Last Friday I set out for my local AT&T store at 7 AM after a long night of strong winds and lightning. I arrived at the store hoping to see maybe 20 people in line ahead of me. Of course, I underestimated the true turnout by about 35 people.

So, three hours and 30 minutes into my wait in line, the store happily announced that they had sold out of iPhones. I had a nice time in line talking with some people, but all in all I was disappointed with the way we were treated in line. We were not told how many iPhones the store had or anything of that nature. Apparently the store only had 10 iPhones, and the majority of the people in line ahead of me failed the credit check or found out it would cost them $400, so they dropped interest rather quickly. I gave up on getting an iPhone on release day in favor of heading to a Cubs game (they won).

The next day I went to the Apple store in Oakbrook to wait in line for an iPhone again. This time, the line was probably 200 people long. However, my wait time to get into the store was less than the over three hours I spent at AT&T. I was brought inside after about 2:45 of waiting. However, I suppose the wait was worthwhile.

The person helping me seemed excited to be launching the new phone, but she admitted that after working two full days selling iPhones it got quite frustrating. We had to cancel a corporate discount on our family plan to get my phone, but hopefully that will be re-added soon. All in all, I walked out of the Apple store with a fully functioning iPhone 3G (8GB model).

I've been using my iPhone for a few days now with just a few complaints.

Laggy text messaging. One of the major reasons I wanted to move away from my Razr was due to its incredibly slow performance text messaging. The iPhone 2.0 software will randomly cause SMS typing to slow to a crawl at random. However, to the phones defense, most of the time the typing is quick and pain-free.

Laggy contacts screen. When I open the contacts program on my new phone, the screen will lag for about 3 seconds before becoming responsive.

SMS sounds stop working. Randomly the sound for receiving an SMS stopped working on my phone. I managed to fix it by restarting my phone and it has been okay since. I'm not quite sure of the original issue, but hopefully it will be fixed in the 2.0.1 firmware.

Crashing issues with new applications. The new applications coded by third party developers are notoriously buggy. I've had a few crashes already. I don't expect perfection, but I would like it if things worked the first time.

These problems, however, are very easily ignored. The overall quality of the phone is excellent. I can't complain about any hardware aspects of the phone. The GPS works great (even indoors) and having 1.4 Mbit internet anywhere with 3G service makes browsing the internet much more bearable.

All in all, I would definitely recommend the iPhone 3G to anyone who currently lacks an iPhone. If you have the existing iPhone, I say only upgrade if you need location based services or fast internet. At any rate, the iPhone 3G does its predecessor justice.