You might not like this…

Given some self-imposed financial constraints, I’ve been patiently waiting to purchase an iPhone until the iPhone 3G update arrived on July 11th.

On launch day, I woke up at 3:30AM in order to be awake enough for the five-minute drive to The Domain, home to the Apple Store for those of us in North Austin. Upon arrival, the security officer informed me that nobody was allowed on the premises until 6AM. Instead of heading home and risking oversleeping, I drove to the nearest AT&T store just a few blocks away to see if they had a line going yet. There were a few folks already lined up (including one in a sleeping bag), so I decided to hang there and, in doing so, became #12 in line at 4:15AM.

Once the doors opened at 8AM, I ended up in the second group allowed in the store. Two guys made it out with activated iPhones while I was waiting…and waiting and waiting for my 16GB White to get activated. Turns out that, among being one of the first people in the Central Time Zone to get an iPhone 3G, I was also one of the first to experience the failure of the iTunes-based activation system used to bring the iPhones to life. After waiting patiently for 20 minutes or so, I finally suggested to the manager that they could send us home with bricked phones and we could activate them ourselves, as had been allowed with the original iPhone. Surprisingly, he didn’t hesitate more than a second or two before agreeing and running around the store telling all the sales people to do as much. Shortly after that, I was on my way as the proud owner of a 16GB White iPhone 3G and the line started flowing again. The activation system was still down when I got home, but finally came through for me around 1:30PM, when I got home from having lunch with a friend.

I’ve now been using it for a little more than one week and, overall, I’m happy with the phone. I have the occasional freeze, etc., but given the three pages of additional apps currently installed on it an the fact that it’s running a fresh new firmware version, I can deal with it, and have no doubt that updates will be forthcoming.

In addition to the phone itself, I’m really enjoying the following apps: Twitterific, Pandora Radio, Bloomberg (rotate your phone while viewing a stock detail page for a nice surprise), Exposure, Remote (coupled with the music library on my Mac Pro which pipes music to my home stereo in the living room via an AirPort Express), NetNewsWire and, as of about two hours ago, I’m now able to blog on the go with WordPress for iPhone!