Yeah, it’s just what it looks like. Jules and I both got an iPhone 3G last Saturday. Jules’ is thankfully being paid for by work so he can be on call at all hours by voice and email (yes, it works nicely with Exchange, amazingly enough) but unfortunately mine was totally unsubsidized by AT&T since I wasn’t eligible for an upgrade (LAME.)

We were advised to show up at the Apple Store about an hour before opening to ensure our place in line, but we got there at 6:45 and there was only one guy out there. Jules and I went and got a coffee and came back and still there was only one guy there. By the time 8AM rolled around there were only about 10 people hanging around and the entire process took about 15 minutes from start to finish. Very easy and painless. (Side note: Those Apple employees must have it so easy. They don’t have to sell their product at all; it already has an incredibly high demand. Their customers are generally knowledgeable about the product they are buying so there’s little convincing necessary. All they really need to do is try to sell accessories!) It was kind of fun hanging out in line with the few people crazy enough to be up that early on a Saturday morning.

My impressions of the device during its first week in my hand: what an extraordinary device! With the new Application store available there is almost nothing it cannot do that I wish it could. The text input method is a bit iffy at times (laggy during certain operations, inconsistently) and there is no copy/paste, but otherwise it is solid. The battery is pretty much dead at the end of every night due to heavy usage, but being able to connect to WiFi rather than 3G when in range of an access point is a fantastically useful feature (and does save some battery.) I’m a bit annoyed that Apple expects you to buy their ringtones or create your own only from songs purchased from the iTunes store, but luckily there is a simple workaround. (I have yet to try this though.) I am happier than I even expected with the phone. Highly recommended.