For the record, I did 'apt-get remove --purge iphbd' yesterday immediately after I spotted this thread. I did not faff around /etd/init.d or anything else. The phone seemed to work fine but I did not reboot until late evening after updating KP52 modules (the reboot was not required but I did it anyway, partly to test whether removing iphbd had any effect).

As far as I can tell, my phone behaves as it has always been. No freezes on boot, no other misbehaviour. The free memory went up by about 7K.

However, reader beware! Like reinob, I have removed all that I could dare from my phone. I do not use Exchange sync (so that went too), Nokia messaging (gone)... and the only IM client I ever use is Skype, and even that only occasionally.