So the iPhone 3G is out. In a move that surprised absolutely nobody, I ended up waiting in line for 10 hours to be one of the first in Montreal to get the new gadget. Since I didn’t know just how long the lines would be, I figured getting there at around 11PM would be OK. When I got there, I was 2nd in line at the flagship Rogers store in downtown Montreal.

The night was weird to say the least. Being second in line meant giving at least 30-40 interviews over the night (and morning) to just about every major news organisations in Montreal. Since I was one of the first out of the store with the iPhone, it meant even more interviews after getting the phone. Got to meet the Rogers VP who told me “please don’t be negative during your interviews”. He said that laughing, but you could tell he meant it. That was such a big day for Rogers, any negative publicity would have contributed to ruin the day.

I wasn’t interested in torpedoeing Rogers anyway. I used to pay $60 a month for 50MB a year ago on my Blackberry, so the $30/6GB ends up being quite a deal for me. The Visual Voice Mail is, quite honestly, a game changer for me. This feature alone was worth the price of the phone. I had always hated the damn Voice Mail system, but this makes it so easy to check messages that I’m almost looking forward to getting more messages.

I spent the last year with a first gen iPhone, so the update is minimal, but I have to say the App Store is really quite nice. I’ve already downloaded over 12 free apps for the phone, some of which are really nice like Shazam which detects a song that’s playing in the background and can tell you the song’s name and author. Twitterrific is also quite nice. I’m using the Mac desktop version of this app and it works quite well, so having it on the phone makes it perfect. The Facebook app (also free) is pretty nice although I’m not a big fan of the site, on the desktop or on the go.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the phone. If you’ve never had an iPhone, its UI alone makes it a  phone that no other phone can touch. You really need to try one to understand the difference. I loved my Blackberry Curve, I really did, but the iPhone is such a superior phone in every possible way that even though the Curve is a really good phone, in my opinion it can’t quite compete, even though it does have a few advantages as far as emails and instant messenging go.