There’ve been a few big-scale reviews of the iPhone over the past week or so, and I wanted to take some time to flag a few up that I enjoyed reading.  Ars Technica have posted up their magna-opus and are sending some pretty serious love Apple’s way with an 8 out of 10 rating.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re not all positive – most frustrating to them seem to be the lockdowns and surprising omissions, like the choice of sole AT&T availability, the lack of MMS and its refusal to sync wirelessly: 

“The lack of (real) Exchange support irks us on a $600 device, the ringer/alert volume issue is silly, the inability to use it as a modem via Bluetooth or any other method is irritating, and third-party application support is weak. We also feel as though Apple really forgot the spit and polish on the mail application”

But to get that high score the iPhone has to come through in the end, and as in so many other reviews it’s the general experience of using the handset and, in particular, the way it handles the internet that earns it so much love:

“It is, without a doubt, the best mobile browser in existence, period. It’s innovative, its page renders are beautiful, and it’s only going to get better with more support”

It’s an opinion shared, at least tentatively, by the other two major reviews out at the minute: Gizmodo’s and Engadget’s, who are both excited by the iPhone but still a little wary of recommending it wholeheartedly.  At the end of the day, it seems that Ars’ own personal decision mirrors that held by a lot of mobile users and reviewers alike:

“Before the iPhone came out, we were planning to buy a new smartphone that was not the iPhone. We are still not buying an iPhone today, after having used it exclusively for some time. However, we are not buying something else either; we plan to wait to see what software (and hardware) updates might come out for the iPhone in the near future. We believe that the iPhone is cool enough to wait for whatever might come out, and we have confidence that many of the nits we have picked can be fixed through a major software update”

We’ve had a few people ask when they’ll see the MYiTablet iPhone review, and we’d like to reassure you that we’re still beavering away at it.  Although any trustworthy coverage of a new gadget tries to look beyond the hype and excitement at launch, it’s still difficult to get a reasonable perspective while still in the “honeymoon” period of first ownership.  At $500 – $600 the iPhone is a huge investment for a mobile phone, and we want to make sure our review gives you everything you need to best judge whether it’s a price you should pay.