iPhone Coming Thursday; Early Reviews Positive

The iPhone 4's scheduled release date is Thursday, and demand has been so strong that some carriers of the device are not promising the product will be available to those who did not pre-order. AT&T said Tuesday that it would not have iPhones for those who didn't pre-order until June 29.

Apple also said Wednesday that the white version of the iPhone 4 will not ship until the second half of July, due to manufacturing problems.

Meanwhile, major technology reviewers had positive things to say about the new device. Engadget's Josh Topolosky, who appeared on a panel at CEA Line Shows at which he read from his review, called it “the best smartphone on the market right now,” and wrote that he “can't overstate how high-end the design of the iPhone 4 is. The 3GS now feels cheap and chubby by comparison, and even a phone like the HTC Droid Incredible — which just came out — seems last-generation,” and added that the new device “outclasses pretty much every smartphone on the market in terms of industrial design.”

Writing in the New York Times, critic David Pogue called the iPhone 4 “beautiful… solid and Lexus-like.” He also praised the device, with its FaceTime feature, as “the first phone that makes good video calls,” and praised the phone's ability to make calls, AT&T's weak network notwithstanding.

The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg called the new device “a big, well-designed update that, in my view, keeps it in the lead in the smartphone wars,” and while he agreed with Pogue that the iPhone 4 does a better job with calls, he too ripped AT&T, calling it a network which “not only still operates a network that has trouble connecting and maintaining calls in many cities, but now has abandoned unlimited, flat-rate data plans. Apple needs a second network.”