Hello true believers, its your friendly neighborhood word slinger here with the review for the latest offering from Apple, the iPhone 3G. As you have read I waited in line to get my hands on one for an early morning review, but wanted to give the phone a few days in my hands before I wrote anything down, to try and be objective, at least as much as I can be.

I was excited to say the least to open the shrink wrapping, and due to the fiasco with the activation process I left the AT&T store with an unactivated iPhone, and when I went to activate it wouldn't for a good 2 hours, so I was left with emergency calls only. This made me sad, and wondering why it was I waited so long for something to then have to wait longer just to use it. But oh well, the purchase was made and the damage done to my sleep and ego. I activate and get a welcomed message that there was no service. I call AT&T and get a wonderful lady on the other end who was happy to help and very happy to tell me my retailer is in a fair bit of trouble for not activating in store. She sets everything up, and 15 minutes later I have a fully functional iPhone and can finally get down to using the phone, this is nearly 4PM Friday. And I left the store at just after 10AM.

I add applications, I add videos and I surf the net. I set up MobileMe and sync everything up, sometimes successfully and sometimes with a complete failure. But I am content. These are early days of a new phone and a new activation procedure for Apple, so I do not want to hold them as responsible as I would someone like Motorola doing the same thing, they have been in the mobile market for 20 years or so.

After two days of usage I can say that this phone does not disappoint. The GPS works amazing, the phone is crystal clear whether over the headset or on the handset. I have yet to add a bluetooth headset to try that out, but everything else I have done sounds better than any other phone.

The 3G addition is welcome as you can quickly move through websites and online applications with ease. The only downside so far has been that some applications tend to make others unusable until you restart or sync the iPhone. If you do not the application just crashes on boot up. Some have even said the new LCD used in the new iPhone is slightly yellow but I have not seen anything noticeable and only see a clear and very user friendly screen.

The only real downsides I can see are ones others have said, no MMS and the iTunes store is only available on WiFi. I wish to be able to download over the 3G network. Its getting up to 1Mbps and is more than adequate for the job. And Voip, I would love to be able to use Skype, its an amazing application, and no reason to not be able to use it, except for maybe upsetting AT&T.

The iPhone is available now (if you can find it). Good hunting and hope you enjoy yours as much as I enjoy mine.