The first reviews from some of the lucky journalists (insert professional jealousy expletive here!) to get an early-review Apple iPhone model are out in the US media! The overall impression is that the "Jesus Phone" may actually live up to the hype after all. Minus the blood to wine conversion of course, though, I'm told there's a nifty app for the phone that actually lets you .... anyway, lol, here are some quick links:

Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal: "Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer." More

David Pogue, New York Times: "... so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese." More

Stephen Levy, Newsweek: "The iPhone is the rare convergence device where things actually converge." More

Edward Baig, USA Today: "Apple's iPhone isn't perfect, but it's worthy of the hype." More

For those of you not enthu enough to read all those reviews here's a quick summary:

It seems as though the biggest worries - keyboard and battery - turned out just fine. While some of them say that the Blackberry will still have its following, all of them adjusted to the touch screen keyboard quite easily. The battery life of 5 hours plus talk-time on heavy usage and eight hours with stuff like Wi-Fi off is way better than most other smartphones. The lack of memory cards didn't seem to be too much of a bother either

The downers in fact have more to do with AT&T's data speeds - apparently their EDGE network like those of our desi carriers is painfully slow. No voice recognition also means that calling a number is a six-step process if the phone is off.

The million dollar ... or crore rupee question is when will we see it in India? Apple originally said that the Asia launch would be in 2008, but here's some inside dope.. I've been getting "dipstick survey" calls by a couple of Public Relations agencies who are all pitching for the Apple India account and some of them privately say that they've been briefed about a possible launch as early as November! Keep your fingers crossed, though without the contract subsidy and with customs duty, be prepared to shell out half a lakh! No question of slipping one through customs, (since the phone isn't SIM card based phone can only be activated by connecting it to a computer with iTunes and then logging on to AT&T's network) unless you want to pay AT&T international roaming charges forever!