrustedPlaces has not done any more with their iPhone app either.

Secondly, Qype needs to make it more location aware about users. You can type where you are, like TottenhamCourt Road or you can use the iPhone’s location-finding ability to plot a route to the listed venue. That’s almost close to what a mobile social app might do - but perhaps they might be able to add a status bar to people’s profiles allowing them to set their location. That would create a mobile social network for the iPhone much closer to the ideal that Techcrunch has been talking about for a while.