Finally, the first public impressions and reviews of the iPhone have been made and surprise surprise, it really does match most of its hype.

After 6 months of non-stop, and always growing hype and anticipation, and for some people, days of queuing up, the iPhone finally went into the hands of the public late Friday evening in the United States.

Despite a few activation issues (AT&T system glitch) and minor flaws, the iPhone met its high expectations, with some even going as far as saying that it's the best smart phone ever created.

After a few days of testing and playing with the phone, most iPhone owners claimed that all phone functions worked as well, and as smoothly as the iPhone ads make it seem.

The new optical quality touch-screen glass clearly proved that it is very much as scratch resistant as Apple claims it to be, even when being deliberately scratched with a key. The iPhone also passed a few 'drop' tests, as PC World magazine reports..

Apple iPhone Stress Test - PC World


Virtual keypad typing wasn't as hard to master as claimed, even with large fingers, as Gizmodo.com demonstrated here.

The debate whether or not it was silly of Apple to partner with AT&T, given their so called 'slow' EDGE network, was temporarily laid to rest as iPhone users experienced surprisingly fast downloads, averaging around 150kbps, rather than earlier reports of only less than a third of the speed.

There were, however, a couple of notable flaws. The iPhone doesn't support Multimedia Messaging (MMS) or 3G, and even has no video camera. The unremovable battery makes it hard to swap batteries when you're running out of battery life, and you can't use your own ringtones yet either.

These were just probably tiny flaws when compared to the amount of great functions the phone has to offer. One thing is clear though, the iPhone is still the most wanted gadget of 2007 by a mile.

As every Bruneian gadget lover would painfully already know by now, the iPhone will not be arriving on our shores until 2008, but it's almost certain that we'll be getting much better, updated iPhone versions by then.

New York's iPhone launch - CNET TV