iPhone 3G: U.K. review, U.S. problems

The iPhone 3G went on sale in 22 countries today at 8:00 a.m. Several are being tested in our labs, and our first impressions will be posted later today. Meanwhile, our colleagues at Which?, the independent testing magazine in the United Kingdom, have used their 5-hour head start on buying the iPhone to complete their own review. Their impressions were favorable overall, though the 3G did get dinged for its inability to record videos or send multimedia text messages—a drawback it shares with the original iPhone.

Here in the States, iTunes' servers—critical for iPhone's activation—began slowing down and eventually conking out soon after stores opened, as Engadget's Nilay Patel reports. Many shoppers—including our own—waited 30 minutes to more than an hour after they reached the sales counter to complete the activation process. Other customers are being turned away or allowed to purchase inoperative iPhones they can activate later from home. It's not clear when "later" will be because the servers need to be up in order for you to upgrade iTunes on your computer to Version 7.7.

We were able to activate our new iPhones in just a few minutes, since we had performed the iTunes update earlier in the morning—a process that took over 2 hours because of the slow servers. As we reported earlier, you can upgrade your original iPhone's operating system to get many of the 3G's improvements, such as more sophisticated e-mail and PDA features as well as the ability to download a multitude of applications from Apple's new App Store. But it's critical that you first update iTunes on your computer to Version 7.7 and make sure you have a connection to the iTunes server before synching your iPhone with your laptop. Otherwise, as the Standard's Jordan Golson reports, you could end up in "upgrade limbo" with an iPhone that won't work.

Our advice on upgrades: Wait a few days for this server congestion to clear up.

—Mike Gikas